#shallus week

[arknthetics]

Fishing hamlet in the Shallus. (Arkn: Legacy)

"Fish Village" by Milena Popgeorgieva.

#fishing hamlet #shallus #empyrium #universe x #arkn: legacy #locations #shallus week

[simplemlmsponsoring]

New Post has been published on http://simplemlmsponsoring.com/attraction-marketing-formula/copywriting/revisiting-2018-do-what-your-heart-feels-is-right/

Revisiting 2018 – Do What Your Heart Feels is Right

Last day of the year is always special. It’s the last time I sat down to write in 2018. It is also an excellent time to reflect upon things that happened this year and make plans for the year to come.

It’s been a while since I composed a yearly review, but here I am, documenting some of the moments of 2018 that I would like to remember forever. In the first week of December 17, We redesigned ShoutMeLoud and got a new logo and did some great work there. Sharat inked himself with ShoutMeLoud logo which is remarkable:

I started 2018 just after one of the most amazing trips to Antarctica, and for the first time, Delhi winter didn’t feel as freezing as it usually does. Now, unlike other years, 2018 was different.

It was a lot of introspection and self-learning for me. I had to fight a lot of my inner demons which I knew existed for years but never dared to face them.

It was more like trash piling up in one corner of the room that I knew was there, but I never took action.

The first half of the year unearthed many of them, and I realized that I  had to accept them before I could fight them.

When I look back, I feel I could have done better in the first half of the year. The only thing I could do was to surrender myself to the whole experience and acknowledge my achievements, realize my mistakes and use the learnings to make better decisions in the future.

2018 was the year when I made the most mistakes, which also makes it the year of great learnings.

I will try to put down my experience below so that you can learn from my mistakes and have a better year ahead.

Also, when I grow old, it would be nice to look back at this phase and smile.

Ok then, here we go:

January and February 2018

Last few months of 2017 were super exciting. I achieved things I never thought I would on personal as well as the financial front.

I kept thinking of early retirement as it felt like I had achieved most of my goals.

I stopped growing for a bit and my perspective changed from being a student of life to someone who thought he knew it all.

I had, unknowingly, started surrounding myself with people who were nice to me, rather than those who were honest in my face. Instead of taking actions, my impulse to seek recognition started increasing.

For me, it was a tough one to digest as I never thought I could be such a person. But it was happening!

The first two months of the year were the toughest and also the slowest for me.

Day-dreaming and running away from accountability, I was making my future difficult.

Sometimes it gets hard to see things when you are in the middle of it all. Don’t you agree?

I was almost in the midst of a mid-life crisis, figuring out what to do next.

It was not productive but the questions I was going through paved the way for time to come.

Me and Sharat did a road trip to Chandigarh to meet Chatty who is a smart young chap and was working on a few projects with us.

March 2018

March started with great pace, and the first significant thing that I did was a trip to Hong Kong with my team.

It was a conference that we attended it as an official media partner.

We also tested a lot of new stuff like:

Podcasts Twitter chat

Podcasts and videos are going to one of the prime targets for 2019.

I also met Gary Illyes, Abhishek, Honey Singh and Fernando at different venues and events in the month of March:

April and May 2018

These two months were pretty busy with managing my finances and restructuring the company.

By the end of April, I moved away from managing the finances of my company which turned out to be a great decision. I also moved my whole blogging business to the newly formed company rather than managing under my name, something that paved the way for better structuring in the times to come.

This is the time when I shared my intention with my team of stepping down from the role of CEO of ShoutDreams and bringing someone knowledgeable to run the company so that I could focus on things that I like.

I could feel the pressure of increasing demand for growing the company and keeping up with writing content.

Honestly, running day-to-day operations was becoming a challenge. I had never felt so much pressure. Even though I knew the right thing to do, I was not sure what to do.

I could feel it in my heart that I was not enjoying what I was doing and that my business and life required some major changes.

The question I kept asking myself repeatedly were:

Do I really need to do this?  Do I really need to build the company? What’s next for ShoutMeLoud?

On the one hand, I knew it was an important thing to do considering the way we do business online was shifting. On the other hand, I felt I was getting too business-oriented and was losing my freedom.

I could feel the requirement of having more key players on my team. Maybe a content guy, a video editor, a graphics guy, maybe an app developer. However, I was not enjoying the part where I had to spend time hiring and letting go of people.

The pressure of running the company was taking a toll on my overall performance. Moreover, I was not sure what I wanted from my life anymore. I had not yet confronted my inner demons and was trying to ignore them as much as I could.

To add to my troubles, Shallu (my wife) met with an accident and hurt her back in April 2018. She was bed-ridden for 3 whole months. When this happened, for the first time in many, many, years, I was really scared. Seeing someone you love in pain is heart-wrenching. I’m sure you can resonate with that.

I was struggling with everything. It was not the best place to be, but I can’t deny the importance of that phase in my career.

I realized I should be spending more time working. Honestly, I was starting to enjoy work again, and I knew it was time to make some changes. I rented a space in co-working office called Regus and worked from there for a month.

It was a boring place to be, but I was still happy as I was breaking out of procrastination and getting work done.

I worked from this space for almost a month. I discontinued with it later because it was becoming too corporate – more like a 9-5 job!

One highlight of April was addressing the audience at MindmineSummit.

June 2018

June is usually an action-packed month for me. In June 2018, I traveled to Helsinki to attend the SummerJam by SEMRUSH. SummerJam is a private event by SEMRUSH where they invite some of the best minds from the SEO and marketing industry.

It was great connecting with like-minded people in Helsinki. Here are some pictures from the event.

I also met Victoria, former affiliate manager of SEMRUSH, who currently works with Supermetrics.

If you don’t remember her, here is the video we did together last year about affiliate marketing for businesses.

Another highilght was this “Blogging birthday cake” sent by my friend, which made my day:

July 2018 – Half cooked Europe trip

After the Summer Jam, I planned to travel to Europe for a month with my family. It was one of our dream trips. From Helsinki, we went to Amsterdam and Prague. The plan was to travel to more places.

However, on the 9th day when I was in Prague, one of my key team member shared his intention of saying goodbye. I already felt I wasn’t doing justice to my role and this news couldn’t have come at a worse time.

We abandoned the rest of the trip and returned to India. I realized how important it was for me to resolve the burning question of the future of the company – putting up the system in place, ensuring everyone gets proper growth and credit for their work. I wish I could have done this more pro-actively a few years back, but as I said, I was no one to complain about how my life was unfolding. More on this later.

August

Half of the year was gone, and I could feel the pressure of not doing anything significant.

It doesn’t matter how well one is doing financially or growing if the ❤ is not in sync with the mind. It’s struggle.

👆🏻was my state of mind, and the first thing I did was change my office space. I found a nice place near my home called Instaoffice where I rented a spot.

It was a dream office and I enjoyed being there from day one.

Instead of planning, I started getting things done.

But I had accumulated a lot of questions in the past few months, and the answers were nowhere to be found. The worst decision one can take is not taking any decision, and I was doing exactly that.

As it is, I was not feeling super pumped up about much I was doing.  Existential crisis along with mid-life crisis, it was a pretty awkward place to be in.

In the past 12 months, I lost two key players from my team, and I was failing to put up system and process. I was facing a new issue every day.

At the stage I was, it was not easy for me to open up to anyone and tell them what I was going through. I was feeling lonely, but I didn’t let anything affect my day-to-day activities. It felt like depression but I’m glad it wasn’t.

I was losing the whole perspective of my journey. I was unsure of what would happen next.

But life always has something to offer.

One gets help when he/she least expects, and this is what happened in August.

I opened up to a few close people and told them what I was going through.

“Are you enjoying what you are doing?”

A friend asked me this simple question, and straight away I knew the answer – No!

I was doing a lot of things that I wasn’t enjoying.

For example, working 9-6 thinking that working more was a solution.

Waiting for weekends to live life!

I was trying to live a perfect life which was not me. I was living someone else’s life.

I was not able to write regularly, because my heart was not in sync and nothing makes me better than journaling.

We discussed things, and after a lot of questions and introspection over the new few days, I realized I was doing the exact opposite of what my heart said.

Working 9-6 was not me, and there I was, forcing myself to work more thinking that was the solution.

Rather than looking at my problems with the lens of solving it, I was harsh on myself.

I was being cornered by my ego. I was not ready to accept my shortcomings.

Instead of keeping my blogging journey fun, being thankful for whatever I have, I was focused more on the things that I wasn’t able to accomplish.

Throughout, I knew I don’t enjoy doing some of those things and rather than asking “How” to solve it, I was looking at “Why” I couldn’t do it.

This is where I started following the mantra“Do what, heart says”.

I accepted the situation, and started to take it easy from there.

I started accepting that I’m good with some things and not so good at other things.

Believe it or not, this mere acceptance changed everything for me.

Working more was not a solution and sometimes taking a step back or slowing down is the best thing to do.

I needed a change. A significant shift in my mindset, and I needed to be at a new place.

What do I really want to do?

From here on, I started making every decision based on the question above.

That one simple thing (“Do what your heart says”) changed the course for the rest of my year and probably my life.

It drastically changed everything!

September – The African Safari and Brighton SEO

I had planned my trip to Kenya a long time ago and even though I had to move major mountains in my business, I didn’t cancel this 9-day trip.

Why?

Because I badly needed a change and deep down I always wanted to experience the Great African Safari.

On the 1st of September, I flew to Nairobi, Kenya, and something was waiting for me.

A new beginning!

Kenya reminded me of India 20 years back. Everything was so raw, natural and pure.

The next few days were full of African adventures.

“The Game Drive”, as they call it, had us travel in the jungle on a safari.

Being in the arms of nature was such an enchanting experience. It reminded me of this famous quote which was part of my social media bio for years:

Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle: when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.

For days, I completely forgot who I’m. Something was happening to me. I don’t have words to explain those changes. After months of self-loathing, I was truly free!

This is the same time I started practicing Yoga, and I made a commitment to wake up before sunrise. This was another landmark decision of 2018 for me as it positively impacted my health and overall awareness. I would take this moment to thank Rohit for being my Yoga guru.

At the end of the month, I attended the BrightonSEO. It was the 2nd event for me of the year, and I realized how much I enjoyed attending such events.

Apart from learnings, such events are the best place to meet people who walk the same path as me.

October: DMSS Bali and Lasik eye surgery

After returning from the Brighton SEO, I went straight to Bali to attend DMSS. I was particularly excited about the mastermind which was one of its kind and my first ever. DMSS Bali turned out to be more than a digital marketing event. I have written a detailed experience here.

I met so many amazing people and discovered a lot of stuff about running and managing a remote company.  I realized how silly I was by trying to fix things which were not even broken. Another key learning is to surround ourselves with people who are on a similar boat.

Andrea also took me for my first ever surfing experience, and I absolutely loved it.

Lasik Eye surgery 

Another highlight of the year was letting go of my eye-glasses. It’s been more 20 years that I have been wearing glasses, and finally, I got the lasik eye surgery done.

so happy that the surgery was successful and now I’m writing this without having anything between my screen and eyes. A huge thanks to Dr. Dariel Mathur.

November: The Change

By November, I was in the doer mode. I was making quick decisions, and my year-long procrastination attitude was long gone.

To make better decisions in life, we need information. If you don’t have the right information, you will end up trying too many times before giving up or keep trying. DMSS Bali has given me the information which I needed to make better decisions, and I realized it was time for me to step up the game.

My experiment with “surrender to the life” had begun again and from the “why is it..

Read more: shoutmeloud.com

#could #first #life #more #started #things #time #which #year #COPYWRITING

[md3inc]

FAMU laboratory first in U.S. to print human cornea

For the first time in the United States, a 3D cornea was printed using human cells. The science was conducted by researchers in the College of Pharmacy at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University in Tallahassee.

The research will help scientists get closer to helping people see again, and will hopefully eliminate animal testing.

The research team is made up of only three people. The project is housed at Florida A&M, and funded by the National Science Foundation.

Some of the work is the first of its kind and, the scientists said, it is just the tip of the iceberg.

"This syringe right here is full of hydrogel and also cells," explained research assistant Paul Dinh.

Dinh, 20, became interested in the field while in high school.

"I had started looking into [things] like, tissue engineering, just on the side, like YouTube, or things like that," he explained.

Fast forward several years, he is working in the lab trying to better understand how the human eye heals.

"We thought, 'Why can't we 3D print a cornea?'" said professor Mandip Sachdeva, who leads the team. "We have been trying to learn every day and we have learned a lot in the process."

The group has spent the past year and a half creating an entire 3D model of a blinking eyeball. The corneas are printed in 3D by a bio-printer, and made from materials including human cells.

"That's like making a recipe for a good dish. You have to have a good recipe for your cornea," Sachdeva said.

The cornea technology was created by a scientist in the United Kingdom, but the lab is expanding on it, making it more efficient by creating a mold to print multiples.

"I was here really late at the lab and it took me so long because I had to print, like, 12 corneas, or something, for the week, so I thought, man, we need to come up with something so we can print 6," Dinh recalled.

The diameter and dimension of an average cornea are entered into the printer. It takes roughly 10 minutes to make half-a-dozen corneas.

"Regular 3D printers, normally they extrude some sort of hot plastic that eventually takes the shape of whatever you want," Dinh said. "Same thing as a bio-printer, except instead of extruding a hot plastic, we can extrude materials that are similar or present in the human body."

The machine prints from the bottom up. Then, graduate student Shallu Kutleria takes over, incubating and growing the cells.

"From there onward we can set up an assembly of 3D-printed corneas in a defeated cell system and then test a lot of formulas or products at the same time and test the data," Sachedva said.

The corneas will eventually be entered into an artificial blinking eye, which was also printed in 3D, tear fluid and all. That way, products can be tested in a simulated atmosphere.

"Then we will try various formulations and we can see the wound healing," Sachdeva explained.

Sachdeva said the method will provide more accuracy, and saves animals from being tested; something that cuts costs and is more humane.

For Dinh, who spends his free time dabbling in photography, he hopes the team's work will some day help others.

"I can go and travel and see all these beautiful things and then there's people out there that can't really see at all," he said. "It really made me appreciate the work that I was doing and that it had meaning to it and maybe my work can help someone down the line."

Dinh said he hopes to one day make an eye that's suitable for transplants.

Professor Sachdeva said that while there is still a lot of innovation to be done in the field, they are only weeks away from inserting the cornea into the eye model.

[android-for-life]

"How a college student became a planet hunter"

I didn't grow up thinking I was going to be an astronomer. There wasn’t a moment when I looked up at the moon and realized my destiny. I grew up loving math and science and in college, I gradually discovered that I loved learning everything I could about stars and planets. When I started studying and doing research in astronomy, I felt like I was given secrets about the universe.

During my junior year, I took a class on planets. My professor was away for a week, so we had a guest lecturer come in. That’s when I met Andrew Vanderburg and heard about his work with former Google engineer Chris Shallue (he recently left to pursue his PhD at Harvard in astrophysics). A few years ago, Andrew and Chris built an AI system with TensorFlow that sifted through the approximately 14 billion data points captured from NASA’s Kepler mission. In doing so, they discovered two new planets: Kepler 80g and Kepler 90i. 

When I walked into that classroom, I couldn't have imagined that it would lead to the discovery of two new planets. 

When I started, I had zero experience with machine learning. I had no idea what a neural network was or how I could build one. I learned everything as I went along using YouTube tutorials and TensorFlow and collaborating with incredible people. Using TensorFlow, I built a way to look through space telescope data and identify signs that planets could be around those stars. By the end of the summer, my neural network was successful and could recognize planets we already knew about, and discover new ones.

I discovered two new planets, but I also created a method that makes it possible for people to find many more. (If you want to learn how to hunt for planets, you can read my tutorial). Accessible technologies and open-source data allowed me to do this work, and because of that, it’s never been easier to discover not only planets, but also other mysteries of the universe. The possibilities for what we might find are endless.

Source : The Official Google Blog via Source information

#jeprog

[usabreakingnews-blog]

Artificial intelligence finds solar system with 8 planets like ours A solar system with as many planets as our own has been discovered with the help of NASA's Kepler space telescope and artificial intelligence, the US space agency said Thursday. "Our solar system now is tied for most number of planets around a single star," NASA said in a statement. However, none of the planets are expected to be hospitable to life. The eight-planet system -- the largest known outside of ours -- orbits a star called Kepler 90 some 2,545 light-years away. "The Kepler-90 star system is like a mini version of our solar system," said Andrew Vanderburg, an astronomer at the University of Texas at Austin. "You have small planets inside and big planets outside, but everything is scrunched in much closer."  The newly identified planet, Kepler-90i, is a rocky planet like Earth, but orbits its star once every 14.4 days, meaning a full year there is the same as two weeks on Earth. "About 30 percent larger than Earth, Kepler-90i is so close to its star that its average surface temperature is believed to exceed 800 degrees Fahrenheit, on par with Mercury." Artificial intelligence Scientists found it by using machine learning from Google, which teaches a computer to scan a trove of 35,000 possibly planetary signals collected from NASA's Kepler Space Telescope for search for signs of planetary transits. Transits are the dimming of light when planets pass in front of a star. Astronomers have already confirmed the existence of some 2,500 far-away worlds using Kepler data, which captures transits. "Machine learning really shines in situations where there is so much data that humans can't search it for themselves," said Christopher Shallue, a senior software engineer with Google's research team who thought of using artificial intelligence to find distant planets. More planets are expected to be found.Researchers plan to apply their neural network to Kepler's full set of more than 150,000 stars. One day, it might even be used to search for more Earth-like planets. The findings are published in The Astronomical Journal.

[arknthetics]

What Nevilith, the Thani of Shallus, would wear while holding court in Castle Bellnacht.

(Arkn: Legacy)

#arkn #nevilith #thani #royalty #castle bellnacht #shallus #empyrium #universe x #arkn: legacy #fashion #kimono #blue #shallus week

[arknthetics]

The Scroll House in Hazedya'kuro, with holographic decor active.

The Scroll House is the biggest bookstore in all of the Empyrium. It sells rare books, tomes, and scrolls. Run by a woman named Mal’avri Galiros, the finest Arkn historian in the whole of the Empyrium.

#the scroll house #hazedya'kuro #shallus #empyrium #universe x #arkn: legacy #locations #shallus week

[arknthetics]

What an Arkn of Levris would wear.

Levris is a large town of around 36,800 residents, situated both on an island and on the aebys itself, floating on ethric boosters. It includes, among other things, an armory, a post office, a blacksmith, a tanner, and a public school. (Arkn: Legacy)

#arkn #levris #shallus #empyrium #lathrum #lathrym #universe x #arkn: legacy #fashion #ensemble #shallus week

[arknthetics]

For the next month (or so), we will be focusing exclusively on a particular location in Arkn: Legacy each week. This week: the Shallus, an oceanic region in the Empyrium.

This is an example of one of the odd couture looks you might see in a Hazedya'kuro night club. (Arkn: Legacy)

VirginSkin4U on Etsy.

#hazedya'kuro #shallus #empyrium #lathrum #lathrym #universe x #arkn: legacy #fashion #clubwear #shallus week