#also I decided to add the ID to the main caption as well just so ppl don't have to click on the image to read it

[rainbowwyrm]

My favorite scene from Clown's recent Makeship commercial

[ID: A digital artwork of Wally Darling and Barnaby B. Beagle standing in the vacuum of space, surrounded by floating debris and three colorful planetary bodies. The black background depicts countless tiny stars that are all arrayed in different colors. Wally conveys an inquisitive expression with his finger pointed towards his mouth. The speech bubble above him reads, "How did we get up here, Barnaby?". In response, Barnaby is seen shrugging his shoulders with his usual smiley expression. The speech bubble above him reads, "Beats me, kid!" as if in a whimsically aloof manner.]

Reblogs are appreciated!

[koobiie]

bestowing my highest honor as an artist to ffxv (drawing the characters in fun outfits)

thoughts under the cut

RREAAAGHHHH SO EXCITED TO BE DONE WITH THIS!!!!! it took me forevarrrr but i soldiered through as an act of love. now excuse me. yap time

OKAY SO the concept behind this was originally specific fashion subcultures for everyone!l ike noct emo ignis dark academia etc. but then decided i didnt want to pigeonhole it all and just freestyled outfits i thought would look nice on everyone

noct - i do think noct would still be emo-ish but also opt for comfy baggy stuff a lot. something you could just fall asleep in on the spot. note the details of bass pro shop shirt (of course) XV necklace, little moon + stars accents, carbuncle + fish keychains. i also wanted his metal band logo shirt to spell LUCIS but i forgor some letters but its not very readable anyways

ignis - ignit ooohghh ignos ignaurs. sorry i made him serve so much cunt it will happen again. i drew him first cause that kind of inspired this whole thing i love him so bad if i didnt draw it id explode. not much detail to note except his collar pins are like his double blade thingies

luna - lunaaa the concept was “clean girl aesthetic” idk if that happened but im actually really happy with how it came out! might be my favorite of the bunch just because she looks so pretty and happy. your honor she should have been able to just be a normal girl and just. chill

prompto - prompotoooo i had trouble picking his vibe!!! my first thought was techwear?? because weeheeeehee he loves tech and well... you know... but then i realized i didnt really like the look of anything i saw + it was so bulky and dark and serious for him! ending up going with some more youthful and baggy. i was considering something more loud and colorful but ended up not going with it. i feel like in canon he'd be too nervous to have such a flashy fit and would want to just look "cool" to fit in with the boys lol. itty bitty details here - chocobo keychain, pompompurin and bi miku buttons, and his lanyard is kings knight themed! i also thought it was funny to write LUCIS on his shirt like you know those shirts that just say BROOKLYN or TOKYO or SAN FRANCISCO and thats it. thats what its like

gladio - okay i know this is going to sound like a lie but im not horny for gladio like at all, hes my least favorite, i think he's just alright. but also i KNOW in my heart of hearts that he would LOVE being a leather daddy and so i had to make it happen. main detail to note here is that his tank top has the motifs of a cup noodle! i didnt know what else to add cause you know.. hes the cup noodle guy.. but also i didnt want it to be so in your face about it with a big as logo so kept it subtle!

(side note the leather daddy gave me an idea for a post where its like noct and prom go to a gay bar all nervous but then they run into gladio and its like "p: GLADIO YOURE GAY?" "n: nevermind that PLEASE dont tell ignis we snuck out" and then ignis walks up and theyre all like WHAT THE FUCK!!!! caption would be "the gang finds out theyre all bisexual." probably wont draw it but i think its very funny lol)

iris - iris my sweetheart.... definitely leaned into the scene vibes here and also that one image of the blonde emo anime girl. details here - of course the moogle big ass backpack and keychain (can you tell i love keychains), but also her buttons are an iris (the flower) and also a crown with hearts (haha symbolism)

anyways oh god i didnt mean to write an essay down here. usually i keep this in the tags but this time i just had Too Much To Say. can you tell i put a lot of thought and love into this . anwyays. *walks off into the sunset and fuckig dies*

[carpenoctemzine]

Carpe Noctem [an original vampire zine]:

Interest Check Results 📊

At long last, the results of our interest check are here!

First, thank you all (again) for your interest in our zine. We were blown away by the amount of responses we got (238??) and in such a short time! We were already at 100 responses in the first 24 hours of posting the interest check; we’re so glad everyone is just as excited as we are!

Moreover, thank you for sticking with us through some early delays. Your continued support means a lot and we’re incredibly grateful.

Some housekeeping: You may have noticed that we’re currently in the process of updating our social media, so pardon our dust. We have however updated our FAQ with some new info. We’re also getting close to launching our applications before the end of the month! Leading up to applications, we’ll be doing some official Mod Introduction posts, so you can get to know us better :’)

⯎ GENERAL BREAKDOWN ⯎

Participation:

We’re looking at an art-heavy zine, with a strong writer showing as well (considering space needed for writing vs. art, we’re aiming for a fairly balanced book)

Price Range:

Main Zine $20-$30 range. Zine + Merch tiers: $30-$40 and above.

Funds:

Split Profit (more details TBA!)

Zine Format:

Both Physical and Digital versions A possible Digital expansion Inclusion of a NSFW / 18+ booklet

Merch:

While final merch will be confirmed later, we can confidently say we will have:

art prints enamel pins sticker sheets keychains large stickers

And that’s the highlights! Keep an eye out for our more upcoming announcements (soon...) and as always, feel free to drop us an ask.

[ Detailed Breakdown and Image IDs below "Keep reading" ].

F A Q   ☽  M O D S  ☆  T W I T T E R  ☾  A S K

⯎ DETAILED BREAKDOWN ⯎

⯈ Participation

Most people are interested in participating as artists, with a whopping total of 156 responses (47.7%). 100 responses are interested in buying the zine (30.6%), and 71 indicated interest in participating as writers (21.7%). 

⯈ Price Range

Survey participants chose from four different ranges: $15-$20, $20-$30, $30-$40, and $50+. The results for just purchasing the zine were closely tied at 114 responses for the $15-$20 tier, and 115 for the $20-$30 tier, with only 9 responses for the $30-$40 tier. For zine + merch bundles, there were 49 responses for the $20-$30 tier, 128 responses for the $30-$40 tier, and 34 responses for the $50+ tier. 

⯈ Zine Funds

Zine funds indicate where the profits would go. We were deciding between for profit, non-profit, and split profit. The results were largely in favor of split-profit (48.7%) with solely for-profit in second place (36.1%) and solely non-profit last (15.1%). We have decided to go with split profit. Specific charitable organization(s) will be decided after final contributors weigh in.

⯈ Zine Format

Most want a physical zine (76.9%) while a lot want both physical and digital formats available (14.7%), and some want just a digital copy (8.4%). We plan on having both a physical and digital option, and depending on the amount of applications we receive, we’re also open to the idea of having an expanded digital version so we can increase the number of accepting contributors while remaining economical.

18+ Booklet?

While the results aren’t displayed on our graphs here, the responses to our question about a possible 18+ booklet were highly in favor. Thus, we will be having a supplemental 18+ booklet along with our main zine and merch. More details on that to come.

⯈ Merch Options

We had a ton of merch options! Note that we may add more types of merch later. To go over our top merch choices:

Small Art prints: 157 (70.7%)

Enamel Pins: 150 (67.6%)

Sticker Sheets: 141 (63.5%)

Keychains: 127 (52.2%)

Large Stickers: 118 (53.2%)

Bookmarks: 102 (45.9%)

Bonus Art Booklet: 93 (41.9%)

Buttons: 90 (40.5%)

Larger Art Prints: 89 (40.1%)

Handmade Mod Bonuses: 48 (21.6)

While our exact offerings will be partially determined by our contributors and what they’d like to create, most of these will likely be available with the zine. We’re also workshopping some ideas for more writing-based merch offerings, so our writers can get in on the merch fun as well~

⯎  IMAGE IDs ⯎

[Image ID: A series of four images. The first image is a black and white Victorian style picture with the words interest check results on it. In the image are three figures. The main figure is a woman-presumably a vampire-with a shawl over her head and back and dark hair. She is reaching over the second main figure, a blonde woman laying on her back in bed asleep, an arm over her head and the blanket pulled part way down. In the background is the third figure, a man in a Victorian style suit with short hair and a moustache. He is entering the room and still part way behind the door, unnoticed by the other two figures. In a hand obscured by the door he is holding a long knife, possibly a sword, and his gaze is focused on the dark haired woman with a serious expression on his face.

The second image is half a black and white picture and half a pie chart infographic, described above under Participation. The picture depicts a Victorian couple, a woman and a man, embraced in a kiss. The woman has long dark hair, a wide hate with a dark feather on top, and a dark dress with a bustle. Her arms and hands are around the man's head and neck as they kiss. The man is wearing a long coat, his back turned towards the viewer so the rest of his clothes are obscured. He has his hat in one hand and the other is obscured. His hair is dark and there are large, bat-like wings emerging from his back.

The third image is half a black and white picture and half a stacked bar graph and pie chart infographic, described above under Price Range and Zine Funds. The picture is a window like image depicting an outdoor scene. There are two main figures, with a large crowd of less distinct figures in the background, watching the two in the foreground. Both main figures are men, both wearing white shirts and wearing hats of two different styles. The one in the front is near the bottom of a hole, kneeling in front of an open coffin with a skeleton inside. He has a leather vest over his shirt and a dark beard with a moustache. He is driving a stake through the skeletons chest area and recoiling as it results in a cloud of smoke, his other hand up to protect his face. The man further back is also recoiling from the cloud and has a very shocked expression on his face. He has one arm up to protect his face and the other hand is still holding a shovel. In the background at the front of the watching crowd is a finely dressed man with poufy sleeves and a large feathered hat who seems to be supervising the event with an indistinct expression. Under the image is a caption that reads “Le Vampire, lithographie de R. de Moraine, tirée des Tribunaux secrets”.

The fourth image is half a black and white picture and half a pie chart and bar chart infographic, described above under Zine Format and Merch Options. The picture is of two figures. The main figure is a woman with dark hair, dark eyeshadow, and a white dress. She is in profile, but glancing down at the second figure. a man who is lying on his back in bed. She is kneeling on the bed next to him, her hands on either side of his chest while she has a seductive smile on, revealing pointed fangs. The man is in a loose shirt, still asleep. One arm is hanging over the side of the be, while his other hand rests on top of his chest. He has short dark hair and a moustache. End Image ID.]

F A Q   ☽  M O D S  ☆  T W I T T E R  ☾  A S K

[livebyfaithblog]

Hello 2019! Can you believe it, 2019 already! Last year before we get into a new decade.

I hope everyone is having amazing holidays and enjoying time off and family time. I’ve been having a wonderful time, extremely busy. As I mentioned in my last post, I am working crazy hours and I have school, but with God’s help I’ve been doing alright! My Christmas was wonderful and I’ve just celebrated a birthday also, so thank for you all of your love and well wishes this past week! So let’s get into it, shall we!

I love being prepared and organized and I despise being last minute, I don’t usually do well under pressure. So I had already prepared some posts for December knowing it was going to be crazy and I made sure that my shopping and wrapping was done before December 20th, and it was!! Now I am preparing for the new year, 2019!

I’m so excited for 2019, because I’ve been at this blog thing since September 2018 and now I’m ready to start going at it more seriously and with God’s help and grace along the way. I’ve been so blessed to be able to share my stories, my opinions on Life By Faith. God has been so faithful and so amazing every step of the way. He is the reason why I started this blog, He put on my heart to do this to help other people and to share His under dying love. God has been so faithful and I cannot wait to see what 2019 holds for Live by Faith!

This time a year everyone asks “What is your New Year’s resolution?” and for someone (like me) who has never and I mean never stuck to her New Year’s resolution, I’ve decided to not do one. What I will do instead is write goals and a list of things to do in order to achieve my goals. I have many personal goals that I want to accomplish that will be kept to myself, but the ones involving the blog I want to share with you guys, so you guys will know what will happen throughout out the year and you might be able to keep me accountable.

So first thing is I’ve changed my blogs name from Sonia Banana Blog to Live By Faith, that was because I didn’t want the blog to reflect me, I wanted it to glorify God. God showed me Live by Faith through a book I was reading, it stood out to me and then it just stuck! So hope you all love the new name as much as I do!

Secondly my website like you’ve probably noticed, has changed a bit and I’ve been experimenting with new designs so I really like this one but we will see maybe down the road it might change again! But I’m a beginner with this whole designs so we’ll see!

For social media accounts! I’ve been on Instagram since the very beginning which is where I communicate with most of you! I joined Pinterest not long after that, and now Live by Faith is on Facebook! I really love social media, and it’s amazing to get my blog out there, but I need help in order to do that! So I would love your support and love on these platforms!

A few months back I did a post called Social Media Free Sundays...This was a wonderful idea and it worked well for about a month, but unfortunately I fell and have not been taking social media breaks like I want too. I know realized that this is a problem that I want to break so I will be now restarting this every Sunday and hopefully down the road I will be able to add another day during the week.

Fourth of all, I love having guest bloggers on my blog! I’ve had two so far and I’m currently working with a few others. But I would love to be able to share the gospel and have other people share their experiences or testimonies or just how in their way do the work of God. So if you have any good request or ideas on who you would like me to collaborate with, let me know!

I will also be completing my pixels in a year calendar again this year! I made a post about this, please go check it out! I’ve also created a template for you to join me on A year in Pixels, check it out: A Year in Pixels-Template

  I will also be starting a new thing this year. Which is a yearly devotional and a prayer book! I have received a prayer journal for Christmas to be used every day for 6 months (I will continue for the rest of the year probably in another notebook). I cannot wait to start this! If you have any prayer request please send me a message and I will pray for you!

I will also be doing a daily devotional, I found this devotional at a thrift store and I was just intrigued my it. I bought it without knowing the author and knowing what it was truly about. When I got home I did some research and realized that’s it’s a book to help you get a fresh perspective and a youthful strength for pursuing the abundant life God intends for you to live. This devotional is called Abundant Life in Jesus: Devotions for Every Day of the Year  by Nancy Guthrie. I cannot wait to dive in and start reading!

I will also be participating in “Year without shopping”. I will posting a post later on this week, explaining what this is and how I will be doing it.

My main priority this year is to put God first. I tend to take on too much and get overwhelmed and when I need God the most I tend to push Him away. Nothing else matters, everyone needs one on one quiet time with God. To read His word, pray and just spend time with Him. All relationships need that, why would our relationship with God be any different.

  I’m sure new adventures, new ideas and new challenges will arise throughout the year, but I’m so excited to take this year on and see what happens. Now let me know below what goals or “resolution” you created for yourself for 2019!

  Love Sonia Banana  

Happy New Years! Hello 2019! Can you believe it, 2019 already! Last year before we get into a new decade.

[butterfly-child99]

So, I could pretend that I haven’t posted the rest of our holiday because I was building anticipation… but truthfully, I have been in a bit of pain and trying to recover, carry on with daily tasks which normally would not take all my energy but currently does, as well as work, kids returning to school and a thousand other things, a mum has to do on a daily basis.

But I hope it will be worth the wait, as we move into part four of our Italian adventure:

Day 6 – Sunday

After our wonderful trip to Pisa and our relaxation day in Lake Brachianno, we decided to carry on with our taking it easy tour by having a nice stroll around Rome to see some of the sights. We had a nice stroll around seeing more of the sights and I let the kids take photos of whatever they wanted, wherever they wanted. I followed behind and took a photo of whatever they did, as I wasn’t 100% sure of there photo abilities and I thought it would be nice to see what they thought was interesting in Rome. It was beautiful, fun, exciting, tiring and hot, very, very hot!!! But incredible!

Stroll through Rome

Fascinating trees

We started at the Roman Forum as that was right outside our apartment, and just headed off into Rome. The kids loved the trees, and I must say I find them fascinating too!

I think this is my favourite photo the kids picked! They loved seeing angels in all the art and architecture! Happily to say, I am raising some cultured children, and I love it.

Our first proper stop, is one of my favourite places in Rome, its also a favourite for thousands, so I knew it would be busy, but I also knew the kids would love it. I wish we could have made it back at night time. Next time we go, Rome by night, will definitely be on our agenda. Anyway, drifted off course there, back to our next stop…it is the largest Baroque Fountain in the world, it features the Titan God of the Sea, if you throw three coins into it: this will ensure your return, a new romance and marriage apparently, (on a side note – the coins have funded a supermarket to help Romans in need.) And it is visited by roughly 1200 people every hour. A crazy amount of people, but it is beautiful and totally worth it.

Trevi Fountain

Trevi Approach – so many people!

Butterfly children posing

Trevi Fountain – Oceanus (Titan God of the Sea)

Trevi Fountain

Of course, as you have probably guess, it is the Trevi Fountain. A glorious, beautiful piece of art and architecture, a true feast for the eyes. The fountain which is located at the junction of three roads, (the most accepted explanation for the word Trevi – from Trivium – or the crossing of there streets) is a display of an ancient aqueduct termination.    The main central statue is Oceanus – Titan God of the Sea -not Neptune as many believe. I love my Ancient myths and stories. I love reading about Gods, Titans, Emperors, so coming to Rome was always going to relight this passion, and seeing the Trevi Fountain and telling the children as much about it as I can remember has only made this passion grow.

It was so crowded here, that we decided to move on quite quickly. Next we headed onto somewhere, that Mamma Butterfly had set a challenge for the kids and they were eager to follow through with it.

The Challenge: How many steps are there at the Spanish Steps? As Mamma BC and I waited at the bottom, Mr BC and the kids took on the challenge!

Challenge Accepted!

Spanish Steps

View from the top as captured by Mr BC and his Go Pro.

Counting the spanish steps

Bella Poppet – Beautiful

Poppet running ahead but couldn’t remember how many steps. Monkey had a number but as Mr BC later told us, he kept getting ahead of himself or skipping steps! 😂 So probably wasn’t the most exact amount of steps.

Aqua Potable

Mr BC cooling off and refilling

Aqua Potable – fresh safe water on a hot day

Cooling down

Aqua Potable – Monkey having a quick drink

Cooling Down

On a ridiculously hot day, this is one of the best things about Rome. Aqua Potable – fresh and cold drinking water. The kids loved it and even Mr BC got a little wet to cool himself down. Refilling our water bottles before heading off to our next stop! We actually spent a good amount of time here, it was still busy but as Mr BC and the kids wandered off up the steps, me and Mamma Butterfly got to people watch.

We stopped, for what turned out to be the most expensive lunch we have ever had, ever! It wasn’t even that nice, we have had some amazing food in Italy, todays lunch, not so much. But it filled us, and helped us move onto our next stop.

Our next stop, is also one for the architecture lover, its also appeared in a few films like the Trevi Fountain, so its probably quite familiar. I remember the first time I visited Rome with Mamma Butterfly (before my butterfly children were even thought off), we wandered around for ages, trying to find this site, and as we gave up looking, we wandered down  street and I used my small bit of Italian to ask where we would find it, the kind gentleman turned me around and there it was, in all its glory, if we had just taken a couple more steps down this road, we would have found it on our own, but still the gentleman was very lovely helping us.

This building was a former Roman Temple, now a church, no one knows quite the date of completion for the newer building Hadrian completed as it still has the inscription kept from the original building by Agrippa, which unfortunately burnt down. I think it is quite a peculiar but wonderful building. Forgive me, my description as I am not sure of the exact wording, but it has 8 columns at its front followed by more columns as you enter. And from pictures, I always think it looks like a smaller building, but it is not. It is impressive in its size, and as you enter and see all the little alcoves and the huge portion for prayers and services in the centre, you can tell why it is so big. Of course, the ceiling is impressive, a big circular domed ceiling with an oculus in the centre… It is of course, The Pantheon.

“God shines down through the hole”. Whenever we see the suns rays, the kids both say its God shining down on us. Which is beautiful!

Pantheon Oculus

I think I was probably the most excited by this stop, the kids took some pictures, and they like the Oculus, but I think they were getting hot and sweaty and couldn’t see the beauty as much as I could.

We wandered for a little longer and soon came back to a very similar view. I don’t think I will ever be bored of seeing some of these buildings. They are truly beautiful to behold, and if you are not sure on whether to add Rome to your list of places to visit, I will happily chat to you all day about truly breathtaking it is, in fact, I would say that about all of Italy. I have fallen in love with Italy all over again, and I don’t think I will ever tire of it! I cannot wait to return (by car probably!) 🙂

Altare della Patria – absolutely stunning building

Beautiful Architecture

On day 6 and still a truly wonderful sight!

We found ourselves back at almost where we started. We took a quick side step to a toy shop to take home with us, but then walked along this beautiful road, taking in the view of the colosseum again.

After our disaster of meal from previous nights, and our not very successful lunch, we returned to our old favourite stomping ground for dinner. And we were not disappointed, I cannot thank the waiting staff at Iari the Vino more. The food was amazing and tasty, the staff are friendly, polite and most important to me, so great with the kids. They didn’t mind that  the kids were a bit excited, they helped them with their Italian and encouraged them to try new words and foods. As we had already visited a few times, most of the staff recognised us and we got the warmest welcome ever. I would highly recommend if you are looking for food around the Ancient side of Rome near the Forum or Colosseum.

I want nails, makeup and this skirt – she knows what she wants!

I want to be a mermaid tonight mummy! ** Only stick on not glued**

Poppet eating pizza … again, in her brothers glasses!

Almost got my perfect shot – but it was yummy desert

Poppet loves a good cheesecake

Finally remembered to take a photo of my food before eating it and Monkey couldn’t help himself!

Find someone who loves you as much as Monkey loves Gelato

Poppet is going through a Mermaid moment (still going through it) and so wanted to have makeup, hair and nails like a mermaid. I was always worried about having a girl as Im not always the girliest but I love it now, I love spending time, doing her hair and makeup and picking cute clothes. Don’t get me wrong she will climb trees and wants to be a firefighter when she grows up, but I have a proper girly girl on my hands and I love it. (** Please don’t worry, the nails are stuck on with sticky flaps not glue).

All week, I have been trying to pretend to be a food blogger, but I always get too excited to eat the food to take a picture beforehand. On this day, I was patient and calm (with desert, lol) but Monkey wasn’t and put his finger in my shot! 😆

Final Day – Day 8 – Monday

For our final full day in Italy, we planned a trip to the Vatican. I will admit, this stop was the day that caused me most worries. I loved the Vatican when I came previously, even without an audioguide/guide, just wandering around the museums, and the Sistine Chapel was incredible. I was a little worried that the kids would get bored and want to leave. My fears were unfounded, as the children loved everything from the moment we stepped of the bus and walked into The Vatican City. They loved hearing about the City within the City, the immense St Peters Basilica was a wonderful sight, and Monkey loved it and wanted to get a little statue of it like he had the Colosseum, Trevi Fountain and Pisa tower.

St Peters

Panoramic of St Peters Square

Fontane di Piazza San Pietro

I had planned our trip knowing all the rules we had to follow, I instructed the children are behaving their best and to be respectful, I was really worried it wouldn’t be that child friendly in the museums. We even made sure we were dressed appropriately, as its important to me that I show the children to respect other cultures. So off we headed into the Vatican Museums. I had arranged for a child audio guide for each child but didn’t know what to expect. I was blown away with how child friendly it was. Even though, we did a shorter child friendlier route this time, I think I enjoyed it more this time than previously as I loved seeing the children engage with the art, culture, history and heritage. I was so excited to wander around the children, I didn’t get nearly as many photos as I would have liked.

The guards were all incredibly friendly, they smiled to the kids putting them at ease, they answered questions (the children aimed at us, but we didn’t always know the answer), and they made the day wonderful. The audio guide was incredible, I have no words to describe how exciting it made the museums, each room we explored had its own linked guide that came alive from a piece of art of sculpture and told a story to the children, and then they had to find pieces of art/sculptures to move onto the next room.

We got off to rocky start as the children got so excited in the first room. We didn’t know what to expect from the audio guides, so I hadn’t warned the children to be calm or anything. An angel from one of the Frescos “came alive” and told them a story and sent them on a quest to find the next piece of art in another room. Monkey went strolling off and got very excited when he found the piece of art, he wasn’t naughty or rude, he just squealed a little in excitement. Another visitor, a young women without children, got a little huffy and snapped at him. I was going to tell him to calm down a little not tell him off though as he was so excited by the place, but her attitude was a little upsetting as all the staff seemed happy to let the children explore and enjoy their guided tour. Happily, I didn’t have to say much as a kind guard told him quite loudly, “well done for finding the right piece”, and asked did he know what the Angel had asked him about the painting. I did still remind Monkey to be a bit calmer as everyone wanted to enjoy their visit, but I was so happy he was excited and enjoying himself.

This was one of the first pieces they had to find, causing all the excitement.

All the Angels – didn’t really want to blink in this room – just in case! Did not tell the children this!

The Garden of Eden by Peter Wenzel

Egyptian Room

The Sphere within a sphere

Both are my children are quite arty, and so loved finding the art work and sculptures, and luckily the tour skipped us past some of the more brutal paintings, so really there was no need to worry as they both enjoyed it. Even with having quite arty, cultured children, I still believe the day was such a huge success because The Vatican Museums have made it such a child friendly and entertaining place to visit. I would gladly go back again, and I have raved to all my friend show have children, who may have had reservations about visiting. I would recommend it, maybe not for really small children, as it is a lot of walking and you have to have a certain level of understanding to follow the audio guide (they are aimed at 6+ and Poppet isn’t quite 6 yet, but she got along just fine.) and map they hand out, with picture clues to help find the artwork.

The Sphere within a sphere

Aqua Non Potable – not drinking water

Aqua Non Potable – not drinking water. its hot outside!

Aqua Non Potable – not drinking water

Hermes

Heracles and the Lion

Ceilings in The Vatican Museum almost as exquisite as the Sistine Chapel

We have been reading Percy Jackson series together, so the kids were excited to come  across some statues the characters are based on.

Perseus and the Head of Medusa

I could write forever about how good a day we had, we spent much longer than I thought we would and when we finally got to the Sistine Chapel, the children were just as surprised as I was when I first saw it. They couldn’t quite understand how someone could paint on the ceilings, especially in such detail, to be honest, I can’t quite understand it either. Even so, they could still the beauty of it and were amazingly well behaved, even more so than some adults in there.

A final photo of our day – lunch at The Vatican – finally got a photo of food!

Delicious Lunch at the Vatican

Overall, today was a huge success and was an amazing end to our holiday. Unfortunately, all the walking and excitement got to me, and I ended up in bed as soon as we got back to the apartment and everyone went for our final meal at Iaris without me. It took Mr BC a while to get across I wouldn’t be joining them this evening, and the waiters didn’t want to serve until I had arrived. It was a true testament to how amazing the restaurant was. They did bring me some takeaway home, so I was very happy!

And so, even with me being in pain, today was a wonderful end to an amazing holiday. I didn’t want to leave and I cannot wait to explore more of Italy in the future. I have fallen more in love with it ever before. Poppet said she might move to Italy when she is older, and as much as I would hate to be so far from her, I think as long as I can visit, I’d be ok with this! Once again, I am trying to learn to speak Italian, and this time I am trying harder and even now I am still going strong.

    Our own little Roman Holiday - part four. Sorry in the delay, part four of our Roman Adventure awaits. #Rome #VaticanMuseums #Pantheon #Trevi #Spanishsteps So, I could pretend that I haven't posted the rest of our holiday because I was building anticipation...

[crazydiscostu]

It’s been a while since we set foot on such hallowed soil and I for one am elated to be back in Dragonborn country.

Elder Scrolls Online (ESO) has become something of a faithful old companion at this stage – in the sense that the 2 of us have lost days and nights adventuring the stunning vistas of Tamriel together, looting bodies, running away from battles and desperately trying to efficiently maximize bag space.

Disclaimer : Game and expansions provided by Bethesda Europe / Zenimax for review purposes.

“Supernatural Harrowstorms plague Western Skyrim, and dark beasts, led by a powerful Vampire Lord, devour souls to further their mysterious plans. In The Elder Scrolls Online: Greymoor, The Elder Scrolls Online’s newest Chapter, you must defend the besieged Nords and uncover the evil behind this monstrous resurgence.”

As with previous ESO releases I had some preparations to make before play could begin :

I began by notifying my employer that once again I would not make it to the office for the foreseeable future. As there was a global pandemic in effect at the time they whole-heartedly agreed but reiterated that i would still need to complete the functions of my job. My long-suffering fiance rolled her eyes. Finally I notified my friends and family that I would not require interaction for the next few weeks. They too, rolled their eyes…..

As with previous ESO reviews (You can find them at the bottom of the page), the game world is so vast and expansive it’s hard to know where to begin. This chapter leans into Vampires and Werewolves as part of the year-long theme ‘Dark heart of Skyrim‘ storyline and is bathed in nostalgia for the most successful of the Elder Scrolls releases to date. Even from the explosive opening the game embraces this thinking and runs triumphantly with it.

Lyris Titanborn : Tamriel PD

Fan-favourite Lyris Titanborn (and the talented Jennifer Hale) returns as a main character in this mystery adventure. She looks like Taylor Swift if she was built like a brick shit house. The beautiful hard-as-nails adventurer has returned to assist you in getting to the bottom of some strange killings, weird ceremonies and dodgy-looking characters, aligning herself with your character to form an unlikely buddy-cop duo.

It’s safe to say Lyris and I are close at this point. We took down a few Bone Colusses back in the day defeating Mannimarco, if you know what I mean* NUDGE NUDGE, WINK WINK. (*We fought some Bone Collusses together)

This buddy-cop dynamic early in the game works well and eases the player into the story. For instance – we happened upon a crime scene and began our investigation. Lyris secured the area and interviewed the associated parties while I searched the nearby bookcases for lore and sweet rolls. It’s a strong partnership that largely involves me standing behind her while she interrogates suspects. The old “good cop / small cop routine”. No sweet rolls were discovered. The investigation continues….

“We’d like to ask you a few questions”

*peers from behind Lyris shaking fist. “YEH!”

What’s New?

Well for starters we’re furnished with a new zone to explore in the form of Western Skyrim (comprising iconic locations Solitude and Blackreach) which has been lovingly recreated.

The Antiquities system – a kind of treasure-hunt activity. Think of the process as Battleships meets Mine-hunter but comparable to World Of Warcraft‘s Archaeology system that has the feel of a mobile game. 2 new skill lines in the form of Scrying and Excavation accompany this. These take a while to level up but offer a relaxing mini-game style process that offers respite from questing and delving. The process also provides a fresh angle to the game and a chance to grab some mythic gear. This feature is intriguing and looks like something that will be further developed with future releases.

Theres a new 12-player Trial event called Kyne’s Aegis where you repel a horde of monsters and collosal sea giants.

The addition of a new world event: Harrowstorms. These are much like the dark anchors or dragons and provide a good place to meet other players and party up.

6 new delves, public dungeons, and stand-alone quests with about 30-40 hours of new content (possibly even more)

Investigating a mystery

Harrowstorms

Vamps Revamped

I haven’t spent much time exploring the Werewolf or Vampire abilities within this release. It’s been a long-term staple of the franchise to have blood-lusting toothy Goths knocking about and Greymoor is sporting that trend as a main plot point, riffing heavily on Skyrim’s Dawngaurd expansion.

The Vampire skill line has got a bit of an overhaul with this release, which some longer toothed counts may find disconcerting. This overhaul is game-wide and also integrates with the base game : Moving forward it has become harder to sustain Vampirism at higher levels. Gaining higher levels obviously comes with penalties but these take the form of reduced health recovery, increased damage from flame attacks and an increased cost for non-Vampiric abilities

VAMPIRE SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT : Much like with the addition of the Necromancer line it is important to remember that using your powers in a settlement is a crime so plan your next NPC buffet carefully.

The voice talent in ESO is superb

Crazydiscostu1

Conclusions And Commentary

For me a huge selling point of ESO, and a factor that keeps me coming back, is the impressive voice-acting talent that continues to add depth to the game narrative. In past releases we’ve heard the likes of big names such as Michael Gambon, Kate Beckinsale, Bill Nighy, Malcolm Mcdowell and John Cleese to name but a few. The big names fall in line with the rest of the voice-talent as the building blocks of ESO‘s stories and ever-expanding lore.

From what i gather Zenimax Online are rolling out patches consistently to provide gamers with the best experience possible and so far I haven’t experienced any instances of glitching or texture loss as yet – something that fans of the series have been critical of in the past.

In my opinion Greymoor brings a fresh feel to ESO despite being routed in nostalgia. The environments are alive and the mystery is involving. The Music as ever helps to set the scene moving effortlessly from themes dwelling in the wistful and atmospheric, to involving dramatic tension during action sequences and battles.

A positive for this one (as with other chapters) is that you can drop straight into the Greymoor story from any level and any updates to skill lines etc are ESO-wide.

A critical piece of commentary would be the lack of SLAP option when engaging with Shield Corporal Thjol in the early chapters, but i can live without this for now.

There is no new PVP content this release and to be honest i’m happy with that. I don’t know many people who were crying out for it. Such is the environment and continues to be the winning recipe for ESO.  

It’s easy to forget that ESO has a Main Quest Storyline with each of these releases. Not that it isn’t engrossing, more that the side quests are also quite involving and in most cases require as much attention for the player. That being said, the releases blend in with the existing world so effortlessly there is no apparent overlap of content – just an expansion to the adventure. (I’ve spent the last few months completing jobs for every wafe and stray that crosses my path and I’ve decided it’s time to get back to the Main Quest)

Greymoor isn’t just the awkward younger Goth cousin of Skyrim, but it is definitely a blood relation. It is not just younger in the sense that ESO is set nearly 1000 years before Elder Scrolls V, it’s younger in the sense that there is a glimpse of youthful hope and exuberance about it. Despite the black clothing, eyeliner, painted nails and bleak world view – you just know this kid is gonna be alright. Greymoor has it’s whole life ahead of it….

About to drop the hottest doom metal album of 2020…

You can check out our previous coverage of ESO here :

Elder Scrolls Online : Summerset

Elder Scrolls Online : Elseweyr

Nerd Food : Sweet Rolls Recipe

Music To Quest To : Epic As Feck Playlist

CrazyDiscoStu.Wordpress.com

                Elder Scrolls : Greymoor It's been a while since we set foot on such hallowed soil and I for one am elated to be back in Dragonborn country.

[nerdybookahs]

I bought Project Highrise back in 2016 and have played it for 54 hours. This number seems oddly low as I thought I’d sunk in much more time than that. I also bought all of the game’s DLCs. So when I saw the announcement for Mad Tower Tycoon, I was a bit skeptical. A second tower-building game? At first glance, these games were identical only with different graphics. However, I love simulation games and I love this theme, so I kept looking at the game’s Steam page again and again. The main question I had on my mind was: How is it different from Project Highrise? Is it worth buying Mad Tower Tycoon when I already own Project Highrise? Do we even need two games like this? Why should I spend money on another game like this if it’s exactly the same? Except for the graphics, of course.

There has also been an interview (written in German as well as English) with a developer from EggCode Games and he was also asked how his game Mad Tower Tycoon differs from Project Highrise. It seems to be something a lot of people ask (also visible when you take a look at the Steam community forums).

This post isn’t about bashing Mad Tower Tycoon, though, or its developer for being boring and copying Project Highrise. I did actually end up buying Mad Tower Tycoon when it was on sale last month. Also, for everything I write about, please keep in mind that Mad Tower Tycoon is still in Early Access and subject to change while Project Highrise has been out for a few years and I may be mentioning some features or content that’s not in the base game but requires the DLC. Also, from here on, Mad Tower Tycoon will be MTT and Project Highrise will be PH, so I don’t have to type their full names over and over again.

Let’s start with a look at the prices and the developers behind these two games. MTT costs 14.99 €. The Steam Early Access page says they currently have no plans of increasing the price after release. The game has already been on sale previously (and it is currently on sale on Fanatical until the end of Monday, German time… sorry, I’m bad with time zones). Release was scheduled for Q1/Q2 2019. This date has already passed, obviously. But from my personal experience, the game is fully playable, so I didn’t even think of checking when the full release will be until I started writing this blog post. The developers are EggCode Games and you may know them from their previous game Mad Games Tycoon. They’re actually based in Germany which I didn’t know until I looked at their website now. I have no idea how many developers there are, but they’re definitely an indie company. It may be that the company consists of only one person as the interview above has him talk about himself only when mentioning the development of the game.

The base game of PH costs 19.99 € (it is also currently on sale on Fanatical! A coincidence, by the way. I didn’t know that they were when I wrote this). It also has one small expansion (Las Vegas, priced at 6.99 €) and four DLCs: Miami Malls, Tokyo Towers, London Life and Brilliant Berlin (price ranging between 1.59 € and 1.99 €). The developers are SomaSim. They are also indie developers and made 1849, a city management game, before they released PH. They’re based in Chicago, USA. Not that the country matters, but as I mentioned it above, I thought I should mention it for them as well.

The graphics are, as always, highly subjective. I like them in both games. And in both games, I am not a big fan of how the people look. In PH I find them too stiff and lifeless. In MTT they are too cute. If I had to choose one game over the other simply because of the graphics, I’d choose MTT. I can’t say anything about the soundtracks in both games, because I always turn off the music. But I’ve never heard somebody say that they bought one game and not the other because it had a better soundtrack. So, I’d say while the first can be a deciding factor, it’s something you can decide by looking at videos and screenshots and the other isn’t that relevant.

I haven’t experienced any bugs or crashes in either of these games. Both seem to be very stable, at least on my PC.

One of the main differences that you will encounter first is that PH has more micro management in general. I’ve seen people call MTT more “arcady” and I guess they’re right. In PH, you put wiring and plumbing closets on each floor. Then you place pipes and lines on each floor where they’re needed. Both games require you to place rooms that produce enough electricity, water, etc. But MTT leaves it at that and connects everything automatically. In PH, if you run out of money before finishing the electrical lines, your tenants are without electricity (if you were silly enough to request the tenant before finishing that part). Also, your tenants have specific needs. You may rent your office to insurance companies which only require electricity and copy services, or you choose an accounting company which also wants courier services. Later on, other tenants that offer a higher rent will also require more facilities and services in your building. On top of that, you will also unlock bigger offices later. And just when I was typing this paragraph, while starting a new tower in PH, an earthquake happened in-game and all tenants were without electricity. That’s within the first five minutes into the game.

Another big difference is the transport system. In PH, you build elevators and the people stand in front of one, disappear and reappear on their chosen floor – a bit like a teleporter system. In MTT, they also stand in front of one, wait for it to travel back to their floor, get in and then you can see the elevator move to their chosen floor. In other words: If there are people waiting on different floors, it doesn’t matter in PH while it does matter in MTT. An elevator that is full won’t transport more people and they need to wait for it to move to their floor. You build the elevators (and the stairs) in front of rooms, though, so you can add more when you need to. On the other hand, they cause noise and not everybody is happy having an elevator or stairs in front of their room. Careful planning is still necessary here!

When it comes to building, in PH you build a floor and stairs or elevators, then add what kind of rooms you want on that floor (and add the lines for electricity etc. as already mentioned). Once it is built, you click on the room and choose a tenant. Rent varies depending on what tenant you choose, but they all have different needs and expectations that need to be met. In MTT, you directly build what you want there, e.g., an office, without having to first add the floor itself. The construction workers still need stairs or elevators to get to the construction site, of course. Once it’s built, some tenant will automatically move in there. You have no control over which tenant. A small office is simply a small office.

What I don’t like in PH is the interface. Not everything is bad here, but I frequently get lost trying to find some item I want to build or trying to remember what I need to do in order to unlock something for my tower. I wish they would condense the options somehow – although it may be less of an issue if I played the game more regularly. You also need to open the utilities report in order to see how much of the available electricity etc. you’re using. In MTT it’s part of the upper tool bar. You also get more horizontal building space in MTT which I like.

PH lets you freely build a tower or play scenarios/missions. The interview I linked to above has the developer of MTT mention missions for his game as a feature he’s planning to implement. So, as it is now, if you want to play missions with certain goals you need to reach, PH is the game for you! PH also had mod support. I always forget about that, because I’m not using any mods here. It seems that MTT won’t get mod support.

What you currently get for your money: A very complete game with PH, but the base game is a bit more expensive and some features only come with the paid DLCs. MTT, on the other hand, is cheaper, but it’s also in Early Access, so it’s future is unknown. It also doesn’t have mod support and we don’t know if we’ll get DLC and thus, if it gets as much content as PH currently has.

So, these are the main differences in my opinion. PH has more micro management in general (I left out some features like booking singers for a concert etc. in your tower as it’s part of DLC) than MTT. MTT is more realistic when it comes to elevators and stairs, so their micro management is in getting your visitors and occupants to easily navigate around in your tower.

If I could choose only one game and wasn’t allowed to play the other ever again, I would probably choose Mad Tower Tycoon (but only then and it’d be a difficult decision). Not because Project Highrise is a bad game or even worse than Mad Tower Tycoon, but because I slightly prefer the graphics and so far, prefer the focus on the transport system instead of having to take care of the wiring for my tenants. Project Highrise is the older game, though, and has more content which may lead to a better long-term investment when looking at entertainment gained per Euro spent. I also quite like that you can choose tenants and their specific needs.

I hope this helps anybody who may ask themselves the same question: Should I buy Mad Tower Tycoon or Project Highrise (or both)? Also, feel free to ask any questions about the games. Maybe I can answer them. 🙂

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with any of the games mentioned here nor with Steam, Fanatical or any other game stores. I bought all games with my own money and am not getting paid to write about the games. My opinion is my own (and if I ever start disliking these games, you’ll be the first to hear it)!

Mad Tower Tycoon and Project Highrise - What's the difference? #blaugust2019 #madtowertycoon #projecthighrise I bought Project Highrise back in 2016 and have played it for 54 hours. This number seems oddly low as I thought I'd sunk in much more time than that.

[bellagbear]

Me being the person I am way before I even have anything resembling a finished site or a portfolio I am working on a logo. So in a way it is very fitting that the logo will be the first completed and text-edited post on this site. I designed the logo because I thought that it would be unbelievable cool to give all my embroidery and other sown artwork a ‘Sign of Sincerity in the form of the logo.

For the logo I decided on the following design parameters:

The possibility to embroider it relatively quick and easy, since it is an extra on the work and not a main feature.

It has to be a dragon, because I love dragons. Preferably a dorky dragon (have you seen the discworld’s dragons, they’re so cute!).

It would be cool if my initials, BGB, have a place in the work.

Preferably the design works on different scales from very small to big so I can adjust the size of the logo to the artwork it should be on.

So following these parameters these were the sketches I made for the logo:

The coloured one won the race. It has a very easy shape and has as little details as possible in order to be easy and quick to embroider and to make smaller when needed. Also the cartoony design allows me to use only three colours, which also simplifies the embroidery enormously (but now looking back at the sketches I might trial embroider the one left from the coloured one as well just because he looks so silly-buff). The foto beneath is the re-drawing of the chosen design.

The coloured in one won the race, which is also the reason why I coloured that one. It won because it has a very easy shape and has as little details as possible. Also the cartoony design of the dragon will allow me to use only three colours which I figured would simplify the design enormously.

I re-drew the design underneath to get a clearer idea of what I wanted and to test if my drawing skills could pull of the design multiple times. You can also see that I experimented with shrinking the design with the pink little bugger.

The biggest change I made to the original idea was to turn the frown into a smile. This because in between the different drawings I decided to be more open about my happy positive side instead of only letting the grumpy me out.

Now the design was chosen, ideas were finalized and decisions were made. The next step was to proof embroider. This I usually do on a piece of old jeans. This is mainly because I feel not bad at all when I screw up because the fabric was thrown out anyway if I would not have done anything with it. Also jeans fabric is nice to work with because it is sturdy and does not frail easily. Finally I like to embroider these loose free hand patterns on fabric instead of Aida, the embroidery stuff, because I feel it gives more movement freedom.

Below is the progress so far. I decided to use the traditional dragon colour red, brown and dark yellow, but colours can differ depending on the artwork the logo is sewn onto.

  To make my work easier I drew the design on the back of the jeans fabric. As you can see with only the red embroidery done the dragon looks just like a snail.

I did discover that I changed between using four strands and two strand somewhere halfway the red. So to prevent that next time it is best if I make notes about things like that (My mind works like a strainer if that is also a saying in English). Luckily to my untrained eye it is not that visible, so I’ll live with it for now, but it is better to take more care next time.

Above you see the logo with the finished brown. Next time I will use a darker brown on this particular fabric because the brown is not very visible. Also the contrast with the red will be better with dark brown instead of the lighter one I used now.

AND IT IS DONE!

Conclusions looking back:

Absolutely love the design. Really happy that I made the dragon look happy instead of angry. His grin is so cute and devious.

Not very happy with the colour combination. Actually they clash with each other rather horrible. No harmony between them at all. Maybe it would also have looked better to take four strands for the brown wings and two for the yellow to get the structure of dragons wings right.

Note: forgot to add lettering. Haha.. I am not even surprised I forgot something. Might do that later to see how that looks in actual embroidery.  But for now I declare this piece finished. Not sure though if that would make the logo better. What do you think?

Logo trials Me being the person I am way before I even have anything resembling a finished site or a portfolio I am working on a logo.

[sugercoatit]

I’ve been on the hunt for WordPress themes for bloggers as a way to freshen up my website, and another site I was updating. This is something I do often enough. What can I say, the trends around this kind of thing change often and keeping up is essential. Don’t laugh; these are the things that occupy my time. Haha. It wasn’t long into my search that I had a billion and one tabs open. Then I realised, maybe finding the right theme for your blog is something you guys struggle with too. And here we are.

  Before we start, let me say a couple of things.

  Firstly, all of the templates I included in this post had positive reviews for easy installation and after-sales customer service at the time of posting. If that changes in the future and you’re looking at them, please let me know and I’ll remove the template from the post.

Why? Because to me, when it comes to purchasing a theme, those are the things I’m looking for. Does it install well (no issues or glitches, no complicated setup instructions to follow) and after I’ve bought it, does the seller support the theme and me, as a customer, well.

The second thing that I want to mention is if you’re building a blog, look through the free WordPress offerings first. There may be something that you like before you purchase a theme. Themes are a bit like photographers with presets or teenagers and water bottles from Typo; there’s no end to how many you can buy. You should know that there are a lot of great free options in the WordPress Dashboard, start there. Try some out. At very least they’ll give you an idea of what you like.

Not a blogger yet? Are you ready to start your blog? Open this blog post of mine and refer back to it later. It will take you from the first steps of choosing a blog name and platform through to getting your first blog post published. I’ve tried to make it a bit of a process you can follow so that you can work through it, setting your blog up as you go. And team, with all that out of the way, let’s get started.

  Awesome WordPress themes for bloggers!

  My Go-To Divi for all the things

The template I use for SO many projects, this blog included (as at today) is Divi by Elegant Themes. It’s based around a content builder and comes with large, actually make that huge, selection of child themes as part of the main one. You can buy an annual subscription or go all out for the developer version and never pay again. This blog is built on Divi, so is my husband’s website here and this one we did for the team at The Career Planner which they have been successfully updating themselves since the website build in 2019. Plus, at the time of doing this post, they have just launched their Theme Marketplace, so if you’re not into any of the MANY themes they offer built-in, there will be something for you there.

view

  Want Free WordPress themes for bloggers?

Some great options that have been around a long time are Moesia, Nimbus (which looks a little like my theme here) and Magazine. They can all be found under Appearance > Themes > Add New, which is where you can also browse the other free WordPress themes that are built into the platform. When I started making on WordPress, I used a free theme and customised it where I could. The problem with Free WordPress Themes is that you can be restricted in how much customisation you can do and even what plugins will work with them. A great starting off point and well worth a look.

  Top row – One  |  Two  |  Three  |  Four

Bottom Row – One  |  Two  | Three  |  Four

  Try Themeforest for Magazine Layouts!

After my first adventure in FREE WordPress themes, I decided it was time for me to invest, so I went to ThemeForest. I had an account there already because I used Joomla before WordPress and they offered templates for Joomla sites there too (at the time, I think it’s pretty outdated now). On ThemeForest, it becomes imperative only to buy themes that have great reviews, but also, the team is responsive in the questions section, and there’s not repeated ‘I couldn’t get any help’ comments there. It can be hard to get a refund on ThemeForest, so do your due diligence with any Theme you like there. Be sure, and don’t be afraid to buy the more popular items, they’re probably popular because they work.

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Sitka

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flatsome

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  Don’t forget the goodness on Etsy.

Finally, the place where I suggest people go if they are DYI’ing their blog. Etsy offers a HUGE amount of options, not just for WordPress but for all bloggers and website platforms. My biggest recommendation is to find one that you like, with FONTS you love, straight out of the box. Some of theme will allow customisation for colours and fonts, but not all. Trust me; you’re better off finding one that works for you without too much work. Otherwise, you may as well customise a free Theme and save your money. Here are some I found on a recent search.

Top row – One  |  Two  |  Three  |  Four

Bottom Row – One  |  Two  | Three  |  Four

  There you go! I know this year has been a big one for starting new blogs or relaunching old ones. As I mentioned in my blog post about how to start a blog, I recommend you get going on WordPress. But straight out of the box, it’s pretty basic. This post should get you all set up with some excellent options for blog layouts.

Why does that matter? It probably doesn’t, you know. I think if you open a blog and want to write, share your work or whatever you’re doing, how it looks doesn’t matter. But, if you’re a little bit like me, those things do matter. Having them look good and how I want them too, does matter. Take learning to code/starting from scratch off your list and get going. Let them inspire you to get started (or keep going!). Enjoy. x

  …

like this post? please consider sharing

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Favourites: Wordpress Themes for Bloggers I've been on the hunt for WordPress themes for bloggers as a way to freshen up my website, and another site I was updating.

[douglassmiith]

Equivalent Experiences: Thinking Equivalently

About The Author

Eric is a Boston-based designer who helps create straightforward solutions that address a person’s practical, physical, cognitive, and emotional needs. More about Eric Bailey …

Constructing an equivalent experience may mean changing the way you think about development and design, and potentially reevaluating your existing work. In this article, we’ll address common accessibility issues, and how to best go about improving them so everyone can effortlessly access your content.

This is the second of two articles on the topic of how digital accessibility is informed by equivalency. Previously, we have learned about the underlying biases that inform digital product creation, what isn’t an equivalent experience, the compounding effects of inaccessible design and code, and powerful motivating forces for doing better.

In this article, I will discuss learning how to embrace an equivalent, inclusive mindset. I will also provide practical, robust ways to improve your websites and web apps by providing solutions to common, everyday barriers cited by the people I interviewed.

Setting A Standard

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) outlines in painstaking detail how to craft accessible digital experiences. While a long and dense document, it is incredibly comprehensive — to the point where it’s been codified as an international standard. For over 10 years, we’ve had a globally agreed upon, canonical definition of what constitutes as usable.

How Would I?

If you need a little help constructing the initial mental framework the WCAG gets at, a question I always ask myself when making something is, “How would I use this if…” It’s a question that gets you to check all the biases that might be affecting you in the moment.

Examples could be:

How would I use this if…

…I can’t see the screen?

…I can’t move my arms?

…I’m sensitive to flashing and strobing animation?

…English isn’t my primary language?

…I have a limited budget for bandwidth?

…I’ve set a large default type size?

…and so on.

Focus on these four parameters to improve usability of your web design:

1. Visual – make it easy to see 2. Auditory – make it easy to hear 3. Motor – make it easy to interact with 4. Cognitive – make it easy to understand

→ Accessibility goals are also usability goals.

— Alex (@alexmuench) January 30, 2020

A Gentle Introduction

If you’re looking for a more approachable resource for how to dig into what the WCAG covers, the Inclusive Design Principles would be a great place to start. The seven principles it describes all map back to WCAG success criterion.

(Large preview)

Learn From The People Who Actually Use It

You don’t have to take my word for it. Here are some common issues cited by the people I interviewed, and how to fix them:

Wayfinding

Headings

Heading elements are incredibly important for maintaining an equivalent, accessible experience.

When constructed with skill and care, heading elements allow screen reader users to quickly determine the contents of a page or view and navigate to content relevant to their interests. This is equivalent to how someone might quickly flit around, scrolling until something that looks pertinent comes into view.

The HeadingsMap browser extension lets you view a page’s heading hierarchy. (Large preview)

Justin Yarbrough voices poorly-authored heading elements as a concern, and he’s not alone.

WebAIM’s screen reader survey cites headings as the most important way to find information. This survey is well-worth paying attention to, as it provides valuable insight into how disabled people actually use assistive technology.

Landmarks

In addition to heading elements, another way to determine the overall structure and layout are landmarks. Landmarks are roles implicitly described by HTML sectioning elements, used to help describe the overall composition of the main page or view areas.

These are five of the eight landmark HTML elements and the roles using them create. (Large preview)

Here’s what Justin has to say:

“If I’m just trying to find the main content, I’ll first try the Q JAWS shortcut key to see if a main region’s set up. If not, I’m just more or less stuck trying to scan the page to find it arrowing through the page.”

Much as how we might use a layer group name of “primary nav” in our design file, or a class name of c-nav-primary in our CSS, it’s important we also use a nav sectioning element to describe our main site navigation (as well as any other navigation the page or view contains).

Doing so ensures intent is carried all the way through from conception, to implementation, to use. The same notion carries through for the other HTML sectioning elements that create landmarks for assistive technology.

Labeled Controls

Brian Moore tells us about “form fields with no label or at least one that isn’t programmatically associated so it doesn’t read anything.”

It’s another frustratingly common problem.

Providing a valid for/id attribute pairing creates a programmatic association between form inputs and the label that describes what it does. And when I say label, I mean the label element. Not a clickable div, a placeholder, aria-label, or some other brittle and/or overwrought solution. label elements are a tried-and-true solution that enjoys wide and deep support for accessibility.

In addition, a label element should not be used by itself, say for a label on a diagram. This might seem counter-intuitive at first, but please bear with me.

<!-- Please do this --><label for="your-name">Your name</label><input type="text" id="your-name" name="your-name" autocomplete="name"> <!-- Don’t do this --><label for="eye">Cornea</label><label for="eye">Pupil</label><label for="eye">Lens</label><label for="eye">Retina</label><label for="eye">Optic Nerve</label><img id="eye" alt="A diagram of the human eye." src="parts-of-the-eye.png" />

The same kinds of assistive technology that let a person jump to headings and landmarks also allow them to jump to input labels. Because of this, there is the expectation that when a label element is present, there is also a corresponding input it is associated with.

Alternative Descriptions

If you have low or no vision, and/or have difficulty understanding an image, HTML’s alt attribute (and not the title attribute) provides a mechanism to understand what the image is there for. The same principle applies for providing captions for video and audio content like podcasts.

Kenny Hitt mentions that when:

“…someone posts something on Twitter, if it’s just an unlabeled image, I don’t even take the time to participate in the conversation. When you start every conversation by asking what’s in the picture, it really derails things.”

Up until last week, the only way for Twitter to provide alternative descriptions for its images was to enable an option buried away in the subsection of a preference menu. Compare this to a platform like Mastodon, where the feature is enabled by default.

[embedded content]

Soren Hamby, mentions Stitcher, a popular podcast app. “The onboarding was a lot of themed graphics, but the alt text for each one was ‘unselected’ and for the same image with a check over it was selected. I think it would be reasonable for them to say ‘sci-fi genre selected’ […] it’s such a small thing but it makes all the difference.”

Ensuring that alternate description content is concise and descriptive is just as important as including the ability to add it. Daniel Göransson, a developer for Axess Lab, has a great article on how to write them effectively.

Robust, accessible features can also be part of evaluation criteria, as well as a great method for building customer loyalty. Soren mentions that they are “often the deciding factor, especially between services.” In particular, they cite Netflix’s audio descriptions.

ARIA

One topic Daniel Göransson’s article on alternative descriptions mentions is to not over-describe things. This includes information like that it is an image, who the photographer is, and keyword stuffing.

The same principle applies for Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA). ARIA is a set of attributes designed to extend HTML to fill in the gaps between interactive content and assistive technology. When ARIA is used to completely replace HTML, it oftentimes leads to an over-described experience.

Brian explains: “There seems to be a perception that more ARIA fixes accessibility and it can help, but too much either reads wrong things or just talks way too much. If on screen text of one or two words is good enough for everyone else, it is good enough for screen reader users too. We don’t need whole sentence or two descriptions of buttons or links i.e ‘link privacy policy’ is far better than something like ‘this link will open our privacy policy, this link will open in a new window’ when the on screen link text is ‘privacy policy.’”

The First Rule of ARIA Use advises us to only use it when a native element won’t suffice. You don’t need to describe what your interactive component is or how it works, the same way you don’t need to include the word “image” in your alternative description.

Provided that you use the appropriate native HTML element, assistive technology will handle all of that for you. Do more, more robustly, with less effort? Sounds great to me!

(Large preview)

Unlike most of HTML, CSS, and JS, the success of implemented ARIA is contextual, variable, and largely invisible. In spite of this, we seem to be slathering ARIA onto everything without bothering to check not only if it actually works, but also what the people who actually use it think of it.

Support for ARIA is fragmented across operating systems, browsers, and assistive technology offerings, all their respective versions, and every possible permutation of all three. Simply put, writing ARIA and trusting it will work as intended isn’t enough.

If misconfigured and/or over-applied, ARIA can break. It may not report actual functionality, announce the wrong functionality, and (accurately or inaccurately) over-describe functionality. Obviously, these experiences aren’t equivalent.

Representation matters. To get a better understanding of how the ARIA code you wrote actually works, I recommend hiring people to tell you. Here are four such services that do exactly that:

Contrast

Color Contrast

Color contrast is another common issue, one whose severity often seems to be downplayed. If I could wager a guess, it’s because it’s easy to forget that other people’s vision might be different than your own. Regardless, it is a concern that affects a wide swath of the global population, and we should treat the issue with the seriousness it deserves.

The Click-Away Pound Survey tells us that out of the top issues faced by users with access needs, contrast and legibility weighs in as the fifth most significant issue. On top of that, it has increased as a concern, going from 44% of respondents in 2016 to 55% in 2019.

We live in an age where there’s more color contrast checking resources than I can count. Products like Stark can help designers audit their designs before it is translated into code. Tools like Eightshape’s Contrast Grid and Atul Varma’s Accessible color palette builder let you craft your design systems with robust, accessible color combinations out of the gate.

(Large preview)

The somewhat ironic thing about color contrast is how, ah, visible it is. While some of the previous accessibility issues are invisible—hidden away as the underlying code—contrast is a pretty straightforward issue.

Mostly, contrast is a binary scenario, in that you either can or cannot see content. So, the next time you check your website or webapp with an automated accessibility checker such as Deque’s axe, don’t be so quick to downplay the color contrast errors it reports.

High Contrast

There are technology solutions for situations where even satisfactory color contrast ratios isn’t sufficient—namely, inverted colors mode and High Contrast Mode. Many participants I interviewed mentioned using these display modes during their daily computer use.

Provided you use semantic HTML, both of these modes don’t need much effort on the development end of things to work well. The important bit is to check out what you’re building in these two modes to make sure everything is working as intended.

Striving For Perfection

To quote Léonie Watson,

“Accessibility doesn’t have to be perfect, it just needs to be a little bit better than yesterday.”

By understanding both why, and how to improve your digital accessibility experiences in ways that directly address common barriers, you’re able to provide meaningful and enjoyable experiences to all.

Further Reading

Thank you to Brian Moore, Damien Senger, Jim Kiely, Justin Yarbrough, Kenny Hitt, and Soren Hamby for sharing their insights and experiences.

(ra, il)

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

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Via http://www.scpie.org/equivalent-experiences-thinking-equivalently/

source https://scpie.weebly.com/blog/equivalent-experiences-thinking-equivalently

[laurelkrugerr]

Equivalent Experiences: Thinking Equivalently

About The Author

Eric is a Boston-based designer who helps create straightforward solutions that address a person’s practical, physical, cognitive, and emotional needs. More about Eric Bailey …

Constructing an equivalent experience may mean changing the way you think about development and design, and potentially reevaluating your existing work. In this article, we’ll address common accessibility issues, and how to best go about improving them so everyone can effortlessly access your content.

This is the second of two articles on the topic of how digital accessibility is informed by equivalency. Previously, we have learned about the underlying biases that inform digital product creation, what isn’t an equivalent experience, the compounding effects of inaccessible design and code, and powerful motivating forces for doing better.

In this article, I will discuss learning how to embrace an equivalent, inclusive mindset. I will also provide practical, robust ways to improve your websites and web apps by providing solutions to common, everyday barriers cited by the people I interviewed.

Setting A Standard

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) outlines in painstaking detail how to craft accessible digital experiences. While a long and dense document, it is incredibly comprehensive — to the point where it’s been codified as an international standard. For over 10 years, we’ve had a globally agreed upon, canonical definition of what constitutes as usable.

How Would I?

If you need a little help constructing the initial mental framework the WCAG gets at, a question I always ask myself when making something is, “How would I use this if…” It’s a question that gets you to check all the biases that might be affecting you in the moment.

Examples could be:

How would I use this if…

…I can’t see the screen?

…I can’t move my arms?

…I’m sensitive to flashing and strobing animation?

…English isn’t my primary language?

…I have a limited budget for bandwidth?

…I’ve set a large default type size?

…and so on.

Focus on these four parameters to improve usability of your web design:

1. Visual – make it easy to see 2. Auditory – make it easy to hear 3. Motor – make it easy to interact with 4. Cognitive – make it easy to understand

→ Accessibility goals are also usability goals.

— Alex (@alexmuench) January 30, 2020

A Gentle Introduction

If you’re looking for a more approachable resource for how to dig into what the WCAG covers, the Inclusive Design Principles would be a great place to start. The seven principles it describes all map back to WCAG success criterion.

(Large preview)

Learn From The People Who Actually Use It

You don’t have to take my word for it. Here are some common issues cited by the people I interviewed, and how to fix them:

Wayfinding

Headings

Heading elements are incredibly important for maintaining an equivalent, accessible experience.

When constructed with skill and care, heading elements allow screen reader users to quickly determine the contents of a page or view and navigate to content relevant to their interests. This is equivalent to how someone might quickly flit around, scrolling until something that looks pertinent comes into view.

The HeadingsMap browser extension lets you view a page’s heading hierarchy. (Large preview)

Justin Yarbrough voices poorly-authored heading elements as a concern, and he’s not alone.

WebAIM’s screen reader survey cites headings as the most important way to find information. This survey is well-worth paying attention to, as it provides valuable insight into how disabled people actually use assistive technology.

Landmarks

In addition to heading elements, another way to determine the overall structure and layout are landmarks. Landmarks are roles implicitly described by HTML sectioning elements, used to help describe the overall composition of the main page or view areas.

These are five of the eight landmark HTML elements and the roles using them create. (Large preview)

Here’s what Justin has to say:

“If I’m just trying to find the main content, I’ll first try the Q JAWS shortcut key to see if a main region’s set up. If not, I’m just more or less stuck trying to scan the page to find it arrowing through the page.”

Much as how we might use a layer group name of “primary nav” in our design file, or a class name of c-nav-primary in our CSS, it’s important we also use a nav sectioning element to describe our main site navigation (as well as any other navigation the page or view contains).

Doing so ensures intent is carried all the way through from conception, to implementation, to use. The same notion carries through for the other HTML sectioning elements that create landmarks for assistive technology.

Labeled Controls

Brian Moore tells us about “form fields with no label or at least one that isn’t programmatically associated so it doesn’t read anything.”

It’s another frustratingly common problem.

Providing a valid for/id attribute pairing creates a programmatic association between form inputs and the label that describes what it does. And when I say label, I mean the label element. Not a clickable div, a placeholder, aria-label, or some other brittle and/or overwrought solution. label elements are a tried-and-true solution that enjoys wide and deep support for accessibility.

In addition, a label element should not be used by itself, say for a label on a diagram. This might seem counter-intuitive at first, but please bear with me.

<!-- Please do this --> <label for="your-name">Your name</label> <input type="text" id="your-name" name="your-name" autocomplete="name"> <!-- Don’t do this --> <label for="eye">Cornea</label> <label for="eye">Pupil</label> <label for="eye">Lens</label> <label for="eye">Retina</label> <label for="eye">Optic Nerve</label> <img id="eye" alt="A diagram of the human eye." src="parts-of-the-eye.png" />

The same kinds of assistive technology that let a person jump to headings and landmarks also allow them to jump to input labels. Because of this, there is the expectation that when a label element is present, there is also a corresponding input it is associated with.

Alternative Descriptions

If you have low or no vision, and/or have difficulty understanding an image, HTML’s alt attribute (and not the title attribute) provides a mechanism to understand what the image is there for. The same principle applies for providing captions for video and audio content like podcasts.

Kenny Hitt mentions that when:

“…someone posts something on Twitter, if it’s just an unlabeled image, I don’t even take the time to participate in the conversation. When you start every conversation by asking what’s in the picture, it really derails things.”

Up until last week, the only way for Twitter to provide alternative descriptions for its images was to enable an option buried away in the subsection of a preference menu. Compare this to a platform like Mastodon, where the feature is enabled by default.

[embedded content]

Soren Hamby, mentions Stitcher, a popular podcast app. “The onboarding was a lot of themed graphics, but the alt text for each one was ‘unselected’ and for the same image with a check over it was selected. I think it would be reasonable for them to say ‘sci-fi genre selected’ […] it’s such a small thing but it makes all the difference.”

Ensuring that alternate description content is concise and descriptive is just as important as including the ability to add it. Daniel Göransson, a developer for Axess Lab, has a great article on how to write them effectively.

Robust, accessible features can also be part of evaluation criteria, as well as a great method for building customer loyalty. Soren mentions that they are “often the deciding factor, especially between services.” In particular, they cite Netflix’s audio descriptions.

ARIA

One topic Daniel Göransson’s article on alternative descriptions mentions is to not over-describe things. This includes information like that it is an image, who the photographer is, and keyword stuffing.

The same principle applies for Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA). ARIA is a set of attributes designed to extend HTML to fill in the gaps between interactive content and assistive technology. When ARIA is used to completely replace HTML, it oftentimes leads to an over-described experience.

Brian explains: “There seems to be a perception that more ARIA fixes accessibility and it can help, but too much either reads wrong things or just talks way too much. If on screen text of one or two words is good enough for everyone else, it is good enough for screen reader users too. We don’t need whole sentence or two descriptions of buttons or links i.e ‘link privacy policy’ is far better than something like ‘this link will open our privacy policy, this link will open in a new window’ when the on screen link text is ‘privacy policy.’”

The First Rule of ARIA Use advises us to only use it when a native element won’t suffice. You don’t need to describe what your interactive component is or how it works, the same way you don’t need to include the word “image” in your alternative description.

Provided that you use the appropriate native HTML element, assistive technology will handle all of that for you. Do more, more robustly, with less effort? Sounds great to me!

(Large preview)

Unlike most of HTML, CSS, and JS, the success of implemented ARIA is contextual, variable, and largely invisible. In spite of this, we seem to be slathering ARIA onto everything without bothering to check not only if it actually works, but also what the people who actually use it think of it.

Support for ARIA is fragmented across operating systems, browsers, and assistive technology offerings, all their respective versions, and every possible permutation of all three. Simply put, writing ARIA and trusting it will work as intended isn’t enough.

If misconfigured and/or over-applied, ARIA can break. It may not report actual functionality, announce the wrong functionality, and (accurately or inaccurately) over-describe functionality. Obviously, these experiences aren’t equivalent.

Representation matters. To get a better understanding of how the ARIA code you wrote actually works, I recommend hiring people to tell you. Here are four such services that do exactly that:

Contrast

Color Contrast

Color contrast is another common issue, one whose severity often seems to be downplayed. If I could wager a guess, it’s because it’s easy to forget that other people’s vision might be different than your own. Regardless, it is a concern that affects a wide swath of the global population, and we should treat the issue with the seriousness it deserves.

The Click-Away Pound Survey tells us that out of the top issues faced by users with access needs, contrast and legibility weighs in as the fifth most significant issue. On top of that, it has increased as a concern, going from 44% of respondents in 2016 to 55% in 2019.

We live in an age where there’s more color contrast checking resources than I can count. Products like Stark can help designers audit their designs before it is translated into code. Tools like Eightshape’s Contrast Grid and Atul Varma’s Accessible color palette builder let you craft your design systems with robust, accessible color combinations out of the gate.

(Large preview)

The somewhat ironic thing about color contrast is how, ah, visible it is. While some of the previous accessibility issues are invisible—hidden away as the underlying code—contrast is a pretty straightforward issue.

Mostly, contrast is a binary scenario, in that you either can or cannot see content. So, the next time you check your website or webapp with an automated accessibility checker such as Deque’s axe, don’t be so quick to downplay the color contrast errors it reports.

High Contrast

There are technology solutions for situations where even satisfactory color contrast ratios isn’t sufficient—namely, inverted colors mode and High Contrast Mode. Many participants I interviewed mentioned using these display modes during their daily computer use.

Provided you use semantic HTML, both of these modes don’t need much effort on the development end of things to work well. The important bit is to check out what you’re building in these two modes to make sure everything is working as intended.

Striving For Perfection

To quote Léonie Watson,

“Accessibility doesn’t have to be perfect, it just needs to be a little bit better than yesterday.”

By understanding both why, and how to improve your digital accessibility experiences in ways that directly address common barriers, you’re able to provide meaningful and enjoyable experiences to all.

Further Reading

Thank you to Brian Moore, Damien Senger, Jim Kiely, Justin Yarbrough, Kenny Hitt, and Soren Hamby for sharing their insights and experiences.

(ra, il)

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/equivalent-experiences-thinking-equivalently/ source https://scpie1.blogspot.com/2020/06/equivalent-experiences-thinking.html

[riichardwilson]

Equivalent Experiences: Thinking Equivalently

About The Author

Eric is a Boston-based designer who helps create straightforward solutions that address a person’s practical, physical, cognitive, and emotional needs. More about Eric Bailey …

Constructing an equivalent experience may mean changing the way you think about development and design, and potentially reevaluating your existing work. In this article, we’ll address common accessibility issues, and how to best go about improving them so everyone can effortlessly access your content.

This is the second of two articles on the topic of how digital accessibility is informed by equivalency. Previously, we have learned about the underlying biases that inform digital product creation, what isn’t an equivalent experience, the compounding effects of inaccessible design and code, and powerful motivating forces for doing better.

In this article, I will discuss learning how to embrace an equivalent, inclusive mindset. I will also provide practical, robust ways to improve your websites and web apps by providing solutions to common, everyday barriers cited by the people I interviewed.

Setting A Standard

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) outlines in painstaking detail how to craft accessible digital experiences. While a long and dense document, it is incredibly comprehensive — to the point where it’s been codified as an international standard. For over 10 years, we’ve had a globally agreed upon, canonical definition of what constitutes as usable.

How Would I?

If you need a little help constructing the initial mental framework the WCAG gets at, a question I always ask myself when making something is, “How would I use this if…” It’s a question that gets you to check all the biases that might be affecting you in the moment.

Examples could be:

How would I use this if…

…I can’t see the screen?

…I can’t move my arms?

…I’m sensitive to flashing and strobing animation?

…English isn’t my primary language?

…I have a limited budget for bandwidth?

…I’ve set a large default type size?

…and so on.

Focus on these four parameters to improve usability of your web design:

1. Visual – make it easy to see 2. Auditory – make it easy to hear 3. Motor – make it easy to interact with 4. Cognitive – make it easy to understand

→ Accessibility goals are also usability goals.

— Alex (@alexmuench) January 30, 2020

A Gentle Introduction

If you’re looking for a more approachable resource for how to dig into what the WCAG covers, the Inclusive Design Principles would be a great place to start. The seven principles it describes all map back to WCAG success criterion.

(Large preview)

Learn From The People Who Actually Use It

You don’t have to take my word for it. Here are some common issues cited by the people I interviewed, and how to fix them:

Wayfinding

Headings

Heading elements are incredibly important for maintaining an equivalent, accessible experience.

When constructed with skill and care, heading elements allow screen reader users to quickly determine the contents of a page or view and navigate to content relevant to their interests. This is equivalent to how someone might quickly flit around, scrolling until something that looks pertinent comes into view.

The HeadingsMap browser extension lets you view a page’s heading hierarchy. (Large preview)

Justin Yarbrough voices poorly-authored heading elements as a concern, and he’s not alone.

WebAIM’s screen reader survey cites headings as the most important way to find information. This survey is well-worth paying attention to, as it provides valuable insight into how disabled people actually use assistive technology.

Landmarks

In addition to heading elements, another way to determine the overall structure and layout are landmarks. Landmarks are roles implicitly described by HTML sectioning elements, used to help describe the overall composition of the main page or view areas.

These are five of the eight landmark HTML elements and the roles using them create. (Large preview)

Here’s what Justin has to say:

“If I’m just trying to find the main content, I’ll first try the Q JAWS shortcut key to see if a main region’s set up. If not, I’m just more or less stuck trying to scan the page to find it arrowing through the page.”

Much as how we might use a layer group name of “primary nav” in our design file, or a class name of c-nav-primary in our CSS, it’s important we also use a nav sectioning element to describe our main site navigation (as well as any other navigation the page or view contains).

Doing so ensures intent is carried all the way through from conception, to implementation, to use. The same notion carries through for the other HTML sectioning elements that create landmarks for assistive technology.

Labeled Controls

Brian Moore tells us about “form fields with no label or at least one that isn’t programmatically associated so it doesn’t read anything.”

It’s another frustratingly common problem.

Providing a valid for/id attribute pairing creates a programmatic association between form inputs and the label that describes what it does. And when I say label, I mean the label element. Not a clickable div, a placeholder, aria-label, or some other brittle and/or overwrought solution. label elements are a tried-and-true solution that enjoys wide and deep support for accessibility.

In addition, a label element should not be used by itself, say for a label on a diagram. This might seem counter-intuitive at first, but please bear with me.

<!-- Please do this --> <label for="your-name">Your name</label> <input type="text" id="your-name" name="your-name" autocomplete="name"> <!-- Don’t do this --> <label for="eye">Cornea</label> <label for="eye">Pupil</label> <label for="eye">Lens</label> <label for="eye">Retina</label> <label for="eye">Optic Nerve</label> <img id="eye" alt="A diagram of the human eye." src="parts-of-the-eye.png" />

The same kinds of assistive technology that let a person jump to headings and landmarks also allow them to jump to input labels. Because of this, there is the expectation that when a label element is present, there is also a corresponding input it is associated with.

Alternative Descriptions

If you have low or no vision, and/or have difficulty understanding an image, HTML’s alt attribute (and not the title attribute) provides a mechanism to understand what the image is there for. The same principle applies for providing captions for video and audio content like podcasts.

Kenny Hitt mentions that when:

“…someone posts something on Twitter, if it’s just an unlabeled image, I don’t even take the time to participate in the conversation. When you start every conversation by asking what’s in the picture, it really derails things.”

Up until last week, the only way for Twitter to provide alternative descriptions for its images was to enable an option buried away in the subsection of a preference menu. Compare this to a platform like Mastodon, where the feature is enabled by default.

[embedded content]

Soren Hamby, mentions Stitcher, a popular podcast app. “The onboarding was a lot of themed graphics, but the alt text for each one was ‘unselected’ and for the same image with a check over it was selected. I think it would be reasonable for them to say ‘sci-fi genre selected’ […] it’s such a small thing but it makes all the difference.”

Ensuring that alternate description content is concise and descriptive is just as important as including the ability to add it. Daniel Göransson, a developer for Axess Lab, has a great article on how to write them effectively.

Robust, accessible features can also be part of evaluation criteria, as well as a great method for building customer loyalty. Soren mentions that they are “often the deciding factor, especially between services.” In particular, they cite Netflix’s audio descriptions.

ARIA

One topic Daniel Göransson’s article on alternative descriptions mentions is to not over-describe things. This includes information like that it is an image, who the photographer is, and keyword stuffing.

The same principle applies for Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA). ARIA is a set of attributes designed to extend HTML to fill in the gaps between interactive content and assistive technology. When ARIA is used to completely replace HTML, it oftentimes leads to an over-described experience.

Brian explains: “There seems to be a perception that more ARIA fixes accessibility and it can help, but too much either reads wrong things or just talks way too much. If on screen text of one or two words is good enough for everyone else, it is good enough for screen reader users too. We don’t need whole sentence or two descriptions of buttons or links i.e ‘link privacy policy’ is far better than something like ‘this link will open our privacy policy, this link will open in a new window’ when the on screen link text is ‘privacy policy.’”

The First Rule of ARIA Use advises us to only use it when a native element won’t suffice. You don’t need to describe what your interactive component is or how it works, the same way you don’t need to include the word “image” in your alternative description.

Provided that you use the appropriate native HTML element, assistive technology will handle all of that for you. Do more, more robustly, with less effort? Sounds great to me!

(Large preview)

Unlike most of HTML, CSS, and JS, the success of implemented ARIA is contextual, variable, and largely invisible. In spite of this, we seem to be slathering ARIA onto everything without bothering to check not only if it actually works, but also what the people who actually use it think of it.

Support for ARIA is fragmented across operating systems, browsers, and assistive technology offerings, all their respective versions, and every possible permutation of all three. Simply put, writing ARIA and trusting it will work as intended isn’t enough.

If misconfigured and/or over-applied, ARIA can break. It may not report actual functionality, announce the wrong functionality, and (accurately or inaccurately) over-describe functionality. Obviously, these experiences aren’t equivalent.

Representation matters. To get a better understanding of how the ARIA code you wrote actually works, I recommend hiring people to tell you. Here are four such services that do exactly that:

Contrast

Color Contrast

Color contrast is another common issue, one whose severity often seems to be downplayed. If I could wager a guess, it’s because it’s easy to forget that other people’s vision might be different than your own. Regardless, it is a concern that affects a wide swath of the global population, and we should treat the issue with the seriousness it deserves.

The Click-Away Pound Survey tells us that out of the top issues faced by users with access needs, contrast and legibility weighs in as the fifth most significant issue. On top of that, it has increased as a concern, going from 44% of respondents in 2016 to 55% in 2019.

We live in an age where there’s more color contrast checking resources than I can count. Products like Stark can help designers audit their designs before it is translated into code. Tools like Eightshape’s Contrast Grid and Atul Varma’s Accessible color palette builder let you craft your design systems with robust, accessible color combinations out of the gate.

(Large preview)

The somewhat ironic thing about color contrast is how, ah, visible it is. While some of the previous accessibility issues are invisible—hidden away as the underlying code—contrast is a pretty straightforward issue.

Mostly, contrast is a binary scenario, in that you either can or cannot see content. So, the next time you check your website or webapp with an automated accessibility checker such as Deque’s axe, don’t be so quick to downplay the color contrast errors it reports.

High Contrast

There are technology solutions for situations where even satisfactory color contrast ratios isn’t sufficient—namely, inverted colors mode and High Contrast Mode. Many participants I interviewed mentioned using these display modes during their daily computer use.

Provided you use semantic HTML, both of these modes don’t need much effort on the development end of things to work well. The important bit is to check out what you’re building in these two modes to make sure everything is working as intended.

Striving For Perfection

To quote Léonie Watson,

“Accessibility doesn’t have to be perfect, it just needs to be a little bit better than yesterday.”

By understanding both why, and how to improve your digital accessibility experiences in ways that directly address common barriers, you’re able to provide meaningful and enjoyable experiences to all.

Further Reading

Thank you to Brian Moore, Damien Senger, Jim Kiely, Justin Yarbrough, Kenny Hitt, and Soren Hamby for sharing their insights and experiences.

(ra, il)

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source http://www.scpie.org/equivalent-experiences-thinking-equivalently/ source https://scpie.tumblr.com/post/620115521826897920

[scpie]

Equivalent Experiences: Thinking Equivalently

About The Author

Eric is a Boston-based designer who helps create straightforward solutions that address a person’s practical, physical, cognitive, and emotional needs. More about Eric Bailey …

Constructing an equivalent experience may mean changing the way you think about development and design, and potentially reevaluating your existing work. In this article, we’ll address common accessibility issues, and how to best go about improving them so everyone can effortlessly access your content.

This is the second of two articles on the topic of how digital accessibility is informed by equivalency. Previously, we have learned about the underlying biases that inform digital product creation, what isn’t an equivalent experience, the compounding effects of inaccessible design and code, and powerful motivating forces for doing better.

In this article, I will discuss learning how to embrace an equivalent, inclusive mindset. I will also provide practical, robust ways to improve your websites and web apps by providing solutions to common, everyday barriers cited by the people I interviewed.

Setting A Standard

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) outlines in painstaking detail how to craft accessible digital experiences. While a long and dense document, it is incredibly comprehensive — to the point where it’s been codified as an international standard. For over 10 years, we’ve had a globally agreed upon, canonical definition of what constitutes as usable.

How Would I?

If you need a little help constructing the initial mental framework the WCAG gets at, a question I always ask myself when making something is, “How would I use this if…” It’s a question that gets you to check all the biases that might be affecting you in the moment.

Examples could be:

How would I use this if…

…I can’t see the screen?

…I can’t move my arms?

…I’m sensitive to flashing and strobing animation?

…English isn’t my primary language?

…I have a limited budget for bandwidth?

…I’ve set a large default type size?

…and so on.

Focus on these four parameters to improve usability of your web design:

1. Visual – make it easy to see 2. Auditory – make it easy to hear 3. Motor – make it easy to interact with 4. Cognitive – make it easy to understand

→ Accessibility goals are also usability goals.

— Alex (@alexmuench) January 30, 2020

A Gentle Introduction

If you’re looking for a more approachable resource for how to dig into what the WCAG covers, the Inclusive Design Principles would be a great place to start. The seven principles it describes all map back to WCAG success criterion.

(Large preview)

Learn From The People Who Actually Use It

You don’t have to take my word for it. Here are some common issues cited by the people I interviewed, and how to fix them:

Wayfinding

Headings

Heading elements are incredibly important for maintaining an equivalent, accessible experience.

When constructed with skill and care, heading elements allow screen reader users to quickly determine the contents of a page or view and navigate to content relevant to their interests. This is equivalent to how someone might quickly flit around, scrolling until something that looks pertinent comes into view.

The HeadingsMap browser extension lets you view a page’s heading hierarchy. (Large preview)

Justin Yarbrough voices poorly-authored heading elements as a concern, and he’s not alone.

WebAIM’s screen reader survey cites headings as the most important way to find information. This survey is well-worth paying attention to, as it provides valuable insight into how disabled people actually use assistive technology.

Landmarks

In addition to heading elements, another way to determine the overall structure and layout are landmarks. Landmarks are roles implicitly described by HTML sectioning elements, used to help describe the overall composition of the main page or view areas.

These are five of the eight landmark HTML elements and the roles using them create. (Large preview)

Here’s what Justin has to say:

“If I’m just trying to find the main content, I’ll first try the Q JAWS shortcut key to see if a main region’s set up. If not, I’m just more or less stuck trying to scan the page to find it arrowing through the page.”

Much as how we might use a layer group name of “primary nav” in our design file, or a class name of c-nav-primary in our CSS, it’s important we also use a nav sectioning element to describe our main site navigation (as well as any other navigation the page or view contains).

Doing so ensures intent is carried all the way through from conception, to implementation, to use. The same notion carries through for the other HTML sectioning elements that create landmarks for assistive technology.

Labeled Controls

Brian Moore tells us about “form fields with no label or at least one that isn’t programmatically associated so it doesn’t read anything.”

It’s another frustratingly common problem.

Providing a valid for/id attribute pairing creates a programmatic association between form inputs and the label that describes what it does. And when I say label, I mean the label element. Not a clickable div, a placeholder, aria-label, or some other brittle and/or overwrought solution. label elements are a tried-and-true solution that enjoys wide and deep support for accessibility.

In addition, a label element should not be used by itself, say for a label on a diagram. This might seem counter-intuitive at first, but please bear with me.

<!-- Please do this --> <label for="your-name">Your name</label> <input type="text" id="your-name" name="your-name" autocomplete="name"> <!-- Don’t do this --> <label for="eye">Cornea</label> <label for="eye">Pupil</label> <label for="eye">Lens</label> <label for="eye">Retina</label> <label for="eye">Optic Nerve</label> <img id="eye" alt="A diagram of the human eye." src="parts-of-the-eye.png" />

The same kinds of assistive technology that let a person jump to headings and landmarks also allow them to jump to input labels. Because of this, there is the expectation that when a label element is present, there is also a corresponding input it is associated with.

Alternative Descriptions

If you have low or no vision, and/or have difficulty understanding an image, HTML’s alt attribute (and not the title attribute) provides a mechanism to understand what the image is there for. The same principle applies for providing captions for video and audio content like podcasts.

Kenny Hitt mentions that when:

“…someone posts something on Twitter, if it’s just an unlabeled image, I don’t even take the time to participate in the conversation. When you start every conversation by asking what’s in the picture, it really derails things.”

Up until last week, the only way for Twitter to provide alternative descriptions for its images was to enable an option buried away in the subsection of a preference menu. Compare this to a platform like Mastodon, where the feature is enabled by default.

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Soren Hamby, mentions Stitcher, a popular podcast app. “The onboarding was a lot of themed graphics, but the alt text for each one was ‘unselected’ and for the same image with a check over it was selected. I think it would be reasonable for them to say ‘sci-fi genre selected’ […] it’s such a small thing but it makes all the difference.”

Ensuring that alternate description content is concise and descriptive is just as important as including the ability to add it. Daniel Göransson, a developer for Axess Lab, has a great article on how to write them effectively.

Robust, accessible features can also be part of evaluation criteria, as well as a great method for building customer loyalty. Soren mentions that they are “often the deciding factor, especially between services.” In particular, they cite Netflix’s audio descriptions.

ARIA

One topic Daniel Göransson’s article on alternative descriptions mentions is to not over-describe things. This includes information like that it is an image, who the photographer is, and keyword stuffing.

The same principle applies for Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA). ARIA is a set of attributes designed to extend HTML to fill in the gaps between interactive content and assistive technology. When ARIA is used to completely replace HTML, it oftentimes leads to an over-described experience.

Brian explains: “There seems to be a perception that more ARIA fixes accessibility and it can help, but too much either reads wrong things or just talks way too much. If on screen text of one or two words is good enough for everyone else, it is good enough for screen reader users too. We don’t need whole sentence or two descriptions of buttons or links i.e ‘link privacy policy’ is far better than something like ‘this link will open our privacy policy, this link will open in a new window’ when the on screen link text is ‘privacy policy.’”

The First Rule of ARIA Use advises us to only use it when a native element won’t suffice. You don’t need to describe what your interactive component is or how it works, the same way you don’t need to include the word “image” in your alternative description.

Provided that you use the appropriate native HTML element, assistive technology will handle all of that for you. Do more, more robustly, with less effort? Sounds great to me!

(Large preview)

Unlike most of HTML, CSS, and JS, the success of implemented ARIA is contextual, variable, and largely invisible. In spite of this, we seem to be slathering ARIA onto everything without bothering to check not only if it actually works, but also what the people who actually use it think of it.

Support for ARIA is fragmented across operating systems, browsers, and assistive technology offerings, all their respective versions, and every possible permutation of all three. Simply put, writing ARIA and trusting it will work as intended isn’t enough.

If misconfigured and/or over-applied, ARIA can break. It may not report actual functionality, announce the wrong functionality, and (accurately or inaccurately) over-describe functionality. Obviously, these experiences aren’t equivalent.

Representation matters. To get a better understanding of how the ARIA code you wrote actually works, I recommend hiring people to tell you. Here are four such services that do exactly that:

Contrast

Color Contrast

Color contrast is another common issue, one whose severity often seems to be downplayed. If I could wager a guess, it’s because it’s easy to forget that other people’s vision might be different than your own. Regardless, it is a concern that affects a wide swath of the global population, and we should treat the issue with the seriousness it deserves.

The Click-Away Pound Survey tells us that out of the top issues faced by users with access needs, contrast and legibility weighs in as the fifth most significant issue. On top of that, it has increased as a concern, going from 44% of respondents in 2016 to 55% in 2019.

We live in an age where there’s more color contrast checking resources than I can count. Products like Stark can help designers audit their designs before it is translated into code. Tools like Eightshape’s Contrast Grid and Atul Varma’s Accessible color palette builder let you craft your design systems with robust, accessible color combinations out of the gate.

(Large preview)

The somewhat ironic thing about color contrast is how, ah, visible it is. While some of the previous accessibility issues are invisible—hidden away as the underlying code—contrast is a pretty straightforward issue.

Mostly, contrast is a binary scenario, in that you either can or cannot see content. So, the next time you check your website or webapp with an automated accessibility checker such as Deque’s axe, don’t be so quick to downplay the color contrast errors it reports.

High Contrast

There are technology solutions for situations where even satisfactory color contrast ratios isn’t sufficient—namely, inverted colors mode and High Contrast Mode. Many participants I interviewed mentioned using these display modes during their daily computer use.

Provided you use semantic HTML, both of these modes don’t need much effort on the development end of things to work well. The important bit is to check out what you’re building in these two modes to make sure everything is working as intended.

Striving For Perfection

To quote Léonie Watson,

“Accessibility doesn’t have to be perfect, it just needs to be a little bit better than yesterday.”

By understanding both why, and how to improve your digital accessibility experiences in ways that directly address common barriers, you’re able to provide meaningful and enjoyable experiences to all.

Further Reading

Thank you to Brian Moore, Damien Senger, Jim Kiely, Justin Yarbrough, Kenny Hitt, and Soren Hamby for sharing their insights and experiences.

(ra, il)

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source http://www.scpie.org/equivalent-experiences-thinking-equivalently/

[emmaeatsandexplores]

Ask anyone on a Grainfree or Paleo diet what is the one thing they miss the most, and the answer is always…Pizza!  It’s probably my favourite food in the world, or maybe it’s bread, or maybe its nachos…  Anyway, now there’s no reason to miss out on Pizza & Movie Night or to have to turn down pizza at a Poker Party with friends.  I’m a great one for believing that you shouldn’t deny yourself anything and for every craving, there is a way to make it within dietary restrictions so I decided to make an SCD cauliflower pizza for my mum and I so we could partake in pizza night along with the boys.

To start making the SCD Cauliflower Pizza, preheat your oven to 180C (350F).  The first step is to make the Cauliflower Pizza Base.

To do this you need to chop the cauliflower into small florets and steam until very soft (about 8-10 mins).  Then, remove the steamed cauliflower from the pan and ‘pulse’ in the food processor to get a kind of cauliflower rice.  (You don’t want the cauliflower to be completely smooth, just in rice-sized pieces)

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Wrap the cauliflower rice in the middle of a clean tea towel and twist to squeeze out as much water as you possibly can. (A lot of brute strength is needed and be careful as the liquid that comes out will be hot).  When you think you’ve done it all there’s still lots more water in there.  You want it as dry as possible – just keep twisting!!

Transfer the squeezed cauliflower rice to a mixing bowl and add the egg, oregano, and season with salt and black pepper. Mix well to combine all of the ingredients.

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Now, draw around your plate to create a circle on a piece of baking parchment. (I like to do this, to have a template for the size and shape to make the pizza base.  But, you can skip this step, freestyle and just estimate the size and shape when you’re rolling out the dough.

Divide the cauliflower mix in two and place half on the baking parchment in the middle of the circle.  Place another piece of baking parchment on top of the mixture and roll out into the required shape and size.   (You can use a rolling pin or you can flatten with your hands.  If it doesn’t roll to a perfect circle you can also shape the edges with your hands!)

Bake the base in the oven for about 5-8 minutes until the Cauliflower Pizza Crust starts to dry out and crisp around the edges. When the Cauliflower Pizza Base is dry enough, slide a fish slice under it and flip it over. Bake again for another 2-5 minutes to dry out the underneath.

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  Now, onto the next step.  While the Cauliflower Pizza Base is cooking you can make the tomato sauce.  A good pizza deserves a good pizza sauce!

Start to make the sauce by peeling and finely dicing the onion and crushing the garlic.  Heat the olive oil in a pan over a medium heat and soften the onion and garlic until it becomes translucent.  Then, add the passata, oregano and season well with salt and pepper.  (Optional: If you want a really smooth tomato sauce you can blend the mixture with a stick blender to puree the onions and garlic.  Cook the sauce on a low heat to thicken slightly until you’re ready to use it.

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Now for the fun bit! It’s time to assemble your pizza!  Start by adding a few tablespoons of the tomato sauce to the pizza base and spread out to the edges.

Then, you can go nuts and add all your favourite toppings!  Olives, chicken, peppers, pineapple, mushrooms, pepperoni – whatever takes your fancy!  Finally, slice or rip up the mozzarella ball and top the pizza with pieces of the cheese. If you like it extra cheesy you can add grated cheddar or another cheese to the top as well!

Drizzle some olive oil over the top, season and bake in the oven for around 5-8 mins until the cheese has melted!  Serve with a side salad or some garlic bread for your next Pizza night!   Tonight I was feeling the veggie vibes.  I added onions, peppers and mushrooms to my base along with lots of yummy mozzarella cheese!

And there you have it – pizza without all the grains and gluten!  A healthier version with all the flavour that won’t leave you feeling uncomfortably stuffed!  And you can personalise it to your own taste.  You can make a Pizza Bianco by leaving off the sauce if you don’t like tomato.  Or, my favourite combinations are goat’s cheese, spinach and caramelised onions or Mozarella and Parma Ham with fresh rocket added to the top once it’s out of the oven.  A different pizza for every night of the week.  The boys can keep their pizza delivery – I’m happy with my SCD Cauliflower Pizza!

This is also a great one to make with kids.  They can add the toppings that they want to and they’ll never know that the base is made of veggies!

[ultimate-recipe id=”22827″ template=”default”]

Dietary Information for SCD Cauliflower Pizza

This recipe is Grain-Free, Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free & Refined-Sugar Free.  It’s also suitable for SCD (Specific Carbohydrate Diet) Low Carb, Paleo & Vegetarian Diets.

See my Products Page for Ingredients & Bakeware that I recommend.

Pin SCD Cauliflower Pizza for later

  SCD Cauliflower Pizza Ask anyone on a Grainfree or Paleo diet what is the one thing they miss the most, and the answer is always...Pizza! 

[gogocrazygo]

Soooooo in these already boring times ( being stuck at home due to COVID-19), I have decided to get my running game on. I just bought new pair of running shoes so there is no stopping me right, or at least that’s what I thought.

When the lockdown started just under 2 months ago, I have moved in with my parents and started working from home. I feel lucky to be able to work this way, since I am aware that a lot of people have been put on furlough, lost their income completely or physically have to go in to work, putting their and others health at risk. To stay fit and generally SANE in these very different times, I have decided to run at least 2 – 4 times a week, normally 5 km, and sometimes even getting my little brother to tag along but on his bike. Other physical activities I would include in my stuck at home fitness venture  would be resistance exercises, finger strength training for climbing and yoga for flexibility.

Unfortunately few weeks ago, a pain in my left shin (which I have had already for few weeks) has become so unbearable I could not walk on that leg after a run. I gave it some rest for a week and tried running again. That was a mistake! The pain came back even worse and sometimes I would struggle to even fall asleep. I gave myself another week off from running and tried to do it for the second time. Again, very silly mistake! Pain was so bad I through I must have shine splints of some sort, or damaged muscle.

Luckily one of my fellow climbing club buddies is a Podiatrist, so I thought I’ll seek some advice over the phone. After explaining my pains and what I have been doing around the time it started, he have unofficially diagnosed me with tibia stress fracture.

All  joys, no more running for 6 weeks, just loads ice and chill for my leg 😦

So what can I do if I can’t put much pressure or consistent impact on my left tibia?

Some yoga and exercises can’t be bad right?

Anyways, I have decided to dedicate 30 min to 2 hours per day, 4 times a week at least for exercises including upper body and arms, loads core strengthening, yoga flows in morning and evening, and even some Joe Wicks with my little brother.  I also thought there must be other things I can do to improve my fitness if I can’t do much cardio, so I have come up with few points that can help expand genera fitness and well-being knowledge:

Food for writing inspiration

gain a bit more understanding about physics behind running and exercise. How does the body work and what to do, to get the most out of your workout (check out these free online courses with  Open University)

get more information about the right nutrition for your own little fitness plan ( check out these free online courses with Further Learn)

explore and map out exciting running events. These are normally inexpensive and fun to complete alone or with a team (one that I have been introduced to and attended 2 times already is the Wolf Run which is a 10 km mud run)

research what to do to get back on track in the most stable and safe way, and create a recovery plan. I find Youtube is very good tool for this type of research, with loads good reviews and ideas from other fitness individuals.

challenge different parts of the body with resistance training.

if running was your main fitness training, maybe look into working out your upper body, work on core or try and become more flexible. To do this successfully I would suggest giving yourself some goals e.g do 5 pull ups after 2 weeks training for it, train to plank for 2 minutes, get closer and closer to a split every week, hold yoga poses for few extra breaths etc.

add weights where appropriate into your normal workout .This will help you keep pushing your body where you can

turn to cycling if you have a bike

try and do some meditative practices. Simple 15-20 min relaxing body scans can really make you aware of sensations you have in your body. I think it helps me to concentrate energy in areas I want to work on

explore some nice new running routs for when you are back in the runners shoes

other activities I could think off all include being in closer contact with people or include being in public space like a swimming pool, which is most likely to be closed off during COVID-19

I think these areas are worth looking into if you want to keep up with good fitness practice and make yourself feel good, especially if you cant run. Of course if you already have a fitness plan in place, or following instructions given by physiotherapist, these might not fully apply to you.

If you are recovering from an injury like me, during COVID-19, I suggest not pushing it. Rest and recover to avoid further damage. If I have stopped, stepped back from running weeks ago and seek help, I might be at the end of my recover period. Instead, I have about 4 more weeks to go if not longer since I have made it worse by thinking it’s nothing serious.

I can imagine the lockdown or an injury could have some negative impact on our motivation, but this is the best time for self reflection and exploration of new challenges to set your mind to. Goal setting is very good for mental health, especially if you are reviewing them on daily bases and pushing yourself that little bit extra.

The above photos are from my random adventure, where I went to explore possibilities for a new and longer running rout. This was almost 10km, with good mixture of on and off road running. Best time for a walk right now is very early Sunday morning, unless you are isolating.

  Fitness Channels I recommend:

MadFit real time workout channel (targeted at females, also include vegan food ideas)

Yoga With Adriene my favourite yoga channel with some awesome easy flows

HASfit fitness for all

  Podcasts I listen to while getting ready for work, driving or running:

The Plant Proof Podcast by Simon Hill. His passion for plant based diet got him to interview doctors, nutritionists, sports people and individuals who have turned their life around thanks to plant based nutrition. My favourite podcast of all as he is so genuine and some of the interviews he has got are just mind blowing.

NutritionFacts Podcast by Dr Michael Greger- well renown physician, public speaker and advocate for whole-foods, plant based diet gives fact and figures on different foods we can eat or avoid to improve our health.

Generation V by Nimai Delgato is all about plant based nutrition in sports and fitness sector. Again very factual and interesting to listen to.

What to do if I can’t run? Soooooo in these already boring times ( being stuck at home due to COVID-19), I have decided to get my running game on.

[newscitygroup]

Cookbook highlights gallstone-friendly recipes | Vancouver Sun

The Gallstone-Friendly Diet: Everything You Never Wanted to Know About Gallstones (And How to Keep on Their Good Side)

By Juliet Sullivan

Hammersmith Books Limited | $9.99

Juliet Sullivan vividly recalls the moment when she had her first gallbladder attack.

“I was sitting on the beach one day, and about half-an-hour after eating lunch, a sudden and excruciating pain ripped through my chest and stomach,” she says. “Once I was sure I wasn’t having a heart attack, I put it down to indigestion, and didn’t think any more of it.”

That is, until a few days later when the agonizing experience occurred again. And, then again.

“The third time, I ended up at emergency, but the doctors were baffled,” she recalls. “The fourth time, I had a round of tests including a CT scan, which is where they discovered my collection of stones.”

Gallstones are hard, pebble-like particles typically made of cholesterol or bilirubin, that develop in the gallbladder, according to Sullivan. They can range in size from a grain of sand to a golf ball.

“Gallbladder disease is an incredibly common problem in western cultures. But there seems to be a lack of awareness and understanding generally about (it),” Sullivan says. “I myself had never heard of gallstones before I was diagnosed.

“Some people can have gallstones without ever knowing they have them.”

Triggers for gallstones attacks can differ from person to person, Sullivan explains. Hers were brought on after digesting fat — regardless of whether it was a ‘healthy’ fat or a ‘bad’ fat.

“Fat doesn’t necessarily cause gallstones to form, but it certainly is the enemy once you have them,” she says. “In my case it was olive oil and almonds.”

Following the diagnosis, Sullivan jokingly remembers feeling “very sorry” for herself.

“At the time it was very difficult,” the British-born author who now lives in the Lower Mainland, says. “The only way for me to avoid the agonizing pain of a gallstones attack was to eat very little fat, and so my diet changed overnight.”

The diagnosis and new reality of her diet forced Sullivan to learn a lot about gallstones and gallstone-friendly food — very quickly.

“After my doctor told me to cut fat from my diet, I started researching how to eat without using fat, and realized there were very few cookbooks available in this genre — mainly because it is not healthy to cut fat from your diet,” she says. “But there were also very few books about gallstones either.”

Juliet Sullivan.

Paul R Stevens /

Handout

So, she decided to create one of her own.

“I have been flirting with writing a memoir type book for years, as memoir is my writing style, and so I incorporated a few chapters of ‘my story’ into the book, to add a context, and also to show the funny side of gallstones. There isn’t one, of course, but I tried anyway,” she explains of the book, which she originally self-published before the title was picked up by a publisher for its second edition.

By a process of trial-and-error Sullivan came up with a collection of recipes that met the criteria for cooking and eating with gallstones in mind. The recipes are given a star rating to identify the approximate fat content of each dish — three stars for “ultralow fat” (about less than three grams of fat per serving); two stars for “low fat” (about less than five grams of fat per serving); and “lowish fat” (about five grams of fat per serving plus the protein).

“Being British, I grew up on my grandma’s shepherd’s pies and apple pies. Lots of pies, actually, which does go some way to explaining how I ended up with gallstones,” she says good-humouredly. “(But), I love food, and I was not prepared to live on dry toast and apple-cider vinegar for six months while I waited for my operation to remove my gallbladder.

“So I set about creating recipes that mirrored the kind of food I love, without some of the offending ingredients.”

The book includes a variety of dishes including breakfast, lunch, dinner, side dishes and dessert options.

When asked to pick a personal favourite, Sullivan pointed toward recipes that show just how close she was able to keep her dietary restriction-abiding dishes to her food heritage roots — albeit with a few thoughtful (and in some cases, inventive) modifications.

“So that I didn’t feel too hard-done-by, I created homely recipes such as Veggie Shepherd’s Pie using lentils and sweet potato, and it is delicious. It is easily as delicious as the meat version. And it uses no fat. It is a healthy comfort food,” she says. “The apple pie is another story, because you can’t have an apple pie without the pie part. I just retrained myself how to think about desserts and treats.

“In this case, once you ditch the pastry, it is actually quite surprising how tasty a baked apple can be, especially if you throw a bit of zero-fat yogurt on top.”

Sullivan hopes that readers — whether those who are simply curious about discovering healthy alternatives to their favourite dishes or those who are suffering from gallstones themselves — better understand the impact that a proper diet can have on their health. As well as earn a greater understanding (and maybe a healthy dose of fear) of what exactly gallstones are, who can develop them and, most importantly, how to avoid them.

“There is a common belief that the only people susceptible to gallstones are female, fair, fat and over 40,” she says. “Whilst there is some evidence that all of these factors can play a part, the fact is that anyone can develop gallstones, even children. Cutting back on refined carbs and increasing fibre intake has been suggested to be the best way to avoid forming gallstones.

“Because, believe me, if you can avoid forming gallstones, you really should. They are evil.”

  RECIPE: Fiery Fajita Bowls 

1 cup (250 mL) brown rice

Coconut or olive-oil cooking spray or water for steam frying

1 onion, sliced

1 medium courgette (zucchini), cut into sticks

1 red pepper, sliced

1 yellow pepper, sliced

3 medium mushrooms, sliced

1 tsp. (5 mL) smoked paprika

1/2 tsp. (2.5 mL) cayenne pepper 

1/2 tsp. (2.5 mL) ground cumin

 Salt and pepper 

Simple homemade salsa

2 large tomatoes, diced

1 spring onion, finely chopped

2-3 sprigs fresh coriander (cilantro), finely chopped 

Salt and black pepper 

To assemble

Fresh coriander (cilantro) 

Chopped spring onions

Hot sauce

Salad

Low-fat sour cream

Method

Boil the brown rice in plenty of water, until cooked to your liking (around 20 minutes), then drain.

Meanwhile, heat a large frying pan or wok over medium heat, then thinly coat the bottom with cooking spray, and add the chopped vegetables.

Add the spices, and a pinch of salt and pepper.

Cook over high heat, stirring regularly, for about five to 10 minutes, until the vegetables are soft.

To make the simple homemade salsa, place the diced tomatoes in a bowl with one chopped spring onion and a sprinkling of fresh coriander; add a pinch of salt and pepper. Mix.

To assemble your veggie fajita bowls, serve the cooked brown rice into three bowls, top with the vegetable mixture and add the homemade salsa.

Finish with a dollop of low-fat sour cream (if using), some chopped coriander and spring onions, and a dash of hot sauce.

RECIPE: Nearly No-Fat Banana Bread

Coconut or olive-oil cooking spray

1 1/2 cups (375 mL) gluten-free, whole-wheat flour

3/4 cup (180 mL) caster sugar

1 1/4 tsp. (6 mL) baking powder

1/2 tsp. (2.5 mL) bicarbonate of soda/baking soda

1/2 tsp. (2.5 mL) ground cinnamon

2 egg whites

3 ripe bananas, mashed

4 tbsp. (60 mL) apple sauce

Method

Preheat oven to 180 C (350 F).

Lightly grease a 8×4-inch (20×10-centimetre) loaf tin with a few pumps of cooking spray.

In a large bowl stir together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and cinnamon. Add the egg whites, bananas and apple purée and stir just until combined.

Pour the batter in the preheated oven for 50-55 minutes, until a skewer inserted into the centre of the loaf comes out clean.

Turn out onto a wire rack and allow to cool before slicing.

Aharris@postmedia.com

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