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#like i will switch them out interchangably multiple times a minute
interships-ulead · 1 year
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Time Management Techniques to Learn From Online Internship
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Time management strategies play a vital role in every professional's work efficiency.
Recruiters ask time management interview questions to gauge candidates' effective time management strategies to optimize work efficiency and productivity. Likewise, it is impossible to answer for an entry-level applicant to answer these questions.
With the rising significance of time management skills, even more so during trying times like the pandemic, here are a few time management techniques that can be learned from work-from-home internships to help with work efficiency.
Let's start!
1. Estimate time per task
We all want to log out as soon as the clock strikes the end of the day. It is best to take some time to organize for the next day. Here is your unpaid or paid internship to help you manage your work accordingly. It can be challenging, but later, you get the hang of it. During your internship, begin your day quickly and have your thoughts organized. For example, if checking and reverting to emails is your first task, assign not more than 30 minutes.
2. Track your time
Mapping time is the most enjoyable part of time management techniques.
Why do you ask?
You want to keep your thoughts clear and ready to function with great ideas to ensure work productivity. Therefore, let your alarm and time management apps deal with the rest of your day(s). It is a good habit to start building during an online internship, which can benefit your future. 
3. Employ the 4-D rule
As a working professional, you might think never saying 'No' is a sign of efficiency. Let me burst your bubble, it's not.
Overworking yourself can lead to stress, anxiety, and even burnout, common during work-from-home internships with stipend. 
Trust me; you do not want to experience that before entering corporate culture. As a result, I have developed the 4-D (Delete, Delay, Diminish, and Delegate) rule for effective time management.
Delete- Ask yourself if the task will bring beneficial results or if it's interchangeable with another project. If it is, you can delete the task and go ahead with the next one.
Delay- Ask yourself if the task is needed on an urgent basis or can be started at a later date. In this case, concentrate on other tasks which require priority.
Diminish- Check if the task demands the amount of time designated or can be done in a shorter time.
Delegate- Can someone else take the task better and more efficiently? If so delegate it to him/her/ them. You cannot be the Jack of all trades since it will allow you become the master of none.
Time management techniques can help working professionals improve their time management skills and increase productivity. You can start the above technique in your online internship. 
4. Quit multitasking
Although assumed to be a virtue, multitasking can drain your time management skills. Interns it is expected to multitask in their online internship so that they can upskill in every area. But ensure that you do not forget to polish your main area. 
This can also damage your brain and also decrease your productivity.
According to an analysis, "People loaded with several streams of electronic information do not pay attention, control their memory or switch from one job to another as well as those who prefer to complete one task at a time."
5. Learn to prioritize
As discussed earlier, interns are considered to do all the work in their unpaid or paid internships. But do not worry; an internship is a trial and error-method. Learn to prioritize your work which is essential when you start working as a professional individual. Those who do not plan their day can easily face the trouble of being at a loss the next day.
ULead offers a paid online internship program for students to upskill themselves while reinventing learning and transforming lives with us. Embark on a fulfilling journey to experience, create, nurture and carry out multiple aspects of what makes our organization click, from sales to marketing in various segments.
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dabisburntsack · 4 years
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False Alarm
Fandom: My Hero Academia
Pairing(s): Shigaraki Tomura x GN!Reader
Genre: Fluff !
Synopsis: When your long time gaming partner brings up the topic of May Day you can’t help but romanticise the olden holiday with your ever growing crush on him.
Wordcount: 1784
This is apart of a sfw flower collab done with the bnharem discord server! I loved the prompt for this collab and can’t wait to see how everyones fics turned out!! Special thanks to @pluviophile-imagines for helping my ass through this as I had a mental breakdown٩( ᐛ )و
✧・゚: *✧・゚:*    *:・゚✧*:・゚✧
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✧・゚: *✧・゚:*    *:・゚✧*:・゚✧
⇾  signifies texting
May Day was a traditional holiday, one you wouldn’t have really heard of had your long time online gaming partner not brought it up in discussion as you fought against him to bring down the zombies on your screen.
“Yeah you pretty much leave a basket full of flowers with different meanings to them hanging on a loved ones door”
“I would have never pegged you for the romantic type” You replied amused.
“I’m- well, I’m... I would never do it-”
“You wouldn’t?”
“Pffft no, of course not”
“Shame, I think it's really romantic!”
The line went quiet, the only audible sound being the cock of guns and explosions going off in the game. You readjusted your mic wondering if he’d cut off when his voice came again; though quieter than the usual responses you would get.
“You think?”
“Yeah! Come onnn, tell me that isn’t the cutest thing ever”
The line paused again for the briefest moment, but when he finally continued speaking the conversation switched back to gameplay as if the short discussion about May Day had never occured. You shrugged and went back to chatting aimlessly about zombies yourself, though a small part of you may have wanted to carry on with the romance talk.
You had known the player ‘Decay_God’ for going on 3 years now and were as close as online friends could be. From what you’d gathered over the years, Tenko worked at a bar and had a shit ton of roommates. Though he constantly went on about how annoying they were, you could tell he cared deeply for them. He was passionate about what he did, whether it be his job (you didn’t know what exactly it was, just that his mood in your games would be whether or not he had received good news from his end) or his game play.
In the beginning, you didn’t really like him or his attitude; both being highly ranked in the gaming community you would constantly butt heads and his childish behaviour of when you would steal a victory off him annoyed you to no end. But as it went on, his temper tantrums died down and once you got to know him, you found his quips and wit to be quite entertaining. Now two years later, you would look forward to getting home from a stressful day at work to endlessly chatter about whatever topic was of the day.
You couldn’t lie, you had garnered a bit of a crush on him.
You didn’t even know what this man looked like. He could be a catfish! An old perverted dude! Hell he could even be a criminal and you’d be none the wiser! Although, if you were being honest with yourself… you couldn’t help but make the obvious connection to a certain infamous villain. One that happened to have pale blue hair and a decaying quirk. Even in personality they seemed interchangeable, from what you had seen on the news he was also akin to throwing childish temper tantrums and scratching at his neck when frustrated (a habit you regularly scolded Tenko for when you heard the telltale sound nails scraping along side the column of his neck.)
Whenever you did think about it though you stopped yourself, come on as if you would be gaming with Shig- no, you weren’t even going to say his name. So they had a few similarities, this was a whole villain compared to your sweet gaming partner. Dumb conspiracy theories aside, you couldn’t help the small flutter of your heart when he would say your name in a teasing manner or when he praised you for a particularly hard kill.
As you logged off for the night you laid your head against the wall your bed was propped next to and stared at the blank ceiling, your mind drifting back to the May Day conversation. A blushing Tenko came to your mind, his face obscured by a large hood, nervously rubbing at the back of his head before handing you a large bouquet of flowers. Your cheeks flushed and you slapped at them to stop yourself from heating up, vanishing the mental image mid thought.
Okay, so maybe it wasn’t as much of a small crush as you wanted it to be.
✧・゚: *✧・゚:*    *:・゚✧*:・゚✧
After having a three day break, getting ready for work so early in the morning proved more effort than it should have been. Still trying to blink the sleep out of your eyes, you dragged your dazed body to your front door. You checked yourself for your belongings as you unlocked it, but as you took your first step out your foot landed in...ash?
You lifted your shoe to inspect the little decaying bits stuck to it, looking down you realised there was a pile of decayed dust on your doorstep.
You paled.
Instantly you were on high alert, tearing your foot from the contaminated shoe and snapping a picture of the evidence. You placed the shoe in a bag for further examination and bolted your door before texting your boss, the number four hero: Edgeshot.
Having the job of a personal assistant to such a high ranked hero meant you were used to lives being threatened. So far it had never happened to you and although this was small you could never be too sure. With the inside information you had, Edgeshot had always told you to be aware that someone may pull something sooner or later. It wasn’t completely out of the blue.
After seeing your message to your boss had been delivered, you reached out for the metal baseball bat you kept in the storage cupboard under the stairs, your quirk not really suited for defence purposes as it was made for technological aspects.
Checking every nook and cranny of your small apartment you didn’t see anything out of the ordinary and flopped back onto the sofa. Sighing, you ran a hand through your hair before going through your phone, checking the news, any odd sightings, anything you should possibly be alert for.
However crime rates seemed to be low and the only recent stories were from three days ago. Still not having received a text back from Edgeshot, you automatically switched to your messages with Tenko to type out the events of your morning.
I think I just got threatened lol
Instant response.
WHAT?!
If you don’t hear from me in 24 hours call the police :DD
Y/N
Ok okaY, damn you’re such a buzzkill
There was a pile of ash on my doorstep this morning, with my work you know I can never be too careful 
I’m fine though, I already told my boss
You waited as three dots appeared signifying he was typing but after a while they stopped. You furrowed your brows as they started up and stopped multiple times. After a full five minutes (during which time you grew bored and changed apps) a ping popped up.
With how long he had taken to type you were expecting a lengthy paragraph, what you weren’t expecting was a simple:
Oh
Oh? That’s all?
Yeah
You placed down your phone before another ping sounded out.
Are you sure they weren’t flowers
How the hell did you come to that conclusion
The typing ceased once more and you were left to your thoughts. What the hell did he mean by that? How did he come up with flowers out of all things like-
May Day?
You leapt from your seat, stumbling to look at the calendar attached to your kitchen wall, scanning the dates crossed off before turning the page and realising it was indeed the first of May. It surely couldn’t be a coincidence Tenko had brought up the holiday just yesterday. So he’d brought you flowers, because you said it was romantic… and he’d… dusted them. Dusted them, with his quirk, because he was…
Tenko could not be Shigaraki Tomura.
You did not have a crush on Shigaraki fucking Tomura.
Luckily at that moment the chime of your phone's ringtone going off distracted you. Looking at the caller ID you breathed a sigh of relief to see that it was Edgeshot. You could finally get to the bottom of this instead of drawing up ridiculous conclusions.
Edgeshot’s calm voice came through the other end of the line, stern but familiar. It seemed you’d been right to take the situation seriously, or so he assured you. But even as he talked to you, asking if you’d seen anything or if there was any other evidence of someone watching you, you couldn’t shake the feeling that it hadn’t meant anything at all.
Of course, if your gut instinct was right and you’d been gaming (and falling for) Shigaraki Tomura for three whole years and he’d been trying to romance you then that was. Definitely something. You just weren’t entirely sure what that something was.
You’d been talking to Edgeshot for nearly two hours when a knock sounded on your front door. Had he come by? What was the point of ringing, then? And wouldn’t he have told you?
You made your way over to the door and opened it expecting the sight of your boss, but instead you were met with a large bouquet of flowers perched on your doorstep. You looked up just in time to see a mess of unruly blue hair tucked into a black hoodie turning rapidly round the corner.
“False alarm,” you said quickly, ending the call on pure impulse and making a dash after the stranger.
You weren’t entirely sure what the plan was. It seemed more and more likely that you were right with each new development. What were you going to do if your gamer buddy really was an S-rank villain? Would you still be interested? Would he? He’d gone through the trouble of  getting you flowers not just once but twice, and honestly… the idea that he’d been so nervous the first time was kind of endearing.
That was a cute image, him standing at your door, so worried that he didn’t even notice he’d dusted the flowers in his hand as he set them down, probably running away quickly so you wouldn’t see him.
You reached out to grab the sleeve of your fleeing visitor and as they whirled round your suspicion after all this time was proven correct. You were speaking the moment his eyes met yours, all hesitation suddenly gone.
“You can’t just leave me flowers and run off like that, what if I thought it was another threat?”
Shigaraki’s scarlet eyes widened as they met your own.
“Hey Tenko” you grinned.
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seblaine-rph · 3 years
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While you're looking into rps can we talk about Devereux Academy for a minute? A basic look at their main and rules reveals Kristin Stewart as an FC but she's asked repeatedly not to be used in rp, people getting originally tested for being Dom Switch or sub at 17, the rp wording is almost an exact replica of another rp that ran for a while, and they are allowing the Motta family to be whitewashed with a white Robert Pattinson FC. I'm sure theres more i was just too disgusted to keep looking.
This isn’t the first time I’ve been told to take a look at @devereuxacademy or heard about it being problematic. I can’t tell you about the dash and I’m not going to troll through everyone’s blogs, so if there is something on the dash that anyone would like to share with me (problematic plots, not tagging triggers, admin behavior,etc) then feel free to send another ask. 
More than one person came to me when this rp first hit the tags, asking if I thought they had stolen parts of their rp. I reported this by answering multiple different asks about it and they never responded, which is very telling. Honestly, I think they did. Intentionally or not, they do have a lot of parts of other, existing roleplays in their plot and there are so many copy and pasted things that it looks to be done on purpose. You can say, “but it’s a D/s academy rp and there’s only so many ways to rp in a school, so of course it looks similar to other rps of the same genre” except for the part where even academy rps have their own unique plot points, including the history of the world, social economics, and the school as well as the history of the administration. And that wasn’t the last time it was brought to my attention, or the only reason. I do see it, if we’re looking for my opinion on the matter of stolen plot content. I can see at least three different roleplays that were already in the tags for a long time, weaved together to make this group. I don’t really see anything that is original in the plot or worldview info, aside from maybe the intense details on IVF as the reason for there being so many triplets. Don’t quote me on that, though, it may have been used before. I just haven’t seen it. 
It weirds me out that they have all of their characters being thrust into nsfw situations before 18, with what should be an 18+ concept like BDSM, and at the same time they’re a discord rp as well as a tumblr rp. It says on their application that the characters are tested to find out which mark they are at 17. That’s a minor, being tested in a nsfw way because however you slice it BDSM and D/s are nsfw and nobody under the age of 18 can legally or morally be allowed to even dip a single toe in and that includes taking a test to find out what kinks they like and whether they’re going to want to be catching or receiving when it comes to sex. It just makes me wonder what’s being hidden in the discord. I’d also like to mention that they do have the option to play teachers as well as students, which is just weird and gross to me in this instance. The content is nsfw, clearly some students are going to get with teachers. It’s weird enough when it’s a sfw college rp and students do not smut with teachers, but being a teacher is a respectable character choice so I can see why you’d want to do it. If you were going to focus on talking to other teachers and developing plots with other teachers. In this instance though... the power dynamic between teachers and students are way different and there is a sexual overtone automatically because this is a kinky smut rp. You can also play a character as young as 21, which just makes me hope there are no relationships being written out by naive 21 year olds with their 30-40-50+, way more mature, could be their parent teacher. That might sound like I’m making up something that would never happen, but I have seen someone try to play a 62 year old lesbian that was predatory towards 19 year olds and even claimed one in a D/s rp like this. We all know how Glee rps work, we all know this line has already been crossed. We all also know why that’s gross- it’s an abuse of power and there is no way that a teacher/student dynamic could be cute because there will always be a sense of one person being way more mature than the other and being in a seat of power. Another reason to wonder what’s being hidden on this discord.
There are incorrectly casted families. In particular, I’m seeing POC families with fcs that should not belong because they do not match. I’d really like to know how it is that two Filipino girls and a black girl are twins. As a general note to the admins, you can’t erase half of someone’s ethnicity either. There are other families where one or more character is half right but also half wrong in an offensive way. And some families that are just wrong. I do give them props on some of this being right, but that doesn’t erase the other problems. You can’t whitewash people. Not all Asians are the same. Not all Latinx people are the same. Brown people aren’t interchangeable. Let me just list these so they’re easier to fix:
In the Adams family, Alex Newell is African-American but the fc has a sister that’s  British, Polish and Caribbean. That might be picking at straws but I always find it offensive when people pick and choose how to group ethnicities- like deciding all Asians are the same so they can be related. Either way, she’s over half white which doesn’t match up. 
Laura Harrier is Rachel Berry, she is half black and half white with Jewish background so that’s a really nice choice but then she’s twins with two Haliee Steinfeld fcs? Hailee who is Filipino... She’s also been accused of using the N word and being racist so she’s on a lot of people’s banned lists for the same reasons as Lea Michele. 
Brianna Tju is in a Chinese family but she’s half Indonesian. She’s also a Disney Channel star, so some people find that problematic from the start, because most of her resources are from kid’s shows at an age that is too young to be roleplaying. She’s only 22 now, which is old enough to rp, however the only real resources she has are from something that aired in 2015 and was likely filmed in 2014 or earlier. When she was definitely a minor. 
Kaya Scoldelario is Brazilian. She’s whitewashed by being placed in the Clarington family.
Zoe Deutch is Jewish. Her siblings are Matthew Daddario (Slovak, Italian, Irish, Hungarian, and English) and Haley Lu Richardson, who has a white background that doesn’t include Jewish. This is the Corcoran family as well, which should be Jewish, since they’re all related to Idina Menzel.
Victoria Pedretti is Jewish and she’s in the very white Evans family.
None of the older Fabrays are Jewish, and Ashley Johnson is Native American but also somehow a twin of the white Frannie Fabray.
Principal Figgins is played by someone that is Pakistani but the Figgins on the masterlist is played by Dev Patel, who is Gujarati Indian. 
Tyler Hoechlin is also partially Native American, but he is placed in the Flangan (Irish, like straight out of Ireland) family that has Rory recast as Thomas Dogherty (Scottish) with an Ariana Grande (Italian) twin as well. 
Kristen Stewart is on the masterlist but she has asked numerous times not to be used in roleplay because it makes her uncomfortable. I just covered this for another roleplay, and I’ve seen other people mention it, so it’s common knowledge at this point. She has been saying this for a long time. She’s also placed as the twin of Danielle Campbell, who is Mexican and Cajun French while Kristen is just white and the canon family member (Gilbert, so Adam Lambert) is Jewish.
Zendaya is also placed as a twin to Samantha Ware. Zendaya is mixed race, half black and half white, while Samantha is black. 
Yvette Monreal is the twin to Demi Lovato. Yvette is Chilean. Demi is Mexican and Portuguese. 
Avan Jogia is a Hart, but he is Gujarati Indian and white. He would be a better family relation to Dev Patel than anyone else on the masterlist and vice versa. As a refresher, Samuel Larsen (the canon fc for the Hart family) is Mexican, Danish, Spanish and Persian.
Maddison Jaizani is Iranian, but she’s listed as a Holliday which makes her related to Gwyneth Paltrow... a blonde, white woman.
Jacob Elordia is Basque and his sibling on the masterlist is Marie Avgeropoulos, a Greek actress. 
Rafael Silva is Brazilian, but he is a Lopez triplet, related to a Mexican-Irish sister (Lindsay Morgan) and a Mexican-Jewish sister (Alexa Demie).
Sugar Motta is played by Vanessa Lengies on Glee, an Egyptian actress. Her family is whitewashed with two white fcs, Kelli Berglung and Robert Pattinson. 
Kaylee Byrant is Japanese but she is twin to Madison Beer (Jewish) and Daisy Ridley (white).
The Puckerman family has lost its Jewish heritage. The only two on Noah’s side are Adelaide Kane (white) and Luke Pasqualino (Italian). Jake Puckerman has been recast as Justice Smith, who is half black and half white but is not Jewish. His sister is Samantha Logan who is half Trinidadian and half white and Pauline Singer, who is full Fijian.
Antonia Gentry is cast as a Weston. She is Jamaican, her listed twin is half white and half African-American. The newest acceptance for a Weston is for an African American fc. 
Lili Reinhart is on the masterlist, but she’s problematic. She’s defended the abusive behavior of her cast mate, Cole Sprouse, who was very publicly accused of sexual assault and abuse. She’s also been accused of blackface annnnnnnd she’s used queer baiting to get people to watch the show. (She teased a girl on girl relationship publicly, telling people to watch the show because they might finally get to see something between Betty and Veronica, knowing that the fans wanted it, but then when she was asked about it in a later interview she scoffed and acted like it was absolutely impossible and would never happen, some would say she even sounded offended by the thought-- which is what everyone got mad at Melissa Benoist for doing with Supergirl.)
David Corenswet is Jewish, cast with Emily Browning as a sister, who is not.
I applaud the Brazilian change for Lauren Zizes, but Ashley Fink was a welcome representation of plus size actresses and the new fc is less than half her size. She’s still plus size technically, but she’s “model plus size,” which is not at all the same as Lauren’s body type. I ran this by someone that this change would affect and they were not pleased. They were the one that pointed this out to me, because it bothered them as a plus size person to see one of the few plus size characters recasted with a skinnier fc. 
Dove Cameron is also on the masterlist, but she’s on a bunch of people’s banned lists. She replied to a fan that said they wanted her to notice them that they were stupid and had no life if that was one of their goals. She’s been rude to cast and crew on set. Dove has also been accused of throwing a fit and making the writers change the Descendants script to take the relationship that was written out for a black actress. She’s being accused of yellow fishing, which I believe is the term for trying to look Asian. She wore a Native American headdress in a cultural appropriation type of way. She’s been accused of being fatphobic and hiding behind photoshop on her social media while saying she doesn’t photoshop, so she’s giving off a false sense of reality to her fans. She’s been talking badly about someone that is trying to get their sexual assault story out there. The latest thing that’s come out about her is a rant about how mental health isn’t real and that people just need to logic their way out of depression? Which would be coming from a seat of high privilege. She wrote a series of tweets on the topic, calling negative mental health and the feelings they cause “a choice.” There’s a whole hashtag on Tumblr for her. 
I’m not at all surprised to see that all of the diverse characters are open. No Artie, no Unique- who could definitely be recast as an actual trans woman, now that we’re living in the age of recasting for reasons of problematic natures- if we can have a new Puck, new Finn, new Rachel, and new Santana why not an appropriate Unique? She is literally the only canon trans woman, why not treat her with respect? They recasted Cooper to better fit the proper ethnicity, so... 
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need-a-new-hobby · 4 years
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Do You Love Him?
Derek had two missions. One: catching this serial killer. Two: making sure the two BAU geniuses got together. Part one of mission 2 was assessing external threats. In the ultimate non-creepiest of ways, Spencer had Piper’s routine memorised. Woke up before dawn. Got some paperwork done. Shower. Toast for breakfast. Coffee from the nearest shop. Arrived at the BAU no later than 8am. He’d convinced Reid to catch a later train and for these lovebirds, he was willing to get to work an hour early. But he didn’t know that Piper equally had all of their schedules memorised. So she was definitely surprised when Reid didn’t show up until 8:45 and Derek showed up at 7:30am.
“What are you doing here so early?”
“Woke up early to have a run but it was too cold out.”
“How early, like 8?”
“6:30”
“AM?” Piper was shocked. “Derek, the last time we shared a room, you smashed your alarm clock for waking you up at 7:30.”
“Yeah, well, people change. Speaking of change, a little birdie told me you’ve been up at night over Detective Lisbon. Really, Pipes? Florida?” Piper sighed.
“I’m going to kill Garcia.”
“Cmon, baby. Talk to me.”
“Shut up Derek. And for the record, he’s from Michigan but was stationed in Florida. He’s putting in for a transfer next week.”
“Interesting. Anywhere in particular? D.C. might be cozy.” Derek laughed.
“First of all, gross and second of all, he doesn’t get to pick.”
“Right, but you’d like him to move to DC, amirite?” She sighed.
“Believe it or not, Derek, you’re wrong.” Piper hastily straightened her pile of paperwork and headed to Hotch’s office.
“Hold it.” Piper groaned and twisted on her heel.
“Whaat?” She exasperated. “I thought things were good, what happened?” Piper slammed her files on the desk. 
“He can’t talk to me without putting his foot in his mouth.”
“Like literally or-”
“Of course not literally. He just always stammers and I used to think it was cute that he was kind of nervous, but we’ve talked over the phone 5 times now, and I don’t know.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I don’t want to date a guy who’s too nervous to talk to me and if he’s never comfortable with me then I’m going to be uncomfortable the whole time.” she explained, clearly upset.
“So, what are you gonna do?”
“I dunno. The transfer has nothing to do with me. Florida just sucks.”
“Amen.” She scoffed.
“I can’t believe I’m gonna say this, but what do you think?”
“Sorry, what was that?”
“Never mind, I’ll just ask Rossi.” Laughing, Derek pulled her back.
“Relax. Just trust your gut. If you don’t feel comfortable walk away.”
“Really?” Derek nodded, desperately controlling himself. “Thanks ma-”
“Don’t you have to get your files to Hotch?”
“Oh shrap. Thanks.” He double pumped the air at her retreating figure before pulling out his cell to tell Spence.
^-^
“We’re going to LA. These are victims 6 and 7, well parts of them anyway.” Piper shuddered.
“Clean cuts too. Like it’s a...”
“Machete?” Rossi offered.
“I was gonna say a samurai sword, but if you want to be boring,” Piper retorted.
“The first 5 were lone victims. He's getting bolder. And more vicious,” Reid noted.
“Tell LAPD we can be there by 9:30.”
On the jet, they took their usual spots after discussing victimology. Piper took the couch, reading her book on Feudal Japan. Reid took the back window reading his book on psycholinguistics. Rossi sat chatting with Hotch and Derek listened to music. Assessing the situation, Derek got up and moved over to Piper. “What’s wrong, Derek?”
“Nothing, I just needed um.. relationship advice.”
“From me?”
“Rossi had three wives, Hotch is a robot and Emily is in a loving relationship with a cat. And Reid’s only advice is that I don’t need advice.”
“Well, you are the woman-whisperer right?”
“Don’t mock me, just help please.” Groaning Piper put her book away. 
“What’s the problem?”
“I have this childhood friend.” Piper’s face wrinkled. “Hear me out, seriously.”
“’Kay what’s the deal?”
“We’re still really good friends but I see her as more than that. What do I do?”
“Well, do you see yourselves being together?”
“I mean, I’d like to.”
“Do you see her on a regular basis professionally?”
“No.”
“Then what’s the harm? Just tell her.”
“Wait, why’d you ask if we see each other professionally?”
“Because it’s like if you’re in a band and you decide to date your bandmate. It’s all well until something goes wrong. You lose focus on which strings you’re meant to be playing and if you break up, the band feels the same tension and eventually breaks up.”
“Huh. Thanks, though. For the advice.” Piper shot him a thumbs up and returned to her book.
^-^
Piper leaned against the FBI bike loaned to her outside the crime scene, glancing at her watch. The sooner this case was over, the sooner she could take her leave of absence. A few days vacation might be the cure to her throbbing shoulder which still hurt. Finally an SUV pulled up in front of her and Spencer and Derek came out bickering. “Should have listened to me.” 
“It wouldn't have saved that much time, Reid. Let it go.” 
“The interchange between the 405 and the 101 freeways is consistently rated the worst interchange in the entire world.” 
“Why do you know that?” 
“It's a government report.” 
“So what?” 
“So you work for the government. What, you don't read the reports?” 
“On traffic patterns in a city 2, 500 miles from where I live?” 
“2, 295 miles.” 
“Don't make me smack you in front of all these people.” Derek turned to see Piper with a raised eyebrow. “How long did you have to wait for us?”
“20 minutes Derek. Why’d you take the interchange between the 405 and the 101 freeways? It’d have been easier to take the-”
“Stop it, both of you.” They were interrupted by the lead detective from the LAPD.
“Detective Brady.”
“I’m Agent Morgan, this is Dr Reid and Dr Bishop.”
“Where’s the rest of your team?”
“In an SUV behind us,” Derek explained.
“Yeah, stuck in traffic.” Morgan stared at Reid, struggling to choose between smacking him or pushing him into oncoming traffic. 
“So, you had two more victims last night?” Piper asked, struggling to hide her laugh.
“They were discovered a little after 3:30 by a cleaning crew finishing up in the building.” 
“So that's 7 victims over the past 2 weeks,” Derek shook his head. 
“Bodies are in the alley. What's left of them.” 
“Same victimology? We don't have positive i.d.on either one of them yet, but the clothing fits. You really think this is only one guy, huh?”
“The level of overkill suggests an unsub in a psychotic break. Multiple unsubs in violent psychotic breaks operating in the exact same location is exceedingly unlikely.” The detective stared at him.
“Essentially it’s rare for two people to have the same psychosis. So you’re probably dealing with one guy.” Piper squeezed Spencer’s shoulder as she motioned for the detective to start showing them the crime scene. Derek couldn’t help smiling at the two of them. That smile faded as they saw the horrifying remnants of two people brutally murdered. After examining the scene, Morgan walked away to call Hotch.
“Do you know that a domestic cat loose in a normal neighbourhood is the equivalent of a small-scale ecological disaster?” Reid asked out of nowhere. 
“Excuse me?” The detective looked perplexed as did Piper.
“Where are you going with this?”
“They'll kill anything they can-- bugs, rodents, birds, other cats, small dogs if possible. Anything.” 
“That got something to do with this?” 
“An unsub in a violent psychotic break is worse.”
^-^
Spencer sat behind Hotch in the SUV, trying to reach Piper to update her on the geographical area. “Yeah, Spence.” Her voice always managed to calm his nerves.
“Hotch and Rossi figured out the geographical centre of the killings. It’s a building complex, a lot of them single room occupancy. High turnover rate.”
“So he’s transient?”
“Yeah. You got any theories?”
“Right now, my best guess is a traumatic event triggered the psychosis, probably violent in nature. But until we know who our victims are, no clue what it could be. Where are you guys headed?”
“To our next victim’s house.”
“House?”
“Yeah, the unsub visited the house of the 8th victim.”
“So he’s getting bolder.”
“Yeah, Derek’s trying to get a hold of the detective. Are you not at the precinct?”
“Nah, I got hungry. I’m getting churros. You need me?”
Always, he thought. “I’ll call you if we do.”
“Okay. Be safe.” Derek made a motion cutting his hand across his neck.
“Hey, Pipes, stay on the call, I’m gonna put you on speaker.”
“Okie doke.” Piper paid for the churro she was waiting for and stood by the bike. 
“So we finally found the link between victims,” Derek said, switching off his cell. “All gangbangers. Guy named Glen Hill. Street name is Reaper. No survivors. 6 dead, 4 inside, 2 outside. Hill’s still missing.”
“So he’s devolving,” Reid noted. “We should ask Garcia to look at recent gang violence in LA. This amount of overkill isn’t just for cleaning up the streets. 
“Like Batman?”
“Like who?” Derek’s voice went up an octave.
“You know. Batman. Gangbanger kills his dad. He becomes the Batman and starts putting away criminals using... does no-one here watch movies?”
“No, Pipes, we just generally call unsubs professional archetypes.”
“Please, Batman is a vigilante, same thing. Don’t ruin this for me, Derek. Bye. Be safe.”
^-^
Piper sat, perched on a desk next to Spencer as she watched Morgan and the officers bring in John McHale. “It’s funny how average they all look.”
“You were right though.” She scoffed.
“PTSD can be a bitch.” She carded a hand through her hair. 
“At least you get to go on leave once we get back.”
“It’s only 2 weeks and I’ll be in DC the whole time. Just please call me so I don’t go completely crazy.”
“Promise.” Piper held out her pinky and Spencer laughed. “Really?” He wrapped his pinky around hers. “Promise.”
“Good. If you break it, I have the right to take that pinky.”
“On whose authority, may I ask?”
“Garcia’s. You can fight with her over the solemnity of pinky promises all day. Just let me know beforehand so I can make popcorn.” She stopped laughing as Hotch, Rossi and Emily walked in with half a dozen boxes. “You guys find the weapon?”
“Didn’t need to. Mr McHale is a very sick young man.”
“I mean his girlfriend was raped by a gang in front of him. I wouldn’t want to survive that. Can’t even imagine what he’s going through,” Piper said softly, looking through the boxes to see detailed replications of the crime scenes in art.
“He killed 8 men,” Brady argued.
“While in psychosis,” Hotch defended. “It doesn’t forgive him, but it’s a mitigating factor.”
“He’s still in it. He probably doesn’t even know what he’s done,” Piper told Hotch, “You’re gonna have to shake him pretty hard right?”
“Yeah, Bishop, you’ve dealt with PTSD patients. Any input?”
“Nothing you probably don’t already know. It’ll probably turn ugly, but mounting pressure’s the way to go. Multiple people, surround him, suffocate him with questions until his mental block breaks. Only way to deal with the psychosis.”
“You’re suggesting we emotionally break him?” Emily asked, shocked at her response.
“No. I’m suggesting you emotionally overwhelm him. He will get violent though. Once he breaks, use the smoothest voice you’ve got, Rossi.”
“How smooth?”
“Elvis Presley smooth.”
“Don’t mention his name to me. Reminds me of my third wife,” he muttered, making Hotch smile as they went into the interrogation room.
“You have any idea what weapon he used?” JJ asked Reid.
“Well, to cut that cleanly, it’s thin but strong, not like a rapier,” Piper started. “Maybe a short sword but those are hard to find in LA and a straight blade isn’t any good. Straight blades are better used for sparring and rapiers can be flimsy, like fencing swords. The best choice would be something like a katana or a scimitar. Their slightly curved which gives a better angle. Plus, scimitars are often sold in pairs which is probably why the crimes were so brutal. Hard to fight against one, never mind both.”
“I don’t wanna know why you know that.” JJ patted Piper’s shoulder and walked off. Piper stared at the drawings. 
“He’s really talented, despite the whole gory part of it. I might’ve even read it if I found it in a library. Be a little horrified but then put it away. How do you put reality away?”
“I think Garcia reads his books.”
“Yeah, what’s it called?”
“Blue.”
“Maybe I’ll get a copy for my mantle.”
“Your what?”
“Hmm? I found his phone, look.” She passed it to Reid absentmindedly. “The more we delve, the badder I feel for this guy.” Spencer stared at her turning the phone over in his gloved hand. Only she would feel this bad for a guy that murdered over a dozen gangbangers. Smiling softly, Reid opened McHale’s phone.
“He’s called the same number 11 times in the past week.”
“Try it. Maybe they can tell us something.” He dialled the number and held it out between them. Piper’s head swivelled towards the ringtone blaring from another box. “This is Vickie’s phone. The girlfriend. Jesus. He doesn’t even know she’s-”
“It’s severer than we thought.”
“Yeah, well. This evidence is all catalogued and LAPD’s all over it so...” Piper paused, drumming her hands on a box. “There’s a comic-book store a block away. You in?” Spencer nodded, smiling.
^-^
Piper stared out the window, seated in front of Hotch who was trying to dial someone, probably Haley. She knew better than to ask. Spencer sat adjacent to her, flipping through the comic Piper’d bought. “That his comic book?”
“Yeah, it’s called Blue.” Piper turned her head at the sound of his voice. 
“It's about a girl who thinks she's a real human being, right? But it turns out she's a robot that was built by her uncle.”
“So it’s Pinocchio?” 
“Yeah, it is like Pinocchio, only, uh, set in a high school in outer space.” 
“Oh, by the way, what happened to vickie's phone?” 
“Phone?” 
“The one that Johnny kept calling, with her message on it?” 
“Oh, we gave them both back to him. You know, I couldn't imagine having nothing left of someone but a voice message. I think I'd never stop listening to it.” 
“Yeah, it's sad. Hey, did you know that Carlo Lorenzini, the guy that wrote Pinocchio, was said to be obsessed with the human nose? As a matter of fact, Pinocchio wasn't even the first character--”
“- interesting. Coffee?” 
“I'm all right. Thank you, though, for asking.” Piper moved into JJ’s original seat to talk to him.
“Do you think it’s weird I knew all that stuff about swords?”
“Nah, we read a lot. Those guys don’t. I’m not sure Derek know what a book is.”
“Oh, he’d read just as much as you if he thought it would help him get a girl.”
“Why’d you ask?”
“Something Drew did a while ago. Kinda stuck with me.”
“What do you mean?”
“He...he hung up on me when I was talking to him about samurais. I dunno, it’s probably nothing right?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Right.” Piper leaned back. “Derek said the weirdest thing yesterday. Asked me for advice about a girl. Said they were good friends but he wanted more. Did he mention anything to you?”
“Uhh... Yeah. No, yeah he did. A umm...childhood friend right?”
“Right. Well, if you know, then it’s cool. It just doesn’t seem like him.”
“What did you say?”
“I said so long as you don’t work with her professionally, what’s the harm? If anything, keeping it in might make the relationship worse.” Piper suddenly got up and returned to her seat, gazing out the window, knuckles resting on her chin.
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postdoc-help-desk · 4 years
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Keeping Track of Articles
There are two key aspects to grad students accumulating a hoard of literature that helps to design their research project. The first is determining which articles are relevant, and the second is through managing their information. Which databases are best for acquiring sources depends heavily on what field of study you're in, but how to manage them once you've located them is an entirely different matter. So in this post I want to talk about references. Not about the field-dependent information on how to get them, but rather the much more useful and generally applied information on how to keep them, sort them, and track them. While I would suggest keeping a PDF file of every reference you read, it’s completely unnecessary to go through each one to pull citation information every time you need to reference them. You are of course able to do this manually, but why waste precious time and energy when you can use one of the many software options available? I'd like to break down the pros and cons of what I and many others consider the top four reference managers.
All of the top reference managers include a few key functions that are invaluable to the graduate student. Even if you choose not to use one of the ones that I’m suggesting here, definitely take some time to investigate your selection to ensure it has the capabilities you want and need. ◆ Storage space is the first thing you’ll want to check. If there’s a limit on anything, whether it’s the total number of references you can have or the number of folders you can sort references into, don’t pick that option! I assure you, there are few things as frustrating to a graduate student as having to move references between different managers at any point. It turns into a waste of time more than anything else, and really shouldn’t be necessary. While actually moving the references might not be so bad, the real time-suck is learning the intricacies of the other reference manager. Once you get used to one, switching can be a hassle. ◆ Cost is another important factor, and there really is no reason for there to be any cost to you as the graduate student. Of the four options I’m talking about in this post, two are completely free and the other two are free to the user as long as the university has a subscription. If you go with the one your university provides access to, do check first to make sure they aren’t considering or planning to switch to a different provider! Mine did this two years into my PhD studies and as I indicated before, switching was quite the debacle. Consider how you’ll want to bring references into the manager. Do you want to have to find and type in all the information? Probably not. A lot of reference databases and journal websites include an option to export the citation information, which you can then import into the reference manager. Some reference managers have a preferred style, but sometimes the database or website messes that up. All of them, whether database, journal site, or reference database, allow RIS imports and exports so I just got used to selecting that option regardless. A few reference managers let you search for new references directly in their software, so they can add the citation information that way as well. ◆ Just as you’ll want to get your references into the manager easily, so too you’ll want to consider how to get them out and into any manuscripts you prepare. Ideally, having the manager take care of any formatting or stylistic concerns when it comes to the citations and bibliography would be best, because this lets your focus stay on writing! Fortunately, all of the reference managers I’m discussing have an option to integrate with the most common word processor, Microsoft Word, with some able to integrate with other word processors. Regardless, the basic idea of each is that you install an addon to the word processor that connects to your personal database of references. As you write, you can quickly and easily select which references you want to cite. When you’re done making any edits, simply choose the reference style of APA, MLA, Chicago, or any of the other options and within a minute, the document will have all the citations prepared according to that style. Additionally, a bibliography of all the cited references will be compiled in the chosen style at the end of the document! If you just want the reference list for your whole database, a specific folder, or just a selection, there’s no need to create a giant list of citations in a document using the addon feature, as the reference manager itself provides this as an option. ◆ Lastly, and this really applies to anything you may use to improve your efficiency, but the feel is a huge factor. So definitely, definitely, test them out before you commit! Even a half hour spent on figuring out which reference manager is easiest for you to navigate and use will pay off in the long run. Will you need to access your personal reference database from multiple computers? Go with one that has a browser version. Will you be working offline often? Choose one that has a downloadable software application. Are you working with a team who will need to share references? Make sure your option offers this feature!
There are few differences between the available options for reference managers, so for the most part they're interchangeable. With that having been said, let’s get into some specifics.
First up is the well-known EndNote. Put out by Clarivate Analytics, EndNote offers both a browser and application version to users. It is restricted to a university license, but since you'll be in an academic setting this shouldn't be problematic. As long as you maintain an active status at your school and they have a license agreement with Clarivate, you should be able to access EndNote for free. EndNote allows references to be imported using a few different file types including those in RIS format. For those collaborating with others, EndNote allows you to share all or part of your reference database. And, it also has an addon that integrates with a number of word processors to automate citations.
If your university doesn't have a license with EndNote, it likely has one with ProQuest’s version, the equally popular Refworks. Again, if your school has a license agreement with the company then you’ll be able to access Refworks for free for as long as you’re a student there. Unlike EndNote, Refworks is a browser-only reference manager, so you will definitely need internet access to interact with it. It allows references to be imported through several different file types including RIS format, and it has its own citation addon for integrating with any of several word processors as well. Need or want to share some of your references with collaborators? You can do that too!
But what if your university doesn’t offer one of these options, or you don’t mesh well with whichever one it does offer, never fret! Two equally useful, but completely free options are also out there. Elsevier’s Mendeley and George Mason University-designed Zotero have most of the same features of the other two. Much like EndNote, both Mendeley and Zotero offer users the option of accessing through a browser or downloaded software application. Even though the databases are saved to your own computer, these reference managers still allow shared libraries across different users so collaboration is an option. As expected, you can import and export references using either RIS format or a few other options. And again, both options also have their own respective citation addons to integrate with your word processor of choice.
In graduate school, and especially as a PhD student, you will read countless articles over the years that you may or may not choose to reference when it comes time to write up your dissertation. Rather than try to keep track of them all in your head, or have to reopen each file or dig through stacks of papers when it comes time to building a bibliography, I would strongly suggest using one of these reference managers. Which one you choose is up to you, but I promise, no matter which one you ultimately go with, you won’t regret it!
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douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years
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UNDERSTANDING YOUR USERS IS PART OF WHAT HIGHER-LEVEL LANGUAGES, AND TWO ARE STILL UNIQUE TO LISP
I'm not criticizing Steve and Alexis. Good hackers insist on control. Overloading, for example, have been around 7-10x.1 Hard to say exactly, but wherever it is, but the fear of missing out. I couldn't talk to them. Over time, the default language, embodied in a succession of popular languages, has gradually evolved toward Lisp. There will of course come a point where there is just too much to keep in your head in order to conceive of the program, and so on. A complex macro may have to save many times its own length to be justified.
If you're not threatening, you're probably not doing anything new, except the names and places, in most news about things going wrong. Economically, this is a sign of an underlying lack of resourcefulness. So being cheap is almost interchangeable with iterating rapidly. And when you look at what they're doing on that computer, you'll find the most general truths. There are plenty of other areas that are just as valuable as positive ones. The most tempting format for stupid comments is the supposedly witty put-down, probably because put-downs are the easiest form of humor. Meanwhile, sensing a vacuum in the metaphysical speculation department, the people working on them discover a new kind of organization that combined the efforts of individuals without requiring them to be interchangeable. Within large organizations, the phrase used to describe a market as a degenerate case—as what you get by default when organization isn't possible. But this way of keeping them out is gentler and probably also more effective than overt barriers. But don't wait till you've burned through your last round of funding to start approaching them.
It was presumably many thousands of years between when people first started describing things as hot or cold and when someone asked what is heat? The most important way to not spend money is by not hiring people. And the project starts small because the idea is small at first; he just has some cool hack he wants to try out. Apple's competitors now know better. Is a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy. If you want ideas for startups, but it didn't help Thinking Machines or Xerox. But hackers can't watch themselves at work. As a little piece of debris, the rational thing for you to do is say one word to them, at least.
Curiously, however, the works they produced continued to attract new readers. It's true that a restaurant with mediocre food can sometimes attract customers through gimmicks. How tech-saturated Silicon Valley is where it is.2 Which usually means that you have to declare the type of every variable, and can't tell one programming language from another, and work well together.3 If you think you're 85% of the way into Lisp, they could probably do it. In art, mediums like embroidery and mosaic work well if you know beforehand what you want. And now Wall Street is collectively kicking itself.4 There is actually some data out there about that. Some may even deliberately stall, because they enjoy it. I didn't realize that when we were raising money. Like a parent saying to a child, I bet you can't clean up your whole room in ten minutes, a good manager can sometimes redefine a problem as a more interesting one.
It won't seem so preposterous in 10,000 years. It's not something you work despite.5 In such situations it's helpful to have working democracies and multiple sovereign countries. It always was cool. Unless their working day ends at the same time as mine, the meeting presumably interrupts theirs, but since they made the appointment it must be, because I read about it in the press all the time.6 Getting money from an investor than an employer. I've learned so much from working on it. The right thing to compare Lisp to is not 1950s hardware, but, say, 1970, I think professionalism was largely a restatement of the first. A better way to get one loaded into your head. We didn't just give canned presentations at trade shows. It wouldn't be a compliment in most organizations to call someone scrappy. Garbage-collection.
So startup culture may not merely be different in the way we do. If that's what's on the other side of the mountain is a nice gradual slope. Bill Gates knows this. Programs composed of expressions. You could conceivably lose half your brain and live. Sometimes when you return to it. If you're the sort of founders about whom we'd say they can take a nap on when they feel tired, instead of dying. This growth rate is a bit uglier. Great programmers are sometimes said to be indifferent to money.
Perhaps only the more thoughtful users care enough to submit and upvote links, so the marginal cost of one random new user approaches zero. If it seems like a daunting task to do philosophy, here's an encouraging thought. And the bigger you are, the less pressure they feel to act smart. It helped us to have Robert Morris, Peter Norvig, Lisa Randall, Emmett Shear, Sergei Tsarev, and Stephen Wolfram for reading drafts of this. The fourth advantage of ramen profitability is a trick for determining which points are the counterintuitive ones: they're the ones I have to keep the sense of being very short, and also did all the legal work of getting us set up as a company with a valuation any lower. If companies want hackers to be productive, they should look at what they do there than how much they get paid for it. Users don't switch from Explorer to Firefox because they want to invest two years in something that is industry best practice actually gets you is not the long but mistaken argument, but the most I've ever been able to write a short comment that's distinguished for the amount of wealth that can be created. For example, the corporate site that says the company makes enterprise content management solutions for business that enable organizations to unify people, content and processes to minimize business risk, accelerate time-to-value and sustain lower total cost of ownership.7 And so while you needed expressions for math to work, and if you get demoralized, don't give up on your dreams.8 Try making your customer service not merely good, but surprisingly good. One of the standard pieces of advice in fiction writing is show, don't tell.
Notes
The CPU weighed 3150 pounds, and b the second wave extends applications across the web have sucked—A Spam Classification Organization Program. Monk, Ray, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Civil Service Examinations of Imperial China, during the war had been with their company for more of the crown, and that modern corporate executives were, we should remember this when he received an invitation to travel aboard the HMS Beagle as a collection itself.
It would have a precise measure of the court. The kind of bug to find out why investors who say no for introductions to other knowledge. Many people have told me they do on the way and run the programs on the software business, and in a way to predict precisely what would our competitors hate most? Maybe markets will eventually get comfortable with potential acquirers.
Plus ca change. Philosophy is like math's ne'er-do-well brother. MSFT, having sold all my shares earlier this year.
Common Lisp for, but I took so long. Digg is notorious for its shares will inevitably be something you need to learn to acknowledge as well as a result a lot better to get kids into better colleges, I mean efforts to manipulate them. The meanings of these people. You can get it, is that the Internet into situations where a great reputation and they're clearly working fast to get the money, but a big change from what it would be a good problem to have been fooled by the government to take a long thread are rarely seen, when Subject foo degenerates to just foo, what that means is we hope visited mostly by people like them—people who need the money.
Spices are also exempt. There are still, has one booked for them.
4%, and made more that year from stock options than any other company has ever been. Unfortunately the constraint probably has to split hairs that fine about whether a suit would violate the patent pledge, it's because of the company will either be a founder; and with that additional constraint, you usually have to pass so slowly for them, and that modern corporate executives were, they'd be proportionately more effective, leaving the area around city hall a bleak wasteland, but the route to that mystery is that the government had little effect on what you call the market.
In technology, so they had that we should work like casual conversation.
A rolling close usually prevents this. We consciously optimize for this essay talks about the other hand, launching something small and use whatever advantages that brings. That makes some rich people move, and mostly in Perl, and the valuation of the most recent version of this desirable company, but I took so long to send them the final whistle, the apparent misdeeds of corp dev guys should be deprived of their time and became the twin centers from which they don't yet have any of the word that means having type II startups won't get you type I. Good and bad luck.
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jordansawtell1-blog · 5 years
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TAudioConverter Portable (Audio Converter And Cd Audio Extractor)
As Wes Phillips just lately reported on this web site , CD gross sales are down and authorized downloads of audio information are up. Stereophile has been criticized more than as soon as for not paying sufficient attention to the subjects of MP3 and different compressed file formats, such as AAC , and for providing no steering in any respect to readers about find out how to get the perfect sound quality from compressed downloads. Here alac to wav Converter you can test right here: alac to wma converter online fast to wav converter free online road and free obtain converter alac to wav friend Tim Fisher is an expert freelance technology author, co-proprietor of a technology companies company for small companies, and author of Windows eight Basics in 30 Minutes. published by i30 Media. Free APE to MP3 Converter is a good piece of software program that may prove fairly useful in helping you turn APE files into audio, either MP3 or WAV, enabling you to listen to them on any common music participant. Free MP3 Joiner - Drag and drop (and also can convert a number of audio file sorts). Some music file sorts, including WAV (.wav), AIFF (.aiff), and RA (.r) cannot be uploaded to your library using Music Supervisor or Google Play Music for Chrome. Simply Record or Download: Document Audio recordsdata or songs and convert them into MP3 file simply. Obtain any Audio file and convert it into MP3 instantly. Usually, that's not true. if your m4a's are lossy (the overwhelming majority of m4a's are), converting to wav is pointless. All it does is make the file dimension bigger without rising sound high quality. The explanation for alac to wma converter online fast this is that when a full res file is converted to lossy, musical data is lost. That's why its known as lossy. As soon as the knowledge is gone, you'll be able to't get it again. Changing to wav is a processing trick. Non musical information is added to the file so that it meats the usual for the format, and as a result, could be performed on something as a wav file. Fashionable computers have multiple cores, a four core system is effectively 4 computers-in-one, dBpoweramp can encode to mp3 four instances as fast. Have an eight core CPU?, encoding to mp3 will likely be 8x faster. Dynamically add and take away cores whilst changing. New tune files appear in your library subsequent to the original recordsdata. Now click on on the Convert All button to begin converting FLAC to MP3, AIFF or any format you need in your Mac system, the converting process shall be completed inside just a few seconds and you can switch to the Converted tab to locate the convertedflac information in your Mac. changing an M4A file into an Mp3 would not enhance the file high quality. It's going to still sound like an M4a file. You're solely growing the file dimension, which is pointless. Audio converter cell apps are much slower than the perfect programs we examined, and even the best crash occasionally. Nonetheless, if you have to convert an audio file using your phone, these are the best choices. I use a software referred to as iDealshare VideoGo which can easily convert WMA to all most all well-liked audio formats like convert WMA to MP3, AAC, AIFF or convert lossless WMA to Apple Lossless ALAC M4A. Ogg Vorbis, not to be confused with the Ogg Theora video format, is an open supply audio format maintained by Basis Just like the MP3 format, Vorbis permits for tags similar to ID3 referred to as feedback. At any time when you are glad with the Aura Apple Lossless Audio Codec ALAC to WAV converter, you can pay a small amount of cash to buy a license for the program and all other Aura multimedia software program. Step 1: Enter the URL for Changing FLAC to ALAC from any browser or choose the format after you enter the website. Free Video Converter is the free converter to transform FLAC to MP3, WAV, ALAC, AIFF, AAC, MP4, and more, and vice versa. This converter is very straightforward to make use of and help converting recordsdata in batch. The output codecs assist above 300+ formats, which may excessive meet your iTunes taking part in wants. iTunes isn't suitable with as many file sorts and doesn't convert as quick as one of the best products we examined. However, if you wish to import lossless recordsdata to iTunes as lossy files to save disk house, there isn't any motive to use another program. iTunes converts to solely four file formats: MP3, Apple Lossless Encoder, AIFF and WAV. Also, if the file you are changing has DRM (Digital Rights Administration), iTunes can't convert it as a result of doing so would remove the DRM.
Nonetheless, when it comes to playback compatibility you may need to consider avoiding FLAC format. In case you are an Apple person, you will find that you can't play FLAC music in your iOS units immediately, since Apple products like iTunes, QuickTime, iPhone, alac to wma converter online fast iPad or iPod don't have native assist for it. In that case, you probably must convert your music that's inflac first to something extra accessible, ALAC for example, on your laptop. One other concern you might need is the elevated storage utilization. Even though FLAC use a form of compression to create lossless file, it still considerably takes up quite a bit of area than lossy audio codecs like MP3, AAC, WMA.Originally created by Apple, Audio Interchange File Format, or AIFF, is an audio file that is utterly uncompressed and will be played on each Macs and PCs. AIFF is an identical to CD-quality audio, however its giant files increase download time and take up significant area, making the format lower than supreme for portable units. Streaming is feasible in AIFF, but it surely's not commonly used.
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Debunking 12 Myths About Cleansing Brushes
LET’S DEBUNK 12 MYTHS ABOUT FACIAL BRUSHES They’ve been on the market for quite some time now, but facial cleansing brushes are still trending in the world of skincare (and for a good reason). When it comes to exfoliating, polishing and improving your complexion, there’s just no competition. Here are just a few reasons why a facial brush is the pinnacle of skincare: 1 . Offers a deeper and more thorough cleanse than just using your fingers or a washcloth. The bristles penetrate further into the surface of your skin, getting rid of more dirt, debris, and oil.
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2 . Your skin renews itself every 28 days and exfoliation from a cleansing brush speeds up this process. 3. Exfoliation tightens skin, shrinking the appearance of pores over time. Learn more info. check out here: face cleansing brush 4. Using a facial brush stimulates the surface of your skin, making it more radiant and smooth. 5. Your lymphatic system collects cellular waste and delivers it to your blood for elimination. Facial brushes stimulate this process and help your skin “detox”. 6. You’ll be prepped for the rest of your skincare routine. Your serum and moisturizer, for example , will be easily absorbed so you’ll see better results. Don’t forget to always follow up with SPF. Despite these amazing benefits, there’s a lot of misinformation and confusion about these must-have skincare tools. So , let’s start by debunking 12 of the most common misconceptions about them. 1 . “They’ll irritate my skin and make me break out. ” It’s all about knowing your skin type, prepping it for cleansing and using the brush the right way. Whether you prefer a makeup remover wipe, micellar water or an oil cleanser, remove your makeup before using a cleansing brush. It can’t completely remove makeup by itself. In fact , it can actually push makeup deeper into pores, causing breakouts. Use plenty of cleanser and water on the brush head to avoid irritation. It’s normal to experience an acne flare-up after using a cleansing brush for the first time. This is called the “adjustment period”, “transient acne” or “skin purging”. Generally, your cheeks, temples, and chin are the most prone to breakouts. The reason for this is that your skin is shedding dead skin cells at a faster rate than normal and all the underlying bacteria are coming to the surface in the form of pimples. You should see an improvement within 2-3 weeks. Just stick with your usual routine and your skin will begin to look better than ever. If it continues or gets worse (like redness, dryness sensitivity), it’s okay to take a break until your skin calms down and goes back to normal. After you’ve given it some time, slowly reintroduce the brush again (once a week is good). 2 . “I have sensitive skin. So , I can’t use them. ” That’s not necessarily true. You just need to use caution and make sure you don’t go overboard. Stick with a cleanser that you already know your skin can handle. Use the brush 1-2 times a week and think of it as a treatment for your face. Make sure to use a light hand and don’t use it on your face for too long. Finer, thinner bristles, like a silicone brush head, will be gentler on your skin and won’t be so abrasive. 3. “I’ll just spread bacteria around my face. ” This will only happen if you don’t cleanse your brush head properly (which you should do after every use). Rinse it under warm water and use an unscented liquid soap to remove dirt and makeup residue. Then, massage the bristles clockwise with your clean fingers for 1 minute, switch to counterclockwise and repeat. This prevents breakout-causing bacteria from building up. Once a week, soak the brush head in a bowl of rubbing alcohol for 1 minute (and don’t rinse). This will kill any remaining bacteria. Make sure to always let your brush head air-dry on a clean towel in a well-ventilated room. To remove residue or buildup on the handle, clean it at least once a week by removing the head attachment and wiping it thoroughly with a damp, soapy towel. For the best results, replace your brush head every 3 months and never share it with other people. 4. “I’ll exfoliate too much. ” Too much exfoliation can lead to red, irritated, dry skin that feels scratchy or tight. No matter your skin type, start off slow (1-2 times a week) to see how your skin reacts. Then you can slowly work up to the usage that’s right for you. Dry and sensitive skin types should stick to 1-2 times a week, while oily skin types can work up to once a day. You might even consider getting a two-speed brush so you can start on the lower speed and work up to the second speed gradually. No matter the brush, avoid the delicate eye areas. 5. “They’re too expensive. ” While cleansing brushes can get pricey, there are plenty of affordable options out there (like ours). Think of it as a long-term investment for your skin--it’s worth the cost. Consider that you might spend as much (or more) visiting your dermatologist, esthetician, going to a spa or fixing a skin problem that could’ve been prevented. Using a cleansing brush is a proactive approach to skin care. 6. “I have acne. So , there’s no way I could use one. ” Cleansing brushes can actually help treat acne by helping to eliminate excess sebum, which contributes to acne breakouts. You just have to pick the right one and the right cleanser to go with it. Anything that’s too harsh can exacerbate acne. Try slowly working up to using the brush 2-4 times a week and pay attention to whether pimples become aggravated. If they do, scale back or take a break. Note: Use caution around cystic acne, which occurs deep below the skin and is often painful. Brushing can irritate the cysts, leading to more irritation and allow more bacteria to enter the pores. 7. “They’re all the same. ” There are plenty of brands that have their claim to fame or declare their cleansing brush the “best”. But , not all brushes are created equal. Find one that’s right for your skin’s specific needs and your lifestyle (i. e. rechargeable vs . battery powered). First, quality varies and this is reflected in the pricing. And, some--including ours--are cruelty-free. Second, different cleansing brushes serve different purposes. For example , some increase collagen production to target fine lines and wrinkles, while others aim to diminish the appearance of pores. There are even waterproof ones available. Third, brush heads are unique. Some come in kits and for some brushes, you have to buy them separately. They also can be interchangeable. Also, they can spin in different directions (i. e. clockwise/counterclockwise). For example , some rotate, some pulse and some oscillate a certain number of times per second. They usually come with multiple speeds. Brush heads are made out of different materials, like nylon, latex or silicone. They can be natural or synthetic. And, depending on their purpose, some are finer and others are more thick and coarse. 8. “It doesn’t matter what cleanser I use with the brush. ” Choosing a gentle cleanser that works well with your skin will give you the best results. A cream, foaming or gel formula will work best with the cleansing brush. Don’t use a physical or chemical exfoliant when using a cleansing brush (i. e. a scrub with little beads or nuts, or a cleanser with glycolic acid). That’ll provide too much exfoliation and can cause a range of other problems (like breaking down skin tissue). We recommend our Main Squeeze Daily Cream Cleanser. It goes on like a cream and begins to lightly foam when wet, giving you a gentle (and therapeutic) cleansing experience. 9. “They’re not worth the hype. ” There’s no arguing, cleansing brushes have become a staple in many skincare routines because they deliver noticeable, positive results. Your skin is the largest organ on your body and it needs to be cared for. And, when you consider you can get professional results without having to go to a dermatologist or esthetician, it’s hard to see a downside. They’re also portable and extremely efficient, surpassing most other cleansing methods. Even better? They come in different colors and sizes, depending on your preference. 10. “They’re hard to use. ” They may look intimidating, but they’re actually fairly easy to use. In fact , they are far less work than traditional methods like your hands or a washcloth. Before buying one, it helps to do research and read reviews online. It’s never a bad idea to ask your dermatologist or esthetician for their recommendations and advice. Just make sure you read the instructions carefully and don’t be afraid to reach out to the company if you have any questions. Some of the best advice? Make sure you’re not pushing the brush down on your skin too hard. Wet your face and brush first and apply a nickel-sized amount of cleanser to the side of the brush (not the center). Let the bristles glide across your skin and use gentle, circular motions. As a general rule of thumb, cleanse your forehead, nose, and chin for 20 seconds each and cleanse your cheeks for 10 seconds each. Don’t do more than 1 minute. You’ll get the hang of it after a few uses. The only thing you have to remember is to charge it or replace the batteries and change out the brush head. 11. “My skin type doesn’t matter. ” This is far from the truth. For example , a person with acne-prone skin has different needs than a person with dry skin. Your skin type will determine what kind of cleanser and brush head to use and how often you should use it. Normal and oily skin types can eventually work up to using the brush once a day, while dry and sensitive skin types should stick to 1-2 times a week. In the end, you know what’s best for you. 12. “I can use the same brush on my entire body. ” This is strongly not recommended. If you use the same brush head on your body as on your face, you’re transferring bacteria and dead skin cells. This increases your chances of a breakout. Not to mention, the skin on your face is thinner and more delicate than the skin on your body. So , body cleansing brushes are designed differently. The bristles are firmer and cover more area. They can also be too harsh for your skin and can cause redness and irritation. The Honest Truth Cleansing brushes are some of the best tools for anyone’s skincare routine. Don’t be intimidated by them. Just remember to do your research and ask questions. With time and effort, you’ll notice a visible change in how your skin looks and feels. If you’re looking for a cleansing brush that’s right for you, check out our best-selling facial brush and get a secret discount. To know more details visit here: facial cleansing brush
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Video Game Year in Review: The Top 10
As with any year-end list, this one probably isn’t complete. Last year, I fell in love with Nioh over winter break after I had already made my top 10, and just a few days ago, I started playing Hollow Knight. As I made clear in my previous lists, Metroidvanias can be hit or miss for me. I can get fed up with wandering around without a clear destination, and Hollow Knight has a bit of that so far, but it also has one of the most atmospherically welcoming settings for a video game in recent memory, and so far I’ve been pretty damn enraptured by it. I’m not too worried about it making the list at this point; it didn’t even technically come out this year anyway, but its Switch release earlier this year gave it somewhat of a second debut, for all the earned attention it finally got. At least I got a little shout-out here before publishing.
Anyway, here’s ten games I loved the shit out of in 2018. This was one year with a handful of games that I absolutely adored, none of which necessarily immediately jumped out to me as hands down the best one of the bunch, and honestly, that’s the way I’d prefer it, but it did make ranking them a bit tough. Really, from number five onward, the ranking gets pretty interchangeable. I didn’t plan on the game in my number one spot being the one that it is until I actually wrote out my feelings for it and decided that out of all them it was the easiest for me to just gush about. Alright, no further ado:
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10. Donut County - Overall, it’s probably a good thing that Donut County isn’t longer than it is, but for as mechanically simple as sucking objects into an ever-expanding void is, it’s something that I felt I would’ve been perfectly entertained doing for a lot longer than the game lasted. Donut County has a wildly inspired and novel central gameplay hook, a relatably goofy sense of humor that might border on obnoxious if it weren’t so sincerely delivered, and an anti-gentrification, anti-capitalist message that mostly works without beating you over the head too hard with it. Ben Esposito and his team have created one of the most charming and original games I’ve played in years here.
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9. Paratopic - “Cinematic” is a grossly overused and frequently inappropriate word to use in games criticism, but this game often had me coming back to the word, observing how many ways it feels like it authentically takes inspiration from creative methods seen more often in film, particularly art films, than in games, much more so than say, Red Dead Redemption 2, which typically embarrassingly pales in comparison to any movies it’s obviously aping from. There’s its willingness to not explain to you what’s going on, letting you pick up on clues from scenery and incidental dialogue. Its multiple switching perspectives, laced together to draw meaningful narrative connections. Its tendency to sit in the atmosphere of a scene. Its ability to tell a succinct story intended to be experienced in one sitting. And most of all, those jump cuts. I know Paratopic isn’t the first game to employ this technique, but as far as I can remember, it’s the first that I’ve played to utilize them for purposeful artistic effect, and every time it happened, it was oddly thrilling. I loved when I’d switch from walking to suddenly driving, and had a moment of panic, as if I suddenly just woke up at the wheel. The cliffhangers scenes would occasionally end on made me desperate to get back to that thread. Hell, even just the fact that there clearly were scenes, that lasted a few minutes at a time, then moved on to the next one, felt weirdly refreshing at a time when AAA design is becoming so absurdly bloated. Paratopic excited me, not in its desire to emulate a separate art medium, but in its casual realization of how many underutilized narrative techniques work genuinely effectively in this medium.
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8. Dusk - I really can’t imagine a game that more perfectly matches my Platonic ideal of “video game comfort food” than Dusk, aside from, maybe, the game in the number one spot of this list. I was raised on 90’s PC FPS games like Doom and, as is much more relevant to this game, Quake. Yeah, for the most part, it’s nice that games have moved on, both in depth of gameplay and artistry, but goddamn does a back-to-basics twitchy shooter with inspired level design and creepy atmosphere just feel good sometimes. The grainy, chunky polygons of this game encapsulate everything I love about the rudimentary but remarkably evocative minimalism of early 3D graphics. The movement feels absurdly fast by modern standards, and the effect is thrilling - every projectile is dodgeable, as long as your reflexes are sharp enough. Undoubtedly the most impressive thing about this game is its ambitious level design, so much of which rivals even John Romero’s. The longer this game goes on, the more sprawling and labyrinthine it becomes. The map shapes become increasingly wacky. The gothic architecture becomes more foreboding and awe-inspiring. Dusk does a lot with a little, and in the process, makes so much more than a tribute to game design and aesthetics of the past - for me, it stands right alongside its obvious inspirations as one of the very best of its ilk.
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7. Into the Breach - An absolute masterclass of game design. Into the Breach leaves nothing about its mechanics obscured, making sure you understand how every move is going to go down just as well as it does, and the fact that the result is still compellingly challenging is a sure sign we’re in the hands of remarkably skilled and intelligent developers. The narrative in this game is sparse - you assume the role of time-looping soldiers attempting over and over again to save your world from alien invasion (think Edge of Tomorrow), and that’s pretty much all you get for the plot, aside from some effective but minimal character beats and dialogue one-liners. And yet, every battlefield, a small grid with its own arrangement of sprites (giant creepy-crawlies, various creative mech classes, structures full of terrified denizens given a modicum of hope at the arrival of their ragged potential saviors) offers a playground for drama to unfold, as gripping and epic as any great mecha anime battle. As I mentioned in my previous list with Dead Cells, I have trouble sticking with run-based games, and this game wasn’t quite an exception - honestly, if it had something resembling a more traditional narrative campaign, I could see it potentially filling my number one spot. But that a game of its style nevertheless stuck with me as well as it did proves what a tremendous achievement I found it to be.
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6. Astro Bot Rescue Mission - This was both the first game I’ve played fully in VR and the first game I’ve ever platinumed. I guess that might say something about how thoroughly I fell for it. For some reason, one of the questions that my brain kept posing while playing this game is, “would you like this game as much if it weren’t in VR?” I would like to pose that first off, if this wasn’t a VR game, it would be quite a different game, but yes, probably a perfectly delightful 3D platformer in its own right. But most of all, this game helped me realize what a bullshit question that is in the first place. By virtue of its VR nature, this game is just fundamentally different, just as the jump from 2D to 3D resulted in games that were just fundamentally different. The perspective you’re given watching over your little robot playable character allows to look in 360 degrees, and often you need to, if you’re seeking out every level’s secrets, and yet, while it moves forward, it doesn’t follow you vertically, so sometimes you’re looking up or down as well. It’s difficult to describe exactly how this perspective is so much more than a gimmick or something, outside of the cliched exaggeration of “it feels like you’re really there, man,” but honestly, this statement isn’t wrong. I truly did feel immersed in these levels in a way that I wouldn’t have if this weren’t a VR game, and while it’s not exactly a feeling I now desire from every game, it does stand out as one of the singular gaming experiences I had in 2018 as a result.
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5. Thonebreaker: The Witcher Tales - I gushed plenty about this game in my review. How its approach to Gwent-based combat is both welcoming to newcomers and remarkably varied, offering new ways to approach and think about the game with nearly every encounter. How its sizable story is filled with fascinating characters and genuinely distressing choices, forcing you to grapple with the inherent injustices of your position. How its vivid art style and wonderfully moody Marcin Przybyłowicz score sell The Witcher feel of this game, despite how differently it plays from the mainline entries of the game. And maybe most of all, how criminally overlooked this game has been. So I’ll make the same claim I did before - if The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt did something for you, it’s likely this game will too. Don’t worry about the card game - I did too, and trust me, it’s fun. It’s the new Witcher game; that really ought to be all you need to know.
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4. Yakuza 6: The Song of Life - There’s...a lot about the Yakuza games that I’ve come to adore, but one of the biggest ones that kept sticking out to me while playing The Song of Life is how they build a sense of place. After playing Yakuza 0, set in 1988, and Yakuza Kiwami, set in 2005, I played this one, set in 2016. Each time, same Kiryu, but older, same Kamurocho, but era appropriate. Setting every Yakuza game in the same map has to be one of the quietly boldest experiments in video games, forgoing fresh new vistas to explore in favor of the same familiar boulevards, alleys, and parks of the iconic red-light district, painting an exquisitely detailed and loving portrait of a neighborhood changing with the decades. While Kiryu’s exasperation at once again walking into the all-too-familiar crowded streets of Kamurocho, brighter and louder than ever, hardly matched my eagerness to see how it had changed, it felt appropriate. Though he’s still the hottest dad (grandpa?) in town, he is kinda old now, and he’s certainly earned the right to just be over it a little. Even the silliest of the era-relevant sub stories (one of which delightfully features Kiryu putting a selfie-stick wielding, obnoxious-stunt pulling, wanna-be influencer shithead in his place) serve to underscore how out of place he now is in his old stomping grounds.
By contrast, the other setting of Yakuza 6, the quaint seaside town of Onomichi, very quickly begins to feel like an idyllic retirement destination. The introduction to this part of the game has to be my favorite video game moment of 2018 - Kiryu trying to calm a hungry baby, while walking the deserted streets after dark in search of one store that still happens to be open. The faint sound of ocean in the distance effectively evokes the freshness, the bitterness, of the air. The emptiness and darkness of the space is almost shocking, compared to the sensory overload of Kamurocho. And there’s Haruto. Kiryu took Haruka in when she was 9, so he’s never had to deal with a baby before. He’s out of his element, but hardly unwilling. The help he gets from Kiyomi and his other new friends is the kind of comfort Kiryu needs at this point in his life. Likewise, the events in Onomichi play out like a retirement fantasy - building an amateur baseball team out of local talent, building relationships with the denizens of a bar in an incredible Japanese version of Cheers, hanging out with the town’s Yakuza, who are so small potatoes they seem to barely fit the definitions of organized or crime. It all works beautifully as a touching send-off to my favorite video game character.
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3. Tetris Effect - There was a long time where I was contemplating putting this as my number one game. I went through some strange conflicts in the consideration - next to all these original, thoughtful games, am I really going to say that fucking Tetris is best one of them? Is that even fair? Is this game really anything more than just regular-ass Tetris but with some pretty lights and sounds and a 90’s rave kinda vibe? The answer to all of these, is, of course, yes, but also no. I’d defend my choice any day, though. This is the first game to actually get me into Tetris. I always appreciated it; it’s a classic, but it was never a game I had actually put much time or thought into before. This game not only sold me on Tetris, but got me obsessed with it, to the point where the name feels remarkably appropriate: ever since I began playing, I’ve been seeing tetriminos falling - in my sleep, in daydreams, any time I see any type of blocky shape in real life I’m fitting them together in my mind. The idea that all Tetris pieces, despite their differences, need each other and complement each other and can all fit together in perfect harmony, and that this is a metaphor for humanity, has to be some of the cheesiest bullshit I’ve ever heard, and yet, the game fully sold me on it from the first damn level. It’s all connected. We’re all together in this life. Don’t you forget it.
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2. Celeste - This is a damn near perfect game, both as refreshing and demanding as a climb up a beautiful but treacherous mountain ought to be. I died many, many times (2424, to be exact), but the game explicitly encouraged me to be proud of that, acting as a friendly little cheerleader in between deaths, assuring me that I could do it. It’s both a welcome break from the smug, sneering attitude so many “difficult” games tend to traffic in, and absolutely central to its themes involving mental health. As the shockingly good plot starts making it increasingly clear that it’s about Madeline’s quest to conquer (or, at least, understand) her inner demons, the gameplay itself offers a simple but effective metaphor for struggling with mental illness - yes, it’s hard, and yes, you’re going to suffer and struggle, but you can make it, and you will make it, because you’re so much better than you think you are. Oh, and also, it’s not all bad, because at least you get to listen to some absolutely rippin’ tunes while you do it.
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1. Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom - (Another one I reviewed!) This is my ideal JRPG. In my mind it stands next to childhood treasures like Final Fantasy IX. Unlike some recent Square projects that specifically try to clone their late 90’s output, this game hardly feels beholden to the game design of the past, and yet, feels of a piece with that era in a respectably non-cloying way. It has a bright, colorful, inviting world full of charming characters, an all-time great soundtrack by Joe Hisaishi, and an exciting, deep combat system with an emphasis on action. Building my kingdom of Evermore was remarkably satisfying, down to all the little dumb tasks my citizens would ask of me, none of which my very good boy King Evan was too busy or too proud to refuse. There’s very little grinding. It’s a long game by most standards, but at 40-something hours, it feels lean by JRPG standards. And for as much of a storybook fantasy as the plot is, as much as it reduces woefully complicated socio-political issues into neat, resolvable tasks for Evan to solve, it always came across as perfectly genuine, and sometimes surprisingly affecting. It’s the game that I’ve wanted to play since the PS1 Final Fantasy games stole my heart as a kid. That’s hardly what I expected it to be as I started into it, and what a joy it was to discover that it was.
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idolizerp · 6 years
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[ LOADING INFORMATION ON OLYMPUS’ LEAD RAP, SUB VOCAL JUNE…. ]
DETAILS
CURRENT AGE: 26 DEBUT AGE: 18 SKILL POINTS: 10 VOCAL | 07 DANCE | 10 RAP | 13 PERFORMANCE
INTERVIEW
Somewhere between scribbles of organic formulas and sloppy syllables of chemistry notes the words ‘’chain reaction’’ were written in midst of yellow highlighter. Had Junhai opened his notes, the road he’d gone through would have made much more sense. The simplicity of lacking in a skill crucial for his environment – the Korean language – had Midas media giving the boy on the edge of debut orders in the delicate form of advice. If you don’t know how to say it, don’t talk at all. Such simple words helped him make a conscious decision of sinking his teeth into his tongue, no matter how much it wanted to cut loose. It formed a whole delusion around the young man right from the start of his career. Unapologetically held eye-contact with ones hovering at the tip of his nose, foot gently swinging on top of the other, shoulders back and a tilted smile pulling up the corners of stained lips mixed well with overall soft features into a mirage of a foreign prince or at the very least – a well-mannered diplomat. Staying relatively quiet until pushed to talk did him justice, short and sweet answers to questions received the perfect amount of minimum to keep Olympians happy.
“You seem soft,” was an implication Junhai often received in fansigns in various shapes and forms. For a moment the answer was replaced with the idol leaning forward, nimble fingers catching the lukewarm digits of a fan and placing their palm right on top of his neatly styled hair. “Am I?” An unnecessary plead of confirmation and a simultaneous offer of freedom for the fan. Bait witch was always taken whether it was a loving pet or a slightly uncomfortable attempt to collect DNA samples for possible cloning in the future, a collection of similar occurrences easily found and compiled in fan videos along with titles of ‘ June poking fans’ cheeks’ and ‘ June making fans blush for five minutes straight’.
There was no spite for Junhai to act the way he had in front of the masses of fans of Olympus. No hidden agenda, other than compensation for a lack of words he desperately wanted to say but was forbidden to. That’s how idols act, right? Well, no, as interviewers questioned his intentions for the sake of variety, to which the young man could only respond that he loved Olympians very much – the only politically correct response in the idol chaos.
Lack of words spoken could have been his greatest strength, hadn’t it been his greatest weakness, leaving him defenseless. ‘If it’s not scripted, you don’t say it’ was an imposed motto, his overall considerate and diplomatic nature chained up and drowned for at least eight years in front of the masses. The inappropriate level of fanservice he caught up to too late to take back gathered loyal fans along with stable saesangs, because of whom June was swept into situations he later couldn’t explain himself for due to the image that had been created – the too accessible prince who can be shared by all. It’s not like he would ever refuse it, only we are in his heart, he loves us too much, they claimed who he was right to June’s face, the ten year contract a heavy weight, making him nod his head and taste blood in his mouth. The man became property in the socialist society of the ones that claimed to be their fans as he kept on smiling warmly at his friends behind closed doors “I’m fine, really. Let’s talk about you.“
BIOGRAPHY
i. Junhai’s father wholeheartedly believed that the reason his son was average is due to the blood that ran in their offspring’s veins. One couldn’t expect someone related to middle ground to become spectacular – June didn‘t have the genes for that, having born into a family of two middle children with boring lives they chose to carry in Guangzhou, China.
Whether it was a placebo effect or not, Junhai was simply average at everything he’d ever chosen to do. He tried soccer, but he only became a professional bench boy. Wood warmer, they called him, as he wasn’t fast enough or sharp enough to join other players on the field. Fencing was thrilling. At least for those who managed to skillfully hit targets and gather points. Not Junhai, unfortunately. He came across drawing, yet no matter how many pencils he used up, there was always someone around him who shaded better and drew better proportions by the rule of the thumb. He was never a top student either, ‘Li Junhai’ always resting somewhere in the middle of a long list after class evaluations. Popularity didn’t mold with him, too, eyes often shifting to his athletic friends or the publicly notorious outcasts he exchanged small talk with. Attention was never on him, it slipped past the boy and lurked around the manifestation of a bare minimum of a personality. It was was almost beyond belief how Junhai had passed the Midas Media audition with a score above average, believing that maybe he had finally found something he wasn’t just ’alright’ at.
ii. “At this point you’re either good, or they will make you good, kid,” was something he heard once he stepped onto the foreign land. Yet, the first year in Korea was a blur of syllables and noises the thirteen year old desperately tried to make sense of as his tongue twisted and turned in failed attempts to communicate with those around him. It was a proper inconvenience to his roommate, who ended up nursing a preteen with the intellectual capacity of a toddler. Or so it seemed, as any reminder of a practice or invitation to a meal was greeted with a pair of knitted eyebrows and Cantonese mutters, while hours dedicated to sleep were disturbed by the foreigner trying to read his Hangul schedule into a translator.
Time was powerful – lesson learned after a proper amount of time and double the amount of effort. Words directed at him didn’t sound like white noise. Hangul wasn’t just scribbles. Messages came through without any interruption. It evolved into Junhai repeating the sentences directed at him in an attempt to form variations in his head which were later verbalized as he tried to communicate like a functioning human should. It was hilarious, the way he spoke without knowing proper words or diction, the base of his sentences formed only by an overall structural understanding. Scissors became sharp cut sticks and toothpicks were sharp mini wood sticks. The sweet combination of mispronunciation along with a relatively limited vocabulary won over some snickers around the company. Had he known the good-nature of the laugh he drew, maybe his stomach would have stopped sinking whenever people expected words coming out of his mouth.
iii. Understanding the language unlocked a new level of comfort and security. The small room he lived in didn’t seem so alien, the streets weren’t that bewildering and the features his eyes stuck upon weren’t uninviting anymore. The mundane life of a trainee caught up to the teenager quicker than one would expect. Yet, no complains or hints of exhaustion were ever heard from the boy. On the contrary, Junhai reached out for ‘above average’ right when making sense of his own schedule and duties allowed him to put his all into training. But overtime could not save a boy of an unclear focus.
“What am I?”
No one ever told Junhai what they were planning for him, training hours marked no certain direction either. You hit that note? Good. You learned that choreography? Good. Your tongue didn’t twist while rapping? Good. Yet, in comparison to others around him, he lacked a spotlight skill and no one had any intention of giving him one. Therefore, his training felt loose and messy. While he did give his whole to train the modest amount of talent he had naturally, lack of a clear path distributed his energy in a way that didn’t allow Junhai to reach the level of skill he wanted. “You’re good. Not great, not special or spectacular. Just good.”
An alright vocalist, an alright rapper, a decent dancer. That was it, he was just.. Good. Not a step over, not a step below.
iv. For someone labeled as average, Junhai wasn’t sure why it was that he belonged in the lineup for Olympus. Charms that he might have had were useless due to how exchangeable he felt, many stronger contenders left lining up behind his back. It only came to him later, that he was just as much interchangeable and that’s why he was wanted. To be the middle ground that fills in the gaps - lines that were too unimportant to belong to main members of the group. A member can sing it better? June, do an ad-lib. Another member can rap better? June, take the background vocal. From multiple well-tailored lines in the subunit he debuted in his position switched to a few bars and maybe some lines if the producer felt generous. Never more, just enough to fill in spaces.
Junhai felt like he was a background member, not important enough to take much lead, not unimportant enough to be kept in the shadows. His members were talent and he was.. There. The feeling of low importance molded the barely existing relationship with the Olympus members. He never held it against them either. It’s my problem, he told himself, I can’t offer much. Therefore, decisions in which the members took part in slipped past his ears and if not the few fans he gathered offering himself to them due by stares and dimpled smiles, maybe no one would really notice if he had been dropped.
v. He really didn’t like being quiet, barely shutting up behind closed doors. His friends could only laugh about it, of course you have a lot to say after bottling your voice up. Yet, the ten year contract hung heavy on his neck like a chain. A bobble-head, well controlled by Midas media. One that got used to the slow attempted homicide of his own character. He wasn’t even that mad anymore, relying on charms and foreign mysteries to keep himself afloat in midst of the talented group. So much that people following Junhai start to seem mundane. There weren’t any ways to object the generous public figure he himself created. They followed him on stage, they followed him abroad, snuck into bathrooms and left presents at his doorstep. And when a number of Olympus fans kept themselves in tact, there was no getting away from the ones that didn’t. After all, he was public property even at the point when forceful pull of an open-hearted fan managed to dislocate his shoulder.
Olympus’ Junhai minor injury practicing; Olympus wrap up ‘Tell me’ promotions as five.
Minor. Did all minor injuries take more than a few months to heal? Midas knows best.
vi. Sometimes his modestly sized friend group worried about the lack of a fitting reaction for being mistreated. June never got mad, never cried or showed signs of distress about it. A dimple appeared on his cheek whenever questioned, as he beamed brightly at his company. “It’s my job, I’m used to it. No big deal.”
Junhai never lied to his friends. Unless the topic was his career.
vii. Guangzhou missed him, or so his mother told him whenever he Skype-called his family whom he hadn’t visited in years. How were his friends doing? That one’s married, that one became a surgeon, the other one has three children already. What he’d done in eight years? Really didn’t feel like much. He became an average member of a boy group in Korea with some lines and screen time. Somewhat liked, somewhat disliked. Needed, but not to the point of survival.
“I don’t think I will continue,” he admits time and time again into the glossy faces of his parents on the screen. “When the contract ends, I mean. We have over two years, the members will likely be planning their military service. And I’m not good enough to be a soloist.” It’s nice to talk in Cantonese again, he notes to himself. “I don’t think I belong here.”
As his mother kept howling into the microphone, he could hear his father murmur the same truth he’s been telling right from the start - mediocre people can’t escape their genetics.
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droneseco · 3 years
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Anker Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pro Review: Excellent Earbuds Beat Big Budget Competition
Anker Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pro
9.00 / 10
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Anker is a well-regarded name in audio hardware, not quite attracting the audiophiles but attracting a strong following for its no-nonsense products. The Anker Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pro earbuds carry on that theme, delivering great audio, customizable EQ settings, and a really good battery life in a tidy package.
Specifications
Brand: Anker
Battery Life: 26-hours
Noise Cancellation: Yes
Bluetooth : Yes
Pros
Great price
Customizable and unique EQ settings
Handles all music genres well
Good battery life
Easy to setup
Cons
Default audio quite bass-heavy
Microphones can sound dull or distant
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Do you want true wireless earbuds with active noise canceling, but you don't want to break the bank? The Anker Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pro earbuds are exactly what you need.
Anker's Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pro earbuds fill in all the gaps from the original model, adding a heap of new features, including better drivers, personalized EQ, and multiple targeted active noise canceling modes. Throw in a substantial battery life, and Anker could be onto a winner.
So, how do the Anker Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pro earbuds stack up in our hands-on review? Read on to find out.
What's In the Box?
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Before delving into how the Anker Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pro sound, here's what you'll find in the box:
Anker Liberty Air 2 Pro earbuds
Charging case
USB Type-C charging cable
9 pairs of silicone ear tips, various sizes
Anker Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pro Specifications
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Now you know what's in the box, here's what's in the earbuds themselves.
Design: Earbuds with stem
Color: Black, Blue, White, Pink
Drivers: 11mm dynamic PureNote Drivers
Frequency response: 20-20,000Hz
Impedance: 16 Ohms
Microphone: 6 microphones
Connectivity: Bluetooth 5.0
Battery life: 7 hours on earbuds, 19 hours on charging case for 26 hours total
With ANC: 6 hours on earbuds
Charge time: 2 hours for a full charge
Fast charge: 15 minutes for up to 3 hours playback
Water resistance: IPX4 for light sweat and light rain
ANC: Targeted ANC, plus custom options
Weight: 2g per earbud
The Anker Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pro earbuds are also compatible with Anker's Soundcore app for Android and iOS. The Soundcore app includes a personalized EQ feature that builds a tailor-made audio experience for your ears, customizable earbud commands, and multiple active noise cancellation options.
Anker Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pro Design
The Air 2 Pro earbuds have a fairly standard style, featuring a stem with external touch controls. The earbuds themselves are nothing flashy, but they're lightweight, weighing just 5.2g per earbud, and they fit snuggly in your ear, courtesy of the nine interchangeable silicone ear tips.
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There are nine different ear tips included with the Anker Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pro, ranging from XXS through to XL. As ever, switching the ear tips is a simple process. The inclusion of such an extensive range of tips makes it guaranteed that you'll find the perfect fit. There's also the ear tip fitting tool in the Soundcore app, but more on this in a moment.
The Liberty Air 2 Pro case is also reasonable. Again, nothing flashy, but the sliding mechanism is soft and easy to work with one hand, while the outside of the case is smooth and glossy to touch. However, it doesn't feel like it will slip from your hand easily as the exterior is slightly rubberized, and the case itself is solid enough that it will protect the earbuds from bumps and scrapes.
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Both Air 2 Pro earbuds include customizable touch controls. They're responsive and easy to use, as well as easy to swap out using the Soundcore app. One thing I liked about the touch controls was that standard commands require a double-tap—no more skipping a track or cutting off an ongoing call when you readjust the earbud position.
Although Anker isn't positioning the Liberty Air 2 Pro earbuds for sport, they're a good option. First of all, they're rated IPX4, which means they'll withstand some sweat and light rain, but not a dip in the pool or a sauna.
Second, the selection of ear tips means you'll find a snug fit for the earbuds that will stop them dislodging while you're exercising. Having used these earbuds for several weeks, I've had zero issues with them moving, rarely requiring readjustment during a workout.
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Last but by no means least, let's talk battery life. The Liberty Air 2 Pro can hold up to seven hours of battery charge on the earbuds, dropping to six with ANC switched on. Then, the charging case holds another 19 hours of charge, meaning you'll stay up and running for more than an entire day of listening.
The 26-hours of combined audio playback put the Air 2 Pro earbuds right up there in terms of battery life.
Anker Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pro Sound Quality
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The Anker Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pro delivers sound quality above what you'd expect from earbuds at this price point. They're bass-heavy on the default EQ, but the overall sound quality is excellent and well-suited to a wide range of music. They have no problem switching between stomping techno beats, melodic acoustic guitar, and precise classical compositions, handling any musical genre with aplomb.
Anker has spent some extra time on the Air 2 Pro drivers, too. The 11mm drivers use Anker's PureNote Driver Technology, which delivers a "45% boost to your bass and a 30% wider frequency bandwidth," both of which are apparent any time you pop them in your ears.
The Air 2 Pro earbuds have two additional features to boost your audio experience.
The first is active noise cancellation (ANC), which comes in four different flavors:
Transport
Indoor
Outdoor
Custom
The default options are tuned to block out external noise in those environments, but the inclusion of a custom ANC dial is a nice touch. There's also a Transparency Mode, with options to allow voices through the earbuds, or Fully Transparent, which allows all ambient noise through.
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Figuring out which noise-blocking technology suits your environment only takes a moment, and you'll find the Liberty Air 2 Pro ANC implementation a worthy competitor to other earbuds, especially at this price point.
Anker Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pro Microphone Quality
The Liberty Air 2 Pro microphone quality was another great-but-not-excellent feature. Earbud mics will never offer the same quality as talking directly into the microphone on your phone, but some earbuds do it better than others.
While testing the Air 2 Pro call quality, I was pleased to find that they successfully blocked out most of the sound walking along the blustery seafront near my home, something my smartphone cannot do—so that's a major plus.
On the flipside, some of the people I called found my voice a little distant and dull compared to a regular call. That said, I was still coming through with clarity, and there were no dropouts or audio glitches.
Customizing Your EQ With the Anker Soundcore App
The second sound quality audio boost for the Liberty Air 2 Pro earbuds is the Anker Soundcore app. As mentioned above, the Soundcore app allows for customizable EQs, Anker's HearID Personalized EQ, and an ear tip fitting test. The Soundcore app is available for Android and iOS.
Download: Soundcore for Android | iOS
After downloading and install the app, fire it up and connect to your Anker Liberty Air 2 Pro earbuds using Bluetooth. It should only take a moment for the app to connect to the earbuds.
Once connected, select HearID and Equalizer > Personalize earphones. The Soundcore app asks how many years young you are, then advises you to find a quiet place to conduct the audio test. The test is similar to an audio medical exam, playing series of tones at variable frequencies in your ears. You hit Yes when you hear the tone, No when you don't, and Soundcore builds a unique HeadID audio profile based upon how you answer.
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The whole process takes about three minutes, showing your audio profile results on completion. You can then pair your HearID profile with your favorite or most listed music genre to create the "perfect" audio profile on completion.
While it sounds a little gimmicky, the result was noticeably clearer audio, which was impressive. The ear test picked up deficiencies in my left ear, adjusted the EQ accordingly, and gave the Liberty Air 2 Pro audio profile a little extra polish. EQ customization features can be quite hit and miss, but Anker's HearID is one worth using.
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You don't have to pair your HeadID with a specific audio genre, either. Sticking with Anker's Soundcore Signature works just as well, especially if you listen to a wide range of audio types.
You can also use the Soundcore app to change the earbud touch controls. From the Liberty Air 2 Pro menu, select Controls. From here, you can switch out the Double Tap and Hold for 2s controls.
Anker Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pro Repairability
As ever, earbuds are not the easiest bits of hardware to repair under your own steam. Repairs usually require specialized tools and hardware that the average consumer simply doesn't have access to.
Anker's Soundcore products come with an 18-month warranty, and repairs are processed using authorized repair centers.
Ultimately, most earbuds fall into the category of disposable audio hardware due to the lack of repairability options, plus the difficulties replacing common points of failure, such as fully-integrated batteries.
This isn't a slight on Anker; the overwhelming majority of earbuds suffer from this issue.
Should You Buy the Anker Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pro Earbuds?
How could anyone not recommend the Liberty Air 2 Pro earbuds? Given the range of features on offer, the extensive battery life, customizable and unique audio profiles, and decent-but-not-mind-blowing design, Anker Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pro earbuds are an absolute steal at this price point.
Right now, you can pick up the Anker Liberty Air 2 Pro for $130, which is a great deal for earbuds that deliver this caliber of audio.
Anker Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pro Review: Excellent Earbuds Beat Big Budget Competition published first on http://droneseco.tumblr.com/
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benjamingarden · 4 years
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Weekending
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Hello beautiful weather!  And I'm not only talking about the sunshine.  It rained Thursday and Friday and my garden is loving it.  Hooray for rain!  Then, Saturday and Sunday it was sunny and in the upper 60's and then 70's which meant my little seeds began sprouting.  And quite happily I might add.  Well, at least I think they seem happy.  Seeds are sprouting, plants are growing, and fruit trees and bushes are getting ready to bloom.  All is well in the garden. Jay was even able to get one of my new raised beds completed.  I will fill it with soil and compost tomorrow and it will be set to plant in a couple of weeks.  One down, one to go!
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Coop Girls - oh those girls.  So, they are back in full egg production again.  I have no idea why it slowed briefly but they are now back on track and laying around a dozen per day. They are so funny about water.  We've started filling their outdoor waterers again (now that they don't freeze every night) and for whatever reason, those outdoor waterers dish out the BEST water.  They watch me fill them and then mob me to get the first drink as soon as the waterers are hung.  *spoiler alert - it's the same exact water as the indoor water....*
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Jackson - that cat.  His newest "trick" is to go around the house and try to open things.  Drawers, cupboards, anything that he can tap at or pull.  Well I made him quite the happy boy.  I saw him doing this throughout the day (it's his only activity some days in between naps) so I put two of his favorite toys in one of the empty soft bins that is on his route.  I can't even describe how excited he was when he successfully pulled that bin open and spotted his pink mouse and his green cricket.  He did a double take and then leapt in the air and attempted to land in the bin (he's not graceful - it didn't work).  He started batting and jumping and carrying on.  It's the little things, isn't it?
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Oliver - he's doing well.  A bit bummed about the rain this week but it was only a couple days so all is well now that his buns are in the sun.  He gets a little cranky on soapmaking days (not his favorite days of the week because he doesn't get much attention).  It will get better when the temps are consistently in the 70's during the day to allow for all-day deck time for him.  If he gets deck time I am forgiven for the lack of attention.
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In The Kitchen - well, I've finally stopped making so much bread.  I feel better not eating flour multiple days of the week, I must say.  I have cut it back to once a week.  That seems to be the best for us. I've been enjoying the Celestial Seasonings "zinger" teas.  I am currently drinking the raspberry zinger variety.  Hibiscus is one of the main ingredients and so incredibly good for you.  I brew it cold and leave it in the fridge so I can enjoy a cup all week.  I don't usually make the switch to iced tea for another few weeks but it just sounded good. I made chocolate-strawberry "nice cream" (non-dairy) as a special treat this weekend and it was sooooo good.  I'll share the recipe this week.  I also tossed a bunch of odds and ends veggies that are getting close to that fateful no-longer-good stage, on a parchment lined baking sheet and roasted them at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for about 30-40 minutes.  After they were roasted I poured them into a dutch oven, topped them with some water, added a bay leaf, and simmered the concoction for 2 hours to make a nice batch of homemade vegetable stock. 
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On Saturday we had oatmeal and berries for breakfast.  Pretty standard.  I had a big delicious salad with hummus for lunch, and Jay had naan "pizza" in the air fryer and we both had an apple dipped in honey-roasted peanut butter as a snack.  Dinner was grilled chicken for him with homefries and steamed broccoli, and I had barley with steamed vegetables and black beans. Sunday was oatmeal with berries for breakfast for me and Jay had eggs and toast.  Lunch was another big delicious salad for me and Jay wasn't hungry because he ate his breakfast kind of late.  Chocolate-Strawberry Nice Cream was our special fruit treat (strawberries and bananas).  Dinner was burgers - meat for Jay and black bean for me.  I made air fryer fresh french fries, steamed broccoli and beets as the sides.  I made up another batch of the black bean burgers for the freezer because I can use these anytime I'm not sure what I want for lunch or dinner. I'm hoping you had a wonderful weekend as well!  Do tell - did you do anything fun or productive?  Cook anything delicious?  Read a great book? Link Love: Have you ever searched Taste Atlas for signature dishes in cities or countries around the world?  It can become a tad addictive.... When was the last time you made bread in your rice cooker?  Never?  Yup, that's my answer too.  Intriguing, however.... (Food52) I understand that you've likely been inundated with enough about the current pandemic, but I thought this write-up in the NY Times was quite informative.  (NYTimes) Are you one of the many who ran out of yeast?  Beth shared a yeast-free pizza dough recipe on her site. (BudgetBytes) Is kombucha healthy or not-healthy?  This is a question I go back and forth over myself.  I haven't had any in over a year because I'm just not sure.  So, I have tea instead.  Here's a take on it with some interesting points including a reminder of the potential impact on teeth. (FoodRevolution) A handy guide for the kitchen of interchangeable ingredients by none other than the incredible Mark Bittman. (Heated)
Weekending was originally posted by My Favorite Chicken Blogs(benjamingardening)
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Cheats For Payday 2
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Perhaps it is your private reception, which you could make a decision if you wish to make it possible for other participants subscribe to you or else. In general, assuming you have a strong crew traveling, the theory should be to perform a superb heist...this means shelling out a period of time before you start a game title title will begin This launching time takes place when Hack Payday 2 shines during photograph outs are an component of the heist imagination, a strong unlawful is not going to requirement to utilize it, directly?
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alexteltevskiy · 7 years
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Vintage camera mini review - Argus C3 w/ 50mm f/3.5
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There's something special about using old film cameras from days long gone. Maybe it's the thought that the camera being used has real history behind it, having taken untold legions of exposures in the decades since it was assembled, passing hands of maybe two, three generations of users. Or maybe it's the easily traceable evolution of human engineering thought and craft, where each successive decade of camera technology brought with it new tricks, affecting the way it looks, feels, functions as well as the the style, the character, the soul of the camera...
I have owned a number of film cameras from different time periods, always on the lookout for something new to eat through rolls of photosensitive polyester. Araki once said that in order to change your photos, you need to change cameras. I'm a firm believer in this, and lucky for me and other like-minded photographers, there's around a century's worth of different cameras to saddle up and try to tame.
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The story
At a friend's party I spied a couple of old cameras, tucked away in the far corners of a dusty bookshelf. One was a collapsible Kodak Tourist 6x9 which, unfortunately, had a few parts missing and couldn't be reanimated, and the other was a little brick-shaped art-deco-inspired 35mm camera - the Argus C3. Covered with thick layers of dust, it responded well to basic operation and had nothing missing. The camera would stick at all shutter speeds as well as require Hulk-like strength to change focus and aperture. The back wouldn't even stay shut. But the doctor had high hopes for the patient.
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Having borrowed the Argus, I began the immersion process, surrounding myself with wikis and manuals. Made from 1939 till 1966 by Argus in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The camera was surprisingly entry level, designed in the late 30's. Saw use by photojournalists during WWII, even managed to snap some iconic shots from the front lines. In the later years it saw widespread use in many American homes, its affordability, ruggedness and repairability fueling its popularity. Even Jimmy Carter had one. But with the flood of inexpensive Japanese SLRs in the 60's, the archaic rangefinder design of the C3 phased it out into obscurity.
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The Brick (as it was affectionately known) had a coupled rangefinder mechanism with a separate viewfinder. Focusing had to be done in one window, framing in another. Both finder windows were some of the smallest I've encountered - even smaller than in my Olympus Stylus Epic - which didn't lend to usability. The leaf shutter speeds went from 1/300 to 1/10 and included provisions for cable release and bulb. Winding the film was manual and separate from winding the shutter. The lens is, surprisingly, interchangeable, but required tools and minutes to change and an external finder for any other focal length than 50. The bare essentials were there, but literally nothing else.
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This skeleton crew of camera functions was a contributing factor to its simplicity and ruggedness. The camera proved incredibly easy to disassemble and work on. The original lubrication had half-evaporated and half-turned-to-stone, but that was quickly remedied with a fresh coating. Play had developed over time in the gears, knobs and dials giving that bucket-full-of-bolts effect - but everything was tightened to spec with simple garden variety screwdrivers and wrenches. Very easy to see why the camera continues to work well even 61 years after it rolled off the production line - inside was a date stamped indicating a 1955 production year.
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After everything was put together, the kid-on-Christmas-Eve syndrome took over and the decision was made to test the camera next day. Weather conditions were highly unfavorable for testing out an all-metal, f/3.5, all-manual camera from 1955. Nearly sub-zero (that's in Fahrenheit, folks) temps, hours of traffic and inches of snow separated us from our intended destination of Downtown Chicago. Mercury was dropping faster than the sun on the horizon as I hoped I could still feel the unfamiliar controls of the C3 through my thick winter gloves. Film of choice was Ilford Delta 3200, rated at 1600 to keep the grain from consuming the image. Original choice was Kodak Tri-X 400 to keep the entire package in the same era, but the mailman failed to deliver forcing the switch, which actually allowed me to shoot for much longer because the light got sucked out pretty quick with all the extra snow in the air.
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The destination was chosen simply because there is no better fit to the form and function of this photographic relic and its place in history than Chicago's own iconic architecture, with its arcane pillars of weathered steel and iron, chiseled art-deco-esque bastions of concrete and slabs of modernist lines receding into infinity. Chicago's facade went through many styles and movements, fueled by advances in construction technology and architectural sciences. But its roots are still bare for the eye to see with the future layered over it. Much of the same applies to the C3.
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I was joined on this trip by lovely fellow 43S-member Kris (wo)manning the A and B cams for our video review of the trip. Dodging snowflakes, she kept the video rolling while I was busy keeping a mental checklist of the 10+ steps I had to do before taking a single shot on the Argus. Plan was to try to score shots that would reveal the gritty limestone-laden angles of a city that originally inspired Batman's mobster-mastertown of Gotham. Segue through to Ohio Street to Michigan Avenue, make our way down to the Riverwalk and continue clicking all along Wacker Drive. Sneak peaks of the Water Tower, John Hancock, NBC and Tribune towers, as well as the transformers building (35 E. Wacker Dr.) and Merchandise Mart - all were on the snowed-over map that was increasingly harder to follow.
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One of the reasons I like using medium format cameras is because you have less frames to worry about, allowing you to focus more on quality, than quantity. All of a sudden having 36 shots to work with sometimes feels like a burden on short, one-day trips. I actually found that fact comforting the first time using a new old camera, resurrected from the dead. Which leads me to mention some of the things I disliked while using it - first of which is ergonomics. Or rather lack of them. It takes very little time to figure out that this camera is not going to be comfortable to hold. Ironically it takes much longer to figure out how to hold the darn little brick in such a way as to not cover up any viewports or get the shutter finger jammed in the way of the shutter cock/release lever. When the shutter button is actuated, the cocking lever springs back, and if the finger is in the way, you get a very, very long exposure (if you know what I mean). At least some shots fell prey to this malice. The other biggest gripe I had with this camera is that everything is manual and separate, including the frame advance winder. Accustomed to using mainly 60s Japanese SLRs and up, where the shutter cock and frame advance are all in one lever - here it's actually three(!) separate mechanisms. One for the shutter cock, one for the frame wind, and one safety latch to allow the frame winder to wind. While probably the stuff of pink fluffy dreams for fans of multiple exposure photography, I was actually quite enfuriated at having to remember to do so much to accomplish something so simple - leading to multiple shots being overlayed one atop another. Did I also mention that I wasn't a fan of the brick-like shape and ergos? I did? Good, I'll mention it again, because it really is not made for human hands. Maybe for robot hands...
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But it wouldn't be a proper camera review without mentioning some of the positives of this fully mechanical monster. And there are quite a few. Surprisingly they have more to do more with its flaws than anything else. The main reason I picked it up is because I really wanted to create some imagery that looked like it came from another time period. Anachronism is the name of the game for me when I use vintage gear and the included 50mm lens delivers in spades giving you that vintage "look". Supposedly coated, the effect is thankfully nowhere to be seen, with images full of silky-smooth, flat-as-LOG gradations of gray almost completely devoid of contrast. Due to a short focal flange distance the lens is surprisingly sharp in the center with minimal distortion, while its antiquated optical formula contributes copius amounts of vignetting that's present even when stopped down. All combined, makes shots look like newsreel footage from the past. Second positive is that just like any film camera, this one slows you down and lets you think more about the content. But where other film cameras are more of a moderately mindful experience, this one is hands-down almost ritualistic in the way it forces you to adhere to the craft. Almost nothing short of actually picking up an old 8x10 - complete with bellows, dark slide, curtain, ground glass and all - can compare. And third is, of course, the conversation starter effect. Just that day alone, three people approached me interested to find out more about the camera. Just not that many crazies like us out there any more, I guess...
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All in all it was a wonderful experience, will be a sad day when I have to return the camera back to my friend. The Argus C3 is a great camera for very niche and very vintage-looking photos. Just treat the cons as pros and embrace the craft. Already looking forward to my next vintage camera to try out - have an old 4x5 from the 30's which I still have yet to fix...
PS: ending the review with a little poster I designed commemorating the trip ;)
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drcontrarian · 7 years
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When a business model eats itself
Or, Committing Ouroboros
The emergence of platform brands has been interesting, and perhaps the defining feature of the post-millennial business models. By platform I am referring to businesses like Facebook, Uber, Spotify, Amazon etc which operate essentially as a marketplace/ platform that connects supply and demand.
The new business is a peculiar beast
One peculiar feature of these business models is that they are, quite literally, business models that eat themselves.
Mythologically, the meaning of the snake eating its own tail (Ouroboros) is strangely enough the Infinity Symbol too. These businesses may seem to last forever, but there is also a limited amount of tail to eat.
Let me explain.
Spotify
Spotify had to attract the big brand (artists) to the platform in order to gain traction. Every time the sign a big name, the number listeners climbed. Eventually they even got Taylor Swift. Now there is no reason for anyone not to listen to spotify.
But as Spotify ‘learns’ your taste in music, and the algorithm produces playlists and stations for you, the constant stream of music obliterates the artist who created it. Unlike radio, where the chatter of the DJs and other human interaction revealed something about albums, artists and other context that constitute the art of music, Spotify  turns all music into muzak. I have hundreds of songs in a playlist (that I like) that I don’t know who the artist is.
When all artists stream on Spotify, you don’t need an artists anymore, just an infinite number of variations of a genre that suits my ear.
Kickstarter
Kickstarter is a way of raising venture capital. In order to get where it is, it needed (traditional venture capital) even while crowdfunding is replacing traditional sources of capital. Eventually, VC can conceivably be replaced altogether by peer-to-peer lending. I can even imagine a time where the applications on these platforms are selected and promoted on the platform based on an algorithmic prediction of likelihood of success. And that the ‘users’ or investors, set an investment budget and allow the algorithm to decide.
Netflix
There are an infinite number of options, but instead of us immersing ourselves in the characters, reading stories about the actors in gossip magazines for the better part of the year, we binge on a series for a weekend - are briefly engaged - and then move on to the next.
I have watched 5 seasons of Suits, and I don’t know who plays the main characters. But I can remember that Corbin Bernsen and Harry Hamlin played major characters in LA Law back in the 80s. Our interest in the actor is fleeting and superficial and they are all eminently interchangeable. Except for the odd break-out series such GoT, everything is forgettable.
Netflix needed the big names to attract us, but can’t produce big names that will keep us.
Amazon/ Commerce/ Shopping Cart
Shopping sites need to stock the brand we want in order to attract us. Once we are there, like it and return, we set up our favourites to re-order. After that, we are less likely to switch brands, because we ‘set and forget’ and have little exposure to alternatives if everything is done on automatic reorder.
Amazon found its fame by signing up all the big name authors to be distributed online. The Kindl seduced them further.
As soon as every author is on Amazon, then all the readers are on Amazon, and then no individual author matters. You are fed an endless stream of authots/titles that are 'like;' the one you already like and they all blur into a genre-soup that satisfies you. Ultimately it kills your curiousity AND your taste, because by never reading something you don't like, you will forget what you like. And no consumer brand eventually will matter when Alexa orders everything.
[ASIDE: That is why social media is so dangerous in fostering groupthink - creating these echo chambers of followers/fans who all happily drink the kool-aid.]
The Brand Paradox
This means in practical terms that brands are developing a new value architecture: These platform business models are at once very hard to replace because they own the demand. This strength increases over time, because of the self-reinforcing nature of the business model. The more people use Uber, the more drivers will want to drive for Uber.
But at the same time, there is paradoxically very low barriers to entry and the business (platform) can easily be subsumed and surpassed. If a better search engine comes along, the value of Google will fall off a cliff in a matter of mere weeks. The switching cost for the consumer is as low as spending a minute to download an app.
The only barrier to entry is the critical mass of consumer demand. This is hard to win, but easy to lose.
The brand becomes a placeholder: Uber now means taxi, and nothing more.
These modern brands are different from traditional brands in many ways. Most obviously is the way in which there is separation between the product/service experience and that of the brand values. If you have a poor AirBnB experience, you won’t necessarily (not initially and not completely) condemn AirBnB, but instead would understand that it is the host that should be punished with negative brand assessment (ratings). If this happens consistently, you will start questioning the AirBnB vetting process, but there is initially some separation between brand value and the actual product or service. The same applies to say Uber or Amazon et al.
But the flipside of the platform-brands enjoying this immunity is that they are also less valuable as a brand. By that I mean that the huge valuations they enjoy is because of the (crazy) multiples of their anticipated cash flows, and not because of some inherent brand equity.  If Uber rebranded tomorrow to Zuber, it would be easily done compared to rebranding Coke.
In Summary
Let’s take Netflix as an example, but exactly the same can be said of any of the other platform brands like Uber, Amazon etc.
The value of Netflix is in the number of subscribers they have.
Because of that critical mass, there is a major barrier to entry.
But if you created a product that was demonstrably better, shifting the mass of customers is easy; the barriers to exit are low.
Netflix engenders no loyalty from the suppliers (producers, distributors, actors) because in fact Netflix destroys the brand value of the very thing it needed in the first place by virtue of becoming dominant through infinite supply.
The customers are not loyal to the brand of Netflix, because there is no real brand of Netflix - it has no brand and no personality, no more than a bookshelf has a personality.
If you see a bad movie or have bad reception, you don’t attribute it to Netflix. But neither do you think Netflix is great because you enjoyed Ozark so much.
When the brand is a platform, it only has utiltarian value.
For Netflix to grow, it needs to eat the thing that made Netflix great:  that is ouroboros - the snake eating its tail.
All these businesses, now so seemingly invincible, are vulnerable at the core, because neither the customer, the supplier or the partners are loyal, since they are all destroyed in the process of making the company great.
Infinity is an illusion.
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