#My internet on my ipad is a BIT better but my internet was generally worse earlier

[venacoeurva]

I can’t make a new post in the tumblr app BUT if I long hold the app I get the Post/message/need passcode/etc. options and can post from there. ok tumblr thanks great app functionality guys

[shannygoatgruff]

Only Fan(s) - A Thriller

Genre: Thriller

Pairing: Modern Ivar/OC

Warning: Language, sex, stalking, obsession, kidnapping, sexual assault

Rating: MA+18

Summary: Sometimes OnlyFans subscribers want a little more than internet pictures. Sometimes they want to be your ONLY fan…

Header by: @flowers-in-your-hayr

Thanks to @xbellaxcarolinax for being my beta.

Disclaimer: This story will deal with some topics that might be a little uncomfortable for some people. As always, I’ll try to tackle the hard stuff as tactfully as possible.

a/n: I know it’s been a minute. I’m always thinking about these stories because I want to finish them, just can’t seem to focus on writing at the moment.  Anyway, hope you enjoy.

Part iv - Date with Destiny

Finding Ivar Lothbrok should have been easy. Between the two of them, he was the stable one. He was the one with the iron-clad schedule that consisted of drinking, smoking, and partying. Torren’s schedule was a bit more... fluid. She tended to go wherever the wind, or whatever car she acquired, would take her. Naturally, Ivar had the occasional meet-and-greet, red carpet, and/or Comic-con engagement that he had to attend, still, he was pretty easy to keep tabs on. All one had to do was look at (stalk) his social media accounts, and his whereabouts were posted for everyone to see.

Knowing where he’d be and finding out where he lived were a different story. Torren had done her due diligence when it came to locating the town in which Little Kattegat was located. It only took about two days and a few Google image searches of the background of a few of the photos and she had it narrowed down to a general area in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

From what she could tell, the closest town to where he lived was pretty small, and there were only a few large estates hidden in the woods. How hard could it be to find? She was willing to drive to every single house and knock on the door to find him if she had to. But it would just be easier if there was loud music and a bunch of cars in the driveway. That way she could tag along inside with the rest of the guests to get to her man. 

Her shirt landed in the pile of dirty clothes in the center of the bed, as she reached around to unhook her bra. “I really need to tell Baby Boo to stop putting all of his business out in these streets,” her brows furrowed as she shook her head, “What if some crazy, psycho bitch started stalking him, or some shit? Then I’d have to kill a bitch.” Torren’s head whipped around and she narrowed her eyes at his picture, still stuck on her wall, “Is that what you want? Huh? You want me to cut a bitch to prove to you how much I love you? I will, Bae! You know I would do anything for you. I’m your Ride or Die...” 

And being his Ride or Die meant that she needed to keep better tabs on him if she was going to protect him from someone crazier than her, God forbid.  She was only able to do so much on this prepaid phone, and going to the library to get online was becoming a pain in the ass. 

She’d considered stealing a laptop or iPad from the library but was still on the fence about the idea. Of course, the alternative meant going to stupid ass libraries and threatening little kids to get off the fucking computers, and that completely sucked ass. 

She always felt rushed when she logged onto her Bae’s Only Fans page from the public library. Without fail one of those little bastard kids would get the library Nazis to kick her off the computer, or bar her from the library altogether for watching porn. 

Ivar’s page wasn’t porn! It was art. It was sexy. It was love...his love for her. Stupid bitches. 

She had encountered far worse things than getting kicked out of the library, but some of these small towns usually only had one or two within their county limits. If she got banned, how was she supposed to check up on Ivar? In the time it took to log in until she got kicked out, she'd be lucky if she could check 2 of his accounts. What if he had some important information on another platform that she hadn’t checked yet? What was she supposed to do then?

Her relationship with Ivar was hanging in the balance, and she'd be damned if some snot-nosed kid or fucking uptight librarian would fuck that up. She needed a computer. But, on the flip side, when she finally got her man back, she wouldn't need one anymore. She could ask him directly what their plans were.

There was a lot to consider and that took time; time that she didn't have right now.

The thick layer of Nair shaving cream she had applied to her already hairless crotch, was just starting to tingle, signaling she had about 5 minutes left before the sweat-inducing, burning sensation would kick in alerting her to wash the cream off. Until then, she had time to consider an outfit for the night.

She knew Ivar well enough to know that he would want her to be sexy for him, but not so much to distract him from work. She could have gone for something slutty, like those skanky bitches he partied with. She could have gone for more demur, but then she would remind him too much of his bitch ex-wife and completely turn him off. The last thing she wanted on their first night back together was for him to be thinking about that bitch. She could have gone for a simple pair of jeans and a t-shirt, but Torren never did simple. 

No, Ivar would want her to be herself. That's what he loved about her. That's what attracted him to her in the first place. She would be sexy without being skanky; she would be demure without being a prude.

Fuck! It was already 7:33 p.m. How in the hell did she miss the beginning of his Live? Now she was running late.

She was supposed to be dressed and ready by the time his Live came on that way she could be out the door as soon as he finished. If she was going to make it to be on his Only Fans live stream tonight, she needed to get to his house before he got too distracted. Now, she’d have to watch his Live, while her cooch burst into flames before she had a chance to take a shower and finish picking out her outfit.

If there was one thing Torren was, it was punctual. It was bad enough that she was about 40 minutes outside of his town, but it could take her up to 2 or more hours to find his house. She only hoped that he didn’t plan on starting any real freaky shit on his Only Fans page until around midnight, cause it looked like she wouldn’t be getting there before then, anyway.  

With the smile still plastered on her face, Torren turned on the hot water for a shower, forgetting that the water didn’t get hot. She didn't mind, much, especially since the cold water gave her a break from the heat in her room. 

Phone in hand, she watched him, as she planted herself on the dirty bathtub floor, cross-legged, and started to get herself ready. Starting with her toes, she shaved each one, just below the knuckle, followed by her fingers, arms, pits, and each leg, from groin to ankle, three times. When the burning from her nether regions was so intense that she couldn’t tell her tears from the shower water dripping on her face, she quickly washed off the cream. 

All she could do was hope that she hadn’t broken the skin this time. The last time she had let that damn Nair stay on, just past burning, the skin broke and she bled. She was not having a bloody hoo-ha tonight. 

With that taken care of, she gently used the razor to remove any other pubes closer to the inside that needed to be removed. Then shaved her backside. When she had more time, she was going to get the internal hairs bleached, but she needed to find out what Ivar preferred. 

Shaving ate up so much of her time that she only had a few seconds to rub some body-wash that she had stolen from a drug store over her body and hoped it got rid of the smell of the summer heat. Her hair? Fuck it...she’d wash it another day, for now, this cold water would have to be enough. She’d spritz some perfume and hair spray in it and it would smell fine. 

Torren finished her shower, and walked out of the bathroom dripping wet, only using a towel to wrap around her hair. She was glad it was so hot in her room that her hair would air-dry quickly. She finger-combed her damp tresses to complete that ‘just got out of bed, but it's styled’ appearance. She knew how much he loved when her hair looked like that. It would remind him of freshly fucked hair. 

She spent extra time applying her makeup, even using an extra dark, thick application of eyeliner. She usually went for more subtle warm colors. They matched her tan skin tone better. But, tonight, she had bold, dark makeup, complete with varying shades of purple and blue eye shadows, and dark purple lipstick.

Torren was glad that she decided to match Ivar’s clothes this evening. The swim trunks and smoking jacket he wore would compliment her beautifully. She wanted everyone to know that they dressed alike, the way real couples do. If he was going for less is more, so would she.

She settled on black leather chaps that tied up on the sides, and tight blue boy shorts that left the bottom half of her ass cheeks exposed. The blue shorts brought out the blue swirls in his trunks; she knew he'd appreciate that touch. Her top was a blue bandanna that she wore as a halter with a short black leather jacket with tassels on the sleeves. 

They screamed “couple” in her eyes.

Completely satisfied with how she looked, Torren locked the door to her motel room and started down the hall. She deliberately stopped by the window and peered through the partially opened blinds of the people staying next door to her. She knocked on the window to get the attention of the young couple inside. Judging from their appearance, they were too strung out to know who she was, or that it was her music that they constantly banged on the wall about. She didn’t care. She still flipped them off before making her way to the stairs. 

Reaching her hand through the busted window of the blue Ford Taurus to unlock the door from the inside. Torren slid into the driver's seat and leaned over to find the two cords that she had pulled out from under the steering column when she stole the car. Flicking the cords together, she listened as the engine reluctantly turned over.

She put the car in reverse, looked in the rear-view mirror at her makeup, then pulled out of the spot. As she turned onto the road leading to the highway, she listened to the knocks, bumps, and hisses that her car made. There wasn't time to do much about it now; not when she was on her way to get her man. But, she made a mental note to do something about it later in the week. The only thing she could do was turn the music up louder to drown out the car noise.

Truthfully, she should have stolen a better car than the piece of shit Taurus that she found in the parking lot of the Quickie Mart while driving through Tulsa, Oklahoma. There were plenty of better cars there to choose from but no one would have wanted to take this one. It was so sad looking that she took pity on it. She had been doing the owner of this crap car a favor, by taking it off of their hands. 

The car was truly fucked. The oil light stayed on, and it drank gas like her mother drank liquor. The car had protested every inch of the ride across the three states that she traveled through in one day. She knew that it would only be a matter of time before that piece of shit breathed its last breath.

She needed to get gas again, but fuck that car. She had already refueled four times since she stole it. Gas wasn't cheap and she wasn't putting another dime in that gas guzzler. Speaking of money, she made a mental note to steal another credit card. It would only be a matter of time before the owner of the one that was tucked snugly between her left breast and strapless bra, would eventually realize that it had been lifted from the table in the diner, and canceled.

Laptop, butt bleaching, car, credit card, and more eyeliner from Walgreen's…her To-Do list was growing. She really needed to take some time off and take care of the necessities. Not tonight, though. She had other things to do. She couldn't do anything else, right now, but get to her man. Besides, once Lothbrok was by her side, he would help her remember all the things she needed to do.

As she came off of the highway exit smoke started billowing out from the engine. It backed up through the exhaust system, and came through the vents, inside the cabin. It was ironic – the air-conditioning vents in the car didn't work, but they seemed to work well enough to clog the inside of the car up with thick white smoke. She drove a few more miles before the smoke was so thick that she could no longer see. As she pulled the car over to the graveled shoulder of the road, the car knocked and shook, before it finally cut off.

Just her fucking luck.

She reached under the dash to flick the cords against each other again, trying to force the ignition to catch again, but it wouldn't. The engine had nothing left to give her. "Fuck Murphy and fuck his fucking law," she said calmly as she pulled the hood release.

She opened the car door, taking care to place both black, platform boots on the ground before lifting her backside from the seat. Placing her sunglasses on her eyes, she walked with one foot in front of the other to the front of the Taurus and placed her hand on the hood. It was hot, but not so hot that she couldn't feel under the front of the lever.

As she lifted the heavy metal hood and placed the rod in the slot to hold it in place, Torren let the smoke from the engine engulf her. It was quite a head rush breathing in the thick engine smoke through her nose, and exhaling it from her mouth. She patiently waited for the smoke to thin out before she bent, at the waist, over the engine. She didn't know what she was looking for, but she knew that someone would see her looking over the engine and stop to help her.

Now, if only someone would actually come down this dark stretch of road, she could be back on her way to Ivar.

It didn't take long before a pair of headlights rounded the bend of the road, just off to her right. Shifting her weight from one foot to the other, she accentuated the leather, chaps against her hips, and lifted her ass higher in the air, to catch the driver's attention. She couldn't help but smirk when she heard the tires of a large vehicle turn onto the graveled pavement in front of where she broke down. She didn't turn to face the car or the driver. She didn't care who they were or what they looked like. She had an appointment to keep and this pit stop was fucking up her timetable.

"You need some help?" A deep voice asked as its owner approached her.

Torren took a moment to peer around the hood, noticing that there were no other cars around. "Broke down," she answered, continuing to bear her weight from one hip to the other. She placed her hands on the metal frame of the car, arched her back, and looked at the man over her shoulder. "You know something about cars?"

"Yeah," he replied, moving around to her side, looking at her, and not the smoky engine.

She gave him half a smile, as she noticed him notice her. "You a mechanic or something?" She asked standing up. She rubbed her hands together to remove some of the visible engine soot while considering the guy in front of her. He was about 6 feet tall with a moderate build. He was dressed in blue jeans, a black t-shirt, and Timberland boots. He didn't look like he was more than 25 years old. Judging from the way he was looking at her and from the ring on his left hand, he wasn't too worried about her car, or his wife, for that matter.

"Nah, not a mechanic, but I work on my own car... in my spare time." He smiled when she did. She was gorgeous, in that slutty kind of way. She wouldn't be dressed like that and leaning over the hood of a car if she wasn't looking to have some fun. "Lemme take a look at it."

Did he work on his car? Hopefully, that meant that his ran better than hers did.

Torren moved over to the side and let him take the position under the hood. "I'll be right back," he explained before walking over to the bed of his F150.

Grabbing a flashlight from the trunk, he took a second to admire the view of her, from behind. If he could get her car moving again, she would hopefully follow him to this cheap motel he knew that was just up the highway.

He leaned in close, taking a whiff of her hair, "You overheated…want to check the coolant level."

She had heard him say something else but she had stopped listening; she was too busy watching the street. "You want me to try to start it?" she asked, removing her sunglasses before making her way to the driver's door. She wasn't sure if he answered or not. She had no intention of driving the Taurus again, even if he could get it started. She just needed to get something out of the car.

She slid into the seat and reached down on the floor. She found the hard metal object on the floor of the passenger's side and gripped it tightly. As she walked back around to the front of the car, she heard him talking, presumably about the car, or maybe he was asking her out. Who the fuck knows? She was on a tight schedule and all of his chatting was holding her up. She stood by the side of the hood, looking at the angle he was leaning over the hood. Quickly, she lifted her arm, and with one powerful blow, she struck him in the head with the crowbar that she used to procure her now-defunct car.

Torren stood over his body, looking at him intensely. God, it felt good. The rush of knowing that one minute this dude was towering over her, and the next he was on the ground. She had dropped his ass. She was the one with the power.

 "Thanks," she said, digging her hand in his pocket to retrieve his cash, credit card, and the keys to his truck. She wiped the blood on the crowbar on his shirt before walking to her new mode of transportation.

Torren sat in the truck's driver's seat and turned on the engine. She had managed to cross two things off of her To-Do list without even planning to.

Thank God the truck had air conditioning. All this heat and humidity was bound to make her hair frizzy. She cranked the AC up as high as it would go and sat still for a moment enjoying the cool air. After a minute, she adjusted the seat and tilted the rearview mirror to look at herself. She was starting to sweat and her eyeliner was starting to run just a bit at the corners of her eyes. She dabbed at the black liner to even out the lines, and then pushed the mirror back to where she could see. Giving the area another once-over, she made sure that no one else had seen her interaction with that guy on the ground, before pulling out from the gravel and onto the paved street.

"Ugh!" Torren yelled. Chester Bradley, the printed name on the credit card, had shitty taste in music. She pushed the stereo button on the steering wheel to do a scan of the radio. Anything was better than country music. Once she found some trap music on the XM radio, she turned up the volume and pulled back onto the highway.

Part iii/

Tags: @ideagarden-blog1  @youbloodymadgenius @xbellaxcarolinax @a-mess-of-fandoms @didiintheblog @conaionaru @peachyboneless @flowers-in-your-hayr @heavenly1927 @zuxiezendler @waiting4inspiration @saldelys @revolution-starter​

[dxmerons]

Okay so without further ado here’s my Star Wars parody of “Welcome to the Internet” by Bo Burnham

all credits for the song go to him because I do not want to get sued for copyright

Welcome to the Star Wars fandom

Have a look around

Anything that brain of yours can think of can be found

We’ve got mountains of opinions

Some better some worse

If none are controversial to you, you’d be the first

Welcome to the Star Wars fandom

Come and take a seat (young skywalker)

Would you like to see the brand new film

Or the cartoon TV

There’s no need to panic

This isn’t a trial, haha

Just nod or shake your head and we’ll do the rest

Welcome to the Star Wars fandom

What would you prefer

Would you like to fight for prequel rights

Or tweet a Wookiee slur

Be happy

Be horny

Be bursting with rage (KENOBIIIAAUUGGHH)

We got a million different ways to engage

Welcome the the Star Wars fandom

Put your peace aside

Here’s a tip for building a saber

Here’s a youngling who died

We’ve got troopers, and doctors, and podracing sports

And a bunch of electric drawings

Of all the clone wars characters f*cking each other!

Welcome to the Star Wars fandom

Hold on to your blue milk

‘Cause a random guy just kindly sent you rantings of the sequels

They are stupid and off putting

He just sent you more

Don’t act surprised, you know you hate it, you bore

See Jango beheaded

Get offended, see Yoda

Show us pictures of your fanart

Tell us everything you think

Start a fight, buy a toy

Or send a death threat to an actor

Or message a girl and bully her

Do a clone or find a “tumor”

And here’s a healthy viewing option

You should kill your General

Here’s why jedi cannot fuck you

Here’s how you can build a bomb

Which Sith Lord are you?

Take this quirky quiz

Palpatine sent the clone troopers

To assassinate the Jedi

Could I interest you in everything

All of the time?

A little bit of everything

All of the time

Obitine is a tragedy and the resistance show is a crime

Anything and everything

All of the time

Could I interest you in everything

All of the time?

A little bit of everything

All of the time

Anidala is a tragedy and the resistance show is a crime

Anything and everything

All of the time

You know, it wasn’t always like this

Not very long ago

Just before your time

Right before the fandom fell

And clone force 99

This was happiness

Cosplays

A quarrel or two

We set our sights and spent our nights

Waiting

For

You

Unproblematic you

Mommy let you use her iPad

You were barely two

Now look at you

Oh, look at you

You, you

Unstoppable, watchable

Your time is now

Honey, how you grew

And if you stay interested

Who knows what you’ll do

It was always the plan

To put the fandom in your hand

Hah hahahaha

Could I interest you in everything

All of the time

A bit of everything

All of the time

Blylas a tragedy and the resistance show is a crime

Anything and everything

All of the time

Could I interest you in everything

All of the time

A little bit of everything

All of the time

Finnpoes a tragedy and the resistance show is a crime

Anything and everything

And anything and everything

And anything and everything

And all of the time

[lutrain2020]

Meet the Creator!

Introducing: Squido!

Commission:  I haven't and don't really intend to. I don't want to take anyone's hard-earned money. Just ask me to draw things and there's a good chance I will.

Social Media:  Tumblr: @sky-squido​ AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sky_squido/pseuds/sky_squido

Tell us a little bit about yourself!

Call me Squido! I love to draw and write but I'm also super extraverted and I love interacting with humans so always feel free to chat with me! Aside from drawing and writing, I just love being outside and have a tumblr sideblog dedicated exclusively to nature photos I take. I love mountains, the ocean, the sky, and just about everything else in this beautiful world of ours! If you ever feel like having an internet stranger give you a thousand word rant, ask me why my favorite color is blue and you will not be disappointed!

What got you into creating? what inspires you to keep creating?

I've been drawing for as long as I can remember and can't seem to stop, though I take long breaks sometimes I always seem to come back to it again. I try not to have anything in mind when I draw, but to start sketching and let the drawing happen. Sometimes I find that what I'm trying to draw is not what my drawing wants to be (if that makes any sense) and change what I'm making halfway through. It makes drawing a really relaxing and carefree therapeutic experience! Writing is different. I've always enjoyed writing, but I didn't write much and never shared my writing with anyone because I thought it was super pretentious. It wasn't until entering High School and joining the literature club and making a deal with a friend that we'd share our writing with each other that I actually gained any sort of confidence in my ability and sought to improve it. Being in that club and sharing my pieces at the open mics was a really encouraging experience! I invite everyone to share their writing, even if it's with some random internet stranger (I'm open anytime!) if they're unsure of their abilities. A little encouragement goes a long way! Now that I'm on Discord, ao3, and tumblr, I receive so much more feedback than I ever have before! It's been super encouraging! What inspires me most is definitely nature. Even if my ideas aren't directly related to the outdoors, I get my best ideas there. Fandoms are also a great idea generator. The sheer volume of headcanons and prompts is enough to make me dizzy with ideas!

What's your creative process like?

I love sketching. My favorite thing about drawing digitally is that I can sketch as much as I like and never worry about wasting materials! Often times my sketches turn themselves into drawings without permission and other times they stubbornly remain sketches for all eternity. I always dive right in because I have no patience and the idea I started out with generally isn't that great but in the process of pursuing it, it spirals out of control and sometimes the idea gets better and sometimes it gets worse but I just kinda roll with it. Creating is a really chill process for me and while I regularly scream stuff like "I'M DRAWING ON THE WRONG LAYER NONONONONONO" or "NO HECK FRICK SHOOT IT SMUDGED HECK HECK GET THE ERASER QUICK," the creative process is a great way for me to unwind. I'm the same way about writing. I never plan or outline and just kind of roll with things. I mean I generally have the basic jist in mind, but I try to not have a plan so I can keep the story driven by the characters and not force them into acting the way I wanted them to in the outline I made hours or even days ago. Creating is my opportunity to break free so I don't really see what good a plan or outline does me. I'm a pretty spontaneous person!

What kind of mediums do you like to use?

I like to take pictures, but it's not really my main focus. I've been mostly digitally drawing—I use my iPad Pro and Procreate—but lately I've been pencil sketching with just your average everyday mechanical pencil (I'd forgotten how nice the texture of paper was! Clearly I spent too much time drawing on my iPad!). I have these Stabilio chalk pastels I love to pieces, but have also spent a great deal of time with watercolors. Digital is my primary medium currently, though.

Is there a specific scene wrote that you are particularly proud of?

"Sky’s golden scales are glowing with reflected light from the sun while beneath them, the same pulsing blue in her mane runs like a river as her very skin is alive with electricity. The sun’s beginning to dip, fading through the color wheel from yellow to deep orange to scarlet and the world is bathed in watercolor and hue shifted through the rainbow until all that was blue becomes red. This new alien world begins to darken as red fades to deep purple-pink, the clouds catching last vestiges of gold in their pillowy folds, yet Sky continues rippling with lighting, the bright blue flowing like blood through her veins and the gold shimmering in the eerie azure glow. We weave through the winds and zephyrs and I close my eyes and let the breeze caress my hair and when I reopen them, I’m standing back on the ground again in a world long since darkened by night. I place my hand over my beating heart where Sky is still laughing with joy and smile because once you’ve awakened your dragon, you don’t need wings to fly anymore."

Is there someone who inspires you and your writing or art?

Every fanartist and fanfic writer that posts their stuff online is an inspiration to me. Even if their stuff isn't very good—especially if it isn't very good—it's a huge testament to the courage of the creator and their bravery in expressing themself! I sat on fanfic and fanart for years and never shared it and here were kids half my age putting out art that was their first experiment in a new medium and a little shaky but it was still out there and they were still being supported by the community and that really inspired me to reach out and stop lurking in fandom and actually get involved!

is there something that you struggled with that made you grow as a creator?

I feel like everyone has these periods where they were just gaining confidence in their artistic ability but suddenly everything they make is trash and they're not happy with any of it and they feel so down and worthless and "where did all of my hard-earned ability go? Will I ever get it back?" I think this is a pretty common experience and when I find myself there, I find it most helpful to share what I make anyway, even if I hate it, with someone who I know will give it to me straight because they'll point out the deeper problems—the root of the issue—that I hadn't even noticed and I can use that information to grow as an artist. Bad pieces are just as valuable as good ones. There was also a time where I had a lot of trouble developing a style. I did a lot of experimenting and never found anything I liked. What happened is I just kept drawing and whatever popped out eventually evolved into my style. I used to get frustrated that I couldn't draw anything without a reference, but after years and years of using references and drawing some of the same things over and over again, you won't need the references anymore. I mean, they're great and you should always feel free to use them, but over time, you won't need to look up a picture of every little thing you try to doodle.

What got you into writing or art?

My silly twitchy fingers can't ever seem to stop drawing! Same with writing. Words and ideas follow me around, little plot bunnies pestering me until they get written down somewhere. I was greatly inspired by the works of C.S. Lewis in my writing, especially his Cosmic Trilogy. My art style was aided by Hiromu Arakawa's Fullmetal Alchemist, which was a valuable stepping stone in developing my own style. Other than that, it was my own insatiable desire to MAKE THINGS that spurred me onwards. I don't think I could stop if I tried!

What's your favorite part of the creative process?

After you've got that first paragraph and you've found a flow and you've got a topic and you just GO. I get into the zone and the story starts happening on its own and I'm not an author anymore, I'm just a channel between the world of the piece and the page. That's my favorite. I love watching things take shape. I love shading a sketch for these same reasons. The whole drawing comes together and becomes A Thing and it's the most exciting time to be a creator. Something else inside you has taken over and you're just along for the ride. I have no idea if my experiences are common at all but this is what it's like for me!

What's your least favorite part of the creative process?

EDITING. I HAVE ZERO PATIENCE. THE THING IS DONE. WHY DO I HAVE TO KEEP LOOKING AT IT. CAN I POST IT YET. This leaves me with a lot of holes in what I make and I can't do a very clean, super detailed drawing unless it's for an art class and I'm forced to keep working on it. I have a terrible habit of never proofreading my things!

What's your favorite type of scene to write?

AAH hard question! I love writing description and places where I can really let my inner 19th century romantic be unleashed but I also love a good emotional moment between two characters. Something tense. I like fight scenes, but I try to keep them brief and interesting. Sometimes I find scenes where I have no idea what's going on and I try to avoid that, but it's really hard sometimes.

What's the hardest for you to create?

I have so much trouble with endings. I can generally figure something out, but there's always a moment of panic before the end like "heck I wrote everything I wanted how do I wrap this up????" That's probably a byproduct of me planning nothing XD I sometimes have trouble with characterization and making sure everyone acts the way they actually would. The hardest part is continuing after you have an "oh heck what do I do now" moment that breaks you out of your zone and all of your ideas and plot threads turn invisible or evaporate or go wherever it is they go when you're looking for them.

What's your favorite genre to write?

ANGST ANGST ANGST ANGST. Wellll... scratch that. I love something adventure-y and plot driven with a lot of really meaningful character interactions. I've always had trouble putting my writing into genres, but I guess that kind of speaks for itself in a way.

What fandoms do you enjoy creating for?

Linked Universe is the fandom I have created and posted the most for by a LONG SHOT. I found LU shortly after making my tumblr and I joined the Discord shortly thereafter. Since then, it has been nonstop inspiration and creativity for me! I tend to get sucked into one fandom and it consumes me for a few months before I silently drift out of it and never think about it again. LU is the fandom I've been the most active in EVER though—and it's still going—so there's a good chance I'm never getting off this ride.

What's the work you are most proud of?

AAAAAAAAAAH MY BABIES. okay um here's the first and only fanfic I've ever posted anywhere but I'm really happy with: https://sky-squido.tumblr.com/post/618964544219463680/turn-back-time-a-linked-universe-fanfic I have a lot of other pieces kicking about, but they're not fandom so I haven't shared them yet. I probably will after I touch them up a bit.

Do you have any fics inspired by real life stories?

Not really? I don't really know where my ideas come from to be honest!

Where do you post your finished works?

my tumblr. I tag stuff #squido writes and #squido draws so you can find them easily. I also put them on the discord but they get lost in the stream of other works pretty quickly so stick to my tumblr. I also have an ao3 now! https://archiveofourown.org/users/sky_squido

If you have any fun stories about the pieces you made, please do share!

Turn Back Time was actually live written in the Discord, but entirely unplanned and in the #angst channel! It was just a headcanon but then I started describing it and like 2 hours and 5k words later I'm sitting in the Discord like "what just happened??"

[stefaniemilner1-blog]

How To Convert APE To MP3?

The right way to convert APE to FLAC on-line with APE to FLAC Converter? Observe: Each music file could be as much as 300 MB. When a file is converted to an MP3, the 300 MB limit applies to the transformed MP3 file. This text introduces a CUE Splitter and a tutorial easy methods to cut up audios (FLAC, MP3, APE, WAV, OGG or WMA) related to the CUE Sheet. With the CUE Splitter, you by no means have troubles in methods to play audio recordsdata on your gadgets. As might be seen from the diagram, the panel allows you to set the expected volume and output format of the audio, and to customize the sample fee, Bit rate and channels the audio will include. 5 days in the past. Monkeys Audio is a quick and easy option to compress digital music. Not like conventional strategies similar to mp3, ogg, or wma that completely discard top quality to avoid wasting house, Monkey's Audio only makes good, bit-for-bit copies of your music. Select FLAC encoder from dropdown file and click on the Encoder choices". Use the Equivalent as original" choices to take care of unique audio format. Compression" lider means that you can select between compression velocity and quantity of the output FLAC file. Nice Software, Works Perfectly. Great software, low CPU and tons of straightforward choices. Now to repair the official overview- batch mode works great, and in addition you'll be able to choose your output bitrate. Simply press the purple button in the High quality field, and you may choose between 32-320kbps. I've had probably the most success using WAV recordsdata, but I have additionally efficiently transformed movies and so on to MP3. That is undoubtedly one of my go-to software tools. 5 stars. APE is the abbreviation for the Monkey's audio format, which is without doubt one of the hottest lossless compressed audio format. FLAC represents Free Lossless Audio Codec, having some similarities and differences with APE. APE (also referred to as Monkey's Audio ) is a lossless audio format like FLAC. Foobar2000 doesn't ship with help to playback APE information. If you set up the patched MAC encoder and decoder for APE files from , this first step is unnecessary. But you would need to compile it with g++ and yasm your self. Similar goes fortta recordsdata, which are additionally usually used instead ofape. XLD is so much better for this objective (and yes I take advantage of Fission as well). It traverses directories, helps drag and drop, is up to date commonly, is free, has great tag switch help, top quality CD ripping with links to the CDDB (CD Database) to tug tag data from the cloud, and so on. Go to Step One" and hit Browse" to input the APE audio you need to convert. With this command you may cut up all tracks from one CUE file into separate FLAC recordsdata named like 01. ARTIST - ". Note, that the output recordsdata may have exactly the same audio quality and monitor duration precisely as the unique. One other great tool, should you use a Mac, is Rogue Amoeba's Fission This audio editor is my device of alternative for trimming, becoming a member of, and editing audio information, and it additionally features a conversion software that lets you convert from just about any audio format to AAC, MP3, Apple Lossless, FLAC, AIFF, and WAV. While it is not one of the best device for those who only need to convert audio recordsdata, it's the best-to-use Mac app for enhancing those files. Minimize ape to flac converter free information and likewise be a part of APE recordsdata. APE has limited assist on platforms aside from Home windows. For example, Linux or OS X needs to install JRiver Media Heart to assist APE; Different platforms need to put in J2SE to support APE. Different choices which you could configure in the Preferences web page embrace the situation to retailer the transformed information and the labeling format of the recordsdata. Simply google search Learn how to Use iDealshare VideoGo to Convert FLAC to iTunes, you'll find a detailed information. Generally once I download music, the format is in APE which isn't handy in Linux. Once add accomplished, converter will redirect an online web page to indicate the conversion outcome. I do know that this was not asked, however contemplating that one of many reasons that that is executed (not less than that is what I wanted to do) is in order that the music will be imported into Apple iTunes which doesn't help FLAC. In such case it makes extra sense to transform FLAC to Apple's own lossless format, ape to flac converter free m4a. I used this command to convert all of the files within the present folder, whereas retaining related file sizes.

Promoting or trading lossless files requires having lossless recordsdata. Some people spoof or falsely reencode lossy information for private acquire. This can be about entry to music files, or income from sales as well as promoting and bundled software program (or worse). 1. Break up CUE related MP3, APE, WAV, and FLAC with CUE and convert to desired audio codecs. While APE is licensed music format with lossless compression that's supported by a restricted variety of players, FLAC format provides better sounding quality having no license limitations in use. If you wish to export your APE to FLAC, use Total Audio Converter that will provide help to to do that with maximal ease. Convert music recordsdata to the universal MP3 format for your LAPTOP, Mac, mobile phone, pill, or any MP3 player. Get MP3 sound of top of the range, up to 320 KBps. The output MP3 songs might be suitable with any machine: iPhone, iPad, Zune, APE to FLAC Converter free Samsung Galaxy, Nokia, HTC Need, SanDisk Sansa, Walkman, Huawei, Xiaomi, Honor, and so forth. Secondly, you don't want an internet connection to hearken to your music, and whereas the Offline modes of both Tidal and Spotify allow you to apply it to the subway, it still must be linked to the 'internet in some unspecified time in the future to get the information. What in case your music participant would not have apps or network capability? For cheap music players just like the Sony A17 , a set of FLAC information take advantage of sense.

[davidsphysicsblog]

Why does it seem that my cellphone is spying on me?

In his seminal book, “The Singularity is Near – When Humans Transcend Biology,” Ray Kurzweil laments the fate of Artificial Intelligence (AI): “An underlying problem with artificial intelligence that I have personally experienced in my forty years of in the area is that as soon as an AI technique works, it is no longer considered AI and is spun off in its own field …” Kurzweil then goes on to give the example of speech recognition – although if you both listen and watch the closed captions to the nightly news, you might wonder how intelligent this recognition is. Still that point has stuck with me since I first read The Singularity is Near, when it first came out in 2005.

Well, friends there is no longer any denying the existence of AI in our lives. We have moved beyond what has been referred to as the “Dark Age of AI.”We’ve got everything from intelligent toaster ovens to self-driving automobiles. Recently, I saw, with a shutter, a news clip about self-driving eighteen wheelers. Yikes, I thought. But then I considered how many people have been wiped out by drowsy truck drivers. Which is better, which is worse?

Now, I am a great proponent of futurism. More importantly, I recognize that there is no denying technology, any more than there is denying climate change. There are good reasons to fear it, especially if your job is in jeopardy. Ultimately all our jobs are in jeopardy. But there is no stopping it. Technology always outruns its own ethical basis.  It has no morality. It just is. And the Luddites, who in the early nineteenth century rose up and destroyed textile machinery because they feared it would take away their means of employment are now reduced merely to a fancy word and a footnote. As I type this AI programs “spellcheck” me and “autocorrect” my grammar. Both of those words exist in the language only because of the AI revolution.  So, they are taking over our language as well.

There is also the nostalgia factor. My IPad and my Kindle do not feel or smell like a book. I so love these tactile and olfactory experiences. But the fact is that my whole library, which is voluminous, could easily fit in digital form on my computer devices, and I read at least three times faster electronically than on paper. Although one might ask, what the rush is? Ultimately, where this nostalgia is concerned we become like Edward Arlington Robinson’s “Minever Cheevy.”

“Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,

Grew lean while he assailed the seasons;

He wept that he was ever born,

And he had reasons.

 Miniver loved the days of old

When swords were bright and steeds were prancing;

The vision of a warrior bold

Would set him dancing.

 Miniver sighed for what was not,

And dreamed, and rested from his labors;

He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot,

And Priam’s neighbors.

 Miniver mourned the ripe renown

That made so many a name so fragrant;

He mourned Romance, now on the town,

And Art, a vagrant.

 Miniver loved the Medici,

Albeit he had never seen one;

He would have sinned incessantly

Could he have been one.

 Miniver cursed the commonplace

And eyed a khaki suit with loathing;

He missed the mediæval grace

Of iron clothing.

 Miniver scorned the gold he sought,

But sore annoyed was he without it;

Miniver thought, and thought, and thought,

And thought about it.

 Miniver Cheevy, born too late,

Scratched his head and kept on thinking;

Miniver coughed, and called it fate,

And kept on drinking.”

 Isn’t it wonderful how all I needed to do was to type “Minever Cheevy” into my search engine, a form of AI and the whole text, which I first read on paper in high school pops up? This is but the first stage in the development of Kurzweil’s bionic man-machine.

And as I was typing the last, my cellphone dinged with the message from Bloomberg News that:

“Medical apps have made it easier than ever for doctors to treat people without ever seeing them in person.”

Is this getting just a bit spooky?

Which brings me to what I really wanted to discuss. I recently read Michael Chertoff’s “Exploding Data: Reclaiming Our Cyber Security in the Digital Age.” This book describes the megadata on each of us, which seems merely a collection of useless facts. Where we were every minute of the day, what we bought, what we ate, what we spent, and on and on. It is not the individual facts that are significant, but the Gestalt, that ultimately presents the threat, not just to individual privacy an liberty, but to national and world security.

Allow me to quote the ninth amendment to the United States Constitution. Yes, Republican friends there is more than the second amendment, which protects the right of madmen to buy assault rifles. But the little ninth amendment says merely:

“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

This is your right to privacy, people! The government does not belong in your workplace, in your home, or in your bedroom, for instance. And when we allow ourselves to be monitored 24-7, we give up that right, in part or in total.

And on the security side. Connect your home to the internet with devices such as smart electric meters for instance, where “the bad guys” have implanted administrative codes in the chips they made for us and we bought because they are cheap, and they can shut down our power grids.

In 2004, yes fifteen years ago, the Israeli military assassinated Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader and founder of the militant Palestinian group Hamas, by landing a smart missile in the lap of the wheelchair-bound Sheik Yassin. I am not suggesting that you have anything to fear from the fact that your own iPhone is tracking your whereabouts in real-time.

What has freaked me out was an IM session that I was having with a friend on my IPhone to set up a time to meet for coffee. When we had settled as to time and place, I went to add it to my calendar, hit the add button, and there it was Name of Person, Name of place, and time all neatly pre-entered for me. Starting with OS 10.0, we are now up to OS 12.2, the operating system has AI algorithms that search your texts and emails in this way. For convenience, right? I’m sorry it seems not so much as helpful as creepy and an invasion of privacy.

I am reminded of a second poem. This by W. H. Auden and called “To the Unknown Citizen.” Perhaps we might modernize the title to “To the Unknown Citizen and his Megadata.”

(To JS/07 M 378 This Marble Monument Is Erected by the State)

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be

One against whom there was no official complaint,

And all the reports on his conduct agree

That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a

saint,

For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.

Except for the War till the day he retired

He worked in a factory and never got fired,

But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.

Yet he wasn’t a scab or odd in his views,

For his Union reports that he paid his dues,

(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)

And our Social Psychology workers found

That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.

The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day

And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.

Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,

And his Health-card shows he was A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.

Our researchers into Public Opinion are content

That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;

When there was peace, he was for peace:  when there was war, he went.

He was married and once in hospital but left it cured.

Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare

He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan

And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,

added five children to the population,

Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his

generation.

And our teachers report that he never interfered with their

education.

Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd: e heard.

I feel a need to return photographically to a simpler time, to turn back the clock to the Willoughby of Twilight Zone fame, to a more mechanical time. The time of carburetors, now replaced by AI chips called injection systems.

(c) DE Wolf 2019.

[thislifeandnext]

24th January 2018

So today’s been a slightly better day than yesterday. And by slightly better I mean minutely better and just slightly weird. I’ve currently lost my journal which is what I normally write in everyday hence resorting to tumblr as a platform, and it’s actually more therapeutic than I thought it would be. I mean putting your life and thoughts out there on the internet is slightly terrifying and massively triggering however the thought of someone potentially reading this that is going through the same thoughts and processes as I am and reassuring them that they are to alone is slightly comforting and reassuring.

So today’s been relatively relaxed but also majorly triggering. I had a crap nights sleep and eventually my insomnia ceased at about 4:30 am gmt and I was then up at 6:30 took my mental hounds for a walk up yo Salisbury plain which was quite comforting and then went back to sleep quite peacefully until roughly 11:30 gmt. After eventually waking up properly I cleaned and tidied as a tidy room always calms my anxiety slightly and decided I was going to treat myself to a full face of makeup - including lashes. However my energy couldn’t span to actually making the effort to washing or even brushing my hair so a messy disheveled bun caked in dry shampoo will do. Then went into a local town with my kinda fella to get his phone sorted which I thought would be fine but in my state of mind that I’m in at the moment gave me a bit of a moment. It’s these ‘little moments’ that you can’t really explain or understand why they make you anxious that actually make it even worse and make you feel crazier.

After this little excursion went back to my home turf of the pub that I work in which is also my major safe place and had a couple drinks which massively calmed me and then went home for some food. Then bizarrely had I message from my ex’s new girlfriend asking if I fancied going for a drink - which again was a little triggering - however I thought ‘why the fuck not, it’s gets me out the house and stops me wallowing I’m self pity’ however on the downside it also gets me drinking again which when I’m on one of my self destruct missions drinking is never a good idea as it just seems to either make me feel a million times worse or a million times happier.

Luckily today drinking meant I was a much happier me until seeing a so called ‘friend’ at the pub who is basically just a complete waste of oxygen. He ended up getting incredibly confrontational and just generally a bit of a cock which then set me off again and made me feel completely and utterly worthless. Especially when he started lecturing me about who I should and shouldn’t be seeing and how I need to be with someone my own age and blah blah blah basically. But oh well life gos on hey !

So I’m now back at my ‘fellas’ and quite happily curled up in bed next to him typing this whilst he plays on his iPad and we may not be talking and have barely spoken since I got here as I’m in one of my moods but I feel so much more relaxed being in his company and just pleased that I’m here.

I’m lucky than I’ve got someone like him around, his presense has a massively calming affect on my mind which is something I’ve never experienced before - or atleast can’t remember feeling this calm anyway - and my insomnia almost dissapears to the point that’s it’s currently 22:37 gmt and I can feel my eyes getting heavy. This could also be a combination of alcohol. But what does that matter. All that matters right now is today’s been a rocky day and yesterday was just horrific but I feel like I’m on the up again so I can’t be mad about that.

I am stronger than my mind and I can overcome anything and everything that’s thrown at me ✌🏼

[allenmendezsr]

How To Create An Iphone Or Ipad Apps And Games Succeed In App Store!

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How To Create An Iphone Or Ipad Apps And Games Succeed In App Store!

 Buy Now

    $ 63,896.21 USD last month?

Looks impressive? I bet it does!

But now, let me tell you the ugly truth.

It looks like I am raking in money now, but the truth is that it was not always like that! Just 6 months ago I was completely struggling. I had no programming skills, no team and no money. The only thing I had was a great desire to create the game of my dreams.

Since childhood, I always had a dream to make it big. I was thinking my game over and over again and again during the sleepless nights, imagining the characters and heroes, levels, gameplay tricks… etc.

Does that sound familiar to you?

To be honest, I am a big fan of the iPhone, so I did not even consider the idea of creating games for anything else but the iPhone or iPad.

But I was missing the main thing – I had no team and no programming skills at all. Even worse – I did not even have a technical education!

Over and over again I have been reading the blogs and reports about the Gold Rush in the Apps Store where small guys like you and me achieved immense success by creating simple but great applications or games!

Did you know that guys from the Top Applications part of the App Store are selling over 35,000 copies a day!

35 thousand!

If you sell your app for $0.99 and get $0.70 from it after all apple commission cuts you are left with pure profit of $24,500 USD per DAY! Well, you can’t live with that but that is a good start, isn’t it 🙂

This thought would not let me sleep well. Of course I did not live in the illusion that I would get on top with my first app but you know me already – I am a kind of guy who always wants to reach the stars!

So my target was to get into the Top100 Apps at least.

Here is what I did. I decided to take it really seriously. First, I bought all the books available in my local Barnes&Noble store and on Amazon as well. Everything from Iphone Development for dummies to the advanced experts-stuff.

Oh boy, that was a real head ache to read all that stuff. It took me about 3 months alone to read all those books.

And you know what?

After I tried to implement the knowledge I was totally disappointed – most of the printed books turned out to be completely outdated. You know it is a long process after you write a book, it goes to the publisher, stays in editing for weeks, then the printing office keeps delaying it again and again. Then you need to distribute it throughout the country to local shops etc.. And the things change so fast. Once iPod was released, next year iPhone, then iPhone3GS, then iPad, then iPhone4, iPad2, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5… the list goes on and on. Things change so fast and these printed books can’t even catch up. Most samples were outdated and never worked for me. What a bummer.

So finally after reading all this crap my head was ready to explode and I decided to take action. My first game was supposed to be the simple “Hidden object” game –you know where you tap the screen to find the hidden objects. I found out that these kind of games are very popular among people and I figured out it is pretty easy to make it – you simply need several images properly cut into layers and a little bit of coding.

Getting a developer account with Apple was pretty easy, so I went ahead and opened it and started the development.

Since I had no one to help and guide me – I guess I spent 3 times longer than average creating it than I actually needed to. In about 2 months of sleepless nights my game was finally ready. The approval process from apple took about a week. This week of waiting was the most frustrating time for me, it felt like time itself stopped… I got so nervous my hands even shook. What if they disapproved of it? I have read tons of horror stories about developers failing because Apple did not accept their game or delayed approval for months. I could not even sleep. I was checking my email and Dev account every minute to see the desired “your App was approved” message from Apple. I was so noxious I even sent 3 followup emails asking apple why it takes so long. Don’t do that guys, I heard you only make the reviewers angry if you display impatience!

Finally I got approved and the sales started! I went to bed dreaming about loads of cash rushing into my pockets.

And can you imagine what happened?

I failed miserably!

The next day, when I checked my sales, I saw the devastating numbers – 16 copies sold. Total net profit: $9 … Well, obviously not the kind of numbers I was expecting…

Next day – 11 copies, then 8 copies, then about 2-3 copies per day during the next week. After 2 weeks my total net profit was around 50 bucks.. Sounds like now I have enough money to invite my girlfriend to McDonalds, right… what an epic failure.

And here is why.

Creating a great app or game is only part of the story. The most important part is how to sell it successfully and get on top of apps store sales. That’s what most developers are missing, failing one after another in their efforts to live their dream. They put all their efforts into the development and miss the most important part – successful marketing! Even the best app can remain totally unknown if you fail to market it properly.

Once I realized this, I decided not to give up. So I spent the next 6 months making the comprehensive market research. I contacted 135 top apple apps and games developers asking for help and advice. As you may expect, 90% of them simply ignored me. But you know I am not kind of guy who gives up easily.

Those 10% who replied gave me knowledge you’d never find in books or on the internet.

I could personally meet some of them and receive the most valuable insider information on how this market works. Oh you can’t imagine how it turned my worldview upside down. Nearly everything I learned before…

…was wrong.

That’s how top developers keep the information from small guys like you and me so they can rake in money, while we can’t even sell 10 copies! Did you know there is a list of elite developers who get fast approvals, premium placing in “What we are playing” and other top ratings & benefits?

All this information is well kept secret from us…

… so no surprise thousands and thousands of new developers who enter the market fail one after another. While you get confused reading and learning hundreds of ways of advertising your app – these guys use only a couple of ways that really work and don’t even waste their time on others…

Where to advertise the app? How to get traffic to the page? Should I order paid reviews or not? Should I create blogs? Do I need to make support forums for my game? Should I make my app free and earn money only by selling Ads inside, or is it better to get rid of ads and sell the app itself? All these questions could leave the newbie developer totally confused and as a result – on the road to total failure in achieving success in the apple store.

Let me tell you this.

Like Tony Robbins once said “Become the best by modeling the best”. Find out what the best developers do and mimic their techniques, use their secrets and tricks and you will become successful. Don’t try to re-invent the wheel. Use what is already working! Don’t spread out efforts on useless stuff that takes up your time but never brings results.

And you know it already – you’ve seen the proof before. Once I started implementing these ideas my sales started to go up and up. Literally, through the roof. Now my girlfriend and I are even thinking on opening our own McDonalds on the franchise next year on a $506,000 investment and 45k/year franchise fee so we can secure my profits in some real offline business. Well.. Ok ..maybe mcdonalds sounds too crazy, but if not McDonalds, I can predict we’ll buy some luxury apartment on the California coast for sure.

But after all that, I still realize that I owe my success to the few generous people among the top developers who decided not to ignore me and help me out by sharing their valuable knowledge with me. Without it, nothing could be possible.

That’s why I decided to gather all my knowledge and resources and put up a comprehensive course on iPhone and iPad development secrets.

My main goal was to make a full multimedia course that I can easily update on a monthly basis instead of writing the boring printed book that will become outdated even before it comes on the store shelf.

Secondly I wanted to make my course really newbie friendly. The arrogant expert authors are so proud of themselves that they don’t even bother to explain the details for people who are just starting out and don’t have any programming knowledge at all. They all assume you are at least expert in C++ before you start learning XCode and other iphone development stuff.

I decided to change this approach completely. You know I had no programming skills at all when I started out so I don’t expect you to know anything about programming. You don’t have to have any technical knowledge. If you can operate your iPhone and basic computer software – that’s all we need to start.

What does that mean to you? Well it means that you won’t have to spend 12 months and tens of thousands of dollars figuring this out like I did. More importantly, it means…

… you can start creating your own app or game today and making money with it tomorrow.

Here is what my course is all about.

During the 4 weeks, I am going to take you by the hand and follow through the whole process of creating your first app or game. I promise – we’ll do it the easy and fun way. No boring theories, no hard core programming, no useless stuff. Only practical information and step by step instructions!

Here is what we are going to cover in the first week.

Like I mentioned before, I don’t expect you to be an expert right of the bat, so first of all we are going to cover the great variety of basic information on how to start and apply yourself in different areas of game and application development: from creating your first “Hello World” application, to developing your first game with Cocos 2d toolkit. Did you know that Cocos 2d is considered one of the easiest ways of creating good Apps and will be the most used toolkit next year?

You will also discover how to create your first web using iWebKit and animated application using Adobe Flash CS5. We’ll also discu ss how to debug your application and get rid of the bugs so you have all the knowledge necessary to dive into more in-depth information over the following weeks. And like I said – it’ll be painless – we’ll do it the easy and fun way.

In Weeks 2&3 you will discover different iPhone development tools starting from simple Xcode to more advanced stuff like Cocos 2d & iWebKit secrets & tricks. Let me warn you – even if this may sound complicated – I put my information, tutorials and samples in such an easily understood manner that you can feel yourself becoming an expert even if you are a total newbie!

We are also going to learn the 2d and 3d editing software for game and app development and some sort of “cheat”-kinds of software & tricks – for those of you who want to use advanced stuff without wasting months on learning it. That’s why I call it “The lazy person’s guide to success” – I just give what you really need and don’t waste your time describing stuff you will never use!

As a result of week 3 you will have your first game or application ready to go!

In the final week we are going to cover the most important part of the story – how to market your game and finally make money by selling it in the App Store. Time to get the money rolling 🙂 Let’s be honest with each other – after all, you want to make good bucks with it, don’t you? I have prepared a lot of good, fresh, updated stuff on how to market your game, and where to get the dirt cheap targeted traffic!

We’ll also cover the most recent trends in game development – what genres are popular now and in the next year, what are the best converting ways to promote the game today and next year.

[a-bookworm-lives-here]

The Start of Something...Interesting

Does anyone just feel as if they're constantly having an existential crisis? This is an honest question to anyone who could possibly be reading this right now. I'm not talking about some huge, mind-blowing realisation that happens once a day; I'm talking about the little things, like bumping into a person and wondering if that single touch meant anything to them whatsoever. If it affected their life at all. I don't know, maybe I'm the only one who feels like this. Sometimes, when I go to busy places I have to actually stop to look at the masses of people and wonder: what has each of them been through? What have they seen? What are their joys and sorrows right at this very moment, their high and lows? There are so many different individuals out there, each one an island whose deepest secrets and darkest treasures will never be discovered. At least, not by me. And I wonder as they're walking along, if maybe they're pondering the same thing as me. Probably not. That's when I realise that if anyone's an island, it's me. This is such a promising way to start a tumblr page, amiright? Look at the enthusiasm! At the...uh...somewhat lacking optimism for life! As you can tell, I'm a bit of a pessimist - which is fine. It has its perks, I suppose. I think about things a lot, sometimes jot them on my iPad, sometimes don't. It all depends on if it feels like I can get the emotion down in words. If I can't...well, then the feeling just kind of lingers in my brain and melds with any other occurrences passing through my mind. The one thing I've never done with these thoughts, however, is actually say them out loud. Life isn't like the movies - you speak about this kind of shit to someone else and they just look at you funny. Trust me: I've tried. But I guess on here it doesn't count as speaking. It's typing, which somehow makes things sound better as opposed to saying them with your mouth. Lately I've been feeling pretty alone, so naturally I thought, 'Gee, wouldn't it be swell to share my deepest, plaguing thoughts with the Internet?' In reality you don't know my face or my name, so I have no problem sharing some things with you that I generally keep internalised. Strange, how this entire site is so impersonal yet so up close and in your face. I actually love it, if I'm honest. If you're still reading by this point, I suppose I can tell you that I'm pretty much here purely to see what happens next. Wanna chat about things with me? By all means, go ahead. Need to rant a bit? Again, I'm here. Or if you simply want to read my posts and/ or see my media, then that's fine too. I just want this blog to leave you thinking about good things and bad ones: maybe even make you stop for a minute and look around as well. For my first post, I think that could've gone a lot worse. I guess only time will tell to see if more come in the future. - K

[theliterateape]

Life Hacks in The Pursuit of Surviving the Leap from the Cliff

by Don Hall

I’ll confess. Jumping off the cliff of the comfortable familiarity to the virtual unknown provides slews of perspective. The process of gaining an outlook on who you are in the world, who you think you are, and who everyone else sees you to be is both painstaking and staggering in depth.

Part of me assumed that some of my street cred in the Chicago landscape would somehow make things a bit easier, the landing a bit gentler, when coming to Vegas. I mean, it’s still in the United States, yes? There are Starbucks and IHOPs and 7-11s here, right? It isn’t like Nevada is another fucking planet. 

Except, in so many ways, it is.

In Chicago, I had carved out a place in the Live Lit and Theater scenes. While I was more notorious than anything else in many cliques of those worlds, I was known. I hosted The Moth for five years, for Chrissakes! Except no one in Las Vegas has even heard of The Moth and there is no Live Lit scene. I mean, there are, maybe, four open mics open to poetry, storytelling and the like and the rest of the nine monthly nights are UNLV type things. Sure, there’s the Black Mountain Institute (UNLV) and they do some pretty cool festivals (#BelieverFest) but the target audience is thin. My time and energy amounts to completely starting over because no one here knows to give a shit.

In Chicago, I spent a decade creating an entire Events department at one of the largest public radio stations in the country and house managed one of the most popular NPR shows in history. Except that the public radio station here has 11,000 members in a population of 2.5 million, have produced one original event in the past three years, and no one here has even heard of that NPR juggernaut of the “Wait Wait” stylings.

In terms of the non-stop pursuit of the Almighty Dollar, it only helps that I was the House Manager of Millennium Park if people in Nevada know what Millennium Park is but they don’t. “Uhm…it’s like Chicago’s version of Central Park” is the best descriptor I’ve come up with so far.

In Chicago, I had my parking spots worked out. I knew where to go to get a haircut. I had my favorite bars. In other words, I had my life hacks.

Now new to the Mojave, I’ve had to come up with a few new hacks to make life just a bit easier, the transition a bit smoother.

FIND YOUR STARBUCKS

Yes, Starbucks is the awful mega chain that put countless independent coffee shops out of business here in Las Vegas. There are far fewer Starbucks in Vegas than in Chicago and the indie coffee scene is percolating. That said, I’m heading to Starbucks because they offer free fucking WiFi. When the independent places offer free internet without the hassle of getting a password or limit on my Sitting on My Ass, Writing Things for Three Hours on My iPad Pro time, I’m there. Until then, I go where the burnt coffee lives.

PRETEND YOU’RE IN MAYBERRY

Las Vegas looks like a city with 2.5 million residents but it behaves like a tiny town in the center of the heartland. As one person put it “the different communities tend to circle their wagons around new people.” Given the relative newness of the city compared to much older places combined with the strange mix of tourists, long -time residents, and transient transplants, making it here is a more delicate balance. The standard “bull in a china shop” approach that worked in Chicago doesn’t play here (unless you have a fucking crater filled with cash).

VOLUNTEER A LOT

The best way to get to know a new city is to volunteer for things you used to be in charge of. The Nevada Preservation Foundation has been a great start. I spent a day as a docent for a historic Boulder City home, met a ton of people, and enjoyed the day. Given the Mayberry-esque nature of Vegas, I met a bunch more people when Dana and I were volunteer tour guides in the historic Binion’s Casino and discovered that some of those people knew the people I had met the day before as well as folks I’d met at the BMI and KNPR. And the hors d'oeuvres were awesome.

THANK DAVID AND KATIE FOR THAT WINDSHIELD SUNBLOCK THING

Goddamn. You only have to get in your car and find the steering wheel so hot it burns your palms to it like that kid’s tongue in A Christmas Story once. Then you praise the thoughtful and pragmatic gift the Himmel’s gave you for Christmas.

OFF STRIP CASINOS

I don’t gamble. It’s certainly fun to win money and, if I ever did, I might gamble. But I don’t. Ever. Win money, that is. The casino/hotels on the strip are beautiful and amazing and expensive and are designed to part you from your rubles, comrade. The off strip casinos are still casinos but feel more like community centers. The people watching is better because the clientele comes from the city rather than Iowa. And, while the buffets aren’t as high-end, they’re generally pretty good and far cheaper than the ones on the strip.

GET A CAR PHONE HOLDER THAT FITS OVER THE AC VENT

Seriously. When, like I do, you rely on GPS to find your ass with both hands, having your phone overheat 30 seconds from getting on the road, that kickass phone holder that juts up and out from the windshield is more liability than aid. Right in front of the vent and the phone stays cool and functions. And you don’t accidentally end up at Hoover Dam when you were just headed for Albertsons.

MANAGE YOUR STRESS

That say that Americans are suffering from more depression and anxiety at earlier ages than ever before in recorded history. This despite the fact that, according to The Woke, life was far worse in the ‘40s and ‘50s. They also say that stress is likely a lot to do with this sad fact. When jumping off a cliff into an unknown city to start a new life (like a pioneer on the Oregon Trail except with a Prius, antibiotics, and Slim Jims) finding ways to calm down, get some perspective, and remember this place is extraordinary is essential. Best thing to do? Go outside in your bare feet wearing shorts and a t-shirt. Every morning. Sit quietly for a few minutes at night and look at stars you haven’t seen in decades. Go to the strip and just look at all the neon and human activity and understand that you are not important but what you do with your limited time can be.

I don’t suffer from anxiety, depression, or even a lot of stress. Perhaps it’s because I don’t gamble and explains the Han Solo hair. I do, however, understand the idea of readjusted expectations. I do comprehend something that chattering voice in the back of my skull keeps telling me: I am not employable so I need to employ myself. This is not to say that I can’t make money or work for a company of some stripe. It is to say that at 53 years old (supposedly the second most creative time in anyone’s life is their 50’s) I’m the best boss I’m ever gonna have.

That resting on your laurels thing only works if you kept the laurels (whatever the fuck laurels are…)

The best life hack for my migration to the desert is writing, playing my trumpet, telling stories, creating Live Lit shows, meeting people, doing some grunt work, and taking my own advice instead of just giving it. Also, ignoring most of everyone else’s problems because most of them don’t give a flat fuck what I think anyway.

I’ve found Vickie’s Diner, Big Dog Brewery, Stephanie Street, the UNLV campus, The Writer’s Block, Rebar, the buffet at Boulder Station Casino, Ninja Karaoke, a gym for $31 a month that has a pool, hot tub, sauna and a steam room, and at least three Starbucks I can drive to and enjoy the free WiFi.

I’m fitting in nicely.

[bynkii]

Right Idea, Wrong Company

Why did the creator of Glass have to be Google?

Because when I look at Glass, I see something that could have been amazing being controlled by a company that uses “build it and they will come, and if not, bin it quick” as its primary development/marketing method. I mean it worked once, with Gmail. But Gmail was…well the Angry Birds of email apps. Gmail also was developed at a time when Yahoo! mail was an “industry leader” as was Hotmail. There was also .Mac, but yeah. The state of public, web-based email was a major factor for Gmail. It wasn’t all timing, but timing was a huge factor.

As well, the early “invite-only” nature of Gmail was an amazing marketing campaign, albeit somewhat unintentional. People love to be elite. So Google didn’t really have to do a lot of deliberate marketing with Gmail.

That’s going to work once, maybe twice. Apple didn’t even get that with the iMac. Contrary to popular belief, they marketed the *heck* out of the iMac. And the iPhone. And the iPad. Really, every product Apple considers important gets marketed to hell and gone.

But more importantly, Apple thought about the iMac and the iPhone and the iPad.

Why should home computers be ugly beige boxes that you hide from view? Why do they need to support a lot of legacy stuff?

Do phones really need a hardware keyboard? If they don’t, how do you build one in software that works well? Why can’t we put a “real” web browser in a phone, wouldn’t that be awesome?

Why should tablet users have software that is only “sort of” designed for them?

On and on.

With Glass, the thinking seems to have been “A COMPUTER YOU WEAR ON YOUR HEAD! THIS IS SO COOL”, and then Google figured everyone would want one, every dev on the planet would fight to the death to be able to develop for it, it would take the world by storm, because magic.

How’s that working out?

Outside of a small number of technorati in a handful of places, no one seems to really care about Glass.

It’s a pity, because some deeper thought could have made this more than just a way to creep on people and get ads from stores you’re walking by. For example, why didn’t Google do a deal with movie theaters? AMC, Regal, and all the rest? Really, think about how awesome this could be for the hearing impaired. Instead of having to borrow things like this: http://www.syracuse.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2013/06/closed_caption_glasses_movies_regal_theaters_deaf.html

…(which of course are different for every theater chain, if your local theater even supports them.) Instead of all that rigamarole, you walk into the theater wearing Glass. You’ve already downloaded the app, so you just sit down, activate it on Glass, and watch the movie. When the movie’s done, you leave…just like everyone else. You don’t have some rent-a-specs on your face, you don’t have some external control unit silliness.

You walked in, enjoyed the movie, and left…just like everyone else.

Google has the money and the human capital to do this deal across theater chains. They could have created an open standard for this. They could have, on day one, had a product that would legitimately help people. It could have been extended to all kinds of media.

Seriously, read this review of the Regal system:

“I went to see “Star Trek Into Darkness” with the new closed captioning glasses, and was happy to finally enjoy every aspect of the experience. Able to relax instead of exhausting my senses to understand what I could, I actually understood every plot twist, chuckled at Captain Kirk’s quips and read descriptions of non-verbal audio, such as “(heavy breathing, panting)” as he’s chased through a red jungle by a planet’s primitive inhabitants.”

Instead, we have well-heeled hipsters being creepy in bars. Awesome.

Even worse, Glass is still “in beta”. We don’t even know what it will cost when it’s “done”.

Same thing with the watches. I’ve yet to see a single one of those things that is materially better than the old square iPod Nano with a band. They’re ugly, they don’t work that well, and their battery life blows oscillating, scintillating chunks.

And the shame of it is, good wearables are needed. Also from the Regal article:

“The devices work best if you’re sitting in the middle of the theater, so get there early. The following day, I saw the fantastic new “Man of Steel” on Destiny’s IMAX screen, but didn’t make any arrangements ahead of time. I arrived half an hour before the Superman film started, but it took 20 minutes to get the glasses — you have to ask the ticket-taker, who calls a supervisor to retrieve them and set them up — so I ended up sitting on the end of a row, viewing the text at a slightly awkward angle compared to the screen.

Also, if you’re going with a group of friends or planning to see a movie on a busy Friday or Saturday night, call ahead to make sure you can get the glasses. They’re available for every movie (look for “accessibility devices available” on Fandango’s website) but Great Northern Mall, Shoppingtown and the former Carousel Center each have just 10 sets. Regal Destiny USA Stadium 19 General Manager Bruce Livingston said he expects to get more to accommodate the brand-new IMAX and RPX screens.”

That’s not a huge problem, but imagine if you didn’t need that. If you walked in, wearing your glasses, sat down and watched the damned movie just like everyone else. No assistance from the theater needed. No calling ahead. No caring about where you sit. You just watch the movie. Heck, put an interlock on the app so the camera turns off when the app is running.

This would help millions. Instead, we get rich hipsters creeping in bars.

My wife works for our community theater. They have people they rely on to provide sign language services for the hearing impaired. But that means the person needing it has to arrange it ahead of time, they have to sit where they can see both the person signing and the play, the person signing is distracting to everyone else…

Wouldn’t it be awesome to have a Glass-compatible captioning system for theaters too? Again, the Glass wearer walks in, sits down, activates the app, and enjoys the play without having to care where they sit. They don’t need any special support. They can buy tickets five minutes before the curtain rises if they’re available.

Just like everyone else.

If Google licensed this technology, it could be huge for motorcycle riders, who are a primary audience for heads up tech. It’s not just a convenience, it’s a safety issue. The less a rider has to take their eyes off the road, the safer they are. At a reasonable price, this would be a fantastic helmet option. Yes, I know a few companies are working on this, but with a bit more thought and work, we could have had this already. Google has the resources to have done this on day one of Glass being available in public.

Instead, we get rich hipsters being annoying in restaurants.

On and on, if you really think about it, the tech introduced in Glass could have been huge, helpful, affordable and available on day 1. EMS services being able to broadcast live video of what they’re seeing to doctors in the nearest hospital. Telemedicine uses, enabling doctors to consult on operations from wherever they can get internet access while seeing what the operating surgeon is seeing, from the same angle and distance. Heck, being able to give surgeons a heads-up display with patient vitals. GPS assisted information for people with varying degrees of visual impairments.

Instead, Google, through shallow thinking, has managed to create a toy for overprivileged prats to be creepy with, (seriously, just put an LED on the front of Glass for when it’s recording and so many problems go away), that has bad battery life, and is designed so that people can shove more ads at you and Google can collect more data on you so that people can shove more ads at you.

I’ve nothing against ads, heck, they, in a way, used to pay my mortgage. But shouldn’t have Glass been much more than…what it is? Shouldn’t my most…enduring…mental image of a Glass user be something that isn’t Robert Scoble wearing one in a shower? Shouldn’t Glass be a name for something that is helping out thousands, if not millions of people by removing no-longer-necessary barriers between them and their lives?

It could have been…had some other company created it.

[brandbaskets]

New Post has been published on https://brandbaskets.in/the-new-idea-for-those-striving-to-find-a-middle-path-between-fomo-and-jomo-technology-news-ettech/

The new idea for those striving to find a middle path between FOMO and JOMO, Technology News, ETtech

Nikhil Jois was always online. The 28-year-old, who joined almost every social network, believed that “your network is your net worth”.

“In my vanity, I thought that everyone wanted to know where I had that masala dosa. I was craving for validation. I wouldn’t just post something, I would wait to see who likes it, who laughs at my jokes and who is jealous of me,” says the Bengaluru-based tech entrepreneur.

It soon became a vicious loop that he couldn’t escape. He had a fair idea of what addiction meant, and social media had begun to feel like one.

“I put on weight, got unusually stressed and unnecessarily angry. I wasn’t looking good or feeling good.” He tried turning off his mobile notifications and uninstalling some of the apps but eventually ended up logging on to them from his desktop. “It was like I was trying to sneak past myself.”

Then, in April 2017, Jois asked his brother to change all his social media passwords and not disclose them to him. “That really worked wonders for my health and productivity,” he says.

It’s been a year since and he claims he is no longer a social-media addict. “I sleep better. I feel healthier. I have regained two hours of reading time a day.” The web browser app on his cellphone has been replaced with Kindle just so he reads more long-form writing than bite-sized content. “I still get FOMO once in a while, though,” he says.

FOMO, or the fear of missing out, is a two-decade-old phenomenon acronymised by a Harvard MBA, Patrick J McGinnis, in 2002, and bandied about by every third digital literate since 2014. FOMO is a feeling that if one is not online, one might miss out on what others are experiencing, learning or talking about.

People suffering from FOMO are tethered to their digital devices and are often found rigorously posting their life updates, and liking and commenting on other people’s posts. Some of them passively scroll through social timelines to see what everyone’s up to.

Jois curbs FOMO by meeting people in person instead of going down the online rabbit hole. He’s moving towards JOMO, he believes. JOMO, or the joy of missing out, is a relatively positive belief that cutting off all social media and digital devices can be blissful. It was reportedly coined in 2012 by the American blogger and tech entrepreneur Anil Dash who briefly switched off his devices and went offline after the birth of his son.

FOMO and JOMO are the two ends of a spectrum that includes other social media-borne emotions like FOJI (fear of joining in), MOMO (mystery of missing out), SLOMO (slow to missing out). To Karthik Srinivasan, a communications and digital marketing consultant, JOMO is more a glamourisation of privilege. It’s meant for people who can afford to miss out on opportunities and leads that social media has on offer.

“FOMO and JOMO are two extremes. One is harmful, the other unrealistic for most users. Nobody is talking about a balance between the two, the middle path,” he says.

ET Magazine has decided to call the middle path NEMO, which means Nearly but not fully Missing Out.

Jois is an ideal example of NEMO now. He is away from most online networks but hasn’t turned into a social media recluse. He occasionally logs into Facebook to run an ad for his digital agency. He follows a select set of people on Twitter to get a lowdown on what’s happening in the world.

Palak Kapadia, 22, is another young NEMO-ite. The Mumbai-based writer envied people who seemed to have a better life on Instagram until she became what she resented. In September 2017, she got an offer to teach English in a high school in Nantes in western France. It was a seven-month term that gave her a chance to visit 14 countries in Europe over the weekends. “Now I was showing off how great my life was.”

Travelling also made her introspect. “It was exhausting to stay updated and keep posting everything all the time,” she recalls. During a trip to Italy, she chanced upon a quote that said: “Would you continue to do what you’re doing if you knew nobody was watching?” She recalls: “I realised my fear of missing out on other people’s lives was actually making me miss out on my own.”

Earlier she would post 10 Instagram Stories a day. “Now, I barely do one in a couple of days.” Completely disconnecting from social media was not an option for her as she likes to know what her friends and extended family are up to.

Pankaj Malani, head of content at tech startup Dailyhunt, is a NEMO cadet, too. He quit Facebook four months ago because he couldn’t keep up with the stream of “fake happiness”. “People were getting married, having kids, going on vacations; it’s as if their lives were perfect when in reality I knew it was far from it.”

However, social media has also proved to be a great tool for him at work. “Every time I need a voice-over guy, a small-time actor, a translator, I just tweet it out and find someone within minutes.”

A lot of people depend on social platforms professionally, says Amrita Clements, a Mumbai-based clinical psychologist and marriage and family therapist. A majority of them also try to perfect their image on social media. “Social media has proved to be an amazing tool to connect the older generation but has made the younger generation in big cities even lonelier.” 80% of her patients recognise its role in changing their behaviour and causing them anxiety and depression.

(aybollads=window.aybollads||[]).push(id:"91015553-3");

Instead of asking them to clamp down on a behaviour, she puts them on the path of NEMO. “I tell them to create boundaries: avoid logging in when they are in a bad mood because it may end up making it worse.”

She encourages them to work on real relationships and focus on themselves. One-fifth of her patients who acknowledge social media’s role in increasing their anxiety are removing social network apps from their phones. Detachment from all platforms à la JOMO is still not advisable. “Social media has also helped normalise mental health issues. It’s hard to cut off something that can be so positive at times,” she says.

The middle path propagated by NEMO is finding takers around the world. According to Socialreport.com’s March 2018 report, around 400 million Facebook users are taking a social media detox on a monthly basis, as opposed to a blanket ban. Apps to help people track mobile usage or keep from distractions have come up.

In 2014, Kevin Holesh created an iOS app called Moment to check his device addiction. The app, at 5.3 million downloads right now, tracks your iPhone and iPad usage and sets daily usage limits so you don’t waste time on the gadgets. In-app purchases range from Rs 200 to Rs 2,000. 6% of its user base is from India. “It’s been a wild ride,” says the Pittsburgh-based UI-UX designer who has seen a 100% year-on-year growth in user base in the last four years.

He sees a huge boost in sales early January because of New Year resolutions. The concern around data privacy after the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica debacle was also good for business, he says.

While the future is certainly mobile-based, the highly productive times of many are often on desktop. In 2009, a North Carolina-based tech company called Freedom created an eponymous software that could be used across mobile phones and desktops to block distracting websites and apps as per the user’s wish. A tenth of its 750,000 users are from India, says Fred Stutzman, founder of Freedom.

Neither Stutzman nor Holesh is a proponent of JOMO. “It is unrealistic to expect people to go smartphone-free. Limiting yourself to two hours on the phone daily is a good place to start with,” says Holesh.

JOMO may have been called the next big trend, but it is actually NEMO that is turning out to be a potential global industry, with the emergence of a raft of phone-tracking and meditation apps that helps you have a balanced digital life.

Digital wellbeing is being turned into an experiential business too. A weekend of digital detox retreat at select tourist locations across the world ranges between $200 and $4,000.

In India, even the internet de-addiction centres in metros don’t talk about completely cutting off social media and digital devices. “Complete abstinence will be met by complete resistance. We have to reduce the dysfunctional part of one’s behaviour that leads to addiction,” says Dr Manoj Kumar Sharma, a clinical psychologist at NIMHANS, who was instrumental in setting up the Services for Healthy Use of Technology (SHUT) clinic under the aegis of the Bengaluru-based medical institution that deals with mental health and neurosciences.

It’s also fashionable to look at social media addiction as a thing in itself when addictive behaviour is actually a lot more complex, says Dr Alok Sarin, a Delhi-based psychiatrist.

“People with addiction are prone to dependency behaviour. This dependency can be on a variety of things, including gambling, gaming and technology in general. It’s difficult to say if the problem is with the behaviour or the platform,” he adds. Companies like Google and Samsung are doing their bit to ensure their platforms offer a balance between digital connectivity and digital wellbeing.

Earlier this year, Arianna Huffington, cofounder of Huffington Post, launched the beta version of a digital wellness app called Thrive in India through the Samsung Galaxy Store and the Google Play store. “We will be officially launching the app in India this summer,” says Danny Shea, head of global expansion at Thrive Global.

Last month, Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, announced a host of features for its upcoming products under the digital wellbeing umbrella while addressing the audience at the tech giant’s annual I/O conference. Finding a balance between FOMO and JOMO was key to his speech as well. A balance that, ironically enough, even the makers of apps like Moment and Freedom are striving to achieve. Everyone is indeed on a quest towards finding their NEMO.

Acronyms of Social Media Age

FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)

It is the anxiety caused by the assumption that if you are not online, you might miss out on what others are experiencing, learning or talking about

FOJI (Fear of Joining In)

It is the worry that your social media friends may not like or comment on your posts and pictures so you are less likely to post updates and could out of platforms at once. FOJI is exhibited by people who delete their post if it hasn’t received too many reactions within an hour of posting

MOMO (Mystery of Missing Out)

When you notice that your friends haven’t posted in a while and you feel anxious that they are having too much fun without keeping you in the loop

FOMOMO (Fear of the Mystery of Missing Out)

The feeling that you are missing out due to a broken or out-of-battery phone

SLOMO (Slow to Missing Out)

When you sleep through the night unaware of your friend’s party, only to wake up to a timeline full of pictures and updates from the same

BROMO (Bros Protecting you from Missing Out)

When your friends don’t post pictures from a fun gig just so you don’t feel left out

JOMO (Joy of Missing Out)

The belief that cutting off from social media and digital devices can lead to happiness

NEMO (Nearly but not fully Missing Out)

The acronym coined by ET Magazine to describe the balance a lot of users are trying to strike between FOMO and JOMO. NEMO is when you have not fully cut off from your devices or social media. (Source: theguardian.com and other media reports)

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[megadarkbouquettidalwavethings]

Five visions for the future of music

Welcome to the (not so) distant future.

The year is 2018.

Music is changing fast, but can the humans keep up?

Here’s a handful of possible outcomes.

Go boldly everybody.

1) Your favourite singer is not real

One of Japan’s biggest pop stars Hatsune Miku (above) is not a real person.

But that small detail didn’t prevent the humanoid singer from releasing another new music video last week.

She may also have some duets lined up – given that she’s already collaborated with Pharrell.

If the name of the fictional J-pop act is unfamiliar, then try this one on for size:

Roy Orbison.

The Big O died in 1988 but now his 3D hologram world tour will come to life, alongside the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, on 8 April in Cardiff.

His son, Roy Orbison Jr, who hopes his dad’s avatar will one day have a Las Vegas residency, says: “We’re really excited we got the opportunity to do this: the first big tour of a deceased artist with a hologram.

“I don’t think it’s possible yet for the hologram to walk out into the audience so there’s definitely a lot of potential for live application.”

He adds: “But most importantly this is just the icing on the cake.

“The cake is those amazing songs that my dad wrote and his incredible voice.”

Rapper, activist and actual woman M.I.A believes virtual alter egos can benefit living musicians too.

“Artists are at the cusp of embracing AI. But what is political activism in AI phase?” she pondered at Meltdown.

“I think ‘Should I make my next video in virtual reality instead of me?’. I find that sexy – new technology.

“I could take the hippy route of singing to people face-to-face… or I could stream my virtual shows to people’s bedrooms around the world so you can be at my show wherever you are.”

She went on: “The amount of data AI can pick up on is so fast growing that the future me will be way better anyway!

“But will the future me be less politicised?”

Speak to James Skelly of Merseyside psych rockers The Coral and he’ll tell you he would have made the digital changeover years ago.

He says: “We wanted a holographic version of The Coral, when we were first doing well in about 2002, to tour Japan as us.

“If there was a group that could do another gig, as well as us, and we could split the profits, I’d be up for it!

“But you need songs – it’s always about songs.”

For all we know, the future may have already started for Guy Garvey of Manchester band Elbow.

“How do you know that we are not already holographic?” he quips.

Well, quite.

2) The live parameters have shifted

From the hippies at Woodstock in 1969 to Ed Sheeran and his loop pedal at Glastonbury this summer, the festival experience has been forever changing.

Bluedot Festival – Photo: BLUEDOT FESTIVAL

By next summer, virtual and augmented reality – as well as “3D mapping” – could mean they are more interactive than ever before.

Ben Robinson, creative director of Bluedot Festival at the Jodrell Bank Observatory (you know, the one in Hitchhikers Guide), is giddy at the thought of “shifting the parameters”.

“We had Orbital playing [in 2017] who, 20 years ago, were the very cutting edge, looking at lasers and light production making it more than just some guy standing on a stage,” he says.

“Now today the incorporation of visuals and the production that goes on is quite insane.

“3D mapping manipulates the look and feel of a 3D object. It’s been done on castles to make them look like they’ve fallen down.

“Now people can experience being on the stage with the artists. Or the gig could move off the stage.

“We are a generation spoiled with possibilities.”

Animated heroes Gorillaz hosted their own one-day festival, Demon Dayz, at Margate theme park Dreamland last summer.

Co-creator Jamie Hewlett told the Daily Star that he and Damon Albarn may be getting “too old” but Ben sees no reason why the show can’t go on without them.

“In the past a band’s legacy was they left a record and VHS recording of a concert. Now they can leave the tools for someone else and be just as effective 50 years in the future.”

3) The recording studio is in your laptop

Noel Gallagher confessed to Radio X’s John Kennedy last month that he had never actually met the bass player on his new album Who Built The Moon?

Jason Falkner was doing his thing down the line from LA, while Noel was having his mind blown in Belfast and London.

Noel said: “It was the entire opposite to the thing I’ve ever done. My thing with Oasis was being in a room with a bunch of people and eye contact.

“Here I am at two in the afternoon talking to a guy on an iPad and for him it’s four in the morning and I can hear the song coming through his speakers and he’s saying ‘What do you think of this? Maybe if I do that?’

“And I’m like ‘this is so far out it’s unbelievable’.”

Butch Vig, former Nirvana producer and drummer with Garbage and 5 Billions in Diamonds, confirms such technology is also now available to new bands, who are short on cash but long on distance and imagination.

“There’s a new editing programme where you can be working on the same song in real time in different cities,” he says.

“You have to be creative with the tools you’ve got and, because of the digital technology, everybody can have a really powerful recording studio in your laptop.”

Beth Orton (who incidentally describes Hatsune Miku as “the music industry’s perfect woman”) embraced such kit on her latest album Kidsticks and in some cases preferred computer-generated sounds over actual instruments.

She says: “The ability to play the keyboard and the sound to be any sound possible was very freeing. That would influence the melodies that you created.”

But just a little of that human touch still goes a long way in the creative process.

“Even making an electronic record it was about the connection with the producer and the other musicians.

“I personally like a bit of imperfection.”

4) There’s a direct line between you and your favourite act

Jack White’s Third Man Records reward their subscribers with deliveries of exclusive limited edition pressings.

DJ Gramatik went a step further last week by becoming the first artist to “tokenise” himself, meaning fans who buy the token using the cryptocurrency Ether can potentially share in his future revenue.

Jeff Smith from music databse Discogs believes such block chain technology will “set a direct line from creator to consumer to be able to send things directly, without any form of piracy”.

He says: “We could see subscription platforms, like Third Man records, being able to send out Jack White exclusives without them being traded or shared in any way.”

That’s not to say that fans won’t still crave physical records and material from their new crypto-favourites.

“We’re definitely seeing a universal unplugging and physical music becoming a major part of peoples lives again.”

London hip hop star Loyle Carner is not currently available in token form and he’s happy to keep fans waiting for the follow-up to his Mercury-nominated 2017 album Yesterday’s Gone.

“A song comes out and people say ‘I like that – OK now I’m bored of that. Where’s the next one?’,” he explains.

“Singles are like chapters from a book and if you want to hear my music you’ve got to wait for it.”

5) But new music technology will not be for everyone

For all the head-bending future technology, for many, music always was and always will be about the people… man.

Neil Hannon from the Divine Comedy says: “I’m going to come across as a complete Luddite now but I believe music only gets worse the further you take people and humanity out of it.

“I foresee if they insist on going down this non-existent route then you’re only going to get another punk of some description that rewrites the rulebook.”

Punks like Irish rockers The Strypes maybe?

Bass player Peter O’Hanlon says: “Our fresh approach will be that we just come and play the gig! Everybody else is flying across the stage and we just stand in front of you and play.”

Guitarist Josh McClorey agrees: “The other stuff is cool, but it’s a gimmick.”

Compatriot Lisa Hannigan won’t be found jamming over the internet or appearing live as a hologram anytime soon.

“I don’t think that’s going to be my bag of chips!” says Lisa.

“I just like rocking out a jam with my friends. I can barely work the camera on my phone.

“Cancel the Lisa Hannigan Hologram tour. We’ve lost the cable!”

Just because you can, doesn’t always mean you should and as we hurl ourselves into the new age, fellow folkee Marcus Mumford prefers to hold on to the sacred spirit of the past.

He says: “I don’t know what the future of music is going to look like but if I’m not playing I don’t want no part of it.

“If it sounds good and people are having a good time, then it’s enough for me.”

Source: BBC

The post Five visions for the future of music appeared first on Breaking News Top News & Latest News Headlines | Reuters.

[casualstudentduck-blog]

10 From The Best Places On earth (PHOTOS).

Arizona has been a significant retirement destination for years, and once and for all factor. The controlling gamer puts a clutter cloud token for each part of the ship within assortment some of the significant ship. Although the competition aspect from The Flavor isn't really specifically intriguing (just like The Vocal) and also the bitchiness in between the judges (Anthony Bourdain, Nigella Lawson, Ludo Lefebvre, and Marcus Samuelsson) could ultimately grate, the meals itself is actually absolutely nothing but alluring and also delicious. There's an account on CNN concerning a nutritionist lecturer that takes place a Twinkie diet plan (all snack food pies) plus all he consumes are snack birthday cake junkfood type things however confines his caloric consumption to below 1800 calories a time. Puerto Vallarta is even more expensive in comparison to various other spots where you could consider living or even retiring overseas, but in Puerto Vallarta that's certainly not the aspect. Meals refuse throughout arrangement and usage is actually a worrying concern, however meals reduction during manufacturing is usually ignored, despite the fact that it's where most food items misuse stems. The Food items & Consume application, powered through Bing, pulls in 100,000 brand-new recipes, a wine encyclopaedia and also plenty of culinary tips. The challenge experiencing many business is actually to locate economical answers that are actually end results oriented. WIC, obviously, is a fair bit various in comparison to SNAP, even though each courses are administrated by the USDA's Meals and Nourishment Company to deliver health and nutrition assistance to low-income houses and maintain all of them out of poverty. When http://blog-dietatippek.info catch her elbow joint and also her workmates couldn't get this to shift, the 30-year-old girl had actually attempted to meet a packet of crisps which landed in the food items rack. Nowhere are actually these divides additional obvious in comparison to in point of views about health food and food having genetically customized components. Read Even more Most of the exact same points matter when hiring a visuals professional, also. http://blog-dietatippek.info -up examines the switch in nutritional designs because of urbanicity (conditions that are actually specific to non-urban vs. city areas), climate adjustment, and the globalization of the meals market. The Castle's spot at the nexus of numerous critical mass relays has actually resulted in its make use of as the capital urban area from the galaxy's governing body system: the Manor Authorities. A place like Footfall will definitely have Transportations coming in with only army quality provisions imo - a staggering quantity. That will be wonderful to observe a health and nutrition graph or pyramid as well as some brief sessions regarding healthy protein, saturated as well as unsaturated excess fats, cholesterol, and other type of carbohydrates. On a special offer for the joyful season, the vineyard scenic tour package deal is actually available in 7 different locations around the UK, ranked 4.5/ 5 by over 1000 customer reviews on internet site. I desired to discover the science and also relevant evidence concerning exactly how food can influence my and child's wellness for far better or even even worse. The subject recall influences 5 great deals of food that were actually generated off its own provider's great deal of beef, which is exclusively made use of for the Piece from Beef product and also not one other products. Creepy-crawlies have been de rigeuer in night markets and also street food items means years, specifically in places like Asia as well as Mexico. MEALS NETWORK CELEBRITY CHILD is actually a preparing food competitors that tests 10 hopefuls to slice, grill, as well as platter their means to results: a Food items Network internet series starring the winner. Given, the title is certainly not one of the most safe-for-work out there, however don't panic, meals adult is actually completely upright. Food Street is the perfect bistro control game for any type of follower from cooking, farming or cooking video games. This is actually possible that Under Armour will utilize the IBM Watson expert system body along with rational records to offer individuals with idea right into their tracking and also health and nutrition data. The sophisticated, voiced-recognizing computer services in vast usage are actually virtual cleverness," basically a sophisticated variation of Siri-- very skillfully set, yet certainly not independent. Nutritional search could look up the differences between Fla or The golden state avocados, for instance.

The best method, as it needs no extra tools, is to just store meals the animal suches as in your hand as well as that will follow you like a famished creature at a petting zoo (as observed in the screenshot over), any place you go as long as you do not manage also swiftly off of it. The foods items each animal likes are outlined in the reproducing graph found in the following part. For example, compared with the 1930s, the fruit and vegetables our company currently eat contain around 20% less minerals like zinc, calcium mineral as well as magnesium mineral according to bodies off The Food Payment. The staff additionally desires to expand the application's data source from dietary stats and customer reviews to feature dining establishments, so consumers could find exactly how healthy a food items facility is, Segal claims. Because I have a great preventive situation as well as armband that maintains it in location and also dry, I've been catching with the iPod. Absolute best Dining establishment Health and nutrition Quick guide plus Meals Score Calculator in one app for iPhone/iPad or iPod! In their developing disenchantment along with conflicting authoritative resources, individuals have the tendency to end up being less competent to any kind of nutritional advice whatsoever. This procedure has been processed eventually as well as now in regions like Peru and also the Canary Islands, workers acquire Cochineal insects and then mix the grain with an acidic alcoholic drinks service to create. carminic acid, which is actually at that point turned into carmine, which is at that point become Natural Reddish # 4 for usage in foodstuff. As you can easily find from the accounts above, food photographes are nothing at all to laugh about. Aspect 4 though, that effects have to be actually direct and immediate for a player to experience impact as well as discover: Although this is actually the best common method (and also very created in video games) we're viewing games like Mass Result and also the Witcher 2 deliver ambiguous selections to the player which can have unanticipated outcomes much better down free throw line.

[nancygduarteus]

How to Die

One morning in May, the existential psychotherapist Irvin Yalom was recuperating in a sunny room on the first floor of a Palo Alto convalescent hospital. He was dressed in white pants and a green sweater, not a hospital gown, and was quick to point out that he is not normally confined to a medical facility. “I don’t want [this article] to scare my patients,” he said, laughing. Until a knee surgery the previous month, he had been seeing two or three patients a day, some at his office in San Francisco and others in Palo Alto, where he lives. Following the procedure, however, he felt dizzy and had difficulty concentrating. “They think it’s a brain issue, but they don’t know exactly what it is,” he told me in a soft, gravelly voice. He was nonetheless hopeful that he would soon head home; he would be turning 86 in June and was looking forward to the release of his memoir, Becoming Myself, in October.

Issues of The Times Literary Supplement and The New York Times Book Review sat on the bed, alongside an iPad. Yalom had been spending his stay watching Woody Allen movies and reading novels by the Canadian writer Robertson Davies. For someone who helped introduce to American psychological circles the idea that a person’s conflicts can result from unresolvable dilemmas of human existence, among them the dread of dying, he spoke easily about his own mortality.

“I haven’t been overwhelmed by fear,” he said of his unfolding health scare. Another of Yalom’s signature ideas, expressed in books such as Staring at the Sun and Creatures of a Day, is that we can lessen our fear of dying by living a regret-free life, meditating on our effect on subsequent generations, and confiding in loved ones about our death anxiety. When I asked whether his lifelong preoccupation with death eases the prospect that he might pass away soon, he replied, “I think it probably makes things easier.”

The hope that our existential fears can be diminished inspires people around the world to email Yalom daily. In a Gmail folder labeled “Fans,” he had saved 4,197 messages from admirers in places ranging from Iran to Croatia to South Korea, which he invited me to look at. Some were simply thank-you notes, expressions of gratitude for the insights delivered by his books. In addition to textbooks and other works of nonfiction, he has written several novels and story collections. Some, such as Love’s Executioner & Other Tales of Psychotherapy and When Nietzsche Wept, have been best sellers.

As I scrolled through the emails, Yalom used his cane to tap a button that alerted the nurses’ station. A voice came through the intercom, and he explained that he needed some ice for his knee. It was the third time he’d called; he told me his pain was making it difficult to concentrate on anything else, though he was trying. Throughout his stay, his wife of more than 60 years, Marilyn, had been stopping by regularly to refresh his reading material. The day before, he’d had a visit from Georgia May, the widow of the existential psychotherapist Rollo May, who was a colleague and friend of Yalom’s. When he runs out of other things to do, he plays on his iPad or his computer, using them with the dexterity of someone half his age.

Many of Yalom’s fan letters are searing meditations on death. Some correspondents hope he will offer relief from deep-seated problems. Most of the time he suggests that they find a local therapist, but if one isn’t available and the issue seems solvable in a swift period—at this point in his career, he won’t work with patients for longer than a year—he may take someone on remotely. He is currently working with people in Turkey, South Africa, and Australia via the internet. Obvious cultural distinctions aside, he says his foreign patients are not that different from the patients he treats in person. “If we live a life full of regret, full of things we haven’t done, if we’ve lived an unfulfilled life,” he says, “when death comes along, it’s a lot worse. I think it’s true for all of us.”

Becoming Myself is clearly the memoir of a psychiatrist. “I awake from my dream at 3 a.m., weeping into my pillow,” reads the opening line. Yalom’s nightmare involves a childhood incident in which he insulted a girl. Much of the book is about the influence that his youth—particularly his relationship with his mother—has had on his life. He writes, quoting Charles Dickens, “For, as I draw closer and closer to the end, I travel in the circle, nearer and nearer to the beginning.”

Yalom first gained fame among psychotherapists for The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy. The book, published in 1970, argues that the dynamic in group therapy is a microcosm of everyday life, and that addressing relationships within a therapy group could have profound therapeutic benefits outside of it. “I’ll do the sixth revision next year,” he told me, as nurses came in and out of the room. He was sitting in a chair by the window, fidgeting. Without his signature panama hat, his sideburns, which skate away from his ears, looked especially long.

Although he gave up teaching years ago, Yalom says that until he is no longer capable, he’ll continue seeing patients in the cottage in his backyard. It is a shrink’s version of a man cave, lined with books by Friedrich Nietzsche and the Stoic philosophers. The garden outside features Japanese bonsai trees; deer, rabbits, and foxes make occasional appearances nearby. “When I feel restless, I step outside and putter over the bonsai, pruning, watering, and admiring their graceful shapes,” he writes in Becoming Myself.

Yalom sees each problem encountered in therapy as something of a puzzle, one he and his patient must work together to solve. He described this dynamic in Love’s Executioner, which consists of 10 stories of patients undergoing therapy—true tales from Yalom’s work, with names changed but few other details altered. The stories concentrate not only on Yalom’s suffering patients but also on his own feelings and thoughts as a therapist. “I wanted to rehumanize therapy, to show the therapist as a real person,” he told me.

That might not sound like the stuff of potboilers, but the book, which came out in 1989, was a commercial hit, and continues to sell briskly today. In 2003, the critic Laura Miller credited it with inaugurating a new genre. Love’s Executioner, she wrote in The New York Times, had shown “that the psychological case study could give readers what the short fiction of the time increasingly refused to deliver: the pursuit of secrets, intrigue, big emotions, plot.”

Today, the people around the world who email Yalom know him mostly from his writing, which has been translated into dozens of languages. Like David Hasselhoff, he may well be more of a star outside the United States than at home. This likely reflects American readers’ religiosity and insistence on happy endings. Mondays with Yalom are not Tuesdays With Morrie. Yalom can be morbid, and he doesn’t believe in an afterlife; he says his anxiety about death is soothed somewhat by the belief that what follows life will be the same as what preceded it. Not surprisingly, he told me, highly religious readers don’t tend to gravitate toward his books.

Yalom is candid, both in his memoir and in person, about the difficulties of aging. When two of his close friends died recently, he realized that his cherished memory of their friendship is all that remains. “It dawned on me that that reality doesn’t exist anymore,” he said sadly. “When I die, it will be gone.” The thought of leaving Marilyn behind is agonizing. But he also dreads further physical deterioration. He now uses a walker with tennis balls on the bottoms of the legs, and he has recently lost weight. He coughed frequently during our meeting; when I emailed him a month later, he was feeling better, but said of his health scare, “I consider those few weeks as among the very worst of my life.” He can no longer play tennis or go scuba diving, and he fears he might have to stop bicycling. “Getting old,” he writes in ​Becoming Myself, “is giving up one damn thing after another.”

In his books, Yalom emphasizes that love can reduce death anxiety, both by providing a space for people to share their fears and by contributing to a well-lived life. Marilyn, an accomplished feminist literary scholar with whom he has a close intellectual partnership, inspires him to keep living every bit as much as she makes the idea of dying excruciating. “My wife matches me book for book,” he told me at one point. But although Yalom’s email account has a folder titled “Ideas for Writing,” he said he may finally be out of book ideas. Meanwhile, Marilyn told me that she had recently helped someone write an obituary for Irvin. “This is the reality of where we are in life,” she said.

Early in Yalom’s existential-psychotherapy practice, he was struck by how much comfort people derived from exploring their existential fears. “Dying,” he wrote in Staring at the Sun, “is lonely, the loneliest event of life.” Yet empathy and connectedness can go a long way toward reducing our anxieties about mortality. When, in the 1970s, Yalom began working with patients diagnosed with untreatable cancer, he found they were sometimes heartened by the idea that, by dying with dignity, they could be an example to others.

Death terror can occur in anyone at any time, and can have life-changing effects, both negative and positive. “Even for those with a deeply ingrained block against openness—those who have always avoided deep friendships—the idea of death may be an awakening experience, catalyzing an enormous shift in their desire for intimacy,” Yalom has written. Those who haven’t yet lived the life they wanted to can still shift their priorities late in life. “The same thing was true with Ebenezer Scrooge,” he told me, as a nurse brought him three pills.

For all the morbidity of existential psychotherapy, it is deeply life-affirming. Change is always possible. Intimacy can be freeing. Existence is precious. “I hate the idea of leaving this world, this wonderful life,” Yalom said, praising a metaphor devised by the scientist Richard Dawkins to illustrate the fleeting nature of existence. Imagine that the present moment is a spotlight moving its way across a ruler that shows the billions of years the universe has been around. Everything to the left of the area lit by the spotlight is over; to the right is the uncertain future. The chances of us being in the spotlight at this particular moment—of being alive—are minuscule. And yet here we are.

Yalom’s apprehension about death is allayed by his sense that he has lived well. “As I look back at my life, I have been an overachiever, and I have few regrets,” he said quietly. Still, he continued, people have “an inbuilt impulse to want to survive, to live.” He paused. “I hate to see life go.”

from Health News And Updates https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/10/how-to-die/537906/?utm_source=feed

[ionecoffman]

How to Die

One morning in May, the existential psychotherapist Irvin Yalom was recuperating in a sunny room on the first floor of a Palo Alto convalescent hospital. He was dressed in white pants and a green sweater, not a hospital gown, and was quick to point out that he is not normally confined to a medical facility. “I don’t want [this article] to scare my patients,” he said, laughing. Until a knee surgery the previous month, he had been seeing two or three patients a day, some at his office in San Francisco and others in Palo Alto, where he lives. Following the procedure, however, he felt dizzy and had difficulty concentrating. “They think it’s a brain issue, but they don’t know exactly what it is,” he told me in a soft, gravelly voice. He was nonetheless hopeful that he would soon head home; he would be turning 86 in June and was looking forward to the release of his memoir, Becoming Myself, in October.

Issues of The Times Literary Supplement and The New York Times Book Review sat on the bed, alongside an iPad. Yalom had been spending his stay watching Woody Allen movies and reading novels by the Canadian writer Robertson Davies. For someone who helped introduce to American psychological circles the idea that a person’s conflicts can result from unresolvable dilemmas of human existence, among them the dread of dying, he spoke easily about his own mortality.

“I haven’t been overwhelmed by fear,” he said of his unfolding health scare. Another of Yalom’s signature ideas, expressed in books such as Staring at the Sun and Creatures of a Day, is that we can lessen our fear of dying by living a regret-free life, meditating on our effect on subsequent generations, and confiding in loved ones about our death anxiety. When I asked whether his lifelong preoccupation with death eases the prospect that he might pass away soon, he replied, “I think it probably makes things easier.”

The hope that our existential fears can be diminished inspires people around the world to email Yalom daily. In a Gmail folder labeled “Fans,” he had saved 4,197 messages from admirers in places ranging from Iran to Croatia to South Korea, which he invited me to look at. Some were simply thank-you notes, expressions of gratitude for the insights delivered by his books. In addition to textbooks and other works of nonfiction, he has written several novels and story collections. Some, such as Love’s Executioner & Other Tales of Psychotherapy and When Nietzsche Wept, have been best sellers.

As I scrolled through the emails, Yalom used his cane to tap a button that alerted the nurses’ station. A voice came through the intercom, and he explained that he needed some ice for his knee. It was the third time he’d called; he told me his pain was making it difficult to concentrate on anything else, though he was trying. Throughout his stay, his wife of more than 60 years, Marilyn, had been stopping by regularly to refresh his reading material. The day before, he’d had a visit from Georgia May, the widow of the existential psychotherapist Rollo May, who was a colleague and friend of Yalom’s. When he runs out of other things to do, he plays on his iPad or his computer, using them with the dexterity of someone half his age.

Many of Yalom’s fan letters are searing meditations on death. Some correspondents hope he will offer relief from deep-seated problems. Most of the time he suggests that they find a local therapist, but if one isn’t available and the issue seems solvable in a swift period—at this point in his career, he won’t work with patients for longer than a year—he may take someone on remotely. He is currently working with people in Turkey, South Africa, and Australia via the internet. Obvious cultural distinctions aside, he says his foreign patients are not that different from the patients he treats in person. “If we live a life full of regret, full of things we haven’t done, if we’ve lived an unfulfilled life,” he says, “when death comes along, it’s a lot worse. I think it’s true for all of us.”

Becoming Myself is clearly the memoir of a psychiatrist. “I awake from my dream at 3 a.m., weeping into my pillow,” reads the opening line. Yalom’s nightmare involves a childhood incident in which he insulted a girl. Much of the book is about the influence that his youth—particularly his relationship with his mother—has had on his life. He writes, quoting Charles Dickens, “For, as I draw closer and closer to the end, I travel in the circle, nearer and nearer to the beginning.”

Yalom first gained fame among psychotherapists for The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy. The book, published in 1970, argues that the dynamic in group therapy is a microcosm of everyday life, and that addressing relationships within a therapy group could have profound therapeutic benefits outside of it. “I’ll do the sixth revision next year,” he told me, as nurses came in and out of the room. He was sitting in a chair by the window, fidgeting. Without his signature panama hat, his sideburns, which skate away from his ears, looked especially long.

Although he gave up teaching years ago, Yalom says that until he is no longer capable, he’ll continue seeing patients in the cottage in his backyard. It is a shrink’s version of a man cave, lined with books by Friedrich Nietzsche and the Stoic philosophers. The garden outside features Japanese bonsai trees; deer, rabbits, and foxes make occasional appearances nearby. “When I feel restless, I step outside and putter over the bonsai, pruning, watering, and admiring their graceful shapes,” he writes in Becoming Myself.

Yalom sees each problem encountered in therapy as something of a puzzle, one he and his patient must work together to solve. He described this dynamic in Love’s Executioner, which consists of 10 stories of patients undergoing therapy—true tales from Yalom’s work, with names changed but few other details altered. The stories concentrate not only on Yalom’s suffering patients but also on his own feelings and thoughts as a therapist. “I wanted to rehumanize therapy, to show the therapist as a real person,” he told me.

That might not sound like the stuff of potboilers, but the book, which came out in 1989, was a commercial hit, and continues to sell briskly today. In 2003, the critic Laura Miller credited it with inaugurating a new genre. Love’s Executioner, she wrote in The New York Times, had shown “that the psychological case study could give readers what the short fiction of the time increasingly refused to deliver: the pursuit of secrets, intrigue, big emotions, plot.”

Today, the people around the world who email Yalom know him mostly from his writing, which has been translated into dozens of languages. Like David Hasselhoff, he may well be more of a star outside the United States than at home. This likely reflects American readers’ religiosity and insistence on happy endings. Mondays with Yalom are not Tuesdays With Morrie. Yalom can be morbid, and he doesn’t believe in an afterlife; he says his anxiety about death is soothed somewhat by the belief that what follows life will be the same as what preceded it. Not surprisingly, he told me, highly religious readers don’t tend to gravitate toward his books.

Yalom is candid, both in his memoir and in person, about the difficulties of aging. When two of his close friends died recently, he realized that his cherished memory of their friendship is all that remains. “It dawned on me that that reality doesn’t exist anymore,” he said sadly. “When I die, it will be gone.” The thought of leaving Marilyn behind is agonizing. But he also dreads further physical deterioration. He now uses a walker with tennis balls on the bottoms of the legs, and he has recently lost weight. He coughed frequently during our meeting; when I emailed him a month later, he was feeling better, but said of his health scare, “I consider those few weeks as among the very worst of my life.” He can no longer play tennis or go scuba diving, and he fears he might have to stop bicycling. “Getting old,” he writes in ​Becoming Myself, “is giving up one damn thing after another.”

In his books, Yalom emphasizes that love can reduce death anxiety, both by providing a space for people to share their fears and by contributing to a well-lived life. Marilyn, an accomplished feminist literary scholar with whom he has a close intellectual partnership, inspires him to keep living every bit as much as she makes the idea of dying excruciating. “My wife matches me book for book,” he told me at one point. But although Yalom’s email account has a folder titled “Ideas for Writing,” he said he may finally be out of book ideas. Meanwhile, Marilyn told me that she had recently helped someone write an obituary for Irvin. “This is the reality of where we are in life,” she said.

Early in Yalom’s existential-psychotherapy practice, he was struck by how much comfort people derived from exploring their existential fears. “Dying,” he wrote in Staring at the Sun, “is lonely, the loneliest event of life.” Yet empathy and connectedness can go a long way toward reducing our anxieties about mortality. When, in the 1970s, Yalom began working with patients diagnosed with untreatable cancer, he found they were sometimes heartened by the idea that, by dying with dignity, they could be an example to others.

Death terror can occur in anyone at any time, and can have life-changing effects, both negative and positive. “Even for those with a deeply ingrained block against openness—those who have always avoided deep friendships—the idea of death may be an awakening experience, catalyzing an enormous shift in their desire for intimacy,” Yalom has written. Those who haven’t yet lived the life they wanted to can still shift their priorities late in life. “The same thing was true with Ebenezer Scrooge,” he told me, as a nurse brought him three pills.

For all the morbidity of existential psychotherapy, it is deeply life-affirming. Change is always possible. Intimacy can be freeing. Existence is precious. “I hate the idea of leaving this world, this wonderful life,” Yalom said, praising a metaphor devised by the scientist Richard Dawkins to illustrate the fleeting nature of existence. Imagine that the present moment is a spotlight moving its way across a ruler that shows the billions of years the universe has been around. Everything to the left of the area lit by the spotlight is over; to the right is the uncertain future. The chances of us being in the spotlight at this particular moment—of being alive—are minuscule. And yet here we are.

Yalom’s apprehension about death is allayed by his sense that he has lived well. “As I look back at my life, I have been an overachiever, and I have few regrets,” he said quietly. Still, he continued, people have “an inbuilt impulse to want to survive, to live.” He paused. “I hate to see life go.”

Article source here:The Atlantic