#this does have to do with my previous post about not liking the way maven is written

[xcziel]

After seeing your tags abt CQL vs MDZS, I wanted to throw my 2c in. MDZS is a 18+ book tagged with bourgeois tragedy. The horror aspects and hypocrisy of the characters is very much part of the point. WWX was *not* a hero. Censorship in China forbids all depictions of moral ambiguity, violence, resurrection/necromancy etc. and CQL is a product of that; relying heavily on the audience also knowing the novel, so it's extremely frustrating to see ppl bag on MXTX for "not knowing" her own characters

Yes, I've seen some posts in reaction to that sort of thing, and I can see that that kind of entitled assumption would be infuriating? And kind of ... bonkers? I guess I don't go in the tags enough because I've never actually seen the posts judging MXTX, just the more reasoned responses on blogs I follow.

I'm not sure if it's just the posts in the generic fandom tags (which I mostly avoid) or if some of these takes are coming from twitter, but my only experience with MXTX criticism is literally just these reaction posts. My preference for CQL is just that, a personal preference, not any literary criticism of the source material or its author.

I've seen many posts from people with deep experience of the novel, the genre, and c-fandom in general explaining why judging source material from another culture by western media standards is inappropriate and often disrespectful, and that MXTX's writing is both indicative of its genre and cultural climate, while also being substantially an intentional deconstruction of expected tropes.

Of course it's frustrating to see people with limited understanding (and seemingly little desire to acquire any) quip away with their "hot takes" and I sympathize. But I'm not sure why I'm being pulled into this - I'm not reblogging or participating in posts that are attacking the original novel or MXTX herself. I don't have any contact with people judging MXTX or MDZS in a negative light. I'm in the tags, in my feelings about people posting on my dash who seem disdainful of fans who prefer CQL because they consider ignorance of information covered in the novel to be some kind of ... scholarly lack? that the newer fans should be eager to rectify immediately, preferably, I can only infer, by reading the novel themselves. So I do have an untagged post where I try to explain why that's not happening for me personally.

All I've been trying to say in the previous tags is that, for myself, CQL is more engaging - as you point out, a lot of things were left out of the TV version for censorship reasons or just adapted for the realities of live action media production. And many of those things also just happened to be things that I personally don't care for or about - leaving out many of Wei Wuxian's darker moments for example, doesn't damage the narrative as far as I'm concerned. And the other aspects that are appealing to me have little to do with the source novel - the actors, the costuming, the sets, the music - these are what drew me personally to CQL, not necessarily the depth of the writing, aside the love story.

And I'm really not looking at it as a _ vs. _ situation? To my mind, it's two different canons and I'm basically advocating treating them as such. It's the opposite of say, Harry Potter, for me: I've never seen even one of the movies, only read the books, so book-canon is where I lived, while still being able to read fanfic that incorporated aspects of both. I'm not preferring CQL only because I dislike the MDZS novel. Without CQL I wouldn't even be aware that there was a novel. And if I had been aware, even in english, that most likely wouldn't have been a novel I would have chosen to read.

Definitely there are aspects of CQL that must have a deeper resonance with an informed and savvy Chinese audience, but I think the surge of international fans makes clear that it does also work as a piece of media without that more intimate knowledge of the source material? It may not be interpreted the same way (obviously) but it's still an enjoyable work and I think people are allowed to be fans of the more superficial view where, indeed, Wei Wuxian is not a "hero" - he's the protagonist of a romance: not specifically good or bad, but necessarily Loved.

In a way it's kind of a Death of the Author thing - I'm not criticizing MDZS, because I will never experience the novel in its raw form, without the interference of a translation process. Just as I cannot make any value judgement of MXTX herself, knowing nothing about her personally, nor enough about her works' place in, and reflection of, the larger culture of Chinese online fandom and entertainment to be able to form a valid opinion. So I accept that my experience of the TV show is basically independent of the original authorial intent. For me and many others, it's just a xianxia show, a very pretty one.

I can only rely on what I've been told by others with more knowledge, and the translations that I've seen, and I'm not fool enough to think that either is sufficient to give me a true grasp of the source work itself. So I find it simpler to rely on the parts that I can judge for myself - the visual elements of the CQL adaptation. I mean, no one seems to be able to come up with a single, holistic english translation for "Jinlintai", nevermind being able to somehow explicate or encompass all of the Chinese cultural and linguistic/literary associations embedded in the written text, or even just the dialogue of the tv show.

I lost my way in here somewhere, but I just wanted to iterate that no reasonable person will ever give credence to some weirdo claim like an author "doesn't understand their own characters" or any other delusional stance hot take fandom twitter mavens are advancing about non-western cultural mores being "abusive" or "regressive" (I have seen twitter bad takes - whoo boy is all I can say there), or whatever else they're saying here on Tumblr that is causing c-fans to feel they need to jump to defend both MDZS' source webnovel and its author.

So ... yeah. I get that the source novel is more sophisticated and transgressive than is represented in the television series, but on a personal level I really do care more about Wang Yibo's microexpressions than I do about debating cultural morality or societal hypocrisy, so I'm definitely gonna stop talking now.

#answered asks #not so much answered as rambled at #i cannot word you guys #tags are where i talk #bc the space is limited #and i can't go on so long i lose track #of my train of thought #also this oncoming migraine is not helping #but it's like 'great literature' ok? #yeah there are themes and all kinds of references #that you don't get if you read at the surface level #but that's still okay #as long as you're not willfully misinterpreting #what you can get to #like gulliver's travels is packed with #cultural and classical referents of the time/place it was written #it's still an okay story without knowing all that though #some people read like that watch movies like that #seeking out the deeper understanding #i feel like i absorb what i absorb #i soak up the general 'vibe' of a piece of media #and ghosts and horror stories are not a vibe i really enjoy #the point got away from me again dang it #i get that some people are being dismisive AND appropriative of chinese culture in all of this #but i don't know what to do about it other than call it out and refuse to tolerate it when i see it #and i can acknowledge the issues while still preferring cql that's all #ooh dang i would put a cut but ofc i can't edit one into a post made on mobile #self tag

[paar-pahlok]

The Fault of Skyrim’s Leaders

This is not the full post I’m planning on making about themes in Skyrim, but I did want to address my comment about why it is imperative that Astrid ‘sucks’ in order to fit in with the themes of Skyrim. It is necessary for her to be as bad as she is and for her to go against the tenets or else the theme of all of the guild questlines has no point.  

We all like to laugh at the fact that by the end of every questline, the PC gets to become the leader of every guild. And while I don’t think that it’s good writing to have that happen, it fits within the themes. 

Each guild has gone off the track of what they were originally meant to be, and the job of the player is to restore the guild. This appears in three steps:

1) The leader has lost the way of what their organization was meant to stand for

2) The arrival of the player disrupts the pattern of breaking the traditions

3) It becomes the responsibility of the player, after the death of the leader, to restore the organization to its previous values. 

So let’s take a look at this idea, going from least dramatic to most dramatic in the core guilds of the base game: the College of Winterhold, the Companions, the Dark Brotherhood, and the Thieves Guild

First, let’s discuss Savos Aren and the College. This is the weakest example of this, however, you could argue that due to his lies he has weakened the standing of the College and now it is up to the player to do better than he did during his life. 

The next example is Kodlak with the Companions. Unlike the others on the list, Kodlak is not directly responsible for the “decline” of the Companions. He is the end of a long line of Harbingers that have fallen to the curse of lycanthropy. What makes Kodlak stand out is that it does not take the presence of the player for him to look for redemption; his mind is already looking toward how he can repair the damage that's been done. Unfortunately, he dies before he can complete his mission and it becomes the responsibility of the player to carry his idea into reality.

Further up the scale is Astrid. Throughout the Dark Brotherhood questline, it is clear that she has more or less fallen to become the epitome of what the DB should NOT be. She disrespects the Night Mother and her keeper and she betrays her dark siblings which is literally one of the worst things she could do as a member of the DB. However, what distinguishes Astrid from our biggest evil on this list is her desire to REPENT. She allows herself to be a part of the black sacrament so that the DB can hopefully move on in the capable hands of the Listener after her death. 

The last on our list is Mercer Frey. Ah, the worst of the worst. First, he goes against what the Guild stands for by allowing it to fall into the hands of Maven Black-Briar. The Guild should be stealing from her - striking fear into her heart - not carrying out her dirty work. Additionally, he uses Guild resources poorly. When the player gets inducted into the Guild, he immediately puts them on the toughest assignment, assuming they likely won’t even make it back. This callous puts a new recruit into danger when they need all the members they can get. What makes Mercer worse, however, is that he destroys not one but two guilds. He completely betrays his fellow Nightingales and Nocturnal and allows the Nightingale order to fall into disarray. This is why the player kills him with no remorse. He does not offer himself to the player. He does not die from some other circumstance. The player must kill Mercer in order to ever hope at reversing the damage done. The extreme way this Guild fits the model is exemplified by the existence of the quest to ‘restore the Thieves Guild’. It is the embodiment of what the player has done with every Guild, but this one requires the most effort and the most time because it had sunk lower than any of the others. 

The fandom likes to pick on Astrid for the role she plays in the Dark Brotherhood questline and that’s fair. But her role also makes a lot of sense. If she did not fit the pattern, it would have weakened the overall state of the game’s plotlines. And while Skyrim is hardly the most well-written game, the present themes do add a level of complexity to the game that makes it fun to go back to again and again. From Savos Aren and Kodlak to Astrid and Mercer, each leader is at fault for the state of their organization, but it is up to the player, to you, to fix it.

#Skyrim #elder scrolls #thieves guild #Dark Brotherhood #College of Winterhold #companions #kodlak whitemane #astrid #Mercer Frey #Savos Aren #tes #tes v #essay #video game #critical #critique #analysis #literary themes #bethesda #long post

[man-creates-dinosaurs]

I was swamped with various obligations all throughout #JurassicJune. So while I did celebrate by re-reading both Michael Crichton novels and re-watching all the previous Jurassic films and attending the premier of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom - I wasn’t able to blog about it. Now #JurassicJune has come and gone and we are in #Kaijuly. But I have one post that I really wanted to make that I think appropriately touches on both month’s themes...

Jurassic Park as Monster Movie

“Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park is nothing more – and nothing less – than the world’s most extravagant Godzilla movie.”

So said film critic David Ansen in his 1993 Newsweek review of the first Jurassic movie. Today this may sound like a rather dismissive assessment of a film which has come to be regarded as one of greatest sci-fi movies ever made. But rather than the snarky opinion of a single critic I find Ansen’s appraisal to be a rather frank and refreshing summation of what Jurassic Park actually is. A high tech monster movie.

Today everyone who was of the right age in 1993 agrees that Jurassic Park is a great movie. But curiously when you ask them “Why?” many have trouble explaining exactly what it is that made the film so great. This goes for professional film critics as well as self-proclaimed fans. Usually people put in this corner tend to fall back on vague adjectives claiming that Jurassic Park was great because it invoked a sense of “awe and wonderment,” a somewhat ironic claim since back in ‘93 legendary film critic Roger Ebert argued that it was exactly these qualities which Jurassic Park lacked... along with decently realized human characters and an interesting story. Both of which further adds to the amusement since in recent years a number of videos have started to pop-up on YouTube (see: here, here & here) made by people attempting to elucidate Jurassic Park’s greatness by examining its themes and characters. Much of the content of these videos is simply a rehash of observations made about Jurassic Park by academics over the last 25-years and deals with how the movie touches upon ideas regarding the perils of scientific advancement while advocating an agenda of reproductive futurism via its characters. See paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould’s essay “Dinomania” and sociologist John O’Neill’s essay “Dinosaurs-R-Us” as well as W.J.T. Mitchell’s The Last Dinosaur Book (U. of Chicago Press, 1998) and Joshua Bellin’s Framing Monsters (S. IL U. Press, 2005) for an example of some of this scholarship. Furthermore, what these YouTube commentators seem to have missed, which the actual scholars did not, is that these elements – the themes of technophobia and the importance of marriage and children – are among the most hackneyed and clichéd aspects of Jurassic Park, not to mention utterly retrograde in their outlook. These elements are certainly not what made Jurassic Park great or what has allowed it to endure for 25-years.

So what does make Jurassic Park great? For critics like Ansen and Ebert the answer, back in 1993, was obvious. The special-effects of course! “You want great dinosaurs, you got great dinosaurs,” wrote Ebert, “[and] because the movie delivers on the bottom line, I'm giving it three stars.” Jurassic Park spent nearly three years in special-effects research and development and combined the artistic might of stop-motion maven Phil Tippett, animatronics maestro Stan Winston and the cutting edge CGI work of Dennis Murren and ILM studios to usher in nothing less than a revolution in special-effects technology. Back in 1993 everyone who saw Jurassic Park left the theater believing – despite their better judgment – that they had seen real dinosaurs. And because of its special-effects after Jurassic Park the world of cinema has, quite literally, never been the same.

Yet as sci-fi author John Scalzi notes in his surprisingly provocative book The Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies (Rough Guides, 2005), the fact that Jurassic Park – which Scalzi counts as being among the then 50 most important sci-fi films ever made –  is great precisely because of its groundbreaking special-effects work has often led to the film being severely underappreciated. Again this may sound odd in 2018 when everyone is celebrating the 25th-Anniversary of Jurassic Park and the fifth film in the franchise – Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom – just finished its second week as the Number 1 movie in America, but it’s important to remember that Scalzi was writing this in 2005 when the Jurassic Park brand was effectively dead in the water and Universal was seriously considering rebooting the franchise as something approaching a live-action adaptation of the cheesy 90s cartoon Extreme Dinosaurs.

Today Jurassic Park has regained its cultural capital in large part due to the phenomenal box office success of 2015’s Jurassic World - which as horror author and film critic Kim Newman observed succeeded in being the first film in the series to bring a definite “kaiju feel” to the franchise - but also because of the wave of 80s and 90s nostalgia currently surging through American popular-culture. But this same nostalgia has now caused Jurassic Park to be put on a pedestal, elevated far above its station to such an extent that many people now become nervous when you point out that they are venerating what is essentially a glitzy Godzilla flick. And make no mistake this is exactly what Jurassic Park is. In Don Shay and Jody Duncan’s highly recommended book The Making of Jurassic Park (Ballantine Books, 1993), Spielberg talks about what his seminal cinematic influences were when filming Jurassic Park. Among the foremost were a number of films which I have blogged about here including the original KING KONG (1933), THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS (1954), GORGO (1961) and of course GODZILLA (1954) which Spielberg singles out as “the most masterful of all dinosaur movies because it made you believe it was really happening.” Other obvious influences, as noted by author Mark Berry in his The Dinosaur Filmography (McFarland, 2005), are the movies DINOSAURUS! (1960) and THE VALLEY OF GWANGI (1969). Jurassic Park – depending on your point of view – may have better special-effects than all of these films, but it is certainly not any better or more sophisticated than any of these films. In many ways, what Jurassic Park really is is a culmination of these films. The ultimate pop-culture dinosaur potpourri.

Currently there seems to be a great deal of monster-movie-denial going around with regards to Jurassic Park for a variety of different reasons. In fact, the only time people seem to want to mention the phrase “monster movie” in conjunction with Jurassic Park is when talking about the sequels and here the association is always negative. As in: ‘Jurassic Park was a great movie, but the sequels are just a bunch of dumb monster movies.’ I happen to like all of the Jurassic sequels to a greater or lesser extent, even the most recent film – Fallen Kingdom – which I nevertheless do acknowledge as being the most seriously flawed movie in the franchise to date. (If you want to hear my opinion of each film I suggest popping over to The Film Find podcast where I recently recorded an episode with regular host Adam Portrais on the entire Jurassic franchise.)

And while I would never insist that everyone who likes Jurassic Park also has to like the sequels I do expect that when someone is going to say a film is bad that they at least lay out a series of well thought out arguments about why they feel that way. And in this case saying that the Jurassic Park sequels are bad because they are “monster movies” when the original film wasn’t simply doesn’t count as a valid argument. I’m not sure how you prove to someone that Jurassic Park is a monster movie - really seems self-evident to me - but in the following series of posts I’m going to endeavor to demonstrate some of the ways that Spielberg used Jurassic Park to pay homage to the dino-monster movies of yesteryear and by doing so firmly seated his film as existing within that same tradition of fantastic film-making. 

#jurassic park #jurassic world #jurassic park 3 #the lost world: jurassic park #jurassic world fallen kingdom #jurassicjune #kaijuly #kaiju #dinosaur movies #dinosaurs #godzilla #gorgo #the beast from 20000 fathoms #the valley of gwangi #dinosaurus! #steven spielberg #monster movie

[snortingcode]

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

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

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

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

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

Getting Started With “sbt new”

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

$ sbt new sbt/scala-seed.g8

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

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

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

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

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

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

Running the project:

Building and running the project is simple:

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

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

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

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

#takes sbt:Whipp> clean compile run

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

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

The build definition - build.sbt

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

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

import Dependencies._ lazy val root = (project in file(".")).  settings(    inThisBuild(List(      organization := “com.snortingcode”,      scalaVersion := "2.12.3",      version      := "0.1.0-SNAPSHOT"    )),    name := “Whipp”,    libraryDependencies ++= Seq(      scalaTest % Test)  )

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

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

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

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

SettingKey[T]

TaskKey[T]

InputKey[T]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let’s jump to the libraryDependencies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#sbt #Scala #functional programming #build tool

[financely]

How I Prepared Financially For 2018

I knew going in to 2018 that I was fed up with the bullshit cycles I keep myself in financially; starting the year off great by paying off most or all of a debt that I owe, vowing that I will never let it happen again, only to end up back in credit card debt by the summer and hating life until the beginning of the year when taxes come in, rinse and repeat.

I would spend an annoyingly long amount of time, into the wee hours of the night researching, doing calculations and making spreadsheets regarding minimum payments, APRs, time-frames, et cetera. I would finish feeling like I finally have it down this time, like I truly understand my finances and what I need to do, only for something different to happen than my hypothetical situations that I imagined and it would throw everything off. I would say 'screw it,' and figuratively throw my budget in the garbage and go spend my hard earned money on crap that I wanted. Because damn it, I only live once and I can't take it with me anyway. And it feel great, except for that voice in my head telling me I shouldn't have done that and I'll regret it later because this happens every time. Sure enough, it does happen every time.

While doing the same thing the last few months of 2017, I really wanted to make a change this year (like every year) but I really wanted it to take effect and hold for me. Thankfully, I found a YouTube channel, The Financial Diet, which really helped me with ideas on what to do. Their advice was nothing I hadn't heard in some form or fashion in my random google quests but hearing it from women my age made it stick with me and inspired me enough to change.

Again, I spent some time watching their videos at work and home, and I came up with something different for myself. It wasn't much, but the steps I took are as follows.

1. Inspected ALL Statements and Pay Stubs From Last Year

I have mentioned a few times that I feel like I just simply don't have enough money. Even with a budget of some kind, I just couldn't save much at all and anything unexpected literally broke me. The previous year wasn't as bad because I did end up making a little bit more gross income in structured paychecks, but still, I felt I wasn't making enough.

Although this was a precursor for the following two points, it’s definitely worth noting. But, I went through my statements and just made sure I was aware of what was coming and going. I have started doing this monthly so I can create a monthly budget, but I decided to actually compile all of my statements electronically on my Google Drive in folders so I could easily reference them any time I need. It was this step that made me think of the next one.

2. Made a Spreadsheet Containing All Relevant Financial Information

Again, after all the bitching about my money, I decided to see just how much I had to work with last year. What other way to do so than making trusty old spreadsheets! To track my income for the year, I made one with the columns: Date, Job 1, Job 2. Since Job 2 had an hourly wage and tips, I made two more columns for each, and using gross income only and a simple addition formula under Job 2 to add the two columns together for the total amount for the two-week pay period.

My second spreadsheet in the workbook was for my Ally savings account. This year really saw a substantial increase in savings deposits from previous years, and I wanted to have it all at a glance. My columns ended up being Month, Starting Balance, Credits, Withdrawals, Interest Gained, End Balance. I just input all the information from my monthly statements and created a formula for the End Balance column so I could see how it all works out in the end.   

My third sheet was for my income tax forms. This was more of a visual thing to prove a point to myself. Although I didn't have this goal prior to this year, I wanted to see hypothetically how saving 10% of my yearly income, and potentially all of my income taxes would have added up over the years. I considered creating a similar spreadsheet to track my student loan refunds, however, I decided against it because I don't know what I would actually gain from doing so. I know I spent it on silly things, regardless of the amount. Now that I am more responsible, I do have a plan moving forward for student refunds.

The fourth sheet was another visual cue and a way for me to face or gain insight into my credit card spending. My Citi Double Cash card has a high balance right now, and I wanted to know for sure why since I started 2017 with a clean slate thanks to a consolidation loan. I wasn't sure it would help, but I tried anyway. My columns are Month, Starting Balance, Purchases, Payments, Difference. I realize that I have a nasty habit of putting a charge on the card knowing I probably won't be able to pay it off at the end of the month or break it into a few smaller payments (hence the Difference column, which is Starting Balance + Purchases - Payments). That's no surprise, honestly. But again, sometimes you truly have to face something to accept it. I did notice that higher spending on the card around the time I quit Job 2 to work full-time at Job 1 when they offered. I *kind of* took a pay cut, but I thought it was for the right reasons. But I should not have used my cred it card to make up the difference.

Conclusion: I definitely need more money.

3. I Re-evaluated Subscriptions and My “Fun Money”

If I am honest with myself, I spend money to fill little holes in my life and to temporarily help anxiety or depression. I funnel that negativity into bad spending habits, especially things like subscriptions-- because they are 'cheap' and only once a month. I had subscriptions to Book of the Month, Julep Maven, Adore Me, magazines, etc. that I don't use, although I love all of the companies and products they offer. I hated to let them go, but I had to, especially BOTM and Julep because I just have so many books and nail polish. BOTM was especially bothersome because they bill in advance, so even if you skip the month, they hold the credit on your account. I'm not sure what would happen if you skipped multiple months, but the negative side of that is the temptation. Marketing and Sales people know that if you have already spent the money and have a credit, you are most likely to go ahead and use it on a purchase. The psychology of spending, people!

I have never budgeted “fun money” in my finances, because I don’t have a need for it. I rarely go out with friends or things like that so it’s easy to know when I can and cannot do those things and how much I can spend if I do. I keep a watch on it anyway through Mint because most financial advice you hear is to cut back on fun spending if you’re on a budget, but for me, there is not any to cut back on.

4. I Had A Conversation With My Partner

By this point, I had a good idea of how I could improve my finances, and knew what I wanted to set for goals. But before I did, I had a conversation with my boyfriend. Although we aren’t married and we have separate accounts, I like to consider his plans. This year, I felt it was especially important because he graduated from college in December and will be looking for full-time employment sometime soon. From my own experiences job hunting, I doubt we will be able to stay where we currently live if we really want to have good job opportunities; IT jobs simply are not available here. So, I wanted to know if he was going to look for and accept jobs in other cities, and what are plans were in case of that. After figuring out his plans, I was able to make decisions for myself that I felt good about.

5. I Set My Goals For The Year

Not much of an explanation needed for this one, it was the final step after all everything is considered. These goals made it to the blog first, so if you are interested, you can read that post here.

#money #save money #finance #women and money #finances #2018 #2018 goals

[globalmediacampaign]

Data modeling with NoSQL Workbench for Amazon DynamoDB

When using a NoSQL database such as Amazon DynamoDB, I tend to make different optimization choices than what I am accustomed to with relational databases. At the beginning, it was not easy for me, because my relational database experience was telling me to do things differently. To help with that, AWS released NoSQL Workbench for Amazon DynamoDB, a client-side application, available for Windows and macOS, that you can use to build scalable, high-performance data models, and simplify query development and testing. With NoSQL Workbench, you can: Define your data model using one or more tables. Visualize the data model to understand how it works in different scenarios. Build the data plane operations for multiple programming languages. In this blog post, I am using NoSQL Workbench, that is now generally available, to design the data model for a common use case: managing URL bookmarks for multiple customers. Even if the use case is relatively simple, there are still many interesting considerations to make. Data modeler For this application, I need to store information about bookmarks and customer accounts. I start by writing down the list of attributes I want to store, with a brief description of what I am planning to store: Customer customerId – a universally unique identifier (UUID) email fullName ­– for example, “Shirley Rodriguez” userPreferences – a JSON object describing user settings for my app creationDate updateDate Bookmark URL – “https://…” customerId – the customer storing this bookmark folder – to organize bookmarks in folders, for example “Cloud” title – by default the HTML title of the page description – optional creationDate updateDate A first approach, similar to what you’d do with a relational database, is to create two tables, one for customers, and one for bookmarks. The customerId attribute links information between the two tables. Let’s see this design in practice. Using the Data modeler section in NoSQL Workbench, I create a new data model with two tables. The following screenshot shows the details for the Customer table. The following screenshot shows the details for the Bookmark table. The Customer table has customerId as primary key. For the Bookmark table, I use a composite primary key, where customerId is the partition key, and url is the sort key. In this way, if two customers store the same URL, I can have both in the table. DynamoDB doesn’t have a fixed schema, only the attributes in the primary key (the partition key and optionally the sort key) must be defined at table creation. Each item stored in the table can then use different attributes on top of those in the primary key. For date fields, such as createDate and updateDate, I use the ISO 8601 standard to store them as strings, like “20200325T091641.123”. This has the advantage that string comparison preserves the order of dates. I store userPreferences as JSON strings. For simplicity, I am using an empty JSON object (such as “{}”) in examples hereafter. Depending the actual application, I could use this to store language or sort preferences, for example something like: { “language”: “en”, “sort”: “date”, “sortDirection”: “ascending” } This first approach, using two tables, definitely works. But what happens in my application when customers log in to display their bookmarks? Each time, the application runs two requests to DynamoDB, the first to get the customer data in the Customer table, the second to get the customer bookmarks in the Bookmark table. This is something quite common when moving a relational data model to NoSQL without changes: table joins are “unrolled” into multiple requests to the database. This is not efficient, especially if you start to have three or more requests instead of one. When using a NoSQL database, you should design your data model to optimize for the application’s access patterns. You should ask yourself: How am I inserting data? How am I going to update that data? What kind of queries am I going to use to retrieve information? How often? You shouldn’t start the design of the data model if those questions are not clear, otherwise you risk to update it too often, slowing down development. Going back to our bookmark application, can I design a better data model? Yes! In my case, I know that most of the times the application is showing, for a specific customer, a summary of the customer information, and the list of customer bookmarks. Wouldn’t it be great if I could retrieve all this information with a single query? To do that, I store the customer information and the customer’s bookmarks in the same table as a collection of related items. Let’s see how that works. The primary key of the CustomerBookmark table is composite: the partition key is always the customerId, while the sort key can hold different values. I use the sort key to store URL for bookmarks, or a concatenated string such as “CUST#” followed by customerId for customer data. In this way, the sort key is an overloaded attribute, and I use a generic name for it: sk. Adding the customerId as part of the sort key for customer data is redundant, but in this way the sk attribute has a high cardinality (meaning that it contains values that are very uncommon or unique) and can be used later as partition key for a secondary index without creating hot partitions. When defining the table in NoSQL Workbench, attributes can be assigned to one or more facets. A facet is a virtual construct in NoSQL Workbench, not a functional construct in DynamoDB itself, that allows you to visualize the different kind of data you store in the same table. For each facet, you can configure aliases for the partition key and for the sort key. For overloaded attributes, aliases describe what that attribute is supposed to hold for that facet. In my case, I have two facets for the CustomerBookmark table, depending on which data is stored in an item: customer data or bookmarks. Each of the two facets has a different alias for the sk sort key: type for items storing customer data, url for items storing bookmark information. We’ll see how to use facets in the next section. Now that I am storing these related items together in the same index, my application can run a single query by customerId and get all the info it needs: customer data and bookmarks. Let’s make this clear using the Visualizer. Visualizer To literally “see” the advantages of this new approach, I move to the Visualizer section of NoSQL Workbench. One of the advantages of using the Visualizer, is that you can add sample data to enrich visualizations. I can also see the sample data from the perspective of the Global Secondary Indexes (GSI) I created, specifically: ByEmail index to get customer data by email address. Note that items without an email attribute, such as those hosting bookmark information, are not retrieved by the index. ByUrl index to get bookmark data by URL. Note that I added customerId as sort key for the index, because the same URL can be bookmarked by multiple customers. ByCustomerFolder index to get, for each customer, bookmarks by folder. Selecting the facets for the CustomerBookmark table, I see how data is rendered when items are hosting customer or bookmark data: The Customer facet shows customer information such as email addresses and full names. The sort key is using the type alias, and begins with “CUST#”. The Bookmark facet describes bookmark data with values such as folders and titles. The sort key is using the url alias, and does not start with “CUST#”. Using DynamoDB Local You can develop and test your DynamoDB applications in your local development environment using DynamoDB Local. In this way, you can work on your application locally, even without an internet connection. I download and set up DynamoDB Local on my laptop following these instructions. If you prefer, you can use Apache Maven or a Docker image. In the directory where I decompressed the archive, I start DynamoDB Local: java -Djava.library.path=./DynamoDBLocal_lib -jar DynamoDBLocal.jar -sharedDb In another window, I test that the local endpoint works using the AWS Command Line Interface (CLI): aws dynamodb list-tables --endpoint-url http://localhost:8000 { "TableNames": [] } It works, and there are currently no tables, as expected. In the NoSQL Workbench Visualizer, I select to commit the data model to DynamoDB, then I add a new DynamoDB Local connection: After that, I repeat the previous AWS CLI command to list DynamoDB tables available locally. Now I see the CustomerBookmark table: aws dynamodb list-tables --endpoint-url http://localhost:8000 { "TableNames": [ "CustomerBookmark" ] } All sample data has been added to the table. I run a table scan for a quick check. For the sake of brevity, I am not showing the results here: aws dynamodb scan --table-name CustomerBookmark --endpoint-url http://localhost:8000 Operation builder Moving to the Operation builder section of NoSQL Workbench, I can build operations and execute them on a connection, using DynamoDB Local or a real AWS account. You can build operations to put, update, or delete items in a table, or to query or scan a table or an index. There is also support for transactions. Using the Operation builder, I can simulate what operations my application would do and generate the code for Python, JavaScript (Node.js), or Java. I can use conditions and parameters to filter data, scan an index forward or backward, or limit the number of items to evaluate. For example, to simulate my bookmark application, I execute a single query operation on the CustomerBookmark table to get all the info (customer data and bookmarks) for a specific customerId: When executing the query on my DynamoDB Local connection, I get the info I expect from the sample data: As an additional tuning, I can change the sort order of the query, using the Scan index format option, to get the customer data as first item. I can accomplish the same result changing the prefix I use in the sk sort key to identify customer data, for example using the lowercase string “cust#”. Satisfied by the result, I select the option to generate code to kick start my application. For this operation, I select Python as the output programming language. The code you see in this screenshot is just a subset of what is being generated: Similarly, I can use the operations builder to query secondary indexes. For example, I can see how many customers bookmarked a specific website selecting the ByUrl index: Again, I can execute the query on the sample data to validate the result: Finally, I generate the code for the query, using the ByUrl secondary index, this time selecting Java as output programming language: Conclusions NoSQL Workbench for DynamoDB helped me refine the design of the data model, based on my access patterns, and generate the code to start the implementation of my application. I could use DynamoDB Local to experiment without the need for an internet connection. NoSQL Workbench supports also IAM roles and temporary AWS security credentials. For example, if your organization uses AWS Single Sign-On (SSO), your users can sign in to your Active Directory, a built-in AWS SSO directory, or another identity provider connected to AWS SSO, and map that identity to an IAM role that you can use for authentication with NoSQL Workbench. Now that NoSQL Workbench for DynamoDB is generally available, transforming your ideas in real applications is much easier. To start, download NoSQL Workbench here, and tell me what are you going to use it for!   About the Author Danilo Poccia works with startups and companies of any size to support their innovation. In his role as Principal Evangelist at Amazon Web Services, he leverages his experience to help people bring their ideas to life, focusing on serverless architectures and event-driven programming, and on the technical and business impact of machine learning and edge computing. He is the author of AWS Lambda in Action from Manning. Follow him on Twitter @danilop.     https://probdm.com/site/MjA2OTI

[gethealthy18-blog]

18 Books I Read In 2018

New Post has been published on http://healingawerness.com/news/18-books-i-read-in-2018/

18 Books I Read In 2018

I honestly never planned to write this post. In fact, I never even planned to read 18 books in 2018. As with most hobbies in life, when you love something you tend to do a lot of it. So here I am just a few weeks out from 2018 being done and I’ve already read 18 books!

I have always been a reader. I’m not a fast reader, but I read A LOT and I’m usually reading a couple books at once oftentimes on a variety of subjects. I tend to reach for fiction novels and memoirs but I don’t discount anything. If it’s intriguing or something I want to learn about, I’m reading it.

To be honest, I haven’t talked much about reading and just books in general here on THM but I have dabbled in it over the years. I used to be a part of a digital book club that I would share about on the blog once a month (anyone remember that?!). I even started the THM Book Club but after a few rounds and a lot of no-shows I decided it maybe wasn’t the best idea and/or maybe wasn’t the right time. So instead I thought I’d drop in and share some of the books I loved this year. If they can inspire you to read more or dive into a good book for the first time in a while, I’m happy! So with that here are 18 books I read in 2018.

FICTION

1. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

This was actually the first book I read this year although technically I finished it on January 1st. It tells the story of a young woman from Nigeria who moves to America and her experience as an African woman navigating African American society….and so much more. Such a good read!

2. Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

If you’re looking for a gripping fiction book with mystery but not quite Gillian Flynn terror (I’m looking at you Gone Girl…) this book is for you. Read it in a couple of days and honestly couldn’t put it down.

3. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

This should be on everybody’s reading list. It’s a YA novel but it applies to adults and teens alike. It tells the story of Starr Carter who witnesses her friend murdered by a police officer for no reason. It’s obviously poignant to our times and as a White American gave me a perspective I don’t see.

4. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

An easy and light read but not total chick-lit. The name pretty much tells you the premise of the book, though the story does not disappoint and takes many unexpected turns.

5. The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin

Finished this recently and it was a great fiction novel about how 4 siblings lives can take 4 totally different directions. As one of four, I can relate to this but it was also just a solid story that was easy to follow along.

6. Call Me by Your Name by Andre Aciman

I’ll be honest, not my favorite book. Some people loved it, but I found it slowwwwww. I was relieved when it was done. I’m told I might like the movie though so I’m adding it to my watchlist.

7. Rich People Problems by Kevin Kwan

This is the third of the Crazy Rich Asians series. I technically started it in 2017 but finished it in January so it counts! If you want a REALLY easy read which requires little to no brain capacity, this series is for you.

NON-FICTION/MEMOIRS

8. Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover

Probably my favorite book of the year. I love a good memoir and this one was hard to put down. It is the story of Tara who grew up in a mormon survivalist family in Idaho. It is gripping, moving, heartbreaking and full of redemption. Highly recommend!

9. Season of the Witch by David Talbot

It’s hard to categorize this book as 100% historically accurate but it also isn’t quite historical fiction. It tells the story of San Francisco from the early 1060s through the early 1980s and the figures who shaped it. If you live in the Bay Area and want to learn more about it, this one is for you.

10. Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark by Paul Clark Newell Jr.

I’ll be honest, I bought this on a whim late one night in Minnesota. I had just finished another book and was looking for something to read when this popped up on my Amazon recommended list. It was actually quite fascinating. It tells the story of Huguette Clark, the heiress of a mining fortune and the story of her life over the past 100 years.

11. What Made Maddy Run by Kate Fagan

The only book I read this year that is not on kindle because my friend Kait Hurley sent it to me. I couldn’t put it down and read it in two days. For anyone who struggled in college and lives with perfectionism, this book is a must-read!

12. I’ll be There For You by Kelsey Miller

This is Kelsey Miller’s latest book and a total departure from her previous one. I LOVED it. It tells the story of everyone’s favorite 90s show, Friends, and the cultural implications of it. If you’re a friends-lover, or even if you aren’t this is a great read.

SELF-DEVELOPMENT/EDUCATIONAL

13. You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero

I actually re-read this book this year. I read it a few years ago but thought it would be a good refresher and a great book to kickoff the THM Book Club (RIP) so I read it again. It’s always a great kick in the butt if you’ve been telling yourself all kinds of stories that no longer serve you.

14. The ONE Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan

THM book club #2…and maybe the book that killed it lol. This is a great read if you’re looking to help hone in on your interests and prioritize how to spend your time. I’ll be honest, I didn’t find all the advice in it to be practical in reality but I did learn a thing or two from the authors.

15. The Untethered Soul by Michael A Singer

Another re-read. I turn to this book whenever I need it and I needed it a lot this year. If you’re looking for a book that aligning and helps you to disassociate from your thoughts in a positive way, this book is for you.

16. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali by Sri Swami Satchidananda 

We technically had to read this for yoga teacher training and while I’m not sure it would have made it onto my list before, I’m so happy it is now. TBH I don’t know how it would be reading this without the guidance of a yoga instructor, but each sutra definitely leaves you with plenty of thoughts and sage wisdom whether you’re a practicing yogi or not. We also had to read The Living Gita but figured I wouldn’t take up two of the books from my list with YTT mandatory reading 😉

17. Chakra Healing: A Beginners Guide by Margarita Alcantara

This book was not my initial choice when it came to learning more about chakras but the book recommended to me wasn’t available on kindle so I ended up with this one. It did feel somewhat repetitive at times, but when it comes to learning more about chakras and the holistic ways to support them (yoga, essential oils, meditation etc..) this is a great intro guide.

18. Medical Medium by Anthony William

I’ll be honest, I avoided this book for a long time because the skeptic in me just didn’t want to give in to the trend. For reference: Medical Medium is about Anthony William, a medium who channels the word of god when it comes to western medicine. Is it as over the top as it seems? Yes. I don’t feel it should be taken at face value, nor do I think celery juice is the answer to all of your problems BUT I did find it interesting and thought the same of the information on herbal supplements was useful. I incorporated some of his suggestions when I got shingles…I still took my antivirals but it certainly didn’t hurt to have a few extra supplements for support.

I’ll be honest, I did read a few other random books about everything from essential oils to tarot, but I figured 18 would be a good (and lucky!) number to end at. Definitely let me know if you enjoy learning about what I’m reading and if that’s something I should continue to incorporate into The Healthy Maven next year.

What was your favorite book this year? Feel free to drop recommendations below for what I should read in 2019!

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[mysteryshelf]

BLOG TOUR - Glitter Bomb

Welcome to

SHANNON MUIR’S THE PULP AND MYSTERY SHELF!

DISCLAIMER: This content has been provided to SHANNON MUIR’S THE PULP AND MYSTERY SHELF by Great Escapes Book Tours. No compensation was received. This information required by the Federal Trade Commission.

Glitter Bomb (A Scrapbooking Mystery) by Laura Childs with Terrie Farley Moran

  About the Book

Glitter Bomb (A Scrapbooking Mystery) Cozy Mystery 15th in Series Berkley (October 2, 2018) Hardcover: 320 pages ISBN-10: 0451489543 ISBN-13: 978-0451489548 Digital ASIN: B078VVDSQT

An exploding Mardi Gras float has got to be the strangest murder weapon scrappy sleuth Carmela Bertrand has ever encountered in this latest Scrapbooking Mystery from the New York Times bestselling author.

It’s Mardi Gras in New Orleans and scrapbook shop owner Carmela Bertrand is excited to be attending the Pluvius Parade along with her best friend Ava. Carmela’s ex-husband Shamus rides by the duo on his float at the head of the parade, when suddenly the revelry turns to disaster. Shamus’ float crashes and explodes, and although Shamus escapes unhurt, a member of his krewe is killed.

Carmela and Ava plunge into an investigation of the krewe-member’s death, but as they dig deeper it starts to look less like an accident and more like a murder….and Shamus seems less like a victim, and more like a suspect.

Guest Post

A Day in the Life

  Guest post from Laura Childs, New York Times

bestselling author of Glitter Bomb,

A New Orleans Scrapbooking Mystery.

  When I talk to readers – at bookstores, libraries, scrapbook shops, and tea shops – I’m often asked about my work schedule. How do I get inspired? Do I wait until a big idea sparks inside my brain and then start writing? Is every day filled with excitement and glamour?

  Well, you might be surprised at how I actually spend my time. Which is why I thought it’d be fun to give you a peak into a day in the life of a full-time author. Ready? Here goes.

  Get up at 7:30 am and feed Asia (dog). Make breakfast for Dr. Bob (husband). Read newspaper for ripped-from-the-headlines ideas and watch Squawk Box on CNBC, trying to kill time so I don’t have to face my half-written manuscript.

  Capitulate and go downstairs to office at 10:30 am. Check emails and respond accordingly. Especially check sale emails that have come in from Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom. Dream about $800 leopard print Manolo heels. Decide they’re way too expensive.

  Check in with Facebook. Accept Friend requests and try to post something amusing that will interest people. (Maybe ridiculously priced leopard shoes?) Check email again. Correspond with two libraries and set up dates to do an author talk. Bite fingernails, worry about what I have to talk about.

  Open manuscript and read through the chapter I wrote yesterday, fearful that it’s mostly gibberish. Am happily surprised that 60% is actually usable. Punch up sagging spots and start to feel better about my work in progress. Check email again.

  Start to get hungry around 1:00 pm so go upstairs and pop Weight Watchers hamburger in microwave. Eat burger while doing crossword puzzle in newspaper.  Scrounge in cupboard for chocolate-covered peanuts to eat while working.

  Go back to office and eat chocolate peanuts, getting keyboard all sticky. Check email. Look at clock, surprised to find it’s nearly 2:30.

  Fear begins to take hold, so I write like crazy and manage to bang out a good 8 to 10 pages. Something furry nuzzles my arm. Dog. I’ve completely lost track of time and realize that the dog wants dinner (so does Dr. Bob) and it’s quittin’ time for me. Whew. What a killer day!

  If you find my writing mildly amusing, let me assure you that my new book Glitter Bomb, is even better. In fact, here’s a quick synopsis:

  Mardi Gras in New Orleans is in full swing when the King Neptune float explodes, sending a plume of glitter into the night sky and killing a hedge fun bigwig. Scrapbook maven Carmela and her BFF Ava have front row seats to the mayhem – and get pulled in when Carmela’s ex, Shamus, becomes a key suspect. Running her own shadow investigation, Carmela tries to clear Shamus while dodging the watchful eye of her fiancée Detective Edgar Babcock. Haunted cemeteries, fashion show, sports car rally, and hungry alligators round out the humor and mischief.

  Thanks for reading me!

  Love,

  Laura Childs

About The Authors

  Laura Childs is the New York Times bestselling author of the Tea Shop Mysteries, Scrapbook Mysteries, and Cackleberry Club Mysteries. In her previous life she was CEO/Creative Director of her own marketing firm and authored several screenplays. She is married to a professor of Chinese art history, loves to travel, rides horses, enjoys fundraising for various non-profits, and has two Chinese Shar-Pei dogs.

Laura specializes in cozy mysteries that have the pace of a thriller (a thrillzy!) Her three series are:

The Tea Shop Mysteries – set in the historic district of Charleston and featuring Theodosia Browning, owner of the Indigo Tea Shop. Theodosia is a savvy entrepreneur, and pet mom to service dog Earl Grey. She’s also an intelligent, focused amateur sleuth who doesn’t rely on coincidences or inept police work to solve crimes. This charming series is highly atmospheric and rife with the history and mystery that is Charleston.

The Scrapbooking Mysteries – a slightly edgier series that take place in New Orleans. The main character, Carmela, owns Memory Mine scrapbooking shop in the French Quarter and is forever getting into trouble with her friend, Ava, who owns the Juju Voodoo shop. New Orleans’ spooky above-ground cemeteries, jazz clubs, bayous, and Mardi Gras madness make their presence known here!

The Cackleberry Club Mysteries – set in Kindred, a fictional town in the Midwest. In a rehabbed Spur station, Suzanne, Toni, and Petra, three semi-desperate, forty-plus women have launched the Cackleberry Club. Eggs are the morning specialty here and this cozy cafe even offers a book nook and yarn shop. Business is good but murder could lead to the cafe’s undoing! This series offers recipes, knitting, cake decorating, and a dash of spirituality.

Laura’s Links:

Webpage – http://www.laurachilds.com/

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/laura.childs.31

Short-listed twice for The Best American Mystery Stories, Terrie Farley Moran is delighted to introduce mystery fans to the Read ’Em and Eat café and bookstore, which debuted with Well Read, Then Dead. followed by Caught Read-Handed and Read to Death released in July of this year. The only thing Terrie enjoys more than wrangling mystery plots into submission is playing games and reading stories with any or all of her grandchildren.

Terrie’s Links:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/terrie.moran.9

Blog: www.womenofmystery.net

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/23186092-terrie-moran

  Purchase Links:

Amazon B&N Google Books IndieBound Kobo BookBub

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TOUR PARTICIPANTS

October 1 – The Avid Reader – REVIEW

October 1 – Island Confidential – AUTHOR INTERVIEW

October 2 – Cozy Up With Kathy – REVIEW

October 2 – Valerie’s Musings – SPOTLIGHT

October 3 – The Pulp and Mystery Shelf – GUEST POST

October 3 – 3 Partners in Shopping, Nana, Mommy, & Sissy, Too! – SPOTLIGHT

October 4 – Community Bookstop – REVIEW

October 4 – MJB Reviewers – AUTHOR INTERVIEW

October 4 – My Reading Journeys – REVIEW

October 5 – View from the Birdhouse – REVIEW

October 5 – Mystery Thrillers and Romantic Suspense Reviews – SPOTLIGHT

October 6 – Cinnamon, Sugar and a Little Bit of Murder – REVIEW

October 6 – I’m All About Books – SPOTLIGHT

October 7 – Rosepoint Publishing – REVIEW

October 7 – StoreyBook Reviews – GUEST POST

October 8 – Mallory Heart’s Cozies – REVIEW

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[gerardwayisarchive]

MSI’S JIMMY URINE ANNOUNCES SOLO LP FEATURING GERARD WAY AND…ROBOTS?

https://gerardwayisalive.tumblr.com/post/176963498454

https://www.altpress.com/features/jimmy-urine-james-euringer-solo-record/

Jason Pettigrew  August 13, 2018

“I wanted it to sound as if Depeche Mode hired J Dilla and DJ Premier to drop loops while Frank Zappa produced—and then I came in and shit all over it.” So says James Euringeraka Little Jimmy Urine of ADD-addled electro-rockers Mindless Self Indulgence when asked to describe his new solo album under the handle Euringer, featuring cameos from folks such as Gerard Way, System Of A Down’s Serj Tankian, Grimes and Chantal Claret.

(Read more: Jimmy Urine talks MSI, Guardians Of The Galaxy role and new album.)

The album—slated for release Oct. 19 by Metropolis Records—is the beginning of a whole new chapter for the multi-instrumentalist and programmer. After visiting New Zealand a few times in the past, Euringer and his wife, Claret, decided to leave their Los Angeles home and move to the other side of the world.

“I totally think New Zealand is the most awesome place in the world,” he says. “It’s like a combination of San Francisco, New York City and Middle Earth. And I’ve always wanted to live in Middle Earth.”  

“We loved [New Zealand] when Obama was president, but now we love it more since it synced up with the world turning to shit!,” he continues. “Awesome! We’re ahead of the curve!’”

Moving is one big step for a whole new reboot. While his previous album The Secret Cinematic Sounds Of Jimmy Urine was primarily an instrumental dive into various synth-laden idioms inspired by such classic electronic composers as Vangelis and Jean-Michel Jarre, Euringer is a whole new pint glass of piss altogether.

The album’s audio verité vibe is best described as sneaking through Urine’s diary, with diversions of everything from metaphorical politics to wild-assed cover versions to having his buddies and parents (Ma Euringer counts in Spanish on “That’s How Jimmy Gets Down” while Dad assumes the role of disappointed parent on “Two And A Half Years” and a bitter old record producer on the cover of the Doobie Brothers’ “What A Fool Believes”) helping him out on the record.

“This album is kind of a psychedelic, counterculture, avant-garde record with vocals,” he opines. “I’m calling it Euringer because I didn’t want to corrupt any of the other stuff. It’s not Cinematic Sounds. It’s not MSI, which have always been a provocative in-your-face kind of band. [The solo album] allows me to experiment with various BPM speeds, lyrics and tones and try some other avenues.

“It is very personal,” he agrees. “As much as I like being in a crazy shock-rock band, the one thing that gets lost is that people focus on the shock rock and don’t really focus on the fact that I’m a really fucking great programmer, and I’m a deconstructionist and an audio collagist.”

“I sculpt audio and make songs around it,” he continues.“And that’s the first thing that gets lost. [imitates fast-talking industry type.] ‘Awww, Jimmy! You’re crazy and the band’s crazy and they’re great and they do all this provocative amazing stuff,’ and that’s fine—that’s what Mindless are supposed to be. But nobody ever says, ‘I like how you programmed that beat and sampled that stuff backwards.’ [Laughs.] That area is what I went full hog into.”

Urine is thrilled with what his collaborators brought to the proceedings. On “If It Ain’t You Today It’ll Be You Tomorrow,” Urine and Tankian updated Rev. Martin Niemöller’s famous anti-Nazi sermon, “First They Came For The Socialists…” “I always thought that quote was really great,” Urine says. “I wanted to write something a little bit political considering the climate, but not a whole record. Serj was in one of the most amazing politically charged bands of the last 20 years. He went through a whole bunch of lyrics and poetry that he had and screamed stuff for an hour. We had coffee, and I went home and edited [the parts] I liked. The point I’m trying to make [on the song] is that we should all stand up for fringe causes because once they’re gone, you’re next.”

Urine teams up with Claret on “Fuck Everything,” describing it as “our ex-pat song. We kind of wrote it while we were packing up our house and leaving, and then we recorded it in Wellington. She’s a really great songwriter: I’ll be sculpting a song for two months, and she’ll write one in a day. I was like, ‘Oh, my God, that was so quick! No wonder I married you!’” [Laughs.]

For “The Medicine Does Not Control Me,” Urine was trying to write a song about alcohol that wasn’t about partying or rehab. “I don’t have an addictive personality. I’m not trying to use alcohol to escape; I use it for time travel,” he explains. “I can pull myself a glass of scotch and then go watch a ton of movies that are based in New York. I can find a movie that was shot in the neighborhood I grew up—‘Oh, there’s the place I went to school. There’s the place where I used to play pinball’—immerse myself in it and then fall asleep. I don’t drink to get crazy. I think there’s a middle ground where people use liquor to get creative, but you never hear songs about it. You only hear the ones where people ‘went too far’ or they’re ‘gonna party!’”

He wanted to work with electronic/hip-hop maven Grimes because of her hands-on work ethic. “She’s DIY like a motherfucker. There aren’t a lot of ladies doing synth work, producing, mastering, editing their own videos, everything. Because she’s so talented, I wanted her to write the track and to produce me singing it, like a reverse Britney Spears thing: I’m the ingenue, and Grimes is the mastermind. We didn’t have enough time to do it that way, so I gave her some tracks and ["Medicine”] was the one she chose.”

Urine has been friends with Way back in the days when My Chemical Romance were opening for MSI in NYC. So having the 21st century polymath appear on the fast-paced “Sailor In A Life Boat” was a complete no-brainer.

“First of all,” he begins to laugh, “Gerard could have sang every song on the record! MCR did a B-side from something off Danger Days [�["Zero Percent”]here the programming was drum-and-bassy, very weird and hard at the same time, like MCR being MSI.”

“This time, I figured we’d go the other way and leave it up to Gerard,” he continues.“I sent him the song, and he obviously knocked it out. The lyrics—“you’re a dogface on the frontline,” “a pilot on a ship that’s going down,” convey that you used to be a sailor in the Navy, but now you’re just some dude sitting in the middle of the fucking ocean. His vocal and lyrical style comes across to me like a Frank Miller comic book from 1981, like Sin Cityand stuff.”

As usual, Urine can’t resist taking a swipe at the scene. And here he is with “Random EMO Top Line Generator,” one of the most heartfelt songs he’s ever written. And the joke is on all of us: Much like the net’s random name generators for everything from porn star names to Wu-Tang handles and other monikers, Urine had the net write lyrics.

“I loaded up, like, a thousand random generators that gave me words,” he explains. “I put in a word, then a random generator would give me a sentence. Than I’d put that sentence into a different random generator, and it would give me a phrase. I wrote this song based on what I’d get out of these random generators, and I made it a very emotional and heartfelt song.”

“So the schtick is people will say, ‘Wow, it’s so deep, look how mature Jimmy is,’” he continues.“Motherfuckers, a robot wrote that song. The robot wrote the lyrics, and you’re lovin’ it! A robot wrote a song that’s so emotionally empowering it could have been written in the last 10 years. And random generators are all over the internet, you could write a whole album that way! We’re really living in a William Gibson cyberpunk reality these days.”

With all the cool collabs with women, men and machines happening on Euringer, it might be easy to ignore the elephant in the room. You know, the one with “MSI” painted in 4-foot DayGlo letters and festooned with crudely rendered drawings of penises. Urine swears that everything is good with his homies in Mindless, and the door is always open.

“That’s not the reason I made a solo album or why I moved to New Zealand. We were all on different coasts. These days, the technology exists so you don’t even have to be in the same room to make a record. MSI are a wonderful art project that never stops.”

And you’re not going to see Euringer on tour to support the new album, either. “I’m not going to tour for it because I’m gonna chill here in New Zealand for a while,” he says. “I’ll make some videos, do press and work on some top secret projects—maybe a Mindless record—down here. Incorporating New Zealand in all the stuff I’m doing is really cool and fun. I like touring with Mindless; I don’t need to put a whole new band together.”

Right now though, he’s enjoying his time in Middle Earth and keeping busy. He’s also working alongside Tankian and the animation house ShadowMachine for an English gangster cartoon called Fuktronic. Expect more, but on his terms, as he steadfastly refuses to reveal if the other projects he’s got rolling are for film, video games or elevators.

“Oh man, I wanna do stuff for elevators really bad!” he beams excitedly, in the same perverse glee that has marked every creative avenue he’s cartwheeled and silly-walked on for decades. “I can’t remember the last time I’ve gotten into an elevator that had music playing in it.” He pauses for a moment. “Damn, we gotta bring Muzak back into elevators. I’m gonna change all the Mindless songs into Muzak. The future is elevators.”

You can preorder Euringer here prior to its mid-October release date. Check out “Problematic” from the LP and the record’s artwork below.

[duqstudents4fairtrade]

Fittest Late Night Talk Show Hosts 2017

Late night talk show hosts can crack a joke and carry a skit, but can they run a few miles without getting out of breath? The nightly format of most of these shows means that these hosts are in our living rooms and on our Twitter feeds every day. They should use their large platform and extensive followings to rally people around healthy lifestyle.

At the HFR institue, we’ve emphasized the connection between entertainment and fitness since 2013. Our innovative lists of fittest celebrities hit all categories of entertainers, from comedians to rock stars. This is our third annual fittest talk show host list, with previous research ranking the fittest late night talk show hosts and daytime hosts. We used Samir Becic’s knowledge of over 33 years in athletics coupled with his experience as 4 times Number 1 Fitness Trainer in the World to scour all available information on the late night hosts to find the fittest of the bunch.

Samir Becic, author of ReSYNC Your Life, says of these late night mavens “Late night talk show hosts have a specific role in American society because of the tens of millions of viewers and followers on social media. They can be among the most influential trendsetters and can inspire millions of Americans to embrace a healthier lifestyle.”

We used a combination of internet research and interviews to create this list:

Andy Cohen – Watch What Happens Live

A post shared by Andy Cohen (@bravoandy) on Oct 27, 2014 at 11:39am PDT

Scuba dives.

Enjoys fly-fishing.

Rides horses- can even be seen herding cattle in Montana on his Instagram page.

Has said his rescue dog Wacha, has made him more of a morning person, and he regularly walks him.

Works out daily with a trainer for an hour.

Although he is up late for his live late night talk show, he always makes time in the morning to workout, something he enjoys.

Cohen eats a healthy diet and is big on healthy eating. He often eats toast and tea for breakfast, quinoa for lunch, and religiously eats the same meal every night of grilled chicken fajita meat when working.

Trevor Noah – The Daily Show

A photo posted by Trevor Noah (@trevornoah) on Mar 31, 2014 at 11:05am PDT

He’s well-aware of the prevalence of heart disease so Noah likes to stay moving when he’s at the office. He does so by spontaneously completing a set of moves with a colleague throughout the day. This can include 10 reps of lunges or squats per person.

Noah finds no excuse to be physically inactive and discourages chronic sitting. He’ll squeeze in some pull-ups, squats, etc. when he’s preparing for The Daily Show.

He believes jumping is a wonderful and easy way to spruce up your monotonous daily actions.

Was runner-up in a reality dance TV Show in South Africa called Strictly Come Dancing, where he trained 14-16 hours daily.

For Noah, it’s not just about being active, it’s also about being proactive in finding ways to include some sort of mini-workout despite your busy schedule.

He is a conscious eater when it comes to processed foods. In a GQ interview, Noah comments that American food “has too much added to it” compared what he ate in his native country, South Africa. To accommodate for these differences, Noah omits excess sugar from his diet and sometimes he’ll even avoid refined carbs for multiple weeks.

Stephen Colbert – The Late Show

A video posted by Late Show with Stephen Colbert (@colbertlateshow) on Nov 20, 2015 at 11:04am PST

A NASA treadmill for astronauts, Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill (COLBERT), was named in honor of Stephen Colbert.

NASA named the space station treadmill after him- Jokes that his daily routine involves:

a protein shake thrown in the face of a jaguar

Crab walks for 25 miles and stabs a mountain

Finishes up with self flagellation and some catapult work

Attended the 2014 Shape & Men’s Fitness Super Bowl Party

In the 2010 Winter Olympics, the “Colbert Report” financially supported the US Speedskating unit as they competed in Vancouver

He used his power as TV show host to promote a fundraiser for the US Speedskating team after their sponsor collapsed during the financial meltdown. His efforts totaled to $300,000 that were used to cheer on the team on the less popular Winter Olympic Games.

He is a yogi in training.

In 2009, Colbert and Matthew McConaughey were ranked the same position for the sexiest Yoga Dork’s male celebrity yogi

Carson Daly – Last Call

A photo posted by Carson Daly (@carsondaly) on Sep 15, 2015 at 6:15am PDT

In 2015, his goal was to lose weight, Daly shed off 30 pounds through dedication and hard work and he continues to maintain his healthier weight.

Upon approaching his 30s, he reveals his growing desire to “eat healthy and be healthy”

Changing his dietary and fitness habits helps him concentrate on the important things of life and work.

Daly credits the blissful California weather for encouraging him to workout.

He’s been recognized as a Health Hero by WebMD in 2014 for his efforts to promote sustainable fresh foods by building gardens for children in Brooklyn.

He enjoys SoulCycle- a high-intensity spinning class

Daly enjoys going on bike rides to explore Santa Monica.

Jimmy Fallon – The Tonight Show

A photo posted by Jimmy Fallon (@jimmyfallon) on Feb 1, 2015 at 10:18am PST

He once had a fitness face-off with First aLdy, Michelle Obama, on his show and lost.

Jimmy is motivated to live a healthy lifestyle so he can stay ahead of his busy schedule.

His green juices contain spinach, parsley, and “God knows what else is in it,” Jimmy joked.

He likes a hearty bowl of salad and getting his omega fats from fish oil supplements.

Jimmy likes golfing.

He often hits the gym with a trainer.

After being the host of the Tonight’s show, he perceives his responsibilities like a boxer on a streak and going on multiple rounds.

Jimmy had to adjust his lifestyle to keep up with the demands of his show. Nowadays, he prioritizes self-care by swapping his night outs for more rest time.

Chris Hardwick – Midnight

A photo posted by Chris Hardwick (@hardwick) on Sep 2, 2016 at 2:11am PDT

He continues to practice abstinence ever since he stopped drinking in 2013.

Hardwick has shed an incredible 40 lbs since his commitment to giving up alcohol.

Being physically active and improving his diet has helped reset his mindset after going through a bump in his life. He no longer tries to make excuses for not being active.

“I humbly place my low point at your feet and tell you that if you’re thinking about making improvements in your life, TODAY IS THE DAY TO START. Quitting drinking, starting exercising, eating better, pursuing your passion, hugging more puppies–whatever it is. Don’t think about it. Just do it. Over-thinking the “hows” and “why comes” will put you in a neverending loop of inactivity. You have the power and ability to change the future with a simple “pro-you” decision” he has said.

Jimmy Kimmel – Jimmy Kimmel Live!

A photo posted by Jimmy Kimmel (@jimmykimmel) on Apr 9, 2016 at 11:44am PDT

Enjoys sport fishing

He multitasks by utilizing his treadmill desk at work ever since 2012.

His decision to get a treadmill desk came after he “read somewhere that sitting all day can cut 15 or 20 years off your life… [which is] worse than smoking.” He believes that “we weren’t meant to sit this much” so he decided to change this by upgrading his office.

Kimmel commonly critiques fad diets and workouts. He doesn’t take them seriously and promotes more sustainable approaches that place a priority on being healthy rather than solely losing weight.

Conan O’Brien – Conan

A photo posted by CONAN (@teamcoco) on Sep 29, 2016 at 7:34pm PDT

In a humorous segment, he did a workout session with fellow actor Kevin Hart and trainer Jen Widerstrom this year. Although he was not as fit as Hart, O’Brien demonstrated his impressive stamina at 53 years old.

He has a love for bikes and biking. In fact, O’Brien supported The Challenged Athlete Foundation and The Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation by participating in an online bike auction. These organizations were both cherished by O’Brien’s late friend, Robin Williams, who also gifted him a Colnago bike worth at least $2,000.

Good music keeps him going. You can find his workout playlist is available on the Rdio app.

Seth Meyers – Late Night: Seth Meyers

A photo posted by @sethmeyers on Aug 8, 2015 at 9:59am PDT

He sticks to a consistent routine of running an average of 4 days a week.

Meyers sets aside 3 days each week to weight train.

He likes to start his day with a refreshing glass/bottle of juice.

Instead of restrictive dieting, Meyers prefers to manage his weight and health by eating once every 4 hours.

Meyers participated in the 2012 Cycle For Survival to raise funds supporting rare cancer research.

He is a firm believer of hopeful perseverance after meeting many inspiring cancer survivors.

John Oliver – Last Week Tonight

A photo posted by Last Week Tonight (@lastweektonight) on Aug 15, 2016 at 6:43am PDT

Oliver has a soft spot for soccer and admits in a Rolling Stone interview that he still dreams of being a soccer player.

Oliver shuns the sugar industry and its unsustainable tactics that are detrimental to health.

In 2016, he bought and forgave $15 million of medical debt.

Despite the limited information currently available on his personal health regime, Oliver has a pivotal role in putting the spotlight on health. He has spoken on nutritional topics such as the chicken industry standards, Dr. Oz’s show, etc.

[Read More ...] http://www.healthfitnessrevolution.com/fittest-late-night-talk-show-hosts-2017/

[lasemillaschoolgardens]

Fittest Late Night Talk Show Hosts 2017

http://ifttt.com/images/no_image_card.png

Late night talk show hosts can crack a joke and carry a skit, but can they run a few miles without getting out of breath? The nightly format of most of these shows means that these hosts are in our living rooms and on our Twitter feeds every day. They should use their large platform and extensive followings to rally people around healthy lifestyle.

At the HFR institue, we’ve emphasized the connection between entertainment and fitness since 2013. Our innovative lists of fittest celebrities hit all categories of entertainers, from comedians to rock stars. This is our third annual fittest talk show host list, with previous research ranking the fittest late night talk show hosts and daytime hosts. We used Samir Becic’s knowledge of over 33 years in athletics coupled with his experience as 4 times Number 1 Fitness Trainer in the World to scour all available information on the late night hosts to find the fittest of the bunch.

Samir Becic, author of ReSYNC Your Life, says of these late night mavens “Late night talk show hosts have a specific role in American society because of the tens of millions of viewers and followers on social media. They can be among the most influential trendsetters and can inspire millions of Americans to embrace a healthier lifestyle.”

We used a combination of internet research and interviews to create this list:

Andy Cohen – Watch What Happens Live

A post shared by Andy Cohen (@bravoandy) on Oct 27, 2014 at 11:39am PDT

Scuba dives.

Enjoys fly-fishing.

Rides horses- can even be seen herding cattle in Montana on his Instagram page.

Has said his rescue dog Wacha, has made him more of a morning person, and he regularly walks him.

Works out daily with a trainer for an hour.

Although he is up late for his live late night talk show, he always makes time in the morning to workout, something he enjoys.

Cohen eats a healthy diet and is big on healthy eating. He often eats toast and tea for breakfast, quinoa for lunch, and religiously eats the same meal every night of grilled chicken fajita meat when working.

Trevor Noah – The Daily Show

A photo posted by Trevor Noah (@trevornoah) on Mar 31, 2014 at 11:05am PDT

He’s well-aware of the prevalence of heart disease so Noah likes to stay moving when he’s at the office. He does so by spontaneously completing a set of moves with a colleague throughout the day. This can include 10 reps of lunges or squats per person.

Noah finds no excuse to be physically inactive and discourages chronic sitting. He’ll squeeze in some pull-ups, squats, etc. when he’s preparing for The Daily Show.

He believes jumping is a wonderful and easy way to spruce up your monotonous daily actions.

Was runner-up in a reality dance TV Show in South Africa called Strictly Come Dancing, where he trained 14-16 hours daily.

For Noah, it’s not just about being active, it’s also about being proactive in finding ways to include some sort of mini-workout despite your busy schedule.

He is a conscious eater when it comes to processed foods. In a GQ interview, Noah comments that American food “has too much added to it” compared what he ate in his native country, South Africa. To accommodate for these differences, Noah omits excess sugar from his diet and sometimes he’ll even avoid refined carbs for multiple weeks.

Stephen Colbert – The Late Show

A video posted by Late Show with Stephen Colbert (@colbertlateshow) on Nov 20, 2015 at 11:04am PST

A NASA treadmill for astronauts, Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill (COLBERT), was named in honor of Stephen Colbert.

NASA named the space station treadmill after him- Jokes that his daily routine involves:

a protein shake thrown in the face of a jaguar

Crab walks for 25 miles and stabs a mountain

Finishes up with self flagellation and some catapult work

Attended the 2014 Shape & Men’s Fitness Super Bowl Party

In the 2010 Winter Olympics, the “Colbert Report” financially supported the US Speedskating unit as they competed in Vancouver

He used his power as TV show host to promote a fundraiser for the US Speedskating team after their sponsor collapsed during the financial meltdown. His efforts totaled to $300,000 that were used to cheer on the team on the less popular Winter Olympic Games.

He is a yogi in training.

In 2009, Colbert and Matthew McConaughey were ranked the same position for the sexiest Yoga Dork’s male celebrity yogi

Carson Daly – Last Call

A photo posted by Carson Daly (@carsondaly) on Sep 15, 2015 at 6:15am PDT

In 2015, his goal was to lose weight, Daly shed off 30 pounds through dedication and hard work and he continues to maintain his healthier weight.

Upon approaching his 30s, he reveals his growing desire to “eat healthy and be healthy”

Changing his dietary and fitness habits helps him concentrate on the important things of life and work.

Daly credits the blissful California weather for encouraging him to workout.

He’s been recognized as a Health Hero by WebMD in 2014 for his efforts to promote sustainable fresh foods by building gardens for children in Brooklyn.

He enjoys SoulCycle- a high-intensity spinning class

Daly enjoys going on bike rides to explore Santa Monica.

Jimmy Fallon – The Tonight Show

A photo posted by Jimmy Fallon (@jimmyfallon) on Feb 1, 2015 at 10:18am PST

He once had a fitness face-off with First aLdy, Michelle Obama, on his show and lost.

Jimmy is motivated to live a healthy lifestyle so he can stay ahead of his busy schedule.

His green juices contain spinach, parsley, and “God knows what else is in it,” Jimmy joked.

He likes a hearty bowl of salad and getting his omega fats from fish oil supplements.

Jimmy likes golfing.

He often hits the gym with a trainer.

After being the host of the Tonight’s show, he perceives his responsibilities like a boxer on a streak and going on multiple rounds.

Jimmy had to adjust his lifestyle to keep up with the demands of his show. Nowadays, he prioritizes self-care by swapping his night outs for more rest time.

Chris Hardwick – Midnight

A photo posted by Chris Hardwick (@hardwick) on Sep 2, 2016 at 2:11am PDT

He continues to practice abstinence ever since he stopped drinking in 2013.

Hardwick has shed an incredible 40 lbs since his commitment to giving up alcohol.

Being physically active and improving his diet has helped reset his mindset after going through a bump in his life. He no longer tries to make excuses for not being active.

“I humbly place my low point at your feet and tell you that if you’re thinking about making improvements in your life, TODAY IS THE DAY TO START. Quitting drinking, starting exercising, eating better, pursuing your passion, hugging more puppies–whatever it is. Don’t think about it. Just do it. Over-thinking the “hows” and “why comes” will put you in a neverending loop of inactivity. You have the power and ability to change the future with a simple “pro-you” decision” he has said.

Jimmy Kimmel – Jimmy Kimmel Live!

A photo posted by Jimmy Kimmel (@jimmykimmel) on Apr 9, 2016 at 11:44am PDT

Enjoys sport fishing

He multitasks by utilizing his treadmill desk at work ever since 2012.

His decision to get a treadmill desk came after he “read somewhere that sitting all day can cut 15 or 20 years off your life… [which is] worse than smoking.” He believes that “we weren’t meant to sit this much” so he decided to change this by upgrading his office.

Kimmel commonly critiques fad diets and workouts. He doesn’t take them seriously and promotes more sustainable approaches that place a priority on being healthy rather than solely losing weight.

Conan O’Brien – Conan

A photo posted by CONAN (@teamcoco) on Sep 29, 2016 at 7:34pm PDT

In a humorous segment, he did a workout session with fellow actor Kevin Hart and trainer Jen Widerstrom this year. Although he was not as fit as Hart, O’Brien demonstrated his impressive stamina at 53 years old.

He has a love for bikes and biking. In fact, O’Brien supported The Challenged Athlete Foundation and The Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation by participating in an online bike auction. These organizations were both cherished by O’Brien’s late friend, Robin Williams, who also gifted him a Colnago bike worth at least $2,000.

Good music keeps him going. You can find his workout playlist is available on the Rdio app.

Seth Meyers – Late Night: Seth Meyers

A photo posted by @sethmeyers on Aug 8, 2015 at 9:59am PDT

He sticks to a consistent routine of running an average of 4 days a week.

Meyers sets aside 3 days each week to weight train.

He likes to start his day with a refreshing glass/bottle of juice.

Instead of restrictive dieting, Meyers prefers to manage his weight and health by eating once every 4 hours.

Meyers participated in the 2012 Cycle For Survival to raise funds supporting rare cancer research.

He is a firm believer of hopeful perseverance after meeting many inspiring cancer survivors.

John Oliver – Last Week Tonight

A photo posted by Last Week Tonight (@lastweektonight) on Aug 15, 2016 at 6:43am PDT

Oliver has a soft spot for soccer and admits in a Rolling Stone interview that he still dreams of being a soccer player.

Oliver shuns the sugar industry and its unsustainable tactics that are detrimental to health.

In 2016, he bought and forgave $15 million of medical debt.

Despite the limited information currently available on his personal health regime, Oliver has a pivotal role in putting the spotlight on health. He has spoken on nutritional topics such as the chicken industry standards, Dr. Oz’s show, etc.

[Read More ...] http://www.healthfitnessrevolution.com/fittest-late-night-talk-show-hosts-2017/

[generationtrygirl]

LinkTree: A Must-Have for External Linking on Instagram

Are you a blogger? Or a social media manager? An insta-model? Maybe you’re just someone that likes to share cool things with your friends on social media, and Instagram is your network of choice. STOP WHATEVER YOU ARE DOING and get the FREE “LinkTree” service now. Because with Linktree, you can FINALLY add multiple external links to your Instagram profile!

What is LinkTree?

Linktree is a free service that will change your Instagram status forever. As we all know, Instagram does not allow direct links within photo posts, and the only real opportunity for your followers to click-through to where you want to send them is the single “website” link in your profile.

But aren’t you tired of constantly changing your Instagram profile description every time you want to share a new link with your followers? I know I was. Then I discovered Linktree, and it changed everything. If you want to, go ahead and click through to my Insta profile HERE to see exactly how seamless it is. (Be sure to subscribe when you do!)

Click the link in my profile to see for yourself how link.tree works!

What’s the Catch?

As far as I can tell after three months of use, there isn’t one. The use of Linktree’s services are totally free (at least as of the date of this publication!) Although, I have noticed they have a “Linkteee Pro” service currently in Beta mode at the rate of $6/month. Either way, free or no, it WILL make your social media life easier.

Linktree Pro vs Regular — What’s the difference?

Regular Linktree

Here’s a little mobile preview from my Linktree admin page. It shows you exactly what your feed will look like after you’ve added your links!

Get a custom bio link (to use in place of your website link on Instagram)

Allows you to post infinite links to your Linktree feed with custom titles

Allows you to see how many lifetime clicks a link has had

You can manually hide [on and off] a link or delete it entirely

The ability to reorder your links in your feed to your heart’s content

9 Pre-made Color-Theme Options for your feed

Instant-update Visual “Live Feed” of your content

Linktree Pro Beta

From what I can surmise, Linktree Pro allows you to do the following in addition to the free services that Linktree provides.

You can schedule your links to appear and disappear at specific, set times.

In addition to seeing how many times a link has been clicked (available on the free service), you can see a daily click breakdown with Linktree Pro

Ability to customize the color combinations on your feed to fit your brand

Choose a custom “Button style” for your feed

Customize your own Linktree Page Name [In place of where your insta handle is on the free version]

Customize Facebook Pixel ID for enhanced conversion tracking

Allows you to: Optimize ad delivery, build audiences for website visitors to target, access audience insights, and more! Read more –> here.

As mentioned, costs $6/month.

An example of the custom nature of “Linktree Pro” — but those four color samples above? They come with the free profile, in addition to five others!

Which one do you use?

I’ve been on the free version since I joined, and it fits all of my needs currently! I can see someone with a larger Instagram following really benefiting from the “Pro” service’s offerings, though. I’m just beginning to blog, so spending extra money on refining my Instagram brand or doing heavy analytics on click through hates isn’t in my budget right now.

I should mention, too, that this can be used for sites other than Instagram for showing a clean feed of all of your latest links and their titles to your audience. Linktree is, however, obviously suited best for fixing the Insta-issue many social mavens have with their internal linking.

This is an example of what my admin page looks like current! By clicked and dragging the black bars with the three dots, you can rearrange your feed, and see what it looks like on your live preview!

What’s your process?

Whenever I am about to post an Instagram photo promoting a new blog post, I go to linktr.ee  first (through desktop or mobile!) and copy & paste my blog’s link into the program. I also make sure to write out the title for the blog post, or just a title that I want to drive traffic. As an example, though my FabFitFun review post was titled “Why FabFitFun’s Spring 2017 Box is the BEST #Treatyoself gift”, I made my Linktree title just “$10 Off FabFitFun Box!” (which, P.S. if you want that, click –> here.)

From there, I post my Instagram, making sure to mention in the comments “Click the link in my profile for more info” or “Blog link in profile,” etc. Something active for your follows to do that incentivizes them. My profile link I had previous made my Linktree link (here), so it was as simple as that! But what about my actual blog’s link? That I just put in my regular profile description. For now, it’s easy enough to type in to see my website as a whole, but the way my website is organized I would MUCH RATHER send my followers directly to my posts.

See how I shout out to the link in my profile? Now I can literally have ALL THE LINKS in my profile!

Are you writing this post as part of an Affiliate program?

I can honestly say I’m not! Linktree, as far as I can tell, is just now starting to get off the ground, so they don’t have any sort of Affiliate program yet. I also wasn’t paid to write this post. No money incentives, so you know it’s genuine. I truly believe Linktree is a service every beginner blogger should have, and I can’t imagine it would be unhelpful for an expert blogger either! I’ve seen services like Curalate offer similar “click to buy” features that directs you to a new library of image-links after clicking through on your Insta profiles, but that service costs thousands of dollars a month! If I can get essentially the same service for free, why not?

So what are you waiting for? Sign up for Linktree HERE. It’s totally free (unless you want Pro of course), and you’ll love how simple it is to use and how seamless it will make your Instagram marketing strategy.

For more on blogging, social media strategy, freelancing and a billion “TRY”s, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest!

The post LinkTree: A Must-Have for External Linking on Instagram appeared first on Generation Try Girl.

from LinkTree: A Must-Have for External Linking on Instagram

#LinkTree: A Must-Have for External Linking on Instagram

[lenaglittleus]

A Day In My Life (Updated) + A Giveaway!

It’s been almost 3 years since my last Day in the Life post. September 17, 2014. Where does time go? At the time I was living in Toronto and still in the beginning stages of getting THM off the ground. I feel like a different woman, business-person and all-around human is writing this post now. It’s crazy how much can change in a few short years.

But even though I may have changed, I still find these types of posts super creatively inspiring and just all-around fun to share. It feels like OG Healthy Maven when I used to share my weekend recaps. Remember those? Those were the days…

It’s due time for an update Day in the Life post though. For one, a lot of you guys have questions about what I actually do on a daily basis and two, I have a whole different approach towards working, self-care and wellness than I did then. In 2014 I was really into the hustle culture. I felt like I had to do EVERYTHING and while I was producing a lot of work, I was also wasting a lot of time, all while stressing out my body.

I have a much more relaxed approach toward work and definitely prioritize slowing down and taking care of my body ahead of my work. In the process, I’ve become far more productive and subsequently more successful at my job. It’s been crazy to see the results of working smarter and not harder. I should also note that I get a lot more help now than I used to. Cassie manages my social media and podcast details and C does all business development and accounting so not having that on my plate has freed up a lot of time for me to focus on the creative stuff that I love.

And if I’m being totally honest, I was major PMSing on this day. I know my body pretty well and if I’m anywhere near that time of the month, I need to move extra-slowly, not overdo my schedule and really, really take care of my body. I think this day is a pretty good reflection of this. Alright, let’s jump in…

8:00 AM: Wake-up! My alarm went off at 7:30 but I didn’t get out of bed until after 8:00. Sometimes I just need the extra sleep. Bodhi and C snuggles are always the best way to start the day.

9:00 AM: Breakfast. After a quick meditation and shower, I got started on breakfast. My usual green smoothie. This one had blueberries, 1/2 banana, protein powder, 2 cups spinach and topped with granola and blackberries. That’s also a matcha latte since I recently quit coffee (OMG!). More on this in another post.

9:15 AM: Emails. I ate my breakfast while clearing my inbox. I took a long weekend because of C’s birthday the previous day so things had gotten a bit backed up.

10:00 AM: My CSA arrives! I love Tuesdays for this reason…Learn more about my CSA Here. After unpacking it, I spent the next hour preparing for my podcast interview.

11:00 AM: Podcast Recording with Joy McCarthy. Stay tuned for next week’s episode with Joy! Yes, that’s a blanket. I was freezing in the office. 12:00 PM: Recording intro and outro to this week’s podcast episode with Erin’s Inside Job. I generally am working a week out but recorded this one the day before. These are surprisingly challenging to record. I got this one in the first take though!

12:30 PM: Snack. I was starving at this point so I grabbed a packet of my favorite trail mix, Orchard Valley Harvest‘s Antioxidant Mix. C and I decided to go out to lunch so it was the perfect snack for on-the-go eating. I also try to get in a lot of healthy fats when it’s around that time of the month and Vitamin E (found in the Antioxidant Mix from the cashews and pepitas) has been shown to help with menstrual cramps.

Also Bodhi was VERY into these. Check out these pics…he kills me!

1:00 PM: Lunch. C and I walked to a nearby Mexican spot to grab lunch. I got a deconstructed veggie burrito bowl. Wasn’t my favorite meal but did the trick! From there we walked Bodhi around the neighborhood before heading home. After sitting all morning I needed to stretch my legs.

2:00 PM: Blog writing and comment responding. I had a few hours of post writing and also got around to responding to comments on the blog. I don’t know if people realize this, but I read every comment that people leave on the blog, on YouTube, on Instagram and elsewhere. I try my best to respond to every single one. Except when people are intentionally very mean…that’s no fun.

4:00 PM: Snack. I picked up some peaches at the market in Pt. Reyes station and always like to pair my fruit with nuts for easier absorption. I find that my blood sugar spikes if I eat fruit alone so I pair it with a nut mix like the Orchard Valley Harvest Omega-3 Mix that has Alpha Lipoic Acid (ALA) Omega-3 with 55% of the 1.6 Daily Value of ALA from the almonds, pistachios and walnuts.

4:30 PM: Yoga. Again, after a few hours of sitting I needed a break and ending the day with a yoga session is one of my favorites. I switch off between yoga and at-home barre classes, but today I did a video from one of my favorite YouTube yoga channels. Let me know if you guys want to see a post on my favorite YouTube fitness channels!

6:00 PM : Dinner. After yoga I got started on dinner since it took an hour or so to cook. We had a turmeric soup/stew that was so cozy and warming. 

7:00 PM: My Evening Routine. I pretty much do that same evening routine every night and lots of you guys have been asking that I film it so I finally did! To see the last part of my day/night watch the video below. Hint: it involves lots of diffusing, face masks and chocolate!

Giveaway time! Once again, Orchard Valley has been super generous and is giving away a prize pack of Orchard Valley Harvest and a $50 Visa Gift Card! All you need to do to enter is follow both The Healthy Maven and Orchard Valley Harvest on Instagram and then comment below with your handle. The winner will be selected on Wednesday May 31st at 12:00AM. Open to US residents. Good Luck!

Disclaimer: This post was sponsored by Orchard Valley Harvest, however all opinions expressed were 100% my own. Thank you for supporting the brands that help make THM possible!

The post A Day In My Life (Updated) + A Giveaway! appeared first on The Healthy Maven.

from News About Health http://www.thehealthymaven.com/2017/05/a-day-in-my-life-updated.html

[broadleafcommerce-blog]

Broadleaf with Groovy and Gradle - Part 1

Would you rather skip the post and go straight to the code? Go check it out on GitHub!

I got a little bored one weekend and wanted to try my hand at some of the new (at least in terms of Maven) technologies Spring has been pushing: Groovy and Gradle. Spring moved all of their build scripts to Gradle a couple of years back and they have been leading the charge on the Grails framework adoption (one of the main consumers of Groovy code).

Some goals that I had for the project:

GRADLE

Automated builds on Jenkins

Deploy SNAPSHOTS and GAs to our internal Maven repositories

Provide 1-1 feature matching for Maven POMs that are used in our other modules

Compare and contrast Gradle features to Maven

GROOVY

Write something very self-contained (needed to finish it in a few days)

Operate alongside of our normal Java code in the rest of the Broadleaf framework

See how good the IDE support is (I use Eclipse)

Try to be as idiomatic as possible - make sure my code conformed to The Groovy Way™ as much as possible

The Holy Gradle

For this first post I will be detailing my first experience with Gradle, starting with matching up the features that we use in our existing Maven builds.

AUTOMATICALLY APPLY LICENSE HEADERS WHEN BUILDING

For Maven, the configuration looks like this for our open source modules:

<project>    <build>        <plugins>            <plugin>                <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>                <artifactId>license-maven-plugin</artifactId>                <version>1.5</version>                <configuration>                    <verbose>false</verbose>                    <addSvnKeyWords>false</addSvnKeyWords>                    <addJavaLicenseAfterPackage>false</addJavaLicenseAfterPackage>                    <organizationName>Broadleaf Commerce</organizationName>                    <inceptionYear>2009</inceptionYear>                    <licenseName>blc_apache</licenseName>                    <licenseResolver>file:${project.uri}/licenses</licenseResolver>                </configuration>                <executions>                    <execution>                        <id>first</id>                        <goals>                            <goal>update-file-header</goal>                            <goal>update-project-license</goal>                        </goals>                        <phase>process-sources</phase>                        <configuration>                            <roots>                                <root>src/main</root>                                <root>src/test</root>                            </roots>                        </configuration>                    </execution>                </executions>            </plugin>        ...    ....

Wow. That is a LOT of XML. What about with Gradle?

// From GitHub: https://github.com/hierynomus/license-gradle-plugin apply plugin: 'license' license {    ext.startYear = 2014    ext.endYear = Calendar.getInstance().get(Calendar.YEAR);    ext.company = 'Broadleaf Commerce'    ext.description = project.description } // Automatically apply the license when building the Jar jar.dependsOn licenseFormat

Definite win for Gradle!

DEPLOYING TO OUR SONATYPE NEXUS

This was actually pretty tricky. I went through 3-4 different plugins before I found the one I was happy with that left me with the simplest configuration. I originally attempted to use the old upload artifacts configuration which I couldn't get working how I wanted it. I then went to the Maven publisher plugin which is going to be standardized in later versions of Gradle (currently in the incubation phase). While this is a definite improvement over the previous upload artifacts, I still had trouble differentiating between a release and a SNAPSHOT repository and everything I did to try to make it work felt like a hack.

With a little Google-fu I came across a Sonatype nexus plugin which suited my needs perfectly and provided configuration that I was used to with Maven poms:

// From GitHub: https://github.com/bmuschko/gradle-nexus-plugin apply plugin: 'nexus' nexus {    attachJavadoc = true    attachSources = true    attachTests = true    repositoryUrl 'http://nexus.broadleafcommerce.org/nexus/content/repositories/releases'    snapshotRepositoryUrl 'http://nexus.broadleafcommerce.org/nexus/content/repositories/snapshots' }

Not a huge advantage over Maven and I was disappointed in the OOB Gradle support for deploying to Maven repositories.

OPTIONAL DEPENDENCIES

We use this at Broadleaf so that the Broadleaf framework dependency declared in one of our add-on modules does not inadvertently get transitively included and conflict with the version of Broadleaf that you are targeting in your own site. This allows a module to be compiled against, say, Broadleaf 3.1.0-GA but your custom project target 3.1.2-GA.

Unfortunately Gradle doesn't have OOB support for the optional keyword. Lucky for us a bit more Google-fu magic led me to the propdeps plugin. This allowed my optional dependencies to look like this:

apply plugin: 'propdeps' apply plugin: 'propdeps-maven' ... dependencies {    optional 'org.broadleafcommerce:broadleaf-common:3.1.0-GA'    // other compiletime/runtime dependencies }

The other way to do this is to modify the generated pom.xml and manually modify the dependency to mark it as 'optional'. This is a much cleaner configuration and gives the exact same result

JREBEL SUPPORT

Jrebel created their own Gradle plugin that works great! The configuration is also super simple, especially the ability to use profiles (don't want to include rebel.xml in the final release jar)

apply plugin: 'rebel' // Simulates a Maven profile. Activate in the same way, 'gradle build -Pblc-development' if (hasProperty('blc-development')) {    jar.dependsOn generateRebel }

Looks pretty good for matching up to Maven features. In most of these cases, the configuration is much easier to read.

But the real killer feature for me with Gradle is that the entire build file is just a Groovy script. I did not realize just how AWESOME that would be until I started using it. What's that, you're not sure what a value of some build variable is when you run your build? No problem! Just throw in a println "Var1 is: " + var1 and check the output.

Haven't convinced you yet? Check out this other little snipped I cooked up to collect properties given to the Gradle build script and pass them to the test execution:

test {    // Collect all of the broadleaf.rackspace properties and pass them in as system arguments to the test execution.    // This little snippet converts all the key-value pairs into -D args and then subtracts the empty strings    jvmArgs = project.properties.collect {k,v -> k.startsWith('broadleaf.rackspace') ? "-D$k=$v" : ''}.minus('') }

As my good friends OutKast would say, so fresh and so clean, clean.

Closing Thoughts

Overall I would say that the Gradle build script came out much more readable and cleaner than a Maven pom.xml. I was a little disappointed in Gradle missing some Maven features out of the box, but the learning curve to write custom Gradle modules is so low and the ecosystem is so good that it wasn't that big of a deal. And again, the fact that the build script is just a Groovy script is a huge plus.

#ecommerce #java #code #retail #b2b #b2c #enterprise #customizable

[duqstudents4fairtrade]

Fittest Late Night Talk Show Hosts 2017

Late night talk show hosts can crack a joke and carry a skit, but can they run a few miles without getting out of breath? The nightly format of most of these shows means that these hosts are in our living rooms and on our Twitter feeds every day. They should use their large platform and extensive followings to rally people around healthy lifestyle.

At the HFR institue, we’ve emphasized the connection between entertainment and fitness since 2013. Our innovative lists of fittest celebrities hit all categories of entertainers, from comedians to rock stars. This is our third annual fittest talk show host list, with previous research ranking the fittest late night talk show hosts and daytime hosts. We used Samir Becic’s knowledge of over 33 years in athletics coupled with his experience as 4 times Number 1 Fitness Trainer in the World to scour all available information on the late night hosts to find the fittest of the bunch.

Samir Becic, author of ReSYNC Your Life, says of these late night mavens “Late night talk show hosts have a specific role in American society because of the tens of millions of viewers and followers on social media. They can be among the most influential trendsetters and can inspire millions of Americans to embrace a healthier lifestyle.”

We used a combination of internet research and interviews to create this list:

Andy Cohen – Watch What Happens Live

A post shared by Andy Cohen (@bravoandy) on Oct 27, 2014 at 11:39am PDT

Scuba dives.

Enjoys fly-fishing.

Rides horses- can even be seen herding cattle in Montana on his Instagram page.

Has said his rescue dog Wacha, has made him more of a morning person, and he regularly walks him.

Works out daily with a trainer for an hour.

Although he is up late for his live late night talk show, he always makes time in the morning to workout, something he enjoys.

Cohen eats a healthy diet and is big on healthy eating. He often eats toast and tea for breakfast, quinoa for lunch, and religiously eats the same meal every night of grilled chicken fajita meat when working.

Trevor Noah – The Daily Show

A photo posted by Trevor Noah (@trevornoah) on Mar 31, 2014 at 11:05am PDT

He’s well-aware of the prevalence of heart disease so Noah likes to stay moving when he’s at the office. He does so by spontaneously completing a set of moves with a colleague throughout the day. This can include 10 reps of lunges or squats per person.

Noah finds no excuse to be physically inactive and discourages chronic sitting. He’ll squeeze in some pull-ups, squats, etc. when he’s preparing for The Daily Show.

He believes jumping is a wonderful and easy way to spruce up your monotonous daily actions.

Was runner-up in a reality dance TV Show in South Africa called Strictly Come Dancing, where he trained 14-16 hours daily.

For Noah, it’s not just about being active, it’s also about being proactive in finding ways to include some sort of mini-workout despite your busy schedule.

He is a conscious eater when it comes to processed foods. In a GQ interview, Noah comments that American food “has too much added to it” compared what he ate in his native country, South Africa. To accommodate for these differences, Noah omits excess sugar from his diet and sometimes he’ll even avoid refined carbs for multiple weeks.

Stephen Colbert – The Late Show

A video posted by Late Show with Stephen Colbert (@colbertlateshow) on Nov 20, 2015 at 11:04am PST

A NASA treadmill for astronauts, Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill (COLBERT), was named in honor of Stephen Colbert.

NASA named the space station treadmill after him- Jokes that his daily routine involves:

a protein shake thrown in the face of a jaguar

Crab walks for 25 miles and stabs a mountain

Finishes up with self flagellation and some catapult work

Attended the 2014 Shape & Men’s Fitness Super Bowl Party

In the 2010 Winter Olympics, the “Colbert Report” financially supported the US Speedskating unit as they competed in Vancouver

He used his power as TV show host to promote a fundraiser for the US Speedskating team after their sponsor collapsed during the financial meltdown. His efforts totaled to $300,000 that were used to cheer on the team on the less popular Winter Olympic Games.

He is a yogi in training.

In 2009, Colbert and Matthew McConaughey were ranked the same position for the sexiest Yoga Dork’s male celebrity yogi

Carson Daly – Last Call

A photo posted by Carson Daly (@carsondaly) on Sep 15, 2015 at 6:15am PDT

In 2015, his goal was to lose weight, Daly shed off 30 pounds through dedication and hard work and he continues to maintain his healthier weight.

Upon approaching his 30s, he reveals his growing desire to “eat healthy and be healthy”

Changing his dietary and fitness habits helps him concentrate on the important things of life and work.

Daly credits the blissful California weather for encouraging him to workout.

He’s been recognized as a Health Hero by WebMD in 2014 for his efforts to promote sustainable fresh foods by building gardens for children in Brooklyn.

He enjoys SoulCycle- a high-intensity spinning class

Daly enjoys going on bike rides to explore Santa Monica.

Jimmy Fallon – The Tonight Show

A photo posted by Jimmy Fallon (@jimmyfallon) on Feb 1, 2015 at 10:18am PST

He once had a fitness face-off with First aLdy, Michelle Obama, on his show and lost.

Jimmy is motivated to live a healthy lifestyle so he can stay ahead of his busy schedule.

His green juices contain spinach, parsley, and “God knows what else is in it,” Jimmy joked.

He likes a hearty bowl of salad and getting his omega fats from fish oil supplements.

Jimmy likes golfing.

He often hits the gym with a trainer.

After being the host of the Tonight’s show, he perceives his responsibilities like a boxer on a streak and going on multiple rounds.

Jimmy had to adjust his lifestyle to keep up with the demands of his show. Nowadays, he prioritizes self-care by swapping his night outs for more rest time.

Chris Hardwick – Midnight

A photo posted by Chris Hardwick (@hardwick) on Sep 2, 2016 at 2:11am PDT

He continues to practice abstinence ever since he stopped drinking in 2013.

Hardwick has shed an incredible 40 lbs since his commitment to giving up alcohol.

Being physically active and improving his diet has helped reset his mindset after going through a bump in his life. He no longer tries to make excuses for not being active.

“I humbly place my low point at your feet and tell you that if you’re thinking about making improvements in your life, TODAY IS THE DAY TO START. Quitting drinking, starting exercising, eating better, pursuing your passion, hugging more puppies–whatever it is. Don’t think about it. Just do it. Over-thinking the “hows” and “why comes” will put you in a neverending loop of inactivity. You have the power and ability to change the future with a simple “pro-you” decision” he has said.

Jimmy Kimmel – Jimmy Kimmel Live!

A photo posted by Jimmy Kimmel (@jimmykimmel) on Apr 9, 2016 at 11:44am PDT

Enjoys sport fishing

He multitasks by utilizing his treadmill desk at work ever since 2012.

His decision to get a treadmill desk came after he “read somewhere that sitting all day can cut 15 or 20 years off your life… [which is] worse than smoking.” He believes that “we weren’t meant to sit this much” so he decided to change this by upgrading his office.

Kimmel commonly critiques fad diets and workouts. He doesn’t take them seriously and promotes more sustainable approaches that place a priority on being healthy rather than solely losing weight.

Conan O’Brien – Conan

A photo posted by CONAN (@teamcoco) on Sep 29, 2016 at 7:34pm PDT

In a humorous segment, he did a workout session with fellow actor Kevin Hart and trainer Jen Widerstrom this year. Although he was not as fit as Hart, O’Brien demonstrated his impressive stamina at 53 years old.

He has a love for bikes and biking. In fact, O’Brien supported The Challenged Athlete Foundation and The Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation by participating in an online bike auction. These organizations were both cherished by O’Brien’s late friend, Robin Williams, who also gifted him a Colnago bike worth at least $2,000.

Good music keeps him going. You can find his workout playlist is available on the Rdio app.

Seth Meyers – Late Night: Seth Meyers

A photo posted by @sethmeyers on Aug 8, 2015 at 9:59am PDT

He sticks to a consistent routine of running an average of 4 days a week.

Meyers sets aside 3 days each week to weight train.

He likes to start his day with a refreshing glass/bottle of juice.

Instead of restrictive dieting, Meyers prefers to manage his weight and health by eating once every 4 hours.

Meyers participated in the 2012 Cycle For Survival to raise funds supporting rare cancer research.

He is a firm believer of hopeful perseverance after meeting many inspiring cancer survivors.

John Oliver – Last Week Tonight

A photo posted by Last Week Tonight (@lastweektonight) on Aug 15, 2016 at 6:43am PDT

Oliver has a soft spot for soccer and admits in a Rolling Stone interview that he still dreams of being a soccer player.

Oliver shuns the sugar industry and its unsustainable tactics that are detrimental to health.

In 2016, he bought and forgave $15 million of medical debt.

Despite the limited information currently available on his personal health regime, Oliver has a pivotal role in putting the spotlight on health. He has spoken on nutritional topics such as the chicken industry standards, Dr. Oz’s show, etc.

[Read More ...] http://www.healthfitnessrevolution.com/fittest-late-night-talk-show-hosts-2017/

[lasemillaschoolgardens]

Fittest Late Night Talk Show Hosts 2017

http://ifttt.com/images/no_image_card.png

Late night talk show hosts can crack a joke and carry a skit, but can they run a few miles without getting out of breath? The nightly format of most of these shows means that these hosts are in our living rooms and on our Twitter feeds every day. They should use their large platform and extensive followings to rally people around healthy lifestyle.

At the HFR institue, we’ve emphasized the connection between entertainment and fitness since 2013. Our innovative lists of fittest celebrities hit all categories of entertainers, from comedians to rock stars. This is our third annual fittest talk show host list, with previous research ranking the fittest late night talk show hosts and daytime hosts. We used Samir Becic’s knowledge of over 33 years in athletics coupled with his experience as 4 times Number 1 Fitness Trainer in the World to scour all available information on the late night hosts to find the fittest of the bunch.

Samir Becic, author of ReSYNC Your Life, says of these late night mavens “Late night talk show hosts have a specific role in American society because of the tens of millions of viewers and followers on social media. They can be among the most influential trendsetters and can inspire millions of Americans to embrace a healthier lifestyle.”

We used a combination of internet research and interviews to create this list:

Andy Cohen – Watch What Happens Live

A post shared by Andy Cohen (@bravoandy) on Oct 27, 2014 at 11:39am PDT

Scuba dives.

Enjoys fly-fishing.

Rides horses- can even be seen herding cattle in Montana on his Instagram page.

Has said his rescue dog Wacha, has made him more of a morning person, and he regularly walks him.

Works out daily with a trainer for an hour.

Although he is up late for his live late night talk show, he always makes time in the morning to workout, something he enjoys.

Cohen eats a healthy diet and is big on healthy eating. He often eats toast and tea for breakfast, quinoa for lunch, and religiously eats the same meal every night of grilled chicken fajita meat when working.

Trevor Noah – The Daily Show

A photo posted by Trevor Noah (@trevornoah) on Mar 31, 2014 at 11:05am PDT

He’s well-aware of the prevalence of heart disease so Noah likes to stay moving when he’s at the office. He does so by spontaneously completing a set of moves with a colleague throughout the day. This can include 10 reps of lunges or squats per person.

Noah finds no excuse to be physically inactive and discourages chronic sitting. He’ll squeeze in some pull-ups, squats, etc. when he’s preparing for The Daily Show.

He believes jumping is a wonderful and easy way to spruce up your monotonous daily actions.

Was runner-up in a reality dance TV Show in South Africa called Strictly Come Dancing, where he trained 14-16 hours daily.

For Noah, it’s not just about being active, it’s also about being proactive in finding ways to include some sort of mini-workout despite your busy schedule.

He is a conscious eater when it comes to processed foods. In a GQ interview, Noah comments that American food “has too much added to it” compared what he ate in his native country, South Africa. To accommodate for these differences, Noah omits excess sugar from his diet and sometimes he’ll even avoid refined carbs for multiple weeks.

Stephen Colbert – The Late Show

A video posted by Late Show with Stephen Colbert (@colbertlateshow) on Nov 20, 2015 at 11:04am PST

A NASA treadmill for astronauts, Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill (COLBERT), was named in honor of Stephen Colbert.

NASA named the space station treadmill after him- Jokes that his daily routine involves:

a protein shake thrown in the face of a jaguar

Crab walks for 25 miles and stabs a mountain

Finishes up with self flagellation and some catapult work

Attended the 2014 Shape & Men’s Fitness Super Bowl Party

In the 2010 Winter Olympics, the “Colbert Report” financially supported the US Speedskating unit as they competed in Vancouver

He used his power as TV show host to promote a fundraiser for the US Speedskating team after their sponsor collapsed during the financial meltdown. His efforts totaled to $300,000 that were used to cheer on the team on the less popular Winter Olympic Games.

He is a yogi in training.

In 2009, Colbert and Matthew McConaughey were ranked the same position for the sexiest Yoga Dork’s male celebrity yogi

Carson Daly – Last Call

A photo posted by Carson Daly (@carsondaly) on Sep 15, 2015 at 6:15am PDT

In 2015, his goal was to lose weight, Daly shed off 30 pounds through dedication and hard work and he continues to maintain his healthier weight.

Upon approaching his 30s, he reveals his growing desire to “eat healthy and be healthy”

Changing his dietary and fitness habits helps him concentrate on the important things of life and work.

Daly credits the blissful California weather for encouraging him to workout.

He’s been recognized as a Health Hero by WebMD in 2014 for his efforts to promote sustainable fresh foods by building gardens for children in Brooklyn.

He enjoys SoulCycle- a high-intensity spinning class

Daly enjoys going on bike rides to explore Santa Monica.

Jimmy Fallon – The Tonight Show

A photo posted by Jimmy Fallon (@jimmyfallon) on Feb 1, 2015 at 10:18am PST

He once had a fitness face-off with First aLdy, Michelle Obama, on his show and lost.

Jimmy is motivated to live a healthy lifestyle so he can stay ahead of his busy schedule.

His green juices contain spinach, parsley, and “God knows what else is in it,” Jimmy joked.

He likes a hearty bowl of salad and getting his omega fats from fish oil supplements.

Jimmy likes golfing.

He often hits the gym with a trainer.

After being the host of the Tonight’s show, he perceives his responsibilities like a boxer on a streak and going on multiple rounds.

Jimmy had to adjust his lifestyle to keep up with the demands of his show. Nowadays, he prioritizes self-care by swapping his night outs for more rest time.

Chris Hardwick – Midnight

A photo posted by Chris Hardwick (@hardwick) on Sep 2, 2016 at 2:11am PDT

He continues to practice abstinence ever since he stopped drinking in 2013.

Hardwick has shed an incredible 40 lbs since his commitment to giving up alcohol.

Being physically active and improving his diet has helped reset his mindset after going through a bump in his life. He no longer tries to make excuses for not being active.

“I humbly place my low point at your feet and tell you that if you’re thinking about making improvements in your life, TODAY IS THE DAY TO START. Quitting drinking, starting exercising, eating better, pursuing your passion, hugging more puppies–whatever it is. Don’t think about it. Just do it. Over-thinking the “hows” and “why comes” will put you in a neverending loop of inactivity. You have the power and ability to change the future with a simple “pro-you” decision” he has said.

Jimmy Kimmel – Jimmy Kimmel Live!

A photo posted by Jimmy Kimmel (@jimmykimmel) on Apr 9, 2016 at 11:44am PDT

Enjoys sport fishing

He multitasks by utilizing his treadmill desk at work ever since 2012.

His decision to get a treadmill desk came after he “read somewhere that sitting all day can cut 15 or 20 years off your life… [which is] worse than smoking.” He believes that “we weren’t meant to sit this much” so he decided to change this by upgrading his office.

Kimmel commonly critiques fad diets and workouts. He doesn’t take them seriously and promotes more sustainable approaches that place a priority on being healthy rather than solely losing weight.

Conan O’Brien – Conan

A photo posted by CONAN (@teamcoco) on Sep 29, 2016 at 7:34pm PDT

In a humorous segment, he did a workout session with fellow actor Kevin Hart and trainer Jen Widerstrom this year. Although he was not as fit as Hart, O’Brien demonstrated his impressive stamina at 53 years old.

He has a love for bikes and biking. In fact, O’Brien supported The Challenged Athlete Foundation and The Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation by participating in an online bike auction. These organizations were both cherished by O’Brien’s late friend, Robin Williams, who also gifted him a Colnago bike worth at least $2,000.

Good music keeps him going. You can find his workout playlist is available on the Rdio app.

Seth Meyers – Late Night: Seth Meyers

A photo posted by @sethmeyers on Aug 8, 2015 at 9:59am PDT

He sticks to a consistent routine of running an average of 4 days a week.

Meyers sets aside 3 days each week to weight train.

He likes to start his day with a refreshing glass/bottle of juice.

Instead of restrictive dieting, Meyers prefers to manage his weight and health by eating once every 4 hours.

Meyers participated in the 2012 Cycle For Survival to raise funds supporting rare cancer research.

He is a firm believer of hopeful perseverance after meeting many inspiring cancer survivors.

John Oliver – Last Week Tonight

A photo posted by Last Week Tonight (@lastweektonight) on Aug 15, 2016 at 6:43am PDT

Oliver has a soft spot for soccer and admits in a Rolling Stone interview that he still dreams of being a soccer player.

Oliver shuns the sugar industry and its unsustainable tactics that are detrimental to health.

In 2016, he bought and forgave $15 million of medical debt.

Despite the limited information currently available on his personal health regime, Oliver has a pivotal role in putting the spotlight on health. He has spoken on nutritional topics such as the chicken industry standards, Dr. Oz’s show, etc.

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