#I had a system of pencil symbols for annotating as I was reading
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Favourite Fleet & Clara quotes from High Vaultage
(Page numbers from my Goldsboro special edition, I'm not sure how they line up with page numbers in other versions. Spoilers for all of High Vaultage.)
p27: Clara had met Fleet only weeks before. She had just arrived in London and started work as a crime reporter, and pursued a murder case alongside Fleet despite his repeated objections, until he eventually conceded - as Clara had known he would - that they were making a good team, and furthermore proposed - as she hadn't a clue he would - that they go into business together.
p51: "There you are, Fleet. Where have you been?" / Fleet paused, made some confused looks between Clara and the room he had just left, and finally pointed at the door. "Isn't this the waiting room for detectives whose partners have run off? They were quite a few of us in there. Quite a lot in common." / Clara suppressed a grin into something more disapproving. "You're not as funny as you think you are, Inspector." (More below the cut.)
p70: [After Clara successfully sneaks into the Iron Bridge Club] [Fleet] should have known Clara would make it in. Her tenacity had been clear to him since she had first left the police roping at a crime scene of his. It was one of the things he admired about her, even if she didn't always check whether there was somewhere to land.
p76: [After Clara's business card strategies work on Cosgrove] Fleet glanced at Clara. She grinned back, eyes wild with pride, before tapping her bag and mouthing the word 'Posner'.
p116: [After Professor McCabe says “Top marks, Miss Entwhistle”] Clara beamed, and flashed her eyebrows at Fleet while elbowing him in the ribs.
p132: "Don't think you can shake me off, Inspector. I'll come with you." / " I'm not trying to shake you off. It's just late, Clara.” / "You're always trying to shake me off. Ever since we met. Despite my constant usefulness." / "I'd say occasional usefulness," replied Fleet, maintaining a straight face. / Clara, with some effort, twisted her grin into something approximating outrage. "Frequent usefulness, surely!" / "No, but I'll agree to "regular usefulness"." / "Deal.” / “And I asked you to join me in business, Clara. If I'd wanted to shake you off, that's a poor way to go about it."
p154: [From Fleet's POV] Clara really was the sort of person - indeed the only person he knew - who could find genuine joy and wonder in a building site.
p172: [When Clara fears for her life at the display of the Lanterns] She thought of her brother, her sister, her parents... Her ridiculous detective.
p176-178: Clara without her usual pep was almost unrecognisable. [...] Normally that sort of reply would at least elicit some playful scolding. Fleet grew concerned. [...] "Do you want to talk about it?" [...] " What do you want to talk about?" [...] He tried to think of more options. Not talking about things was Fleet's speciality, but for Clara this signalled a worrying malaise. Things were dire. He was going to have to resort to small talk. "Would you like to hear about my day?" A brief pause. "Yes," she replied, with a note of hope [...] Fleet remembered the mess he was in before he switched to the task of cheering up Clara.
p184: When he saw her, she noticed his eyes were shining with a rare zeal, and he appeared bursting to explain whatever he was thinking.
p187: Fleet had, after all, taken her under his wing, even if she did have to thrust herself there initially. She thought about the door plaque he’d had engraved with both their names on it as his way of inviting her to be his business partner – typical Fleet, refusing to tell her so much as his favourite breakfast food and then to go and do something like that. It was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for her.
p201: [After Fleet sees a magpie get electrocuted] Fleet looked at Clara, who thankfully had been facing the other way.
p214: [After Fleet falls into the frozen river] Clara, removing her cape and placing it over Fleet's shoulders
p225: [Clara] had read several books on the subject - Surreptitious Sleuthing, Introduction to Ingression, Undetectable Detection, to name a few - but she always seemed to pick up more from her partner, whose years in the police had left him full of [useful tricks].
p235: [While navigating the Brunellian tunnels for the first time] "I still think my way is more fun." / "Escape, Clara. Escape and then fun." / "That's a promise, Fleet. You've promised it now.”
p259: “That's too much topiary,” said Fleet [...] Clara's eyes lit up at this rare revelation of a personal opinion from her colleague. “I didn't know you had such strong views on topiary, Fleet.”
p293: [When Crowe increases how much he'd be willing to pay them to investigate on his behalf] Fleet knew his answer, but felt he had to see whether Clara was still in agreement. He looked to her, only to be met with an expression of astonishment that he had taken even this long to respond.
p337: [After their falling out] Where do you even begin, she thought, let alone end, with someone you've worked with so closely?
p338: [After they squash the scone Fleet brought Clara as part of his apology] "You want me to eat an exploded scone!" cried Clara, stifling laughter.”/ “I think it says a lot if you refuse.” / “Fine,” she said, grabbing the bag, pulling out the crushed scone and taking an enormous bite. / The corners of Fleet's mouth twitched. Clara was sure he almost laughed.
p341: [Before they go into the Church of the Mechanical Man to look for Helena Evans] Clara smiled, and punched him in the shoulder. / "Ow! What was that for?" / Clara realised that in her excitement at Fleet's plan she had landed her friendly thump with rather more power than intended, so she clarified: "You're a good one, Fleet.”
p371: [After Fleet gets shot in the shoulder] Fleet thought he heard Clara scream his name, but he couldn't be sure. Suddenly she was next to him, checking his shoulder.
p371-372: Clara turned to Fleet. “Now I have an idea.” / “What kind of idea?” / “A terrible idea. Just the worst idea I've ever had.” / Fleet looked towards the distant exit, which could barely be seen beyond the fire, and then back to Clara. “I like it.”
p373: [As they anticipate an oncoming wave of molten metal] Fleet felt a sensation he did not recognise. Something like calm. Then Clara took his hand and turned him towards her. For some insufferable reason she was smiling again. He couldn't help but return it. [...] Fleet realised Clara still had his hand firmly in hers, and she seemed to be saying something at him that he couldn't hear. He tried to listen, but she stopped speaking, shook her head, threw her arms around him and hauled him down onto the ground.
p375: [When Clara won't tell Fleet whether she knew they were going to be saved by Helena Evans] “And you don't think this might affect how likely I am to trust your plans in the future?” / “Does it?” asked Clara. [...] “No,” said Fleet. “It doesn't.”
p381: Clara stiffened her posture, as though she might salute. "Archibald Fleet, I challenge you to a battle of business." / "We're partners, Clara. We're on the same side." / "A point for whoever solves a case first! More for trickier ones!" / "But we work together..." / "Let battle commence!" she cried.
#High Vaultage#Victoriocity#Clara Entwhistle#Archibald Fleet#There's just so much care and affection and trust and respect and understanding and humour between them#in the midst of all their differences#One of the nice things about the move to book format#is the chance to see more inside the characters' heads and to know more about their body language#And you can really tell the attention they pay to each other#like all of the times one of them looks over to the other to check in or to express a feeling#Almost all of the times Fleet smiles or almost-smiles in the book are at something Clara says or does#I had a system of pencil symbols for annotating as I was reading#e.g. an asterisk for every bit that made me laugh#a little heart for the sweet moments for character dynamics#so this is a good chunk but not even all of the lines with hearts next to them#Btw I'm in the process of writing a long ass post about the potential to read Fleet and Clara's dynamic through a QPR lens#which I'll post after all the S3 episodes are officially out#I guess lmk if you would like to be tagged in that#Inspector Fleet#Clara & Fleet
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university note-taking 101 ~
one of the hardest things parts of adapting to life in university is finding a note-taking method that is efficient and easy for you and your learning style.
it took me 18 months at university, experimenting with different note-taking styles, to settle on a few that work best for me. i thought i’d share all of the different methods i tried and the pros/cons of each & hopefully it’ll help you land on some note-taking styles quicker than i did! :-))
SO...i’ll start by saying obviously not all note-taking techniques are going to be included in this post because i’m just one person and these are just the styles i’ve had personal experience with and not everyone will like or dislike the same methods, it will take a little bit of trial and error to find your perfect style :-))
i’m going to split the different methods into 3 separate sections (and i’ll highlight my personal favourites):
⇢ handwritten
⇢ ipad/tablet
⇢ macbok/laptop
starting with what we all know and (kind of) love! we’ve spent the majority of our school education making handwritten notes for high school so it makes sense to start here.
1. basic handwritten notes
this type of note-taking is the most basic of all basic note-taking techniques and it’s probably what you’re used to. it involves any kind of paper - lined, squared, plained, whatever you fancy - and a single pen or pencil.
all this involves is writing down everything important you think is being said or discussed by your lecturer or your classmates! there’s nothing fancy involved, it’s all about getting down the most important points.
pros:
- you’ve already been doing this for years
- no time wasted doodling or highlighting
cons:
- can be time consuming if you’re not a quick writer
- if you’re writing on loose paper, it’s super easy to lose
- not easy to work out what notes relate to what slides / what comments were being made
- you may end up trying to write down everything on the lecture slides - waste of time when you can view them at home and you might miss important adlib!
2. annotating print-outs (*fave*)
this is a technique i adopted in second year of university! all you have to do is print out your lecture slides beforehand and bring them along with you. you can write at the side of slides or right on top of them.
pros:
- less likely to repeat what is said on slides so you can spend time listening for the nuggets of gold from your lecturer
- having slides prepared before a lecture means you can read them and familiarise yourself with some content
- easy to know what notes relate to what specific slides
- super quick to make important and accurate notes!
cons:
- it can be expensive to buy a printer/ink or to use your university’s printing facilities
- again, you can easily lose loose paper if you’re not careful
- your lecture slides may not always be available beforehand
3. cornell note-taking
cornell note-taking is something you’re probably already aware for those who don’t know - it’s a note-taking system devised in the 40s by a cornell professor.
cornell notes have to look a particular way in order for them to work (see here) and they’re geared towards helping you pass your exams.
you do your main note-taking in the right-hand box - these notes should be brief but include enough detail to act as a revision source. take these note in lectures or in classes and make sure to note down and highlight anything your lecturer emphasises.
use your left-hand column to write down potential exam questions you could be asked regarding the notes you’ve written on the right. these questions should act as test questions when you’re revising!
finally, in the bottom box you should summarise the key points to take away from that page of notes.
pros:
- excellent note-taking method for exam revision
- can be super efficient once you’re used to the style
cons:
- can take a while to set up pages if you’re doing it by hand
- can take some time adapting to this new way of note-taking
- not a flexible note-taking system, no person wiggle room
handwritten notes general pros and cons:
- hand writing notes is the most reliable way to remember important information
- you can use personal abbreviations and symbols to make your note-taking quicker
- you might lose papers here and there meaning your notes are incomplete or totally make no sense anymore
- it can be time-consuming trying to decide what is the vital information and getting it down before the topic of discussion changes
1. goodnotes for set reading annotations (app link here) (*fave*)
goodnotes is an app designed specifically for taking efficient and nice-to-look-at-notes! i personally use it for note-taking and annotating set readings at university.
i create a checklist on the first page of each module’s notebooks and write down each research paper or journal article i have to read so i don’t lose track. i then important PDFs straight into the notebook and annotate and highlight over the top of them.
pros:
- it’s super easy to have all of your reading notes and annotations in one place
- no risk of losing papers as everything is stored electronically
- the app uses icloud to sync your notes across all your devices make everything super accessible
- you can quickly share your notes with anybody through email/airdrop/imessage/pretty much anything!
cons:
- you do have to pay for the app (but it’s cheaper than printing out all of your readings)
- can be difficult to navigate at first
2. onenote for in-lecture notes
onenote is a microsoft app that lets you type and draw in one place! it works in a similar way to goodnotes.
i used onenote in first year to take in-lecture notes because it also allows for audio recording (DISCLAIMER: DO NOT RECORD YOUR LECTURES WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION FROM YOUR UNIVERSITY AND LECTURERS) and it was super handy to have my notes and audio stored in the same file.
pros:
- super versatile and allows for many note-taking method in one app
- syncs across your devices (if you have onenote downloaded)
- allows you to collate different methods of note-taking in one place
cons:
- can be hard to organise your information! pages are blank and there’s no end to them, there’s also no grid for your items to snap to so it gets messy very quickly
- i’ve experienced personal issues with the syncing feature
ipad tablet/notes general pros and cons:
- tablets are generally really lightweight and easy to carry around - making them preferable over heavy notebooks or laptops
- having access to the internet makes note-taking super easy when you need to search terms or find photos
- you do have to make sure your tablet is fully charged if you’re taking it onto campus
- tablets can be super expensive
now for my holy grail - taking notes on a macbook or (insert laptop of choice here)!
1. brief in-lecture notes (*fave*)
i use microsoft word or pages to take most of my in-lecture notes and i fleet between using my ipad and macbook - i’m sticking it in this section because 9/10 i’m using my macbook.
with these kind of notes i set myself a specific structure and carry that out through the whole module!
first i lay my title across the top of my document - i usually just use the title of the lecture / general lecture topic. I then use my first indentations for the titles of each individual slide and bullet points for important comments made about each slide i also note particularly interesting things written on the slides themselves!
i stick to one font and one size to avoid wasting time on formatting!
i usually print out these notes so i can annotate them with any research i’ve found so it helps with my finalised notes.
pros:
- super quick if you’re a fast typer
- easy to correct notes or go back and add more detail at a later date
- easy to share and sync between devices
- simple format makes it easy to follow and a good revision resource
cons:
- notes can look a little boring and uninviting
- not easy to use abbreviations or symbols because of autocorrect!
2. extensive revision notes (*fave*)
i also use my macbook to create my finalised notes that i use to write my essays and revise for exams.
these notes take more time to make because of the formatting but they’re super nice to look at and make a wonderful resource at the end.
for these notes i start by picking a colour scheme (usually one within microsoft word) and i stick with this colour scheme for a whole module. i allocate one colour to research names and dates, one colour to titles, one colour to highlight key information with. i also use a variety of fonts! i typically use 4 fonts: one for the title of the lecture, one for subheadings, one for researcher names and dates and one for the main body of text - the main body font is usually a standard Helvetica or Arial!
i really take time to flesh out these notes so they reflect all of my learning - lectures, seminars, set reading, extra reading and knowledge i already had! i print off the notes and stick them in a ring binder and this becomes my bible for the semester!
pros:
- really inviting to look at so it makes revision a bit more enjoyable
- gives you time to show off your knowledge and create an extensive revision resource
- easy to share with friends or lecturers to get feedback
cons:
- can take a while to make these notes
- if you’re printing, this can cost quite a bit!
3. mind-map notes
finally! mind-map notes.
i use SimpleMind Lite to create mind-maps as the last part of my learning. each lecture gets its own mind-map and the nodes represent the key themes within the lecture!
it’s super important you don’t just use slide titles for your nodes as your mind-map will get crowded easily and you won’t want to use it as a revision resource.
keep your branching-off nodes short and sweet - think of them as knowledge cues! by the end of your learning you should be able to look at a node and remember the information regarding that point. these cues are also easier to remember and jog your memory in exam settings.
pros:
- good to see information presented in a new way
- you can use bright colours to make it more exciting
- great way to prep for exams
cons:
- hard to print also your canvas within the app is endless
- can be hard to share with others
macbook/laptop notes general pros and cons:
- can help you create a wide variety of notes - from short and sweet to fleshed out and fuuuuull of all the detail in the world
- allows you to correct, add to and print off your notes however many times you’d like
- you do have to make sure your laptop is always charged / you always have a charger!
- laptops can be heavy and impractical to carry to university
- if you’re not saving to a cloud you could lose some of your work (don’t be silly like me, use an external hard drive or dropbox!!!)
you made it!!! congrats :-))
hopefully i’ve given you a good idea of some of the note-taking methods you could use in university and you fancy trying a couple out!
if you have any questions or note-taking tips yourself, leave a message in the replies below.
decaffs x
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#studyblr#study#college#uni#university#grades#studygram#revise#plan#school#graduate#stationery#notes#note taking#psych#psychology#academic#organisation#organization#diary#bujo#100dop#coffee#cafe#studying#langblr#d*caf#masterpost#note#cornell
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The Experiment XII
There was a rich chuckle off to her left as she shelved books in the library. “I might have been wrong about you not enjoying yourself here, cara mia. Although your work would go faster if you didn’t pull out more books than you put back.”
“I’m looking at publication dates. And trying to find an Encyclopaedia Britannica.” She let out an annoyed huff. “House full of historical geniuses and you don’t use a research library shelving system. You really are monsters.”
“Just what are you up to now?” Leonardo stood up, stretching lazily.
“Found it!” She plucked out the index volume of the Ninth Edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica and hopped into the overstuffed chair, legs dangling over the arm. She flipped rapidly through it, occasionally going back to a previous section. “Volume 14. Page 455.”
She smirked up at him and his gold eyes narrowed slightly.
“So you have read it. Is that volume perhaps hiding in your room, then?” She hopped up and dashed off down the hall.
He took a detour to the kitchen to finish a cup of coffee before he found her sitting cross-legged on his bed with the encyclopedia in her lap, idly petting the black cat sprawled out next to her.
She glanced up when she heard the door open. “You talked to the pope about alchemy?”
“I might’ve. Getting awfully comfortable on a man’s bed, cara mia.”
She laughed but didn’t look up from the book. “That would imply you actually sleep here. This isn’t a bedroom, it’s a storage closet. It explains so much about why you sleep in the hallway.”
“Have you studied alchemy? Issac mentioned that you had constructed a simple bain-marie.”
Her hand paused after turning the page and she finally looked up at him. “Like philosopher’s stone, lead-to-gold without a particle accelerator alchemy?”
“…You can turn lead into gold?”
“Shear three protons off an atom of lead, you get an atom of gold. Bismuth’s easier because it only has one stable isotope. It’s a massive amount of energy to turn a lot of bismuth into a few atoms of gold, most of which aren’t stable.”
Leonardo had produced a leather-bound notebook and pencil from somewhere in his Coat of Holding.
“If you’re taking notes, you might want to sit down for this. There’s a lot to go over. Actually, this might be easier to explain if I sketch out the periodic table first. May I?”
Leonardo handed her the pencil with the notebook open to a blank page, and she felt the bed sink as he sat down on the other side of the cat. She quickly sketched out the periodic table with atomic symbols and weights, as best she could remember it. There were some blank spots, but enough to get the point across. Then she drew a quick sketch of a single proton orbited by an electron, and one and two neutron isotopes of hydrogen.
She handed the notebook and pencil back to Leonardo. “I think you should have a basic version of this by now. It organizes elements by valence and atomic weight — the number of protons it has. I think it’s too early for subatomic particles. Uh, atoms have a nucleus with positively charged protons and neutrally charged neutrons, orbited by negatively charged electrons. Atomic weight is based on the number of protons, but reactivity to other elements mostly has to do with the number and arrangements of electrons. Each column has a similar electron arrangement. Rows are increasing atomic weight.” She pointed at the sketch. “Gold is here. Lead is here. Bismuth is here.”
He leaned in close, but his eyes were focused on the page. “And the ‘isotopes’ you mentioned?”
She pointed to the three hydrogen drawings. “Different isotopes have different numbers of neutrons, but most elements only have a few stable configurations. Hydrogen here has a single proton with a single electron, but it also has a stable isotope with a single neutron that doubles the mass of its nucleus. Water with that isotope is called heavy water. It’s a little denser, the freezing point and boiling point are slightly higher, but mostly it acts just like water. Unstable isotopes, like this one with two neutrons, decay over time, and I don’t know the specifics well enough to get into how.”
“And what is a particle accelerator?”
“They’re also called atom smashers. You speed atoms up really fast then slam them into other atoms and bits go flying off. This particular experiment slammed it into a sheet of bismuth. If you remove the right amount of protons you get gold, but it won’t be a stable form of gold unless you also end up with the right number of neutrons. Ta-da. The same principle holds for lead to gold. You end up with very, very little gold for a LOT of effort.”
Leonardo picked the notebook back up and immediately started annotating her drawings.
“Alchemy has some actual useful science buried in mysticism, fraud and a lack of understanding of chemistry.” She snapped the book shut sharply. “The Elixir of Life and philosopher’s stone stuff is supposed to be nonsense. But then again, vampires don’t exist and time travel isn’t possible, except moving inexorably forward at a rate of one second per second.”
“Alchemy doesn’t work, it can’t make a human immortal.”
“…You sound like you’ve tried. Do I need to leave a copy of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein on your pillow?“
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requested by @niviasthoughts - thank you for approaching me!! I hope this post can help!
The IB Program is hectic enough without having to worry about where your stuff is, when you need it, and how you’re doing. Keeping track of things is pretty much essential for success, because once you get behind it’s difficult to catch up.
I graduated in 2018 with an IB score of 37 out of 45. I started the two years organized and ended even more organized than I thought possible. It’s definitely a program that tests your limits and forces you to surpass or reinvent them.
This is gonna be a pretty long post, so I'm going to put it under the cut.
part one: starting out
It's important that, before you follow through with any of the systems I suggest/inventing your own, you check that your teacher doesn't already have a system set up. In my experience, my teachers' systems have never worked as well as ones that I have determined for myself, because they haven't spent ages and ages developing it just for MY benefit like I have. However, just as life often does to us, you may not have a choice.
Some teachers (and in my experience, the ones I like the least) have a system that they don't just suggest but enforce, and will often take off points in grades such as notebook checks if you don't use their suggested materials/system. There's no way around this, so make absolutely sure you can use your own system on a class-by-class basis to ensure you're getting the best grade you can. Those points add up.
part two: materials
You do not need anything fancy or expensive. All of my stationery is pretty affordable and there are only a couple products I use that I saved for/splurged on. You. do. not. need. fancy. stationery. to. succeed. or! be! a! real! studyblr! say it with me y'all.
I'm not even going to bother to list specific brands because it'll just discourage you from others. I'm going to be as vague as possible. For a reason. Decide for yourself what you like best.
rivkah's very basic IB shopping list
black/blue pens
(trust me, you'll need multiple. I went through a whole pack of 12 THE FIRST SEMESTER of my senior year because I was writing so much.)
a binder and loose leaf paper OR notebook, one for each class
this is entirely up to your personal preference. I prefer to have loose leaf paper because I can rearrange things as I wish (I'm so indecisive and often reorganize). I typically choose 1 inch binders and 4-8 tab dividers. It really depends on the class how I organize these dividers, but they're usually something like classwork/homework/projects/tests/etc.
a colored set of some kind of writing implement
markers, pens, highlighters, it REALLY DOESN'T MATTER as long as you have AT LEAST five colors. I prefer 7-10, because annotating history/english documents requires that you look for a lot of different things. pick whatever works best for you and figure out what your color systems are. it's best to have multiple, especially cross-subject, because your needs may differ depending on the document.
a pencil pouch/supplies organizer
again, whatever fits your preference. I like backpacks with pockets that have little built-in organizers or a pencil pouch that, likewise, has different compartments. I'm one of those people where I like to know EXACTLY where my materials are. I don't like wasting time rifling through a general pouch. if that doesn't bother you, go ahead and get one!
post-it notes
these are so versatile. annotations, reminders, misc notes, anything. I always have multiple colors and sizes on me because I use post-it notes for almost everything, including writing down ideas and reminding myself of deadlines.
planner/bullet journal
digital or paper, doesn't matter. but YOU NEED TO WRITE THINGS DOWN IN IB. don't rely on your memory, because it'll start failing you as soon as you get stressed and busy. also don't worry about spending too much money. I like my bullet journal because if I feel artsy, I can be. If I'm in a hurry, I can keep it minimal. plus I never need to worry about not having enough space to plan. whatever you pick, if it works, stick to it. don't try to have 5 planners because I guarantee you'll just confuse yourself.
misc materials like scissors, glue, white-out, tape, etc
I like to have these on hand just because you never know when you or someone else might need them.
part three: how to integrate these materials/systems
general tips
if something can be done in less than 15 minutes, do it as soon as you can--whether it's at lunch, in extra time at the end of class, or when you first get home.
if it's a large project/assignment, get something down the first day it's assigned. write up a schedule to work on it, or an outline/draft skeleton, or do a little research into what you'd be interested in covering if it's open-ended. something, anything. at the very least, if you don't make progress, it'll cement the assignment in your mind and you won't forget at easily.
do not leave readings to the last minute. they often seem small in comparison to presentations or essays, but they're important.
whenever possible, try to link projects or topics back to your interests. it makes things like the IAs or EE so much easier to write... because the only thing worse than having to write 2000 or 4000 words is having to write 2000 or 4000 words on a topic that puts you to sleep.
utilize your connections with your teachers. in most cases, they want to help and see you succeed. if you have any teachers you're close with, confide in them.
at the very least, if you can't be friendly with them, communicate with them. and suck up a little. because if you're in their good graces, they'll be more understanding when you have your 9th consecutive breakdown or run out of time and can't hand something in. And if they know you're having problems (mentally, socially, in your family, whatever) they can extend their hand to help more. even if it's just one or two teachers, it makes a difference.
set reminders in your phone/calendar for the end of the school day if you have to take a textbook home and you keep it in a locker (hopefully you do, it's bad for your back. IB is bad for your back lmao.) it'll save your life when you start on your way home, exhausted, not remembering. funny how stress makes you totally memory-less.
is a desktop and phone app that has saved my life on numerous occasions. it's more suited for college, but it's really nice because you can track your PROGRESS on assignments, not just on whether you've completed them or not.
obvious, but get sleep and eat good foods. it'll improve your concentration and memory.
it's really tempting when you walk into your room to just dump your stuff somewhere, maybe in a pile. try to make a bin/tray/spot that is specifically for "stuff to be done/sorted/taken care of" and then take care of it nightly.
I know it's often tempting to relax until dinner (at least, if you're like me) and then do your homework after dinner, but please. start your homework as soon as possible once you're home, or before then if you can. you don't have to study every second, but I know I got really tired of seeing 2:30 AM blinking back at me every night.
set your own deadlines and, for the love of all, hold yourself accountable for them.
schedule in at least a half-hour of you time, hopefully in the middle of your homework. you'll forget to have it otherwise and you'll be a zombie. I've been there.
English
stay ahead on readings. see above. if possible/time allowing, read/skim the first time and THEN go back to annotate once you understand what you're looking at. when you notice things the first time, you can start connecting the dots the second.
always know where your books are. have a specific place in your backpack/locker/desk/room. nothing's worse than losing a book you're halfway through and have a paper due.
keep detailed notes for your EA/IOP/IOC. my teacher made us do this thing called "grids" which dissected key symbols/motifs/themes to DEATH, and it was hell, but it helped a lot.
History
again, detailed notes. include not just what happened but why? what were the causes, the events, the effects, and the historical interpretations? this is a fancy little buzz word for "quotes others have on the subject." if you throw even one of these into each of your final papers during senior exams, it boosts your score. my history of the americas teacher never let us forget it. and boy, did I have it in my head by May 2018.
you don't *need* a book for your IA or History EE, but let me tell you, it's hard as hell to get a good score without one. get that deep, deep knowledge bb.
keep things in whatever order works best for you. for my purposes, I always did it chronologically, because I didn't want to jump around too much in an essay. but there's other ways to structure an essay and you need to find what your strong points are.
Spanish/French/etc language
I personally took Spanish. Got a 7 in it, too, so I know how to organize best for this class.
It's INCREDIBLY important that you stay organized in this class, particularly with vocabulary. It's up to you how you want to study and structure your notebook, but leave ample room to write words over and over and over.
You will most likely (assuming your teacher is doing their job) have readings. Devise your own color system, but I typically had three colors for Spanish readings: 1) words I don't know (and later define), 2) vocabulary we learned in class/need to memorize, if applicable, and 3) words I know/need more practice with. You can add/subtract depending on your strength and weakness in the language.
Math
The only class I kept a notebook for, not a binder.
You won't pass just by studying rules. You need to be able to apply them, too, so please keep a section of your notebook/binder for practicing problems. As many as it takes/you have time for.
Keep. All. Your. Tests. I do this for all my classes, but it is VITAL for Math that you're aware of your weaknesses. When it comes down to it, you need to study what you DON'T know, not what you know.
Science
I took Biology. My brother is currently taking Physics.
There will be math in both, just much more in Physics. Follow the rules above for Math when applicable.
Biology was so difficult for me that I rewrote my notes three times. First for studying for the upcoming test, then for the Year 1 "final" my teacher gave, then again for the IB Exams. It's incredibly time-consuming, and might not work for you like it did me. Whatever you do, organize your notes in a way that let you understand difficult concepts in a step-by-step order. IB Bio and Physics are super step-by-step and if you go out of order, you lose points.
Art
I took art, not psychology, so I'm sorry I can't help for psych. But I was basically on my own for art because my teacher was not up-to-date NOR ORGANIZED AT ALL. I had to do all the research myself for the rules before I could even start my work. And I had to do it all senior year, because she wouldn't let me start as a junior.
honestly, I could write a whole separate post just on this subject.
make sure your stuff is neat and in black pen. especially for your process portfolio, that's the only way they'll grade it. I did my Comparative Study on the computer.
TOK Presentation/TOK Essay/IAs/EE
I didn't mention this in the material list, but I was so paranoid about losing materials necessary for my History IA and EE that I literally had 2 folders, one for each of them, JUST devoted to all of the papers that were thrown at me for them.
I was instructed to keep one for my EA by my English teacher, AND I had another kept my grids (used to study for the EA) in a separate folder too.
This is completely optional, but I found it really helpful in making sure I knew where I was with all of my assignments. You could easily substitute all these folders for an accordian binder, it whatever works best for you.
Okay, I've covered all of the subjects I took and major assignments, as well as the general organizational tips. There's still so much more, but this is the bulk of what I did and what I remember. If any of you want to see anything on one of these subjects specifically, please reach out to me! And as always: IB is scary and confusing, as well as incredibly fast-paced, but it isn't impossible and you're not alone. My messages and inbox are always open if you need anything.
#international baccalaureate#ib#ibdp#ib program#my posts#rivkahstudies#my advice#my ib life#niviasthoughts#studyblr#ib studyblr#ib graduate#saylorlook#pinetreelookie#student-succulent#gloomstudy#jennystudy#ibthereforeicry#heypat#thekingsstudy
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Jitish Kallat’s new show: A message into space and a 60 feet painting - art and culture
For contemporary Indian artist Jitish Kallat, who has traversed a range of mediums in his artistic practice, it is always the idea that has driven the form and material of the artwork.Kallat, who is returning to Bombay with a solo exhibition after five years, said while he does not prefer a particular medium, his choices are defined by his “initial impulse”.The show - “Terranium Nuncius” at Mumbai’s Famous Studios that opened on Friday, features two of his major works - a new photographic and sound based installation titled “Covering Letter” (Terranum Nuncius), and a mixed media painting on linen called “Ellipsis”. The latter is his largest painting to date.“As an artist my mediumistic choices are defined by the initial impulse and I do not privilege one over the other, making both the pixel and the pencil equally potent within the studio. “It is always the idea that has driven the form and material,” Kallat told PTI in an email interview.As a result, his over two decade-long artistic career has seen it all - from paintings, and large-scale sculptures, to photographs, installations, and videos. So, while a work like “Hue Saturation” (2012) becomes a video, “Public Notice 3” (2010) is made of 70,000 light bulbs on the stairs of a museum, and descending rain drops etch an image of the cosmos in the Rain Study (2017) drawings.“Terranium Nuncius”, which is the second instalment in his ‘Covering Letter’ series, showcases the artist’s persistent interest in the epistolary mode.While the first work in the series, created in 2012, and showcased at Philadelphia Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney and the Venice Biennale, re-cited a historic letter from Gandhi to Hitler on a curtain of mist, the latest installation “foregrounds a message that goes from us, a planet, to an unknown other, an interstellar alien”.He draws from the two phonographic Golden Records that were hoisted onto the legendary Voyager 1 and 2 space probes launched by NASA in 1977.“Adjusting the focal length and distance at which one views the world, in time or in space, alters the manner in which we interpret the now and immediate. As an artist and as an observer of reality this element runs through much of my work,” Kallat, who curated the Kochi-Muziris Biennale in 2014, said.As part of the artwork, the gallery, which is permeated with the sound of greetings to the universe in 55 languages, houses a large round table with over a hundred backlit 3-D photographic transparencies placed on it.To create them, Kallat has referenced the images decoded by Ron Barry, a US-based software engineer, who had converted the sound clips on the Golden Records into images, as if they were accessed by an extra-terrestrial who would have to follow a similar procedure to view the images.These images ranged from scientific and cosmological diagrams, representations of our genetic make-up and anatomy, as well as other life forms, and architecture, often annotated with measurements.“This is a presentation of ‘our’ world to an unknown other. At a time when we find ourselves in a deeply divided world, Kallat foregrounds these sounds and images for a collective meditation on ourselves as united residents of a single planet, where the ‘other’ is an unknown ‘intergalactic alien’,” Nature Morte, one of the galleries representing Kallat, said in a statement.The artist, however, clarified that his interest in these space probes, and the contents of the Golden Record did not stem from a technological and scientific perspective, but more from a “philosophical and symbolic dimension of what they represent”.“The probes point to a deep human need to expand and explore the distant and the inconceivable, while the contents of the Golden Record reveals the fundamental human need to communicate. The contents of the record convey evidence of our presence on this planet to an unknown, space-faring alien other.“The two Voyagers and the Golden Record will most likely outlast us as a species and our planet, as well as our entire solar system. They remind us of our collective mortality and our collective journey on a tiny planet in an obscure corner of an ever expanding universe,” Kallat said.In ‘Ellipsis’, Kallat uses the “vocabulary of paint” to have a go at “forms that point to some of the mysterious aspects of our reality and let them emerge through pigment and abstraction”.“I think at the heart of ‘Ellipsis’ is this impulse to find forms and imagery that go beyond my own perception. I paint and then I watch what I’ve painted,” he said.The 45-year-old artist took two years to paint the 60 feet abstract work, the ideas behind which, he said, have been long standing inquiries but directed through a “deeply probing painterly process”.“I returned back to painting after a gap of close to five years in 2017. While working on specific canvases in 2018, parallelly I began making marks and gestures on various other canvases. These fragments began to grow slowly, gather momentum and materialise as form, converging as clusters of speculative abstractions.“Over the past several months these images slowly began to coalesce into a single painting titled ‘Ellipsis’. I followed the impulses as they emerged from the canvases, letting a mark or a stain direct the course of the next gesture... evocations of the bodily, the botanical, the sub-oceanic and the intergalactic all intermingle and exchange energies,” he said.While the exhibition in Mumbai is set to continue till January 22, “Covering Letter” (Terranum Nuncius) will later travel to the Frist Art Museum, Nashville (US) for Kallat’s first solo show there. (This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text)Follow more stories on Facebook and Twitter Read the full article
#abstract#abstractart#acrylicpaint#ArtandCulture#artgallery#artsupplies#artist#artwork#Culture#howgreatthouart#howgreatthouartlyrics#modernart#paint#popart#wallart#watercolor#whatisliberalarts
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iOS 11 is about to arrive—and here's what's in it
yahoo
If Apple’s (AAPL) usual annual schedule is any guide, then Tuesday, September 12 won’t just be the day we get new iPhone models. It will also be the day —or at least the countdown to the day—we get a new version of the iPhone system software, which will run on several years’ worth of older iPhone models. This year, it’s going to be called iOS 11.
It won’t bring you any one big-ticket feature. Instead, you’ll get a wholllllle lot of tiny nips and tucks. They seem to fall into five categories: Nice Tweaks, Storage Help, iPad Exclusives, Playing Catch-Up, Fixing Bad Design.
Here’s what you have to look forward to!
Nice Tweaks
Expectations set? OK—here’s what’s new.
A new voice for Siri. The new male and female voices sound much more like actual people.
One-handed typing. There’s a new keyboard that scoots closer to one side, for easier one-handed typing. (You can now zoom in Maps one-handed, too.)
The new one-handed keyboard.
Quicker transfer. When you get a new iPhone, you can import all your settings from the old one just by focusing the camera on the new phone on the old one’s screen.
Do not disturb while driving. This optional feature sounds like a really good one. When the phone detects that you’re driving—because it’s connected to your phone’s Bluetooth, or because the phone detects motion—it prevents any notifications (alert messages from your apps) from showing up to distract you. If someone texts you, they get an auto-response like, “I’m driving. I’ll see your message when I get where I’m going.” (You can designate certain people as VIPs; if they text the word “urgent” to you, their messages break through the blockade.)
No more distracting notifications while you’re on the road.
Improvements to Photos. The Photos app offers smarter auto-slideshows (called Memories). Among other improvements, they now play well even when you’re holding the phone upright.
Improvements to Live Photos. Live Photos are weird, three-second video clips, which Apple (AAPL) introduced in iOS 9. In iOS 11, you can now shorten one, or mute its audio, or extract a single frame from that clip to use as a still photo. The phone can also suggest a “boomerang” segment (bounces back and forth) or a loop (repeats over and over). And it has a new Slow Shutter filter, which (for example) blurs a babbling brook or stars moving across the sky, as though taken with a long exposure.
Swipe the Lock screen back down. You can now get back to your Lock screen without actually locking your iPhone—to have another look at a notification you missed, for example.
Smarter Siri. Siri does better an anticipating your next move (location, news, calendar appointments). When you’re typing, the auto-suggestions above the keyboard now offer movie names, song names, or place names that you’ve recently viewed in other apps. Auto-suggestions in Siri, too, include terms you’ve recently read. And if you book a flight or buy a ticket online, iOS offers to add it to your calendar.
AirPlay 2. If you buy speakers from Bose, Marantz, and a few other manufactures (unfortunately, not Sonos), you can use your phone to control multi-room audio. You can start the same song playing everywhere, or play different songs in different rooms.
Shared “Up Next” playlist. If you’re an Apple Music subscriber, your party guests or buddies can throw their own “what song to play next” ideas into the ring.
Screen recording. Now you can do more than just take a screenshot of what’s on your screen. You can make a video of it! Man, will that be helpful for people who teach or review phone software! (Apple didn’t say how you start the screen recording, though.)
Storage Help
Running out of room on the iPhone is a chronic problem. Apple has a few features designed to help:
Camera app. Apple is adopting new file formats for photos (HEIF, or High Efficiency Image Format) and videos (H265 or High Efficiency Video Codec), which look the same as they did before but consume only the half the space. (When you export to someone else, they convert to standard formats.)
Messages in iCloud. When you sign into any new Mac, iPhone, or iPad with your iCloud credentials, your entire texting history gets downloaded automatically. (As it is now, when you sign in on a new machine, you can’t see the Message transcript histories.) Saving the Messages history online also saves disk space on your Mac.
Storage optimization. The idea: As your phone begins to run out of space, your oldest files are quietly and automatically stored online, leaving Download icons in their places on your phone, so that you can retrieve them if you need them.
iPad Exclusives
Many of the biggest changes in iOS 11 are available only on the iPad.
Mac features. In general, the big news here is the iPad behaves much more like a Mac. For example, you can drag-and-drop pictures and text between apps. The Dock is now extensible, available from within any app, and perfect for switching apps, just as on the Mac. There’s a new Mission Control-type feature, too, for seeing what’s in your open apps—even when you’ve split the screen between pairs of apps.
The iPad now offers a “Mission Control,” showing what’s going on in all your apps.
Punctuation and letters on the same keyboard. Now, punctuation symbols appear above the letter keys. You flick down on the key to “type” the punctuation—no more having to switch keyboard layouts.
No more switching keyboards just to type punctuation.
A file manager! A new app called Files lets you work with (and search) files and folders, just as you do on the Mac or PC. It even shows your Box and Dropbox files.
A Finder–a desktop–comes at last to iOS.
Pencil features. If you’ve bought Apple’s stylus, you can tap the Lock screen and start taking notes right away. You can mark up PDFs just by starting to write on them. A new feature lets you snap a document with the iPad’s camera, which straightens and crops the page so that you can sign it or annotate it. Handwriting in the Notes app is now searchable, and you can make drawings within any Note or email message.
The iPad grows ever closer to becoming a legal pad.
Playing Catch-Up
With every new OS from Google (GOOG, GOOGL), Microsoft (MSFT), or Apple, there’s a set of “us, too!” features that keeps them all competitive. This time around, it’s:
Lane guidance. When you’re driving, Maps now lets you know which lane to be in for your next turn, just as Google Maps does.
Lane guidance. At last.
Indoor Maps. The Maps app can now show you floor plans for a few malls and 30 airports, just as Google Maps does.
Siri translates languages. Siri is trying to catch up to Google Assistant. For example, it can now translate phrases from English into Chinese, French, German, Italian, or Spanish. For example, you can say, “How do you say ‘Where’s the bathroom?’ in French?”
Siri understands followup questions. Siri now does better at understanding followup questions. (“Who won the World Series in 1980?” “The “Phillies.” “Who was their coach?”)
Person-to-Person payment within the Messages app. Now, you can send payments directly to your friends—your share of the pizza bill, for example—right from within the Messages app, much as people do now with Venmo, PayPal, and their its ilk. (Of course, this works only if your friends have iPhones, too.) When money comes to you, it accrues to a new, virtual Apple Pay Cash Card; from there, you can send it to your bank, buy things with it, or send it on to other people.
Send payments directly to your friends.
iCloud file sharing. Finally, you can share files you’ve stored on your iCloud Drive with other people, just as you’ve been able to do with Dropbox for years.
Fixing Bad Design
Some of the changes repair the damage Apple made to itself in iOS 10. For example:
Redesigned apps drawer in Messages. All the stuff they added to Messages last year (stickers, apps, live drawing) cluttered up the design and wound up getting ignored by lots of people. The new design is cleaner.
Redesigned Control Center. In iOS 10, Apple split up the iPhone’s quick-settings panel, called the Control Center, into two or three panels. You had to swipe sideways to find the control you wanted—taking care not to swipe sideways on one of the controls, thereby triggering it. Now it’s all on one screen again, although some of the buttons open up secondary screens of options. And it’s customizable! You can, for example, add a “Record voice memo” button to it.
The new, customizable, somewhat ugly Control Center.
App Store. The App store gets a big redesign. One chief fix is breaking out Games into its own tab, so that game and non-game bestseller lists are kept separate.
After nine years, the App Store gets a new look.
Coming very soon
There are also dozens of improvements to the features for overseas iPhones (China, Russia, India, for example). And many, many enhancements to features for the disabled (spoken captions for videos and pictures, for example).
So what’s the overarching theme of the iOS 11 upgrade?
There isn’t one. It’s just a couple hundred little fine-tunings. All of them welcome—and all of them aimed to keep you trapped within Apple’s growing ecosystem.
More from David Pogue:
MacOS High Sierra comes this fall—and brings these 23 features
T-Mobile COO: Why we make investments like free Netflix that ‘seem crazy’
How Apple’s iPhone has improved since its 2007 debut
Gulliver’s Gate is a $40 million world of miniatures in Times Square
The 5 best new features of this week’s YouTube redesign
Samsung’s Bixby voice assistant is ambitious, powerful, and half-baked
Is through-the-air charging a hoax?
David Pogue, tech columnist for Yahoo Finance, is the author of “iPhone: The Missing Manual.” He welcomes nontoxic comments in the comments section below. On the web, he’s davidpogue.com. On Twitter, he’s @pogue. On email, he’s [email protected]. You can read all his articles here, or you can sign up to get his columns by email.
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The 27 most interesting new features in iOS 11
Tim Cook, CEO, holds an iPad Pro after his keynote address to Apple’s annual world wide developer conference (WWDC) in San Jose, California, U.S. June 5, 2017. REUTERS/Stephen Lam
If there were one big lesson from the announcements at Apple’s developer conference Monday morning, it’s this: It’s getting harder and harder to add Big New Features to a phone operating system.
When iOS 11, the new, free iPhone/iPad OS upgrade comes this fall, you won’t gain any big-ticket feature. Instead, you’ll get a wholllllle lot of tiny nips and tucks. They seem to fall into five categories: Nice Tweaks, Storage Help, iPad Exclusives, Playing Catch-Up, Fixing Bad Design.
Nice Tweaks
Expectations set? OK—here’s what’s new.
A new voice for Siri. The new male and female voices sound much more like actual people.
One-handed typing. There’s a new keyboard that scoots closer to one side, for easier one-handed typing. (You can now zoom in Maps one-handed, too.)
The new one-handed keyboard.
Quicker transfer. When you get a new iPhone, you can import all your settings from the old one just by focusing the camera on the new phone on the old one’s screen.
Do not disturb while driving. This optional feature sounds like a really good one. When the phone detects that you’re driving—because it’s connected to your phone’s Bluetooth, or because the phone detects motion—it prevents any notifications (alert messages from your apps) from showing up to distract you. If someone texts you, they get an auto-response like, “I’m driving. I’ll see your message when I get where I’m going.” (You can designate certain people as VIPs; if they text the word “urgent” to you, their messages break through the blockade.)
No more distracting notifications while you’re on the road.
Improvements to Photos. The Photos app offers smarter auto-slideshows (called Memories). Among other improvements, they now play well even when you’re holding the phone upright.
Improvements to Live Photos. Live Photos are weird, three-second video clips, which Apple (AAPL) introduced in iOS 9. In iOS 11, you can now shorten one, or mute its audio, or extract a single frame from that clip to use as a still photo. The phone can also suggest a “boomerang” segment (bounces back and forth) or a loop (repeats over and over). And it has a new Slow Shutter filter, which (for example) blurs a babbling brook or stars moving across the sky, as though taken with a long exposure.
Swipe the Lock screen back down. You can now get back to your Lock screen without actually locking your iPhone—to have another look at a notification you missed, for example.
Smarter Siri. Siri does better an anticipating your next move (location, news, calendar appointments). When you’re typing, the auto-suggestions above the keyboard now offer movie names, song names, or place names that you’ve recently viewed in other apps. Auto-suggestions in Siri, too, include terms you’ve recently read. And if you book a flight or buy a ticket online, iOS offers to add it to your calendar.
AirPlay 2. If you buy speakers from Bose, Marantz, and a few other manufactures (unfortunately, not Sonos), you can use your phone to control multi-room audio. You can start the same song playing everywhere, or play different songs in different rooms.
Shared “Up Next” playlist. If you’re an Apple Music subscriber, your party guests or buddies can throw their own “what song to play next” ideas into the ring.
Screen recording. Now you can do more than just take a screenshot of what’s on your screen. You can make a video of it! Man, will that be helpful for people who teach or review phone software! (Apple didn’t say how you start the screen recording, though.)
Storage Help
Running out of room on the iPhone is a chronic problem. Apple has a few features designed to help:
Camera app. Apple is adopting new file formats for photos (HEIF, or High Efficiency Image Format) and videos (H265 or High Efficiency Video Codec), which look the same as they did before but consume only the half the space. (When you export to someone else, they convert to standard formats.)
Messages in iCloud. When you sign into any new Mac, iPhone, or iPad with your iCloud credentials, your entire texting history gets downloaded automatically. (As it is now, you can’t see the Message transcript history with someone on a new machine.) Saving the Messages history online also saves disk space on your Mac.
Storage optimization. The idea: As your phone begins to run out of space, your oldest files are quietly and automatically stored online, leaving Download icons in their places on your phone, so that you can retrieve them if you need them.
iPad Exclusives
Many of the biggest changes in iOS 11 are available only on the iPad.
Mac features. In general, the big news here is the iPad behaves much more like a Mac. For example, you can drag-and-drop pictures and text between apps. The Dock is now extensible, available from within any app, and perfect for switching apps, just as on the Mac. There’s a new Mission Control-type feature, too, for seeing what’s in your open apps—even when you’ve split the screen between pairs of apps.
The iPad now offers a “Mission Control,” showing what’s going on in all your apps.
Punctuation and letters on the same keyboard. Now, punctuation symbols appear above the letter keys. You flick down on the key to “type” the punctuation—no more having to switch keyboard layouts.
No more switching keyboards just to type punctuation.
A file manager! A new app called Files lets you work with (and search) files and folders, just as you do on the Mac or PC. It even shows your Box and Dropbox files.
A Finder–a desktop–comes at last to iOS.
Pencil features. If you’ve bought Apple’s stylus, you can tap the Lock screen and start taking notes right away. You can mark up PDFs just by starting to write on them. A new feature lets you snap a document with the iPad’s camera, which straightens and crops the page so that you can sign it or annotate it. Handwriting in the Notes app is now searchable, and you can make drawings within any Note or email message.
The iPad grows ever closer to becoming a legal pad.
Playing Catch-Up
With every new OS from Google (GOOG, GOOGL), Microsoft (MSFT), or Apple, there’s a set of “us, too!” features that keeps them all competitive. This time around, it’s:
Lane guidance. When you’re driving, Maps now lets you know which lane to be in for your next turn, just as Google Maps does.
Lane guidance. At last.
Indoor Maps. The Maps app can now show you floor plans for a few malls and 30 airports, just as Google Maps does.
Siri translates languages. Siri is trying to catch up to Google Assistant. For example, it can now translate phrases from English into Chinese, French, German, Italian, or Spanish. For example, you can say, “How do you say ‘Where’s the bathroom?’ in French?”
Siri understands followup questions. Siri now does better at understanding followup questions. (“Who won the World Series in 1980?” “The “Phillies.” “Who was their coach?”)
Person-to-Person payment within the Messages app. Now, you can send payments directly to your friends—your share of the pizza bill, for example—right from within the Messages app, much as people do now with Venmo, PayPal, and their its ilk. (Of course, this works only if your friends have iPhones, too.) When money comes to you, it accrues to a new, virtual Apple Pay Cash Card; from there, you can send it to your bank, buy things with it, or send it on to other people.
iCloud file sharing. Finally, you can share files you’ve stored on your iCloud Drive with other people, just as you’ve been able to do with Dropbox for years.
Fixing Bad Design
Some of the changes repair the damage Apple made to itself in iOS 10. For example:
Redesigned apps drawer in Messages. All the stuff they added to Messages last year (stickers, apps, live drawing) cluttered up the design and wound up getting ignored by lots of people. The new design is cleaner.
Redesigned Control Center. In iOS 10, Apple split up the iPhone’s quick-settings panel, called the Control Center, into two or three panels. You had to swipe sideways to find the control you wanted—taking care not to swipe sideways on one of the controls, thereby triggering it. Now it’s all on one screen again, although some of the buttons open up secondary screens of options. And it’s customizable! You can, for example, add a “Record voice memo” button to it.
The new, customizable, somewhat ugly Control Center.
App Store. The App store gets a big redesign. One chief fix is breaking out Games into its own tab, so that game and non-game bestseller lists are kept separate.
After nine years, the App Store gets a new look.
Coming this fall
There are also dozens of improvements to the features for overseas iPhones (China, Russia, India, for example). And many, many enhancements to features for the disabled (spoken captions for videos and pictures, for example).
So what’s the overarching theme of the iOS 11 upgrade?
There isn’t one. It’s just a couple hundred little fine-tunings. All of them welcome—and all of them aimed to keep you trapped within Apple’s growing ecosystem.
More from David Pogue:
Inside the World’s Greatest Scavenger Hunt: Part 1 • Part 2 • Part 3 • Part 4 • Part 5
The DJI Spark is the smallest, cheapest obstacle-avoiding drone yet
The new Samsung Galaxy does 27 things the iPhone doesn’t
The most important announcements from Google’s big developer’s conference
Google Home’s mastermind has no intention of losing to Amazon
Now I get it: Ransomware
Google exec explains how Google Assistant just got smarter
Amazon’s Alexa calling is like a Jetsons version of the home phone
David Pogue, tech columnist for Yahoo Finance, welcomes nontoxic comments in the comments section below. On the web, he’s davidpogue.com. On Twitter, he’s @pogue. On email, he’s [email protected]. You can read all his articles here, or you can sign up to get his columns by email.
#tech#Pogue#David Pogue#_lmsid:a077000000BAh3wAAD#$GOOGL#_revsp:yahoofinance.com#$MSFT#$GOOG#$AAPL#_uuid:d0427da1-69d7-3791-9d1f-0f3527c3cedc#_author:David Pogue
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