#but I love the tracking and resource management and every map is so detailed

[allyouneediskilly]

i massively enjoyed my time with rise/sunbreak and I’ll no doubt keep playing it, but i finally jumped into world and im not trying to be too corny but i am genuinely overwhelmed by how beautiful it all is.

[aethersea]

another thing fantasy writers should keep track of is how much of their worldbuilding is aesthetic-based. it's not unlike the sci-fi hardness scale, which measures how closely a story holds to known, real principles of science. The Martian is extremely hard sci-fi, with nearly every detail being grounded in realistic fact as we know it; Star Trek is extremely soft sci-fi, with a vaguely plausible "space travel and no resource scarcity" premise used as a foundation for the wildest ideas the writers' room could come up with. and much as Star Trek fuckin rules, there's nothing wrong with aesthetic-based fantasy worldbuilding!

(sidenote we're not calling this 'soft fantasy' bc there's already a hard/soft divide in fantasy: hard magic follows consistent rules, like "earthbenders can always and only bend earth", and soft magic follows vague rules that often just ~feel right~, like the Force. this frankly kinda maps, but I'm not talking about just the magic, I'm talking about the worldbuilding as a whole.

actually for the purposes of this post we're calling it grounded vs airy fantasy, bc that's succinct and sounds cool.)

a great example of grounded fantasy is Dungeon Meshi: the dungeon ecosystem is meticulously thought out, the plot is driven by the very realistic need to eat well while adventuring, the story touches on both social and psychological effects of the whole 'no one dies forever down here' situation, the list goes on. the worldbuilding wants to be engaged with on a mechanical level and it rewards that engagement.

deliberately airy fantasy is less common, because in a funny way it's much harder to do. people tend to like explanations. it takes skill to pull off "the world is this way because I said so." Narnia manages: these kids fall into a magic world through the back of a wardrobe, befriend talking beavers who drink tea, get weapons from Santa Claus, dance with Bacchus and his maenads, and sail to the edge of the world, without ever breaking suspension of disbelief. it works because every new thing that happens fits the vibes. it's all just vibes! engaging with the worldbuilding on a mechanical level wouldn't just be futile, it'd be missing the point entirely.

the reason I started off calling this aesthetic-based is that an airy story will usually lean hard on an existing aesthetic, ideally one that's widely known by the target audience. Lewis was drawing on fables, fairy tales, myths, children's stories, and the vague idea of ~medieval europe~ that is to this day our most generic fantasy setting. when a prince falls in love with a fallen star, when there are giants who welcome lost children warmly and fatten them up for the feast, it all fits because these are things we'd expect to find in this story. none of this jars against what we've already seen.

and the point of it is to be wondrous and whimsical, to set the tone for the story Lewis wants to tell. and it does a great job! the airy worldbuilding serves the purposes of the story, and it's no less elegant than Ryōko Kui's elaborately grounded dungeon. neither kind of worldbuilding is better than the other.

however.

you do have to know which one you're doing.

the whole reason I'm writing this is that I saw yet another long, entertaining post dragging GRRM for absolute filth. asoiaf is a fun one because on some axes it's pretty grounded (political fuck-around-and-find-out, rumors spread farther than fact, fastest way to lose a war is to let your people starve, etc), but on others it's entirely airy (some people have magic Just Cause, the various peoples are each based on an aesthetic/stereotype/cliché with no real thought to how they influence each other as neighbors, the super-long seasons have no effect on ecology, etc).

and again! none of this is actually bad! (well ok some of those stereotypes are quite bigoted. but other than that this isn't bad.) there's nothing wrong with the season thing being there to highlight how the nobles are focused on short-sighted wars for power instead of storing up resources for the extremely dangerous and inevitable winter, that's a nice allegory, and the looming threat of many harsh years set the narrative tone. and you can always mix and match airy and grounded worldbuilding – everyone does it, frankly it's a necessity, because sooner or later the answer to every worldbuilding question is "because the author wanted it to be that way." the only completely grounded writing is nonfiction.

the problem is when you pretend that your entirely airy worldbuilding is actually super duper grounded. like, for instance, claiming that your vibes-based depiction of Medieval Europe (Gritty Edition) is completely historical, and then never even showing anyone spinning. or sniffing dismissively at Tolkien for not detailing Aragorn's tax policy, and then never addressing how a pre-industrial grain-based agricultural society is going years without harvesting any crops. (stored grain goes bad! you can't even mouse-proof your silos, how are you going to deal with mold?) and the list goes on.

the man went up on national television and invited us to engage with his worldbuilding mechanically, and then if you actually do that, it shatters like spun sugar under the pressure. doesn't he realize that's not the part of the story that's load-bearing! he should've directed our focus to the political machinations and extensive trope deconstruction, not the handwavey bit.

point is, as a fantasy writer there will always be some amount of your worldbuilding that boils down to 'because I said so,' and there's nothing wrong with that. nor is there anything wrong with making that your whole thing – airy worldbuilding can be beautiful and inspiring. but you have to be aware of what you're doing, because if you ask your readers to engage with the worldbuilding in gritty mechanical detail, you had better have some actual mechanics to show them.

[ishouldbeinh0rnyjail]

Hello! I have a request 😊 I don’t know if it would be something you would be into writing but I would love to see either a NSFW one shot/ or Drabble about Gojo trying to get his wife back.

Say, he screwed up (cheated on her) and she left him, disappeared off the map. He soon realizes he is an idiot and he is indeed very much in love with his wife so he puts all of his effort and limitless resources to find her. I leave up to your imagination all the juicy details ;) please and thank you 😊

Hehe. I love this idea! Not to mention this is something I've thought about in passing before so I'm glad I get to write for it. I hope you enjoy the few twists I've put in there and I really hope that this is okay cause I had no other ideas on how to make it NSFW🥲. However, if you want somethin’ a little more spicy🌶 I’d be happy to do a pt.2

Where Did You Go?

Pairing: Satoru Gojo x reader

Theme(s): cheating husband

Part 2

TW: cheating, heartbreak, obsession, sexual activities, harsh language, implied kidnapping, murder, gore, satoru being a little bitch

You let out a sigh of relief when you closed the door to the penthouse you shared with your husband, Satoru. After finally getting home from your mission across country you felt a sense of relaxation. You were so glad to get home early. ‘Maybe we can go out for a date night,’ you thought as you hung up your keys.

Your arms lifted above your head and you felt the tension in your back fade with every satisfying pop. You walked past the kitchen looking for your beanpole husband and stopped in your tracks as you entered the living room.

You slowly approached the couch cautiously. Hanging over the edge, you saw a perfectly manicured hand that was too feminine and small to be your spouse’s. You slapped your hand over your mouth, barely muffling the screech of heartbreak. Tears ran down your eyes as you took in the form of your husband’s unconscious naked body draped over another one.

You stumbled back, clutching desperately at your lips to stop yourself from audibly sobbing. You took a moment to gather yourself with your eyes screwed shut. You couldn’t look at his betrayal anymore.

Once you managed to collect some form of stability, you straightened up and quickly moved to the bedroom.

You took out as many bags as you could find and began shoving as much of your personal belongings into them. You only grabbed things that were important or could be of value. At one point, you accidentally knocked over a lamp. The loud thump it made was soon followed by a faint “oh shit” coming from the other room. You quickly opened the safe and took all the money stashed in there as you heard the shuffling of clothing.

You zipped up your five duffle bags and, using the strength you’ve gained from your years as a Jujutsu Sorcerer, you strapped one to your back and carried the other four, two in each hand.

“Honey, wait!” Satoru appeared in the doorway, completely bare save for the pair of pants hanging off his hips, as you were about to exit the room.

You didn’t want to look at the cheating bastard let alone talk to him, so you simply used your shoulder to knock him out of the way. You stormed your way to the front door, ignoring all his attempts to “talk some sense into you.” Funny, this was most levelheaded you’ve felt in a long time.

“Babe, please! Put your stuff down and let’s talk about this,” Satoru pleaded, but could tell you had no intention of listening to him. As a last resort he lifted his hand and activated Limitless in front of you.

You kissed your teeth as you felt your hand come to a stop right as you reached for the door handle. You finally turned to face your now former lover and glared at him with all the spite and anger you could muster.

He seemed taken aback for a second, as he’d never seen such an expression from you directed towards him, and right as he opened his mouth to try to defend himself you cut him off.

“They were right. You’ll never change.”

He didn’t think words could hurt so bad, but what you said cut straight to his heart. You had spent years telling him that he was more than what others thought of him, so hearing your seething voice tell him that everyone was right about him struck home.

He felt himself dissociate and his ability deactivate on its own.

As soon as you felt your arm released from his metaphorical grip, you turned and left without another word, slamming the door behind you.

It’s been exactly four months and six days since then. He’d know, he counted. No one has heard anything from you since that day. It was like you’d suddenly vanished.

At first, it wasn’t so bad. He thought he was finally free to go back to living his playboy lifestyle, but no matter how many women he fucked he could only think of you. The way you’d moan and call his name as he thrust into you. The way you’d writhe beneath him as he pleasured you. The way his heart would sore has your bodies connected. He could do nothing but call your name, which earned him more than a few snaps across the face. He never bothered to stop the impact. He knew he deserved the pain. He couldn’t believe it took you leaving to realize he was truly in love with you. Guess the saying was true. You never know what you have until you lose it.

He spent every waking moment thinking of you. He couldn’t even escape to his dreams as they were filled with nothing but the memories he’d made with you, though, it didn’t matter how lovely they started, they always ended the same way. With your scornful expression and hateful voice repeating the last thing he ever heard from you.

He couldn’t do this anymore. He couldn’t survive without you. He knew that now.

Living without you felt like a kind of torture that far exceeded any he’s ever experienced before. So with all the money and resources he could gather, he set out to find you.

He traced your faded image across countries and continents. You were good about covering your tracks, he hit many dead ends. However, he refused to give up. Anytime a trail would go cold he’d go back until he got new information.

It took fourteen more months to finally find you. As it turns out, you got a little cabin in the woods in the northern regions of Canada. You always loved the cold.

He scoured every inch of that forest until he found your cozy little home. A smile bloomed across his face as he saw you walk by a window and he rushed to the front door, almost tripping over a root in his haste.

Satoru slammed the door open so hard it closed behind him. What Satoru saw was a sight he never could have expected. There you were, standing right in front of him, and cradled in your arms was a little bundle of green fabric with tufts of white hair sticking out.

You gasped in surprise and shifted to hold the bundle against your shoulder in a protective manner.

“Y/n… is that…” Satoru couldn’t bring himself to finish his sentence as he approached you. For every step he took toward you, you wanted nothing more than to take two steps back, but you knew you were trapped.

As the man you tried to escape, reached out to you the door opened once more.

“Hey, honey. I’m ba- um. Who are you?” Satoru saw the look of sheer terror cross your face before slowly turning to face the man behind him with wide, unsettling eyes.

“Ru-!” Before you could even finish that single word, Satoru’s hand sliced through the air. You watched as your gentle boyfriend’s head was separated from his body at the neck.

You yelped and clutched at your baby as blood poured from the neck of the man you had come to love and trust before his body fell lifelessly to the floor. You tried to hold in your sobs, not wanting your child to wake up, as you watched the man’s head roll across the floor.

“Considering the reason we’re even in this situation at all, I’ll let this go. But just this once,” Satoru said in an oddly calm tone, however, it was obvious he was trying to hold in his rage. “Now… is it a boy or a girl? I always hoped our first child would be a boy!”

Taglist: @fiona782

[carnegiemuseumnaturalhistory]

What Do Botanists Do On Saturday?

by Sarah C. Williams

Here in the section of Botany we’ve adapted in some strange ways, just like plants do, to the changes of the past year and a half. Let’s learn about the off days of some of our Super Scientists in the Section of Botany!

Mason Heberling, Assistant Curator of Botany

Collecting specimens has become a focus as more time was able to be spent in the field when we weren’t allowed to be at the museum. As our new Botany Hall entrance video shows, Assistant Curator of Botany, Mason Heberling and Collections Manager Bonnie Isaac collect plant specimens on a pretty regular basis. They also snag iNaturalist observations for these plants, taking photos that show what the plant and habitat looked before being picked and pressed.

Mason studies forest understory plants, in particular, introduced species and wildflowers in our changing environment. Mason has a bunch of fun projects going on this summer, ranging from coordinating seed collections of an uncommon native grass to send to Germany for a large greenhouse study to working with a team of students to study the effects of climate change and introduced shrubs on our forest wildflowers.

In addition to work in the field, the herbarium has been a busy place this summer too! Mason has been working with Alyssa McCormick, an undergraduate research intern from Chatham University, to examine stomata (the pores on leaves for air exchange for plants to “breathe”) and leaf nutrients in everyone’s favorite plant – poison ivy!  Poison ivy has been previously shown to grow bigger and cause nastier skin rashes with increasing carbon dioxide in our air due to fossil fuel emissions. Alyssa is using specimens collected as long ago as the 1800s to examine long term changes in poison ivy.

Mason, where can we find you on a Saturday?

“This summer has been a lot of going to various places around western PA like Presque Isle or Idlewild to get out and enjoy the fresh air with my family. I can also be found most Saturdays around the house doing chores!”

Bonnie Isaac, Collection Manager

Bonnie, one of CMNH’s TikTok celebrities, and All-Star in the Mid-Atlantic plant world, has spent a lot of the past year doing fieldwork. Her PA Wild Resource Grant involved looking at most of the populations for 10 Pennsylvania rare species. She and husband Joe Isaac spent many days on the road and a few in the bog! You can see some of her videos about these unique Pennsylvania finds on Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s Tiktok account: @carnegiemnh.

She diligently keeps track of various data points from latitude and longitude and elevation, to flower color, size, and associated species within a habitat. In addition to trying to make sure the plant names in our database are correct, she has also been busy georeferencing some of our specimens so that we can see on a map where each one was collected.

Bonnie, where can we find you on a Saturday?

“On most Saturdays I am either home taking care of my many chickens or getting some exercise in one of my kayaks with my spousal unit, Joe. I sometime even take a fishing pole for a ride or see how many different kinds of plants I can find on a hike. As long as I can get outside with Joe, I’m happy.”

Cynthia Pagesh, Herbarium Assistant

Specimens make their way home to the museum, where we assure they’re bone dry, flat as a pancake, and have been frozen twice to get rid of any pests. They then find their way into the nimble hands of Cynthia Pagesh, our resident plant mounter. Cynthia has luckily been able to do some mounting both onsite and at home over this past year, really honing her craft. She uses Elmer’s glue, dental and sculpture tools, linen tape, and a paintbrush akin to a magic wand: transforming roots, stems, flowers, and fruits into scientific and artistic renderings on an 11.5x16.5” archival herbarium sheet.

Mounting can be very detailed and challenging: wrangling a dry and brittle rare plant you want to salvage every detail from, or an oversized leaf ‘how-will-this-all-fit?’ ordeal, or finessing a delicate petal that glue is especially heavy on. Bulky bits, crumbly bits, spiky no nos: Cyn handles them all. Her work is just as much an art as it is a science. When she’s not making masterpieces, she’s probably doing something with plants.

Cyn, where can we find you on a Saturday?

“You can find me on Saturdays helping prune young trees in my community, collecting wildflower seeds or in my kitchen making preserves or homemade pasta noodles.  I volunteer in vegetable, herb and flower gardens.  I have a pollinator garden at home and raise Monarch caterpillars.  I tag and release them to migrate south.

There are lots of Community Science projects for people of all ages: ask someone to help you find one related to a subject you have an interest in.  I have an interest in pollinators including bees.  I participate in a Community Science Project every Summer that counts types of bees on certain plants when they bloom.”

Iliana DiNicola

After another stint in the freezer for bugs-be-gone, it’s everyone’s favorite day: Picture Day! Each plant: sturdy and mounted, all data logged and super official, makes their way to the imaging station to spend some time under the bright lights. Since 2018, students, interns, and volunteers have lovingly held these plants’ hands as they get their close ups. We take high definition photos using a specially made lightbox and special software.

While this is part of a limited project, called the Mid-Atlantic Megalopolis, we are still hard at work going into our last year of the time we were given. This past schoolyear and summer, former Pitt student, Iliana DiNicola was taking pictures for us on the regular while also interning with the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy. She just graduated and I’m excited to hear what she does on her Saturdays in the future.

Iliana, where can we find you on a Saturday?

“I just graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a degree in Environmental Studies, and I am now on the lookout for any jobs related to the environment back in my hometown of Phoenix, Arizona. I am interested in working with anything from sustainability, to policy or political work, or maybe even something more related to ecology and outdoor work.

On a Saturday, I am definitely helping clean my house since I am a semi-clean freak, I love to go hiking if the weather isn't too hot, enjoy drawing and working on any art projects, or work on my future hydroponics garden.

As somebody who interned for Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, I highly recommend participating in any camps or activities the conservancy has to offer. It was super fun learning more about Pittsburgh's history and ecology and getting to teach kids about these topics, alongside participating in fun outdoor activities.”

Sarah Williams, Curatorial Assistant

Next up, Sarah Williams, the Curatorial Assistant in the Section of Botany, is overseeing the digitization project, morphing the photos from raw camera files into smaller files for sharing and detailed files for archival storing using Adobe Lightroom. She takes the images from the newly photographed specimens and makes sure they get uploaded onto the Mid-Atlantic Herbaria Consortium’s website to be shared far and wide across the world.

There is also a lot she does in sorting, filing, and taking care of the specimens as well. She does a bunch of scheduling, hiring, and training of work study students, interns, and volunteers. We consider her a jack of all trades.

Sarah, where can we find you on a Saturday?

“Most weekends I work with a local catering company called Black Radish Kitchen. I usually end up serving delicious vegetable and farm focused meals at least one day a week, commonly Saturdays because they’re prime for celebrations. The re-start up since the pandemic has been cautious, and I’m excited to be amongst people and help them to make mouthwatering memories again. I’ve worked in the restaurant industry for over a decade and the skills I’ve learned doing it as well as the friends I’ve made are matchless. It has a big piece of my heart.

I also moved into a new house this year about five minutes from my mom, so if I’m not running to say hi to her and ‘borrow’ some groceries, I’m doing laundry, dusting and yardwork… but only after I sleep in, eat some delicious breakfast with my partner, and hang out with our two cats, Santi and Gil.”

We hope you enjoyed getting to know us here in the Section of Botany, look forward to updates and more introductions in the future as we continue to host volunteers, federal work-study students, and interns on their journeys to learn even more about the plant kingdom.

Sarah Williams is Curatorial Assistant in the Section of Botany at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

[luminous-studiess]

Hi. :) You said that you're trying to consciously make studying enjoyable and productive. Do you think you can tell us what you're doing exactly? Thank you. ❤️ Hope your day is fantastic and productive.

OHHH thank you for asking this, i’ve been wanting to share this for a while. i think @studyimpression asked this too a while back, and i wasn’t able to answer. long post ahead!  HOW I MAKE STUDYING ENJOYABLE AND PRODUCTIVE: SECOND HALF OF 2020/QUARANTINE EDITION i’ve mentioned this briefly here, and i still stand by a lot of these tips, mostly because this is my general baseline for what i consider ‘enjoyable’ and ‘comfortable’. but i do think i can expand on these especially in terms of productivity. what i’ve discovered, and what has helped me get things done is knowing that studying is not an inherently comfortable or easy thing to do. and knowing this already makes you manage your expectations about what you need to do, and how much hard work needs to be put in. however, there are things you can do to make the workload manageable and the process less difficult.  1. TRY TO MAKE YOUR STUDY HOURS/SPACE AS COMFORTABLE AS POSSIBLE: A “HAPPY/PRODUCTIVE” ROUTINE this does not mean that you need your own, personal workspace (although that would be a bonus) or anything particularly fancy. things are not productivity, and as long as you have the proper learning resources, you have it in you to succeed.  however, i do think it really helped me to start to associate studying with some level of peace and focus by setting a routine which made me start to associate getting productive with a little peace and pleasure. as i’ve mentioned in my other posts, my favorite thing to do lately is to get up early, do a quick freshening up, and to pretend my dining room is a small cafe by making myself an iced coffee and turning on some jazz music. it’s nothing expensive or overly fancy (in fact that whole kilogram of coffee is like... less than 10 dollars), but it allows me to pretend that i’m in a starbucks, and it feels unbelievably peaceful while i start studying. that helps me get going at a very early hour, and this routine makes me excited to get up and start working. personally i think it’s a very good way of treating yourself while being incredibly disciplined. after doing this lately, i feel as if i’ve been more responsible and accountable, but i also feel peaceful and not overworked!   however, this also means: 2. KNOWING WHAT HOURS YOU ARE MOST PRODUCTIVE AT + SETTING A DEFINITE AMOUNT OF WORK HOURS PER DAY i don’t have classes yet, so i have a little freedom to decide when i’ll start working. however, i do have an urgent deadline to finish before classes, so i’m forced to do a lot of work during very unstructured days. that’s why it helped to (a) EVALUATE WHAT TIMES OF THE DAY I FEEL MOST FOCUSED and (b) to track the number of hours i work. so on point (a): studying is not comfortable. it’s actually very tiring. and it helps to see when your body feels the most energy to be able to focus for several hours at a time, doing intensive tasks. i recommend that you try different times in the day to finish something you need to do with complete focus (more on that later), and see at what time your body naturally responds/feels focused. well... this doesn’t apply if you have online classes, and are forced to sit at set times, but this helps for the times when you have to do independent work/homework/revision.

from personal experience, i work best from 7 am to about 10 am. then my body tends to go into a slump until late afternoon and before 12 am. it’s different for everyone, and you really have to listen to your body. (b): it’s inevitable that you have to dedicate many hours to get good results. i really recommend setting a minimum number of hours per day as a quota/the bare minimum. you don’t have to do them all in one go! maybe you might do the pomodoro method and spread these hours out, but it helps to have a baseline for what you consider productive. (mine is four minimum). use a timer or a productivity app like forest. count your hours. set goals within those hours (like assignments that need to get finished), then take a break after. you’ll feel so proud of yourself, i promise. 3. FOCUS AND DISCIPLINE: FOCUS IS A MUSCLE YOU HAVE TO EXERCISE AND STRENGTHEN this is not naturally enjoyable, but it makes you productive, and is a skill that needs practice. i also have a poor attention span, so this is something i had to work on! i thought i was naturally lazy, but this all changed when a friend told me “hey. focus is a muscle. it needs to be worked out regularly”. so slowly, i realized that i had to put a lot of work and effort into focusing on one task at a time, and ignoring all distractions. again, this wasn’t easy; i had to use apps like forest to lock myself out of my ipad so i wouldnt goof around on social media/games. but once i started to get used to being disciplined about getting work done every day, and finishing certain tasks, it became even easier to focus on what needed to be done. it really isn’t perfect yet, but i do find that concentrating on one task keeps me in a “focus” mode, and helps me to get things done much more easily and even calmly.  however, if there are days you can’t focus. acknowledge that. rest first, then go back to work. 4. MAKING CHECKLISTS OF EVERYTHING/PLANNING i would consider myself a very carefree person and used to hate planning. but once i started writing everything down, scheduling on calendars, and making lists, i became less afraid of what i needed to do, because i could visualize what was due, and how much time it takes to break down huge tasks into smaller, more manageable deadlines. i would recommend using a notebook or a program (like Notion! it has a free premium plan for students.) to map out all the things you need to do. it also helps to break down tasks into subtasks, so that even if you do a little, you can still check it off and feel less overwhelmed. put your deadlines on google calendar immediately, and set aside a little time at the start of your workday to see and write down what needs to get done, and what you WANT to get done.  this also helps in lessening the time i became anxious about making decisions re: what i needed to do! forming processes which made my studying easier made me much less scared of starting 5. EVALUATE YOUR DAY: BEING MINDFUL, BE PROUD OF WHAT YOU’VE ACCOMPLISHED as i get ready for bed, i like to run by my lists and check what i’ve finished, what i haven’t gotten done, what needs to get done. i also ask myself what i did well that day, and what didn’t go so well. this isn’t harsh self-critique! it just helps to know how i can make my next study day more efficient AND enjoyable (sometimes i just end up looking for nice playlists for studying....) 6. DON’T SWEAT THE SMALL THINGS!!!! it’s easy to worry about doing things wrong, especially now, when so much of our learning is self-guided. But as long as you’re doing the work, being disciplined and accountable, but also gentle with yourself, then you don’t need to worry about the tiniest details. DO YOUR BEST, AND MOVE ON. <3 7. FINALLY: NEVER ASSUME THE WORK IS EASY, AND NEVER ASSUME THAT IT IS IMPOSSIBLE.  we tend to underestimate or overestimate what needs to get done, and that gets in the way of being productive. we become scared or lazy or overwhelmed, and it makes it hard to move! know that learning is very very difficult, but putting in the work and accomplishing something is beautiful, and that it is a PROCESS. and always know that you are capable of great things if you have the discipline and the grit. i hope that helps. don’t forget to take many breaks and do the things you love. intense work is meaningless without equally intense rest. please take care, and stay safe!!! -- sam <3 

[theemperorsfeather]

You want some insight into why/why not things get deleted from FB? This covers some of the details, as well as how horrible things are for the people working as moderators. It’s crushingly awful.

CW: first few paragraphs describe a murder that trainees (who are contractors, not directly hired by FB) were forced to watch.

Over the past three months, I interviewed a dozen current and former employees of Cognizant in Phoenix. All had signed non-disclosure agreements with Cognizant in which they pledged not to discuss their work for Facebook — or even acknowledge that Facebook is Cognizant’s client. The shroud of secrecy is meant to protect employees from users who may be angry about a content moderation decision and seek to resolve it with a known Facebook contractor. The NDAs are also meant to prevent contractors from sharing Facebook users’ personal information with the outside world, at a time of intense scrutiny over data privacy issues

But the secrecy also insulates Cognizant and Facebook from criticism about their working conditions, moderators told me. They are pressured not to discuss the emotional toll that their job takes on them, even with loved ones, leading to increased feelings of isolation and anxiety. . .

It’s a place where, in stark contrast to the perks lavished on Facebook employees, team leaders micromanage content moderators’ every bathroom and prayer break; where employees, desperate for a dopamine rush amid the misery, have been found having sex inside stairwells and a room reserved for lactating mothers; where people develop severe anxiety while still in training, and continue to struggle with trauma symptoms long after they leave; and where the counseling that Cognizant offers them ends the moment they quit — or are simply let go. 

The moderators told me it’s a place where the conspiracy videos and memes that they see each day gradually lead them to embrace fringe views. One auditor walks the floor promoting the idea that the Earth is flat. A former employee told me he has begun to question certain aspects of the Holocaust. Another former employee, who told me he has mapped every escape route out of his house and sleeps with a gun at his side, said: “I no longer believe 9/11 was a terrorist attack.”

. . .

The use of contract labor also has a practical benefit for Facebook: it is radically cheaper. The median Facebook employee earns $240,000 annually in salary, bonuses, and stock options. A content moderator working for Cognizant in Arizona, on the other hand, will earn just $28,800 per year. The arrangement helps Facebook maintain a high profit margin. In its most recent quarter, the company earned $6.9 billion in profits, on $16.9 billion in revenue. And while Zuckerberg had warned investors that Facebook’s investment in security would reduce the company’s profitability, profits were up 61 percent over the previous year.

Since 2014, when Adrian Chen detailed the harsh working conditions for content moderators at social networks for Wired, Facebook has been sensitive to the criticism that it is traumatizing some of its lowest-paid workers. . .

Before Miguel can take a break, he clicks a browser extension to let Cognizant know he is leaving his desk. (“That’s a standard thing in this type of industry,” Facebook’s Davidson tells me. “To be able to track, so you know where your workforce is.”)

Miguel is allowed two 15-minute breaks, and one 30-minute lunch. During breaks, he often finds long lines for the restrooms. Hundreds of employees share just one urinal and two stalls in the men’s room, and three stalls in the women’s. Cognizant eventually allowed employees to use a restroom on another floor, but getting there and back will take Miguel precious minutes. By the time he has used the restroom and fought the crowd to his locker, he might have five minutes to look at his phone before returning to his desk.

Miguel is also allotted nine minutes per day of “wellness time,” which he is supposed to use if he feels traumatized and needs to step away from his desk. Several moderators told me that they routinely used their wellness time to go to the restroom when lines were shorter. But management eventually realized what they were doing, and ordered employees not to use wellness time to relieve themselves.

...

Everyone I meet at the site expresses great care for the employees, and appears to be doing their best for them, within the context of the system they have all been plugged into. Facebook takes pride in the fact that it pays contractors at least 20 percent above minimum wage at all of its content review sites, provides full healthcare benefits, and offers mental health resources that far exceed that of the larger call center industry.

And yet the more moderators I spoke with, the more I came to doubt the use of the call center model for content moderation. This model has long been standard across big tech companies — it’s also used by Twitter and Google, and therefore YouTube. Beyond cost savings, the benefit of outsourcing is that it allows tech companies to rapidly expand their services into new markets and languages. But it also entrusts essential questions of speech and safety to people who are paid as if they were handling customer service calls for Best Buy.

[kurtty-drabbles]

Amalgverse au (part 2?)

N/A: This is a cute idea. I want to make clear is Kitty not dumb, she is not accustomed to this environment but she is not dumb. I really don´t want to make Kitty into a born sexy yesterday. She does not know anything on the TV and media´s business but she is not dumb.

@djinmer4 @dannybagpipesarecalling

The Gotham News is famous for many things, one of them is the sheer amount of technology for each of their program or their needs. The Studio is a clear example of this equipped with the best resources to make each show in the TV channel(Gotham News has the news and the talk show for now as their primarily shows but there talk in expanded) and the show You´re wrong is a fine example of many things.

Many interns would have a similar reaction. Working in the New Gotham´s studio is a place where they can be closer of their dreams of being a professional.

Kitty Pryde is looking at the extended lines and cameras with childlike awe as she noticed the lines, the lights and people working in each little detail. Kurt Ryder is watching her, such glee in the eyes is not uncommon, many would feel this way when getting the chance to work here.

Of course, Kurt is not that arrogant to think the attention is for him or that he is the best in the entire world, however, even the newest interns never show not even a fraction of the same emotion as Kitty is giving so freely.

Ryder thought about Jessica Jones, a woman sent by their rival company to spy on them, she was...not a good actress to say the least and they manage to change the tidel in their rival´s schemes by giving Jessica false information.

But...something on Kitty does not seem to belong to a spy. Especially as she didn´t even question about the plans of the show or any other program linked to Gotham News.

"Miss Pryde" Ryder calls her out and her eyes are shinning in fascination with the different lights being throw, or she is the best actress or...there´s something really fishy going on.

"I want to discuss the schedule with you" Ryder offers still analysing her moves.  She is acting more and more like someone that never put a foot in a TV studio and this makes the situation even more mysterious.

Her doe eyes look at him and as much she is really cute Ryder won´t let his guard down until he gets the full story.

"Schedule?" Kitty asked tittling her head to the side slightly and showing a clear signal of confusion.

"For the show, do you know anything about ''you´re wrong''?" Kurt asked expecting any answer at this point. Kitty, surprising the man once again, only shakes her head.

"Is your show, you can do whatever you want, right?" the question is made with uncertainty as now she is bitting her bottom lip and maybe she can pick up some social cue and a few clues that this is not the typical answer. Ryder plays along.

"I wish, no, the idea is to reveal all the secrets my interviewee are hiding and expose the truth to the public" Ryder explained feeling proud of said explanation and by extension, himself.

Kitty claps her hands together as if now she understands the situation, and her eyes show a fierce determination and Ryder wishes it wasn´t that cute as it can be extremely hard to focus.

"You´re an inquisitor" Kitty explained now calmly and Ryder knows people compare him with many things, such as : evil Dr Phil, if Voldemort has a talk show , if Snape has a talk show, if Sauron has a talk show and his favourite don´t ever come to this show thinking you can deceive Ryder or you´ll make company to the devil.

(The last one seems way too dark for his like but sometimes, such reputation helps in his case, sometimes)

Now, Inquisitor is a new one. What´s caught his attention(aside from the comparison) is how that´s was the first thing that pops in her mind. No one mentions the inquisition, except the ones who joke with the famous line of Mounty Pynton.

Yet, she makes this comparison as if something natural...for her. For where she comes from. Ryder put this in his mind and proceeds as nothing happens.

"An Inquisitor? how so?" Kurt Ryder asks calmly not giving any negative emotion nor how craving for information the man is.

"Oh, Inquisitors do this, they have to extract the truth from people, and my old job was to protect people from any interference" now Kitty´s eyes widen and she is bitting the nail of her thumb, realizing that this is not a proper response for the cover and then smiles (the corner of her lip shiver slightly and Kurt is paying attention to everything) "fool you, I mean, inquisitors aren´t normal for us, mere citizen of this lovely city, you´re wrong, so...what I should do?"

She is making this too easy. But Ryder has no clue on what´s her endgame is.

"Well, J.J.Perry hire you too quickly, Bertha was the responsible for the light" Ryder points at the camera and notice her awe again, like a child that never saw such thing in her entire life "but the editing can wait, I suppose as your first day, you can chat with the interns and get the ropes of the situation"

Kitty nods and then asks looking determined.

"Can we put tons of different lights with this machine?" Kitty asked and Ryder knows this is really fishy.

"I hope not, as tons of light in the camera means no one will watch us, which will be a bad thing for the show" Ryder explained and Kitty nods saying there´s a moderate number of lights to use(not wrong) and she´ll do her best.

One last test, to see what´s her intention(a spy?)

"Today, I ´ll interview James Patrick, the man is allegedly accused of stealing tons of money from the health care to rich his pockets" and the said man has several friends who got rich in the process at the expenses of others.

Kitty frown at Kurt and now her hands are completely relaxed.

"What a nasty fellow. Those who steal must deal with the consequences" Kitty explained in a more serious tone and Kurt nods.

"The man even says something absurd every week, last time, the man said he saw the headless knight walking freely by the city at the night" now Kitty´s eyes are wide again, her lips are in a thin line, as her hands are in the famous opening and closening.

"Yeah, what absurd thing, where he said he saw the headless knight?" Kitty speaks trying(and failing) to be natural.

"On the residence of Chestnur" Ryder explained and Kitty nods and thanks him as she is about to leave, Kurt having a good idea of his own strength and how people perceive certain scenes, gently touch the sleeve of Kitty´s shirt gaining her attention.

"Where we are going? The show is there, I may need your help after you " now the man whisper on her ear "you did the famous Canadian-Australian ''you´re right'' and I´m always up for new points of view" Ryder smiles at her and notice she does not use perfume.

(but her smell is too unique. No woman in the city wears such scent. She is not from here, that´s a given at this point)

_________________________

The situation of the headless knight was dealt in Chestnur with easy as the knight himself appears to be really lost as Kitty feels sometimes in this new place. A nice talk and the man was back to his dimension, someone summons him by accident and the man was rumoured ever since.

(And she also dealt with the summoner of the knight and that person won´t do careless summon in the future)

Now, she has one last thing to do for the night. She must deal with the troll in the Grace Park´s garden. Which has a few problems and one of them is that Kitty has no idea where the place is.

"Ah, I shouldn´t have accepted this promotion" Kitty used to her own distorted voice thanks to the magical fedora and spells as right now Kitty is looking at a map that is not helping her case "Ok, I´m here and I need to go there...."

"No, actually, you are there and you need to be here" Nightcreeper shows up doing a pose that Kitty has no idea of what´s all about, however, due to the man wearing little to nothing, Kitty has no time or desire to guess what the pose is.

"Nightcreeper" her voice is tentative as she is afraid she got the name wrong and the lunatic only giggled maniacally as a reply "What are you doing here? Is the JLX is trying to meddle with magical affairs?" there´s a dark tone in her voice and Kitty knows she can take down at least half of the members and can cause serious damage to the rest and if the worst comes by, the council has no problem in resorting to extermination.

(Come to think of, is a bit ironic they choose Kitty to a job that basically ensures the peace among magical communities and humans as they see no problem in extermination. Then again, sometimes, sacrifices must be made but...she hopes the JLX gets the memo and don´t start meddling)

A green fuzzy hand is waving in front of her face snapping Kitty back to reality.

"Lost in thoughts, Kinder" Nightcreeper speaks don´t mind the dark tone or the subtle implication. Nightcreeper is too insane to follow a magical guardian and Kitty wonders why? "I was just doing my patrol" Kitty, having her identity hide, seems bemused by the explanation and somehow she has the feeling Nightcreeper seems to get and is amused.

"Are you trying to go to Grace Park´s garden?" Nightcreeper asks and Kitty didn´t reply, how did he know? "you are going on the wrong way" the lunatic giggles and point to the other side "the garden is there"

Oh, Kitty is chewing the nail of her thumb again and Nightcteeper seems amused by this gesture.

"You´re so cute" Nightcreeper speaks cooing at her and Kitty would say how she is not cute, maybe using a non-lethal but scary spell when then the lunatic speaks again "it makes me want to watch the show you´re right"

This makes the woman stops on her tracks and the lunatic laughs, the makes a proposition.

"Let me take you to the garden, I´m not breaking any rule here as I´m merely taking you to the Garden, whatever happens there it happens" Nightcreeper suggested and Kitty thought for a moment.

"Are you not afraid of magic? Why help me?"

"You´re lost and I´m the gallant hero who will escort the brave magical guardian to her destination" Nightcreeper replied and Kitty ends up accepting the deal.

_________________________

The garden is really pretty but sadly, Kitty is not here to enjoy the garden. Nightcreeper is jumping and bouncing like an energetic child.

"Shush, be quiet, he knows we are here" Kitty explained and Nightcreeper just smiles widely now.

Kitty walks near a bridge and chants a few words and suddenly, a huge troll shows up destroying part of the bridge and looks in a foul mood.

"I´m Butch" the troll replied. "I´m a troll"

"Hi, I would ever guess, my turn? Ok, I´m Constantine and you´re in a serious problem" Kitty explained and Kurt can even see her smiling at the big troll, smiling in victory as she is about to do something.

(So relaxed and in control, way different than in the TV studios)

The troll seems afraid for a moment, the name Constantine obviously has some weight, but, Butch immediately calms down and tries to attack Kitty. Which, of course, it was a terrible idea.

Nightcreeper teleports Kitty out before his huge fist could have caused any damage.

"Magical guardian, ok, does not mean I want you to be a pancake" Nightcreeper explained already imagine the expression on her face.

"Nightcreeper, trust on me, I´m the Constantine for a very good reason" Kitty speaks and phasing from his embrace the woman goes back to where Butch is.

Kitty uses one finger in her hands creating a golden line. Butch tries to step away, run, anything, but it´s was useless.

"Wait, I´m the son of the great Jim, the king of trolls, you can´t touch me, I have diplomatic immunity" his tone is desperate as the man is walking causing more damage to the garden.

"Yeah, but according to the laws of the troll´s state, no troll will harm a human or be on a human´s territory, you violate two of those rules and who do you think to ask to put an end on this?" Kitty speaks as now Butch realizes he is in the circle of the golden line as Kitty controlling the circle starts to erase Butch, the troll.

The troll is no more.

No words are needed as Kitty starts using magic to restore the garden, however, Nightcreeper waves at Kitty.

"There´s someone here" Nightcreeper points to a woman who is far too scared who is under the bridge tied up, it was not all the bridge that was destroyed, only the support, so the woman is fine.

A survivor never crossed into her mind during this whole exchange.

Kitty goes to the woman who is crying in fear.

"Is ok, is over, This is Nightcreeper he is a hero from the JLX and I´m a magical guardian, the Constantine" Kitty speaks and the woman didn´t move. "Are you in pain? I can help you, we can help"

Now the woman rose her eyes to her saviours and only speak in a low tone.

"That monster wanted to eat me, how can I live my life now?"

Kitty has no idea. Survivors are hardly on her mind(usually there are no survivors)

Nightcreeper then speaks gathering their attention.

"Live well and longer which is something that troll won´t do ever again." Nightcreeper gives this as an answer and the woman accept, for the lack of better term, this as an answer.

Healing the woman and send her where she will be safer was a night that Kitty did plan. To be fair, lately, nothing is what she expected.

Nightcreeper can see how she is sad(can imagine her doe eyes looking down, her lips shiver slightly as her hands are out of his view)  and is never the one to let sadness win any battle.

"Hey, magischer Wächter" Nightcreeper speaks poking her shoulder to get her attention like the real lunatic he is "are you hungry?"

"Food, now?" Kitty asked feeling confused and a bit angry, how can she think of food after what she saw.

"Yes, because you won´t accomplish nothing by looking sorry for yourself or for that woman, I know that sometimes even I can´t save everyone" Nightcreeper now stops poking her shoulder. "All you can do is try your best to save the others, you can´t change what this woman went through, however, because of you she is alive and that´s something to celebrate with churros"

Kitty can´t help by chuckle a little. This man is crazy.

"I don´t know where we can eat churros" Kitty replied.

"The horror, I know we can eat, and I can show you the city next time as you won´t look so lost"

"I feel like you want to be my partner in this crusade"

"Nah, I feel like we work together already"

"You´re crazy"

"You´re right"

Kitty accepts his offer to eat churros, the other is still being debated. The man is crazy enough to deal with her job, but, Constantine always works alone. Then again, maybe a change of pace can be good(uhm, as long the JLX does not meddle in the missions...why not?)

[clearpeanutcollector]

Bets College Homework Mac App

College isn't all fun and games (unless you want it to be.) Don't sweat it, though. Take a look at these 25 apps — they'll give you a smoother college experience by helping you study smarter, connect with new people and wake up in time for your early lectures.

Jul 06, 2020  BET+ is a premium online streaming service with over 1,000 hours of your favorite Black content from the best Black creators. Now, you can stream Black culture: the movies you remember, the TV shows you love and the new series you can't live without. And they're all in one place, commercial free. Everything from classics like Martin and House of Payne to modern favorites like Bigger and Carl. The best part about this app is that the students can opt for one-on-one interaction with a tutor and clear their doubts instantly. Download: iOS. Student Agenda. This homework app offers a free planner and diary that is designed by the students for an uncluttered usage.

Your university probably has its own app, too — download it. It will provide you with a more tailored breakdown than a national application.

See also: 12 Things Students Should Never Do on Social Media

Any helpful ones we missed? Let us know in the comments!

1. BenchPrep

Image: BenchPrep

BenchPrep is an interactive course library with all the graduate and professional exam study material you can handle. It includes hundreds of practice questions, flashcards, in-app purchases and almost 600 study lessons. Go ahead and pick your poison: LSAT, MCAT, GMAT.

Available for free on iOS and Android devices.

2. iStudiez Pro

Image: iStudentPro

iStudiezPro keeps track of your deadlines, grades and more across all Mac devices — all you need to do is plug your class schedule into the app. It comes with both Cloud syncing and iCal integration.

Bets College Homework Mac Application

Available for $2.99 for iOS. The free iStudiez Lite version limits the number of classes you manage, but it's useful nonetheless.

3. Evernote

You've probably heard a lot about Evernote, and yes, you should try it. What have you got to lose .. your homework? The app syncs all your stuff — text, audio, photo, video — to an online account, so you're always connected with resources to study.

If you're feeling overwhelmed by Evernote's many features, check out this comprehensive beginner's guide.

Available for broke college students (read: free) for iOS and Android devices. The premium version is even more useful, at $5 a month or $45 a year.

4. StudyBlue Flashcards

Flashcards are an effective way to memorize information, but making them is a headache. With StudyBlue, use text, pictures and audio to create the perfect stack of (digital) flashcards; or, search the massive database to borrow someone else's.

Bets College Homework Mac App Free

Available for iOS and Android devices.

5. RealCalc Scientific Calculator

Did your little brother steal your calculator once you finished AP physics? Use RealCalc for serious computing — it's a perfect alternative for the calculator-less.

Available for free for Android. If you need a heavy-duty upgrade, try RealCalc Plus for $3.49.

6. Engineering Professional

More than 650 chemical, civil, electrical, environmental, hydrology and mechanical formulas are updated in Engineering Pro — so don't worry about buying multiple formula apps. Save or Favorite the formulas you need most often.

Available for $11.99 for iOS.

7. EasyBib

Image: EasyBib

EasyBib generates citations in MLA, APA and Chicago style wherever you are — just scan the book's bar code or enter the title. The app also lets you easily email and export the bibliographies to yourself. Using this, you have no excuses for putting off that term paper.

Available for free for iOS and Android devices.

8. Notella

Image: Notella

Some professors drop the most important bombs when you least expect it ('Have a good spring break, everyone. Oh! One more thing: We're having an exam worth 60% of your final grade the day you get back. See ya!').

Don't miss a thing with Notesdeck. This super-fast note-taking app opens to a new note by default, lets you create custom hotkeys and syncs notes from other apps — iCloud, Evernote, Simplenote and Dropbox. You can even search within those other apps from one search bar.

Mac map mouse button app download. Feb 06, 2007  Question: Q: Mouse Button Mapping More Less. Apple Footer. This site contains user submitted content, comments and opinions and is for informational purposes only. Apple may provide or recommend responses as a possible solution based on the information provided; every potential issue may involve several factors not detailed in the conversations. May 28, 2012  ‎Joystick Mapper is an application that allows you to configure your joysticks or gamepads to simulate keyboard keys/mouse movement/mouse click/mouse scroll, so you can control any app or game using them, even the ones without built-in support. It also lets you remap the Scroll Wheel Button to some useful functions like Mission Control and it features a refined Smooth-Scrolling algorithm, which I think strikes a great balance between fluidity and control. Mac Mouse Fix is very light on system resources and it's a System Preferences Plugin so there's no status bar item. X-Mouse Button Control by Phillip Gibbons (Highresolution Enterprises) is a free application that can help you customize the functionality of your mouse buttons (set new functions to mouse buttons). Sadly, there is no version of X-Mouse Button Control for Mac available for download, but there are other tools that can help you change the.

Available for $2.99 for iOS.

9. Wolfram Alpha

From thermodynamics to baseball, the Wolfram Alpha reference app uses its supercomputing Cloud to quickly generate answers — across thousands of domains — to all your research questions.

Available for $2.99 for iOS and Android devices.

10. Dictionary.com Mobile

With more than two million definitions, synonyms and antonyms, Dictionary.com's fast and user-friendly mobile app will decode that confusing media law textbook in no time.

Available for free for iOS and Android devices.

11. Babylon

Whether you're a Spanish lit major or just looking to finish your general education requirements, Babylon provides comprehensive dictionary results and translations for dozens of languages. With pasteboard integration and access to more than 1,500 glossaries in 75 languages, you'll never struggle to find an accurate definition for your foreign language presentation again.

iBabylon is available for free for iOS; Babylon Translator is available for free for Android.

12. Jumpcut

You have better things to do than copy and paste all day. Make light work of data entry assignments with Jumpcut: copy as much text as you want, one after another, and paste using simple keystrokes.

Available for Macs only.

13. Dragon Dictation

Ever wish you could type faster? Dragon Dictation uses accurate voice recognition software to let you speak and instantly see your words in text. Dictate statuses to your social networks or pretend you're talking to someone if you're trying to write a speech — even send statuses straight to your social networks. Try this if you're in a time crunch and really need to churn out an essay; or, if you're just someone who prefers speaking over writing.

Available for free for iOS.

14. SelfControl

Image: Flickr, jonas maaloe

It's finals week. You have a huge essay to finish .. but then there's Reddit, emitting its bewitching siren call. Every. Damn. Time.

SelfControl lets you set a period of time to block certain websites or mail servers by adding them to a 'blacklist.' It's too bad if you finish your work early — restarting your computer or deleting the application won't negate the timer.

Available for free for Mac OS X.

15. Studious

Avoid interrupting class and getting on your professor's bad side with Studious. Once you input your class schedule, Studious will silence your phone during those hours.

Available for free for Android. Upgrade to Studious+ for $1.99 to bypass the ads.

16. Circle of 6

Ever feel uncomfortable when it's dark and you're in a new part of a city — or even campus? Circle of 6 won the White House's Apps Against Abuse challenge. It helps you stay safe by connecting you to six trusted contacts, whenever and wherever. Use the pre-programmed 'come and get me' message with your GPS location, or easily call national and local emergency hotlines in critical situations. It's a fast and discreet way to put your safety first.

Available for free for iOS and Android devices.

Addendum: You don't actually need six people if you want to double up on contacts.

17. Skype

Image: Skype

Hi!The last days I've noticed how every time I start Safari everything freezes (finder included) for a couple minutes. Macos bitcoin miner in mrt.app. Then I can write something in the search bar, and then it freezes another time!

Video interviews are not going away any time soon — so you might as well get a heads up now. Microsoft's Skype is a reliable way to connect with faraway family and friends via text, voice and — of course — video.

Available for free for iOS and Android devices.

18. LinkedIn

LinkedIn and all its nifty mobile features makes connections a breeze — for better or worse, college is a time of both personal and professional connections.

Available on the web, of course, but also for free for iOS and Android devices.

19. Twitter

Don't be the only person in class who isn't up-to-date with world events. Use Twitter to keep yourself in the loop in both the academic and social aspects of your life. In today's contemporary classrooms, you may even be asked to participate in class discussions via Twitter.

Available for free for iOS and Android devices.

20. Sworkit

There are a lot of things to do in college. Exercising isn't always one of them; especially when there's socializing and studying to be had. Sworkit's greatest asset is its ability to let you choose your exercise time allotment in five-minute increments — starting at, yes, the very low threshold of five minutes. Doable, right?

It also boasts an extensive list of work out routines.

Available for free for iOS and Android devices. Sworkit Pro comes with advanced features and costs $0.99 for iOS and Android.

See also: 10 YouTube Channels That Will Make You Smarter

21. Mint

Club fees. Books. Tuition. Food. College adds up — quickly. Mint is a web and mobile app that helps you keep track of your spending. Plus, it's never too early to start cultivating good credit.

Available for free for iOS and Android devices.

22. Sleep If U Can Alarm

Bets College Homework Mac Apps

Come on, you lazy bum — you're paying for these early classes, remember? Nicknamed the 'world's most annoying alarm,' Sleep If U Can gives you two options to silent the alarm: 1) Shake your phone; or 2) Physically go the place shown on your screen (see: the bathroom sink in the video) and take a picture.

Available for $1.99 for iOS and free for Android.

23. Pocket First Aid & CPR

Mashable composite, images: Pocket First Aid & CPR

While it's not the sexiest app to have at your disposable, you never know when it might come in handy. Along with clear and concise CPR instructions, Pocket First Aid and CPR contains 34 videos and 46 high-resolution illustrations.

Available for $1.99 for iOS and Android devices.

Bets College Homework Mac App Download

24. Between

Attempting the long-distance relationship course? Kudos — that's no small task. Relationship app Between can help ease the separation anxiety by letting you send messages, voicemails, memos and photos. A private timeline makes it easy to reminisce about the good old days with your significant other(s).

Available for free for iOS and Android devices.

25. TED

Image: TED

In an environment often congested with bad influences, a heavy dose of genius goes a long way. TED Talks give you instant access to the biggest thought leaders of our time.

Available for free for iOS and Android devices.

Image: Mashable, Meghan Uno

Whether you're taking the first step towards school or passing out of the college, your life can be a total mess including assignments, surprise tests, homework, examinations, attendance and so on. All you do is wake up early, go to school and come back. That becomes your routine cutting out the quality time to spend with your family and friends. How disheartening is that? With such a busy schedule and a massive number of deadlines to fulfill, it becomes quite challenging to keep track of homework or anything that has to be submitted on the next day. In such circumstances, a homework planner or organizer could be reliable to oversee and update you regarding the assignments, homework and other deadlines. Of course, it's a daunting task to look out for a suitable homework planner who can assist you with your regular tasks.

Top 5 Homework Planner Apps for College Students

Because it is a tedious job, we have come up with the best homework planner apps for students that will help them to do their tasks without any hassle:

1. School Planner

School planner is a full-scale homework planner app that is designed mainly to pay attention to students so that they are well focussed about their career. This app has a pile of features ranging from simple features to ones that you can think of. Besides your homework and timetable, school planner app assists you to keep track of your attendance. You can also add your teachers' contacts on the list, combine recorded lectures which could be beneficial during exams and add multiple planners too. Initially, it is a tedious job to use this app as you have to enter all your details in a form. In addition to your details, you must enter your teacher's details, timetable, and other college details. But once that's done, you're good to go! The app also supports backing up all the data that you feed in via Google drive, calendar, etc. This app does not fail to give you weekly reports, give reminders on the day of submission of assignments, attach snapshots to any reminders. Although the school planner offers a lot of features, it has the best performance with a beautiful framework. In case of your research paper you can use Edusson at affordable pricing.

2. Istudiez pro

Istudiez pro is yet another student-friendly homework planner app and probably the oldest app when compared to all of the mentioned apps. Like school planner, this app also offers a wide range of features including grading, attendance and subject wise organization of activities. It is way easier to set up when compared to a school planner. But the prominent feature in studies pro is that it is integrated with Google Calendar which gives you all the details like holidays, exam schedule, daily routine and so on. Not just that, it is also supported in all operating platforms like iOS, Mac, and windows. All the apps sync well and therefore you can operate this homework planner anywhere anytime on your laptop.

3. My study life

The next homework planner app for college students is My Study Life. The best thing about this app is that it has its web app which makes it unique. The web app can sync well(mostly on Android) therefore making your data accessible from any remote location using your device. Make sure that you've got a web browser installed in your device. This is a goal-oriented app and keeps reminding you about how much is completed and how much is left to achieve the goal. In addition to that, the calendar feature keeps track of all the important dates, it could be deadlines or project submission dates. The only con of my study life is that it is quite lengthy to set up. Once it is correctly done, you're all set!

4. ChalkBoard

One of the smartest homework planner app for students is a chalkboard. It is pretty quick regarding its features and subject wise allocation of teachers on the app. When you open it for the first time, it prompts you to fill the name and subjects of all your teachers along with the timetable. Cool, isn't it? Although the setup process is a tedious job, it is entirely reliable and smooth. The amazing part is you don't have to memorize your timetable as you can see the upcoming classes on the home screen. Not just that, you can also find pending assignments and other tasks on the screen making your job way too easy. Features like these make this app stand out when compared to other homework organizer apps and gives you a great overall experience. This homework planner app would have been much more superior if it had a calendar feature in it.

5. Egenda

It's quite easy to set up Egenda when compared to others. All you need to do is, add the subjects and classes that you have. Once that is done, you have the choice of adding any homework, deadline, project or test. The pending tasks can be seen in the form of cards and have to be swiped away once it's completed. The best part about this homework planner app is that it keeps you updated, could be regarding the upcoming assignments, tasks or competitions. This will help you plan ahead and complete the job on time. Unfortunately, the app doesn't have a timetable feature. But in its latest update, you will find a calendar that can assist you in keeping track of dates. Backup option not available in this app, therefore data can't be recovered once you lose it.

Final Words

So these were some of the coolest homework planner apps exclusively for career-oriented students who want their tasks to be completed on time and who do not wish to struggle till the last minute to meet the goal. We genuinely understand your problem and these apps are going to be of great use to you!

[theadmiringbog]

The good news was that there was still widespread consumer awareness of Oil of Olay, and as every good marketer knows, awareness precedes trial.

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To play to P&G’s strengths, it made sense to stay in mass channels, but only if department store consumers would defect there for Olay. To win with Olay in mass, the company had to bridge the mass and prestige markets, creating what it would come to call a masstige category.                 

Olay needed to shift the perception of beauty care in the mass channel, selling higher-end, more prestigious products in a traditionally high-volume environment. It needed to attract consumers from both the mass and the prestige channels.                

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Strategy can seem mystical and mysterious. 

It isn’t. 

It is easily defined. 

Strategy is a set of choices about winning. 

Again, it is an integrated set of choices that uniquely positions the firm in its industry so as to create sustainable advantage and superior value relative to the competition.                 

Specifically, strategy is the answer to these five interrelated questions: 

What is your winning aspiration? The purpose of your enterprise, its motivating aspiration. 

Where will you play? A playing field where you can achieve that aspiration. 

How will you win? The way you will win on the chosen playing field. 

What capabilities must be in place? The set and configuration of capabilities required to win in the chosen way. 

What management systems are required? The systems and measures that enable the capabilities and support the choices.                

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Nested choice cascades

           --

Example:

Consider a company that designs, manufactures, and sells yoga apparel. It aspires to create fierce brand advocates, to make a difference in the world, and to make money doing it. It chooses to play in its own retail stores, with athletic wear for women. It decides to win on the basis of performance and style. It creates yoga gear that is both technically superior (in terms of fit, flex, wear, moisture wicking, etc.) and utterly cool. It turns over its stock frequently to create a feeling of exclusivity and scarcity. It draws customers into the store with staff members who have deep expertise. It defines a number of capabilities essential to winning, like product and store design, customer service, and supply-chain expertise. It creates sourcing and design processes, training systems for staff, and logistics management systems. All of these choices are made at the top of the organization.                

But these choices beget more choices in the rest of the organization. Should the product team stay only in clothing or expand to accessories? Should it play in menswear as well? Should the retail operations group stay in bricks and mortar or expand online? Within retail, should there be one store model or several to adapt to different geographies and customer segments?                 

Consider the salesperson in the Manhattan store. She defines winning as being the best salesperson in the store and having customers who are delighted with her service. From not only her daily sales numbers but also her interactions with repeat customers and feedback from her peers, she knows she’s succeeding. Her where-to-play choice is largely defined by the folks who walk in the door, but she may notice that there are types of customers, times of day, or parts of the store where she can best bring her skills to bear. She consequently turns her attention there. In terms of how to win, she may have one approach for customers who are new to yoga and intimidated by all the choices (offering advice not just on attire but on how to get started, as well as reassurance that it will all make sense in time), another for aficionados (highlighting the technical specs of the gear but also swapping stories about classes and instructors), and another for the fashion crowd who seek yoga pants not for athletics but for running errands (pointing out racks of new arrivals, emphasizing unique colors and designs).                 

These frontline choices may not seem as complex as the choices facing the CEO, but they are indeed strategic choices.                

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What is our winning aspiration?

The first question—what is our winning aspiration?—sets the frame for all the other choices. A company must seek to win in a particular place and in a particular way.                

--

To be most helpful, the abstract concept of winning should be translated into defined aspirations. Aspirations are statements about the ideal future. At a later stage in the process, a company ties to those aspirations some specific benchmarks that measure progress toward them.                

--

At Olay, the winning aspirations were defined as market share leadership in North America, $1 billion in sales, and a global share that put the brand among the market leaders.                

--

Aspirations can be refined and revised over time. However, aspirations shouldn’t change day to day; they exist to consistently align activities within the firm, so should be designed to last for some time.                

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Where to play? How to win?

These two choices, which are tightly bound up with one another, form the very heart of strategy and are the two most critical questions in strategy formulation.                

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Where to play represents the set of choices that narrow the competitive field. The questions to be asked focus on where the company will compete—in which markets, with which customers and consumers, in which channels, in which product categories, and at which vertical stage or stages of the industry in question. This set of questions is vital; no company can be all things to all people and still win, so it is important to understand which where-to-play choices will best enable the company to win.                

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Example:

There were three critical where-to-play choices for P&G at the corporate level: Grow in and from the core businesses, focusing on core consumer segments, channels, customers, geographies, brands, and product technologies. Extend leadership in laundry and home care, and build to market leadership in the more demographically advantaged and structurally attractive beauty and personal-care categories. Expand to leadership in demographically advantaged emerging markets, prioritizing markets by their strategic importance to P&G.                 

--

Where to play selects the playing field; how to win defines the choices for winning on that field. It is the recipe for success in the chosen segments, categories, channels, geographies, and so on. The how-to-win choice is intimately tied to the where-to-play choice. Remember, it is not how to win generally, but how to win within the chosen where-to-play domains.                

--

To determine how to win, an organization must decide what will enable it to create unique value and sustainably deliver that value to customers in a way that is distinct from the firm’s competitors.                 

--

Two questions flow from and support the heart of strategy: 

What capabilities must be in place to win? What management systems are required to support the strategic choices? 

The first of these questions, the capabilities choice, relates to the range and quality of activities that will enable a company to win where it chooses to play. Capabilities are the map of activities and competencies that critically underpin specific where-to-play and how-to-win choices.                

--

At P&G, a company with more than 125,000 employees worldwide, the range of capabilities is broad and diverse. But only a few capabilities are absolutely fundamental to winning in the places and manner that it has chosen: 

Deep consumer understanding.                 

Innovation.                 

Brand building.                 

Go-to-market ability.                 

Global scale.                 

These five core capabilities support and reinforce one another and, taken together, set P&G apart. In isolation, each capability is strong, but insufficient to generate true competitive advantage over the long term.                

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Management systems foster, support, and measure the strategy. To be truly effective, they must be purposefully designed to support the choices and capabilities.                

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Beneath Olay’s choices and capabilities, the team built supporting systems and measures that included a “love the job you’re in” human resources strategy (to encourage personal development and deepen the talent pool in the beauty sector) and detailed tracking systems to measure consumer responses to brand, package, product lines, and every other element of the marketing mix.

Olay organized around innovation, creating a structure wherein one team was working on the strategy and rollout of current products while another was designing the next generation. It developed technical marketers, individuals with expertise in R&D as well as marketing, who could speak credibly to dermatologists and beauty editors.                

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Strategy needn’t be the purview of a small set of experts. It can be demystified into a set of five important questions that can (and should) be asked at every level of the business: What is your winning aspiration? Where should you play? How can you win there? What capabilities do you need? What management systems would support it all?                

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Do remember that strategy is about winning choices. It is a coordinated and integrated set of five very specific choices. As you define your strategy, choose what you will do and what you will not do. 

Do make your way through all five choices. Don’t stop after defining winning, after choosing where to play and how to win, or even after assessing your capabilities. All five questions must be answered if you are to create a viable, actionable, and sustainable strategy. 

Do think of strategy as an iterative process; as you uncover insights at one stage in the cascade, you may well need to revisit choices elsewhere in the cascade. 

Do understand that strategy happens at multiple levels in the organization. An organization can be thought of as a set of nested cascades. Keep the other cascades in mind while working on yours. 

Do remember that there is no one perfect strategy; find the distinctive choices that work for you.                

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More about aspirations 

Aspirations are the guiding purpose of an enterprise.                 

Nike’s: 

“To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete* in the world.” 

(The additional note, indicated by the asterisk, reads: “*If you have a body, you’re an athlete.”)                

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The first box in the strategic choice cascade—what is our winning aspiration?—defines the purpose of your enterprise, its guiding mission and aspiration, in strategic terms. 

What does winning look like for this organization? 

What, specifically, is its strategic aspiration? 

These answers are the foundation of your discussion of strategy; they set the context for all the strategic choices that follow.                

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As a rule of thumb, though, start with people (consumers and customers) rather than money (stock price). Peter Drucker argued that the purpose of an organization is to create a customer, and it’s still true today.                

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The single most crucial dimension of a company’s aspiration: a company must play to win. To play merely to participate is self-defeating. It is a recipe for mediocrity. Winning is what matters—and it is the ultimate criterion of a successful strategy. Once the aspiration to win is set, the rest of the strategic questions relate directly to finding ways to deliver the win.                 

When a company sets out to participate, rather than win, it will inevitably fail to make the tough choices and the significant investments that would make winning even a remote possibility. A too-modest aspiration is far more dangerous than a too-lofty one.                

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Too many companies eventually die a death of modest aspirations.

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Where-to-play choices occur across a number of domains, notably these: 

Geography. In what countries or regions will you seek to compete? 

Product type. What kinds of products and services will you offer? 

Consumer segment. What groups of consumers will you target? In which price tier? Meeting which consumer needs? 

Distribution channel. How will you reach your customers? What channels will you use? 

Vertical stage of production. In what stages of production will you engage? Where along the value chain? How broadly or narrowly? 

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Choosing where to play is also about choosing where not to play. This is more straightforward when you are considering where to expand (or not), but considerably harder when considering if you should stay in the places and segments you currently serve. The status quo—continuing on in the locations and segments you’ve always been—is all too often an implicit, unexamined choice. Simply because you have made a given where-to-play choice in the past is not a reason to stay there.                

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One final consideration for where to play is the competitive set. Just as it does when it defines winning aspirations, a company should make its where-to-play choices with the competition firmly in mind. Choosing a playing field identical to a strong competitor’s can be a less attractive proposition than tacking away to compete in a different way, for different customers, or in different product lines.                

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The alternative to low cost is differentiation. 

In a successful differentiation strategy, the company offers products or services that are perceived to be distinctively more valuable to customers than are competitive offerings, and is able to do so with approximately the same cost structure that competitors use. In this case, companies A, B, and C produce widgets and all do so for $60 per widget. But while customers are willing to pay $100 for widgets from company A or B, they are willing to pay $115 for company C’s widgets, because of a perception of greater quality or more-interesting designs. Here, company C has a $15 higher margin than its competitors and a substantial advantage over them.                

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All successful strategies take one of these two approaches, cost leadership or differentiation. Both cost leadership and differentiation can provide to the company a greater margin between revenue and costs than competitors can match                

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Alternative winning value equations for low-cost strategies and differentiation strategies     

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Differing imperatives under low-cost strategies and differentiation strategies                

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Life inside a cost leader looks very different from life inside a differentiator. In a cost leader, managers are forever looking to better understand the drivers of costs and are modifying their operations accordingly. In a differentiator, managers are forever attempting to deepen their holistic understanding of customers to learn how to serve them more distinctively.                

--

In a cost leader, cost reduction is relentlessly pursued, while in a differentiator, the brand is relentlessly built.                

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HOW-TO-WIN DOS AND DON’TS 

Do work to create new how-to-win choices where none currently exist. Just because there isn’t an obvious how-to-win choice given your current structure doesn’t mean it is impossible to create one (and worth it, if the prize is big enough). 

But don’t kid yourself either. If, after lots of searching, you can’t create a credible how-to-win choice, find a new playing field or get out of the game. 

Do consider how to win in concert with where to play. The choices should be mutually reinforcing, creating a strong strategic core for the company. 

Don’t assume that the dynamics of an industry are set and immutable. The choices of the players within those industries may be creating the dynamics. Industry dynamics might be changeable. 

Don’t reserve questions of where to play and how to win for only customer-facing functions. Internal and support functions can and should be making these choices too. 

Do set the rules of the game and play the game better if you’re winning. Change the rules of the game if you’re not.                

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Capabilities

The activity system is a visual representation of the firm’s competitive advantage, capturing on a single page the core capabilities of the firm. Articulating a firm’s core capabilities is a vital step in the strategy process. Identifying the capabilities required to deliver on the where-to-play and how-to-win choices crystallizes the area of focus and investment for the company. It enables a firm to continue to invest in its current capabilities, to build up others, and to reduce the investment in capabilities that are not essential to the strategy.                

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Companies can be good at a lot of things. But there are a smaller number of activities that together create distinctiveness, underpinning specific where-to-play and how-to-win choices. P&G certainly needs to be good at manufacturing, but not distinctively good at it to win. On the other hand, P&G does need to be distinctively good at understanding consumers, at innovation, and at branding its products.                

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When thinking about capabilities, you may be tempted to simply ask what you are really good at and attempt to build a strategy from there. The danger of doing so is that the things you’re currently good at may actually be irrelevant to consumers and in no way confer a competitive advantage.                

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the group came to five core capabilities: Understanding consumers. Really knowing the consumers, uncovering their unmet needs, and designing solutions for them better than any competitor can. In other words, making the consumer the boss in order to win the consumer value equation. Creating and building brands. Launching and cultivating brands with powerful consumer value equations for true longevity in the marketplace.                

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Procter & Gamble activity system     

In this system, the core capabilities are shown as large nodes, and the links between the large nodes represent important reinforcing relationships. These reinforcing relationships make each capability stronger, which is an essential characteristic of an activity system: the system as a whole is stronger than any of the component capabilities, insofar as those capabilities fit with and reinforce one another.                 

The subordinate nodes are the activities that support the core capabilities. Scale, for instance, is supported by the way in which P&G is structured. At P&G, GBUs oversee categories, brands, and products, providing a holistic, consistent approach to each element on a worldwide basis. At the same time, MDOs have responsibility for a continent, region, country, channel, or customer, paying close attention to its specific needs and demands. The GBUs and MDOs work together to create a global approach with local applicability and customization. This matrix allows P&G to drive scale where it is needed but to stay nimble on the ground.                

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BUILDING CAPABILITIES DOS AND DON’TS 

Do discuss, debate, and refine your activity system; creating an activity system is hard work and may well take a few tries to capture everything in a meaningful way. 

Don’t obsess about whether something is a core capability or a supporting activity; try your best to capture the most important activities required to deliver on your where-to-play and how-to-win choices. 

Don’t settle for a generic activity system; work to create a distinctive system that reflects the choices you’ve made. 

Do play to your own, unique strengths. Reverse engineer the activity systems (and where-to-play and how-to-win choices) of your best competitors, and overlay them with yours. Ask how to make yours truly distinctive and value creating. 

Do keep the whole company in mind, looking for reinforcing rods that are strong and versatile enough to run through multiple layers of activity systems and keep the company aligned. 

Do be honest about the state of your capabilities, asking what will be required to keep and attain the capabilities you require. 

Do explicitly test for feasibility, distinctiveness, and defensibility. Assess the extent to which your activity system is doable, unique, and defendable in the face of competitive reaction.                

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What a strategy discussion is and isn’t

A strategy discussion is not an idea review. A strategy discussion is not a budget or a forecast review. A strategy discussion is how we are going to accomplish our growth objectives in the next three to five years.                

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The questions tended to press on a few key points: was P&G winning in this category? Was the business team sure? How did they really know? What were the opportunities related to unmet consumer needs? What were the most promising innovations and technologies? What were the threats to category or country or channel structural attractiveness? What core capabilities was the business lacking? What was its most troubling or threatening competitor?                

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At P&G, a preexisting management system for describing strategy could be leveraged: the OGSM, a one-page document that captures objectives, goals, strategy, and measures for a brand, category, or company.                

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OGSM might look something like the one found in table 6-1, which is an adaptation of the real family-care OGSM from several years ago.                

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A sample OGSM (objectives, goals, strategy, and measures) statement               

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At P&G, it boiled down to three themes that would enable the company to win, in the places and ways it had chosen, regardless of the details of individual differences between businesses: Make the consumer the boss. Win the consumer value equation. Win the two most important moments of truth.                

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P&G created supporting systems for each of its core strengths, investing resources and attention to building sustainable structures: On consumer understanding, P&G invested aggressively in new consumer-research methodologies, striving to lead the industry with real in-house consumer and market research capability. P&G invested significantly in innovation—in understanding the innovation process, in exploring disruptive innovation with Clay Christensen and Innosight, and in creating Connect + Develop (the P&G version of open innovation), so that more than half of the company’s new brand and product innovation had one or more external partners by 2008.                

--

On the go-to-market front, P&G invested heavily in strategic partnerships with retailers. It created new ways of doing business with retail customers, suppliers, and even competitors (in noncompetitive categories), leading the charge to change the traditional business model in which all important activities exist within the walls of the firm.                

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the company launched a project to codify P&G’s approach to brand building for the first time. Deb Henretta, then general manager of laundry, was the executive sponsor, and the team comprised three outstanding marketing experts: Lisa Hillenbrand, Leonora Polonsky, and Rad Ewing. Their work led to the creation of P&G’s brand-building framework (BBF) 1.0, which explained P&G’s approach to brand building in one coherent document for the first time.                

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Measurement provides focus and feedback.                

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Expected outcomes should be noted in writing, in advance. Specificity is crucial. Rather than stating “increase in market share” or “market leadership,” quantify a thoughtful range within which you would declare success and below which you would not.                

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MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS AND MEASURES DOS AND DON’TS 

Don’t stop at capabilities; ask yourself which management systems are needed to foster those capabilities. 

Do continue strategic discussions throughout the year, building an internal rhythm that keeps focus on the choices that matter. 

Do think about clarity and simplicity when communicating key strategic choices to the organization. To get at the core, don’t overcomplicate things. 

Do build systems and measures that support both enterprise-wide capabilities and business-specific capabilities. 

Do define measures that will tell you, over the short and long run, how you are performing relative to your strategic choices.                

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Where do you start?                 

You need a winning aspiration against which you can weigh different choices. But remember that strategy is an iterative process, and you’ll need to return to refine your winning aspiration in the context of the subsequent choices. So, rather than dwell on crafting the perfect definition of winning, sketch a prototype, with the understanding that you will return to it later with the rest of the cascade in mind.                

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To define where to play and how to win, you’ll need to understand and reflect on your context. To do so, you have scores of tools at your disposal—from simple analyses like SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) to purpose-built tools like the Boston Consulting Group growth matrix and General Electric–McKinsey nine-box matrix to detailed frameworks based on particular strategic theories (the VRIN model, which assesses the degree to which the organization possesses capabilities that are valuable, rare, inimitable, and non-substitutable, and which emerged from the resource-based view of the firm).                

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Ultimately, there are four dimensions you need to think about to choose where to play and how to win: The industry. What is the structure of your industry and the attractiveness of its segments? Customers. What do your channel and end customers value? Relative position. How does your company fare, and how could it fare, relative to the competition? Competition. What will your competition do in reaction to your chosen course of action?                

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The strategy logic flow                

The flow runs from left to right as a framing mechanism and a rough order of operations—though as with pretty much everything to do with strategy, a lot of iterative back-and-forth is required.                

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STRATEGY LOGIC FLOW DOS AND DON’TS 

Do explore all four critical dimensions of strategy choice: industry, customers, relative position, and competition. 

Do look beyond your current understanding of the industry, pushing to generate new ways of segmenting the market. 

Don’t accept that entire industries are or must be unattractive; explore the drivers of different dynamics in different segments, and ask how the game could be changed. 

Do consider both channel and end consumer value equations; if only one of these constituents is happy, your strategy is a fragile one. A winning strategy is a win-win-win; it creates value for consumers, customers, and the company. 

Don’t expect either the channel or the end consumers to tell you what constitutes value; that is your job to figure out. 

Don’t be blasé about your relative capabilities or costs; compare them with those of your best competition, and really push to understand how you can win against them. 

Do explore a range of possible competitive reactions to your choices, and ask under what conditions competitors could block you from winning.                

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In the end, building a strategy isn’t about achieving perfection; it’s about shortening your odds.                

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Reverse-engineering strategic options                

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For your own company, ask (and honestly answer): 

Have you defined winning, and are you crystal clear about your winning aspiration? 

Have you decided where you can play to win (and just as decisively where you will not play)? 

Have you determined how, specifically, you will win where you choose to play? 

Have you pinpointed and built your core capabilities in such a way that they enable your where-to-play and how-to-win choices? 

Do your management systems and key measures support your other four strategic choices?                

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For your organization, have you used the tools to help you think through your potential choices? Have you used the strategy logic flow framework to understand the industry, channel, and customer values, your own relative capability and cost positions, and competitive reactions in a way that can underpin sustainable where-to-play and how-to-win choices? Have you reverse engineered the strategic possibilities and asked what would have to be true to ensure that this possibility is the one that gives you the best chance to win?                

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The playbook                

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Here are six of the most common strategy traps: 

The do-it-all strategy: failing to make choices, and making everything a priority. Remember, strategy is choice. 

The Don Quixote strategy: attacking competitive “walled cities” or taking on the strongest competitor first, head-to-head. Remember, where to play is your choice. Pick somewhere you can have a chance to win. 

The Waterloo strategy: starting wars on multiple fronts with multiple competitors at the same time. No company can do everything well. If you try to do so, you will do everything weakly. 

The something-for-everyone strategy: attempting to capture all consumer or channel or geographic or category segments at once. Remember, to create real value, you have to choose to serve some constituents really well and not worry about the others. 

The dreams-that-never-come-true strategy: developing high-level aspirations and mission statements that never get translated into concrete where-to-play and how-to-win choices, core capabilities, and management systems. Remember that aspirations are not strategy. Strategy is the answer to all five questions in the choice cascade. 

The program-of-the-month strategy: settling for generic industry strategies, in which all competitors are chasing the same customers, geographies, and segments in the same way. The choice cascade and activity system that supports these choices should be distinctive. The more your choices look like those of your competitors, the less likely you will ever win.                 

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Look for these positive signs, for your own business and among your competitors. 

An activity system that looks different from any competitor’s system. It means you are attempting to deliver value in a distinctive way. 

Customers who absolutely adore you, and noncustomers who can’t see why anybody would buy from you. This means you have been choiceful. 

Competitors who make a good profit doing what they are doing. It means your strategy has left where-to-play and how-to-win choices for competitors, who don’t need to attack the heart of your market to survive. 

More resources to spend on an ongoing basis than competitors have. This means you are winning the value equation and have the biggest margin between price and costs and the best capacity to add spending to take advantage of an opportunity or defend your turf. 

Competitors who attack one another, not you. It means that you look like the hardest target in the (broadly defined) industry to attack. 

Customers who look first to you for innovations, new products, and service enhancement to make their lives better. This means that your customers believe that you are uniquely positioned to create value for them.

[quarantingz]

seven things i’ve learned so far in quarantine

wednesday, 29 april on my longer-than-what-i’m-usually-allowed lunch break

This entry stemmed from a prompt I had written on one of my contemplative yet meditative roadside walks a while back. Looking up at the trees and unabashedly into the windows of houses I’d pass, jotting down in messy prose what I see and describing it in detail in my Notes app. Revisiting places in my community that both look and feel familiar and observing them closely as if I’m getting to know them again for the first time has been a new-found hobby of mine as of late.

So I present to you, an elaborate list of seven things I’ve learned so far and everything in between, whilst in quarantine: 

Accepting, learning to be okay with and I’d even go as far as saying dancing with loneliness. This is a funny one. I realised after my breakup that I was taken for majority of my adolescence. At least the years where I was still learning how to be an adolescent. This meant that I based a lot of my decisions and sometimes even my happiness on the person I was with. Being the fragile, reserved and passive teenager I was, there were instances where I let people step all over me and take advantage of me. I can say this without feeling an ounce of bitterness now because they’ve already happened. I’ve already borne them. I got out of that labyrinth essentially. I think it’s important to look back on our past selves (and I’ve noticed my peers do the same which is amazing) as we tend to look over our growth and forget to give ourselves credit for overcoming hurdles that at the time seemed insurmountable but in hindsight (to quote Alyssa hehe) now seem trivial. I guess the challenges we go through get harder as we grow up. Like in a video game where the quests increase in difficulty the closer you get to finishing it. Anyway, I digress, so my point is that I got used to having someone to vent to when something particularly exciting or devastating happened to me. While I do think it’s important to open up to someone and not be shy about seeking comfort from them, we can only really rely on ourselves at the end of the day. It’s during these moments of solitude that we’re not influenced by anyone or anything. Perfect for self-reflection.

Doing things “while I remember” them. I thought to myself every now and then that if I had a memoir the title of it would be “While I Remember.” I think I can speak for both myself and Alyssa that we operate on to-do lists on top of to-do lists. To me personally, it was all a matter of quantity over quality. If I didn’t write something down the moment I thought of it, it’ll leave me entirely. As an easily-side tracked procrastinator, I loved putting things off in pursuit of something else that seemed more immediate. But for the last 2 weeks, I found myself taking the initiative to just do something while I remember and while I can. Like if an opportunity to do my laundry when it’s sunny out arises, then just take it. I guess this links to intuition as well. Relying more on intuition when I do things on a daily basis rather than thoroughly thought-out to-do lists has made me feel good recently. 

Active listening, being more attentive and sensitive to people and things. At a time where everything seems to demand our attention, I thought I’d never be able to focus on one thing ever again, whether that’s an episode of a TV show, a podcast or a video. Whenever I get some down time I’d put a film on, deceiving myself that I’ll watch the damn thing when I know I’ll just go on my phone anyway. About two weeks ago though, to my surprise, I managed to watch BlacKkKlansman without getting distracted which is worth scoffing at as it shouldn’t even be considered a feat lol. ANYWAY, let me ineffectively segue into mindfulness – something I’m still trying to get better at each waking day but find myself adopting more in daily activities, whether mundane or taxing. Like when I’m working out or stretching, I try to really focus on the physical sensations I’m feeling as I bend and manoeuvre my body in different forms and motions. Being mindful of my breathing, in for 8 seconds, hold, then out for 8 seconds or so, while doing a child’s pose or that yoga pose that I don’t quite know the name of where you place one bent leg on the other, kind of squatting back and putting your hands together as though you’re praying. Back straight, chest out and finding one spot in front of you to focus on as to maintain balance. Or when I’m running and my breathing starts to increase in tempo – inoutinoutinout, but surprise myself that I somehow haven’t fainted and collapsed on the ground 4 kilometres in. Which brings me to my next bulletpoint:

I learned that I can do almost anything so long as I put my mind to it. Like the fact that I and you too can make any edible substance from scratch, be it a tortilla, challah (Jewish braided bread) or buttermilk. Or even something inedible like a shelf. Although I don’t have the willpower to cross that one off my list yet. Going back to my observation of mindful running, I’ve also been describing my fitness progress to a few people as “running becoming second nature that it almost feels like walking.” I think that’s beautiful. How our bodies can quickly adapt to strenuous movement with training. That being said I also learned the importance of:

Rest (I’m looking at you Alyssa! Haha jk). It’s so easy to get into the rhythm of things and forget to take a breather. I’ve had my fair share of these “poor practices” in the last few years. Like doing uni work for 5 hours straight without drinking water, eating or even doing as little as getting up or looking at something that isn’t forcing blue light into my eyes for a couple of minutes, slumped over my laptop and later complaining about having a perpetually sore back. Also to bring it back to running again, insisting to my sister but more to myself that I can keep running even though my shins are practically crying out for rest. I know it’s hard to pause and take a break when you’re on a roll but resting proactively, rather than as a last resort after we’ve crashed, is integral to the function of our bodies. This book called Why We Sleep highlights that if sleep wasn’t so important then why has it evolved up to this point where we still need at least 7 hours of it for optimal physical and mental health as well as daily performance? Alyssa and I have tackled hustle culture a few times on this blog but it’s so important that we keep coming back to it. Then again we’re so hypocritical because we always seem to remind our loved ones to rest but we hardly ever do ourselves hehe. We’re getting there! No pressure.

Resourcefulness and/or as I like to call it “working with what you have.” I have been very adamant about cooking using ingredients we already have on hand as opposed to finding a recipe and flocking to the supermarket to get all the ingredients on the list. Hell, I sometimes even draw mind maps of meal ideas that share as many components with each other to make sure I get the most out of my money. I think I really did age 20 years since not being with my parents for 3 months, speaking of which, I think this turned out to be a blessing as it made me more intuitive and understanding of the struggle my mum used to, not really complain about but she sure wanted us to hear, that it’s hard to think of what to cook for dependants sometimes [most of the time]. Hats off to all mums out there doing the leg work for us!

Lastly, and I think this point actually ties everything I said together into a neat bow, I learned that life is indeed what you make of it. Emphasis on the doing word “make” as we often tend to be lived by external events and our thoughts when in reality, although these can attack us from different directions, we can choose whether we’ll let them affect us. I recently learned more about the Greek philosophy of stoicism which is living by the fact that “we don’t control and cannot rely on external events, only ourselves and our responses.” Again I think that’s beautiful. Hard to practice but beautiful nonetheless.

I’ll end this one with a line by Ottessa Moshfegh which I think encapsulates how I view and treat this quarantine period (or at least try to): 

“Here is how I spend my days now. I live in a beautiful place. I sleep in a beautiful bed. I eat beautiful food. I go for walks through beautiful places. I care for people deeply. At night my bed is full of love, because I am alone in it. I cry easily, from pain and pleasure, and I don’t apologise for that. In the mornings, I step outside and I’m thankful for another day. It took me many years to arrive at such a life.”

- p

[ladytabletop]

Hello!! I was the one who asked about where to find a group! I have a new question now, apologies if you've answered anything similar. So my friend and I haven't had any luck finding a grouo to join, so we've decided to start our own! I'm the one most interested in DMing out of our group, but here's the problem; I'm inexperienced. This would be my first *actual* game as a DM and I played one short session as a player once. That said: Any advice/tips/resources? ♡ Thank you!!

Hi there, so sorry about taking so long to answer this!

For your first game, there’s a couple important questions to ask yourself before you start. I will give advice under the assumption that you’ve already chosen the system you want to play.

First, how long of a game do you want to run? 

This is important mainly if you’re running something you’ve written on your own. It won’t necessarily be neat and easy, like saying ‘We will play exactly ten sessions.’ But knowing whether you’re looking to run a very long running game vs. a self-contained short can help you the DM when writing plot points and the like.

Second, pre-written adventure or homebrew? 

There are tons and tons of pre-written adventures for pretty much every system out there, whether they are published by the company that made the game or by enthusiastic players and GMs who put their own adventures out there in a published format. It’s worth noting that if you like something like Rise of the Runelords for Pathfinder but want to run it in DnD5, it isn’t too tough to adapt something from one system to another.

On the other hand, a homebrew plot can be really fulfilling! It requires a bit more work on your part, but it can be worth it. Keep in mind that you can start with a published adventure and veer into homebrew territory as you get more comfortable running things.

NOTE: a homebrew setting is a whole other beast, and here’s a post about that.

Also another beast: allowing homebrew in your games. If you’re going to do this, please please please talk with your players beforehand and make sure they know that balancing during the game may happen. Nobody likes to be nerfed, but if there’s homebrew that’s just outclassing everyone else, it has to be scaled back. Use your resources online, ask people to look over things you think might be over or underpowered.

Third, what style of game will this be?

Is it going to be political intrigue and espionage? A classic dungeon delving guild style? A Lord of the Rings-esque sweeping fantasy epic? A more modern fantasy fast-paced mystery? Seafarers and ship combat? A really dark game where things are serious, or a funny goofy romp?

All of these are great options, but be sure your players know a little bit about what type of game it will be so they can get on board! No one wants to bring a hardened vigilante elf barbarian with no stealth to a game that’s primarily social challenges and shadowy murders (actually now that I’ve said it, I do. but he would be thematically appropriate and not useless).

Now that those questions are answered, here’s a few more suggestions.

As a GM, it’s important to root for your player characters. If you’re the type of group that likes to play as GM vs. players, this campaign is deadly, that’s fine as long as that’s what everybody wants. But if not, you the GM need to challenge the characters without decimating them. Find out what their goals are and root for them in achieving them, but don’t make it easy! Help them have fulfilling character arcs and try to be familiar with their characters wants, flaws, past, etc. It’ll help you make things more personal in the plot, whether that be by making them run into an old foe or by helping them eventually trust people again, etc. Being familiar with the characters and what the players want for them will help you make the most satisfying game for everyone.

Remember that you’re a storyteller, but it’s not your story you’re telling. You can have plot points you’re attached to, NPCs you love, but ultimately, the story should be about the players. Let them shape it! Try to get them as involved in the heart of things as possible. Don’t make it seem like things can happen with just the NPCs, as though your characters are the bystanders. Let them be in the thick of the plot. This isn’t to say things won’t happen without them - they have to! But when things start really cooking, the PCs should be there, they should care about what’s happening, and they should be able to affect it to some degree.

Be flexible. Improv is a key skill for DMs. Not everyone is great at it, and that’s okay. That’s what online resources and prep time are for! But regardless of how good or not you are at making things up on the spot, you need to be flexible. Your players are going to change the way you think the plot will go. They’re going to surprise you. They’re going to (hopefully) have character arcs that change, and you need to adapt with them. You need to be ready for these things to happen, which honestly means being ready to throw out your prep and throw out the things you’ve worked on sometimes.

That being said, it’s important to do at least a little prep, especially if you’re running a plot heavy game and not a smash and grab dungeon crawl. This can be as simple as using index cards with bullet point NPCs, treasure, and monsters/encounters, or it can be as involved as writing out details about the setting and plot that you can read when it comes to the appropriate time and making huge complex maps and encounters.

Be consistent in your rulings. Sometimes the rules get debated, or you want a house rule at your table, or a spell is worded vaguely and there’s multiple interpretations, etc. In these instances, you get to say, ‘Hey, GM rules this.’ (I only recommend doing this after having heard arguments for why it could be ruled multiple ways). After you say that, stick to your guns! The rule stands, and it stands for everybody. Unless you really really think you were wrong later, in which case you should talk to your players and rectify things, you need to be consistent in the way you adhere to the rules so that no one feels cheated.

My last piece of advice for you is to always have open dialogue with your players. Get feedback on how they think the game is going. Get their predictions about the plot. Touch base about how their characters are feeling, what their goals are. Make it clear that if any players aren’t having fun/are having issues, they can come to you and you’ll do what you can to help. Just be open in your communication. And remember, everybody at the table should be having fun, including you.

Now that I’ve gotten through all that, here’s some resources I like to use for my games.

Donjon RPG Tools - this is my favorite of all time. Tons of random generators, from names to encounters to maps to treasure. There’s an initiative tracker, an xp calculator if you use experience points, and a dice roller. It’s really an all in one tool.

My resource tag has everything from inspirational art to interesting dungeon builds to how to incorporate linguistics into your games to answers to the question ‘How do I start a game?’ answered by other people. It’s really just an amalgam of collected resources.

I enjoy the Obsidian Portal campaign manager, and there are tons of others out there.

A lot of folks use the Same Page Tool to make sure all players and GM understand exactly what’s happening and what’s expected at the table.

I use the DnD5e Spellbook app (which of course is system specific, but super useful).

And other than that, I mainly just have pdfs of the system I’m using, a piece of scrap paper so I can note NPCs, locations, and plot points that the PCs encounter that may be relevant in coming sessions, notecards with stat blocks for enemies, a sheet to track PC ac, initiative, goals, and flaws. You’ll figure out the setup that works for you the longer you GM.

Good luck!!

[gyamfi11]

Fishing Apps That are Free and Easy to Use Instantly.

2020 will soon be here and we are excited at the mammoth technological breakthroughs in fishing the world had witnessed.

Today  it is possible to do so much with just a mobile device in your palm.  Mobile applications are an important addition to every modern-day  angler’s bag of tricks and also skill-set.

I  have gathered a current list of some of the most capable fishing  applications in the world experts say they have potential to change the  world of fishing.

(1)

FISHSURFING

Availability: (iOS, Android: free).

For iOS at

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/fishsurfing/id1235154377

For android at

FISHSURFING — social network for fishing — Apps on Google Play

FISHSURFING The fastest growing fishing social network. Share your catches, experiences and findings with fishermen all…

play.google.com

About

Currently  ranked is the fastest budding fishing social network. For sharing  catches, fishing experiences and new findings with experienced fishermen  all over the globe that is amazing.

The  platform is enabled with features for discovering new fishing locations  and finding the best local guides in Europe to assist you in finding  the great catch you dream about.

The platform is also a good place to make friends new friends discover different fishing cultures around the world.

This fishing application provides a complete fishing experience.

This  application is currently one of the most popular applications on the  market; it has the potential to become the leading application experts  say.

FISHSURFING is currently number 1 in Europe and number 1 in the world when it comes to the services, of using fishing guides.

The application is the best Fishing Guides in Europe.

Major functions of the application

Local Fishing through the Entire of Europe Guides:

What  the team at FISHSURFING has done is to provide a tailored local guide  in all the countries in Europe to help make the fishing experience  worthwhile.

Fishing Professionals:

The  application provides an opportunity for the user to create their  business profile and guess it is free with no hidden cost serving as a  market place to offer your services a huge client base of fishermen all  over the world.

Fishing Shops:

Worry no more, about finding the right fishing equipment.

Just use FISHSURFING to find — fishing rods, fishing, and gears.

Understanding Each Other:

The application has an impressive translation feature.

Fishing Events:

If you love fishing and want to keep up to date with competition and events then your best bet is FISHSURFING.

The Gallery:

A neatly designed gallery with a powerful filter to display high-quality images of some of the world’s biggest fishing catches.

The blog:

The  application gives you the power to blog and shares your own fishing  stories and experiences just the way you like with other fishermen.

(2)

Fishbrain App (iOS, Android: free)

What it does:

Fishbrain allows fishing enthusiasts to share catches, fishing news, and comments reachable to just the community.

Information about baits and techniques is accessible on the platform.

This excellent resource for fishing enthusiasts who want to try out something new.

Availability:

For iOS at

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/fishbrain-fishing-app/id477967747

For android at

Fishbrain — local fishing map and forecast app — Apps on Google Play

Millions of anglers use Fishbrain to share their fishing activity and connect with like-minded anglers with our social…

play.google.com

Millions of anglers use Fishbrain to share their fishing activity and connect with like-minded anglers with our social…

(3)

Fishidy App (iOS, Android: free)

What it does:

The application permits members to use all the features.

Fishing enthusiast keeps data of catches, trip, and share them with friends and family.

The application also allows fishing enthusiasts the right of entry to hundreds of tips.

The  Fishidy application is a comprehensible map-based fishing log. The  application is easy to use. Find the best fishing spots and cast with  confidence.

For iOS at

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/fishidy-fishing-maps-app/id561498932

For android at

Fishidy: Fishing Hot Spot Maps, Reports & Tips — Apps on Google Play

Find the best fishing spots and cast with confidence. Fishidy is the only fishing app powered by Fishing Hot Spots® — a…

play.google.com

(4)

Navionics App (iOS, Android: free)

What it does:

Navionics  is a global leader in nautical graphs; the mobile app contains access  to an all-inclusive library of charts and maps. They offer several  different plans comprising a Navionics+, which reveals exciting features  like Sonar Chart to create a more accurate chart.

The application allows fishing enthusiasts to access globally.

Availability:

For iOS

https://apps.apple.com/us/developer/navionics-s-r-l/id294013906

For android at

https://play.google.com/store/apps/dev?hl=en_US&id=5199459121415523859

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Deeper App (iOS, Android: free)

What it does:

The application is a ground-breaking sonar device that provides an accurate detailed underwater map to any mobile device.

It  also provides important information such as depths, bottom composition,  fish location, water temperatures, weather, and more. This one of the  best applications on the market.

Availability:

For iOS

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/fish-deeper/id680517501

For android at

Deeper Smart Sonar — Apps on Google Play

Map the waters you fish and maximize your catch rate with the Deeper Smart Sonar fishing app. The original Deeper Smart…

play.google.com

(6)

Pro Angler (Android, iOS)

(Android, iOS: Free)

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=us.openocean.proangler&hl=en

Pro Angler — Fishing App

The Most Complete Fishing App Available. Weekly Reports, 60K+ Fishing Hot Spots, Fresh to Salt we have you covered…

apps.apple.com

What it does

The  application makes available a wealth of resources to users, for  checking out weekly updates of the current trends in their region or  locality.

They have bonus features including guides to how to tie knots, rigs, and gears.

(7)

. Fish Track (Android, iOS: Free)

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fishtrack.android

FishTrack — Charts & Forecasts

FishTrack provides saltwater anglers with everything they need to find fish. The FishTrack app offers Cloud-free Sea…

apps.apple.com

What it does:

This  an amazing application intended for mostly saltwater anglers, providing  enough data such as sea external temperature charts , satellite  descriptions, and weather forecasts exhibited on a covered map for  stress-free reference out on the water.

In accumulation to the route-finding data and weather forecasts.

(8)

. Fishing Points (Android, iOS: Free)

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gregacucnik.fishingpoints

Fishing Points — Fishing App

Fishing Points app enables you to save and find your favorite fishing locations, trotlines and trolling paths. Enjoy…

apps.apple.com

What is does

Fishing Points makes available a resourceful toolkit of useful info for fishers.

There is a feature for favorite saving your fishing spots, and trawling paths.

With assistance of Google Maps it helps help you get back to just the right spot.

You can create a catch log for everything you manage to catch during your fishing trip with wide-ranging with catch photos.

The ninth on the list

9. Fishing & Hunting Solunar Time (Android, iOS: Free)

Fishing & Hunting Solunar Time - Apps on Google Play

Make your fishing and hunting extremely effective with forecast from Fishing & Hunting Solunar Time! Based on the…

play.google.com

Fishing & Hunting Solunar Time

Make your fishing and hunting extremely effective with forecast from Fishing & Hunting Solunar Time! Based on the…

apps.apple.com

What is does

On  the Android anterior, Fishing & Hunting Solunar Time is a decent  option for fishermen and anglers looking for a good basis of Solunar  time tables to forecast periods of animal movement and feeding.

The  app provides main and minor time period estimations, rise, zenith and  set times for the sun and moon, and a five-day weather prediction all  for your current location.

10. I Angler Tournament (Android, iOS: Free)

iAngler Tournament - Apps on Google Play

iAngler Tournament is a comprehensive system for the operation and management of Fishing Tournaments. The system also…

play.google.com

IAngler Tournament

The "iAngler-Tournament" system is a comprehensive system for the operation and management of Fishing Tournaments. The…

apps.apple.com

What it does.

Is  designed to help competition planners and partakers track and log their  catches, with users able to take photographs and log dimensions of a  catch while still out on the water. In accumulation to the tournament  administration and leader board options

[topqualityproducts]

CHOOSE THE RIGHT HIKING TRAIL

HOW TO CHOOSE THE RIGHT HIKING TRAIL

Some trails are familiar, like a pair of padded shoes that form at your feet. Each turn is comforting and warm, like the pages of your favorite book. Some trails are rocky and wild, demonstrating with you every mile the thrill of nature and its own limitations.

For different levels of experience, locations, time constraints and moods, there are likely to be a variety of trails near you that meet your needs. With some useful resources and considerations, finding the perfect path is easy.

WHERE TO RESEARCH HIKING TRAILS

You can use a website or an application to find trails no matter where you live. All Trails and the REI Hiking Project are two excellent places to start looking for trails. As hikers use trail profiles in these applications, they can qualify and give reports of their experiences. For each level of hiker, the information can help make informed and realistic decisions. Where a beginner hiker could discover local trails with simple navigation, a hiker looking for a significant elevation gain would find the most useful mile-by-mile altitude report.

Read some recent reports on the trails you are interested in to find out what equipment you need to take, if there are confusing sections of the trail or what unexpected circumstances (such as parking fees or road closures) could affect your walk.

As you review the resources, you will notice levels of difficulty in each journey. Take them with a grain of salt, as they are qualified by the creator of the trail profile. Instead of relying solely on classification, consider all the concrete data that has been given on the road and make your own decision about your level taking into account your physical condition, equipment and experience. More information so you can make the best call for your walk will come in the next section.

In some less visited areas, resources like these do not have enough information to plan a walk around. If you are in that situation, call a local ranger station to help plan a day trip. In most hiking areas, there are also trail guides or trail books and maps available to guide you in choosing a hike. Look for local libraries and outdoor stores for these, taking care to notice how resources were recently published, sometimes the trails may change! If you get your trace information from a print source, be sure to call the ranger station for more information about the current conditions of the trail before you leave.

In highly trafficked areas such as the popular National Parks, take some time to investigate which trails are most popular at what time. If you are looking for a little more solitude, try starting early in the day or doing a short walk in the afternoon or evening. In areas like this, Visitor Centers are excellent resources to find suitable trails for you on any given day. Take advantage of maps, guides and staff suggestions to get a complete picture of the area and the options open to you.

WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN A HIKING TRAIL

The first elements of your road search checklist should focus on what you can do safely. Start with a weather report as close as possible to the trail the day you want to walk. Are you ready for the weather that day? Observe the highest elevation of the track. Will it be ready for the coldest temperature and wind that come with a higher elevation?

Next, consider the path itself. Is it mostly dirt, or rocky and rough? Will there be wet and muddy sections or ice, and are you prepared to handle these conditions? When in doubt, as a beginner, call for recent information or choose another path.

The ease of navigation is a crucial consideration, especially for beginner hikers. The path you hope to travel can have excellent signage and clear directions, or it could be confusing for those who do not have a detailed map and some navigational experience. Often, this is affected by the management organization of the area. While national forests tend to require more skills and preparation, state or national parks are often well marked and easy to follow. When you start, one of the most useful skills to start building is the reading of topographic maps. Although there are simple GPS resources available, try to print a map of well-marked trails from caltopo. While walking, take out the map and familiarize yourself with the contour lines and how to locate yourself using the details of the map and its surroundings. Starting early with map reading can make an incredible difference in the paths you can take, and in the speed with which you progress to more intact areas. If you are not sure of the signage and clarity for navigating a trail, find out who manages the area and contact them for more information.

We all have different levels of physical condition and acclimatization to altitude and climate. Although it could be a marathon runner on low ground, strenuous activity at high altitudes can quickly drain your energy and change your "normal" abilities. As someone who is in a cool and dry environment, walking in a dense humidity could limit your typical level of walking. Be sure to observe the duration of the walk, the amount of elevation obtained through the walk (total, not net) and environmental considerations. If you are not sure of your level, try your resistance with a long walk around your neighborhood. If you traveled five miles and felt a little tired at the end, maybe a two to three mile trail is the best starting point for you.

Once you find a path that suits your skill, physical condition and level of experience for the area and the day you plan your hike, be sure to take note of the accessibility. How will you get to the trail, and is it possible for you and your car to reach it safely?

Finally, find out how busy the road is. Popular trails tend to have more items, such as a bath or a water filling station and a map at the beginning of the trail. If you feel comfortable walking with other adventurers, a highly traveled trail could be an excellent and safe environment to start. If you are looking for a little more solitude in your hiking experience, try to find out which trails are the most visited using the resources mentioned above.

HIKE YOUR OWN HIKE AND HAVE FUN!

With safety considerations out of the way, you can start creating your list of hiking trails and start marking them one by one.

Do you prefer to walk in the trees, or through exposed areas with panoramic views? Have you always wanted to see mountain wildflowers in bloom, or walk under a waterfall? Take a look at the destinations you'd love to see and plan out trips that take advantage of the wildflower season and fall colors.

Another consideration to keep in mind is what else is in the area. Would you love to explore a nearby city for a well-deserved hamburger after the hike? Some of the best hiking experiences in general are combined with excellent food, so dig a little and try something other than a new trail to complete the day.

KNOW YOUR HIKING JARGON

Finally, here are just some common hiking terms you should know when investigating trails:

Path: where the trail begins or ends, where you can access the beginning or end

Out-and-Back: a path that goes out to a point and returns in the same way.

Palette: a trail that has the shape of a palette, with a single path leading to a loop

Loop: a path that does not return the same way it did, but joins again at the end of the path.

Cairn: a pile of rocks used to mark the trail

Topo (or topographic): a type of map that shows the geological characteristics of an area in detail

False Peak: A point on an ascending trail that looks like the top, but is not

LNT (or Leave No Trace): a set of guidelines that hikers must follow to keep the natural area clean and healthy

I hope the Guide series for beginner hikers has allowed you and encouraged you to go out on the track with confidence. If you have still been waiting to hike, choose a simple path near you. Even if it's a paved road in the suburbs or just a walk on your way, take some time to get out and move. Warmer weather is just around the corner, and getting out starting is often the most difficult step.

Enjoy your adventures, near and far!

For detail visit us Damascus1.com or contact us:  +1 703 4195 777

[meredithrucker-blog]

Mastery Journal: Professional Practice

 1. Mastery: This course has helped me develop the confidence to continue pursuing my “life’s task.” It has also helped me see the pitfalls to avoid and how to deal with those who may not understand my journey. Finally, Mastery has given me tips on how to further develop my strengths and weaknesses so that I can be sound in mind, body, and spirit. It helped me develop my thesis presentation by building a strong foundation for my mastery journey. In doing the thesis presentation site I was able to look back over everything I learned, refine my best work and defend it with the proper research.

2. Defining Client Needs: This course helped me develop a new flow for my creative process. Learning about and developing mind maps was a critical turning point for me. I was finally able to visualize the paths to new innovative ideas. I was stretched during the sketching exercise. Now, I’ve learned that every design project needs to start with pencil and paper. The first ideas aren’t always the best ideas. We have to push our imaginations to arrive at the best possible solution for our clients. For my thesis presentation, this course helped me to show more of the process behind my work instead of just the finished work. I may not have sketched as many logo drafts as my peers, but I went from sketching 1or 2 logo designs to at least 25.

3. Brand Development: This course gave me a more detailed understanding of the logo design process and all of its moving parts - consideration of color palettes, typography, styling and other assets that complement the brand. It really took my passion for branding to another level. I’ve always loved the little details that no one else cared about, x-heights, the space around the logo, proper placement. It was because of this class that I wanted to go back to the drawing board and redevelop the Marrakech brand for my final project. My biggest accomplishment was creating 3 logos that were completely different from each other. Usually one stands out as the winner, but they were all solid.

4. Effective Copywriting: This course helped me sharpen my writing skills and learn how to create persuasive content for my design projects. I really enjoyed creating an ad campaign for the Lupus Research Alliance. I had never created a whole ad campaign from scratch before. Much of my inspiration comes from words, so it was fun to think of a brand as a person and develop the brand’s persona. I used my work from this class as part of the thesis presentation because I felt that I created a strong campaign for Lupus awareness based on the many voices in the Lupus community.

5. Design Research: This course helped me not dread web design as much. For some reason, me and web design just didn’t mix. After learning that even web design starts as a sketch, it helped me transition my ideas to the computer once I had a clear idea in place. Originally, I would have gone straight into Photoshop to “start” the layout only to end up spinning my wheels. This course helped me to break web design down into actionable steps so that I could produce a cohesive website for the sea turtle charity concert. Once again, this course helped me to focus more on the design process than the finished product.

6. Organizational Structures: This course is where it got real! I already had traumatic memories of Flash class from my undergrad degree. I wasn’t looking forward to learning AfterEffects on my own or creating motion graphics. Sketching storyboards for the motion graphic and the commercial helped ease my trepidation again. I made a plan to keep things simple and manageable. I actually had fun creating the motion graphic and the commercial! I used this project for my thesis site because I am proud of the work. Motion graphics were something that I never thought I’d be able to do.

7. Design Strategies and Motivation: This course helped me to develop a project timeline for my final project. I tried my best to stick to the calendar, but there were areas where I got stuck and had to go back to the drawing board. I decided to redo the Marrakech brand from the cities project. I discovered that Marrakech was known for winter sports, so I decided to create a brand that attracted a new audience through athletics and created a sense of unity in a culturally diverse environment. I used this project for the bulk of my thesis presentation because I was able to achieve the goal of not only creating a brand guide but also a design system with a set of icons.

8. Design Integration: This course is where the road became extremely rough. I had to retake this class three times due to personal external factors that affected my performance. I’m used to being an honors student, so being put on academic probation really sent me into a state of depression. They say that the third time is the charm. I hunkered down and focused so that I could pass the class. I bounced back from a low point and have had steady rise in my grades since then. The bright point during this course, what receiving advice and inspiration from my instructor. The focus of his work in media design was in developing design systems. He gave me tips on how to get started and pushed me to further with my project by developing a design system for the brand.

9. Multi-Platform Delivery: During this course, I developed the icons for the Marrakech brand. I studied Olympic design systems and how the icons were developed to be simple and universally recognizable. I also took a close look at how design systems unify design teams. I want the brand guide to be a resource that anyone could easily pick up and gain an understanding of the Marrakech brand and execute it with clarity. My biggest accomplishment was the development of an icon set. This portion was also highlighted on my thesis site.

10. Measuring Design Effectiveness: This course showed us how to develop surveys to test the effectiveness of our final projects before making the final tweaks and going public. I learned how to ask the right questions so that my respondents could provide the feedback needed to gauge the project’s success. The majority of the responses were positive and gave the direction I needed to focus on the Marrakech brand message. My biggest accomplishment was seeing that all the research and design work I put towards the brand was on the right track.

11. Presentation of Design Solution: This scared me a little. We were finally near the end of degree and now it was time show and back up what we’d learned over the past year. I saw how my work had grown and also how my research and analysis skills had developed in critiquing my peers’ work. I’ll definitely take the ability to give and receive constructive criticism with me. Again, the web design process gave me anxiety but I was able to execute it quickly since we used the same methods from design research to construct our thesis sites.

[noredinktech]

Designing for Teachers: User-driven Information Architecture

It’s not breaking news that teachers are using technology in their classrooms more than ever. Public schools in the US now provide at least 1 computer for every 5 students and spend more than $3 billion per year on digital content. With their already packed schedules, teachers don’t have time to figure out websites and apps that are complicated and unintuitive. A key feature determining whether using a website feels simple and easy is the site’s information architecture, or IA. IA is the underlying structure that defines how the contents of a website (or any repository of information) are classified and organized.

Good IA goes unnoticed, allowing the user to navigate the site and find what they are looking for without a second thought. Bad IA makes itself obvious, and can often be the culprit of a frustrating user experience. My local supermarket, for example, continues to baffle me in the way that its goods are organized. On a hunt for peanut butter, I see the jelly and think to myself, “I must be getting close.” But alas, it’s hiding 4 aisles down, next to the olive oil, inexplicably.

This summer at NoRedInk, the product team embarked on a project to redesign the information architecture of the teacher side of the website. We hadn’t audited the IA since its launch in 2012, and we wanted to ensure that creating an assignment and viewing student results were as easy as finding the peanut butter next to the jelly. As with everything we do, the project focused heavily on user research. We utilized a variety of methods to get to the core problems with our IA and evaluate potential solutions, resulting in a final product we think teachers will find welcoming and intuitive when they come to NoRedInk this fall.

Phase 1: Gathering and synthesizing teacher feedback related to IA

The first step was to examine where our current IA wasn’t working well. We spoke to members of our Support, Customer Success, and Partnerships teams about feedback they’ve collected from teachers regarding usage challenges on the site. These teams interact with teachers every day, responding to support emails, conducting professional development training, and giving demos of the site, and they had great insights about common navigation pitfalls on the website. For example, the Support team tracks all the emails we get from teachers about specific problems or requests. The second most common issue reported this past school year was not being able to add new students to existing assignments - a problem we knew could be fixed with better IA.

We then conducted interviews with teachers who had recently signed up for NoRedInk in order to understand which aspects of teacher functionality were easy to do right way, and which parts of the site were more likely to go unnoticed. We learned that a few key aspects of NoRedInk - the different types of assignments we offer and the ability to track students’ mastery levels - weren’t always immediately clear to teachers in their initial experiences on NoRedInk.

Phase 2: Card Sorting

Once we knew the major problems with our current IA, we started to design solutions. Instead of building off the existing model, we wanted to give ourselves the freedom to start from scratch. So we began by listing out all of the teacher-facing pages on NoRedInk and experimenting with new ways of organizing the pages. Using a method called card sorting, we had teachers do the same. Card sorting is a tool that helps uncover the way users intuitively group and categorize the pages and functions on a website. The user is presented with a long list of the website’s contents, like “Preview an assignment,” and asked to sort them into categories and give each category a name. We recruited teachers who had never used NoRedInk to avoid bias from familiarity with the current structure. The card sorting tests revealed that participants largely agreed on the overarching categories on NoRedInk: Assignments, Student Performance, Classes, Settings, and Instructional Resources. From there, we had to drill down into the finer details of where more specific functions would be found and what to name them.

Optimal Workshop, the tool we used for card sorting, analyzes the results from each participant and quantifies how frequently cards were sorted into the same category.

We took what we learned from teacher interviews, support data, and card sorting to the drawing board, and each member of the product team mapped out some new structures. We had a brainstorming meeting in which we taped hard copies of the sitemaps up on the wall and went around with stickers to mark the ideas we liked the most.

Ideas of new sitemaps from our team brainstorm.

Phase 3: Tree Testing

Our brilliant designer Ben synthesized all of these ideas into two new versions of the IA: one that was more similar to the existing site, and one that was more “class-centric” - using a teacher’s classes as jumping off points to other parts of the site. We used a method called tree testing to evaluate whether the new versions made things easier to find compared to the existing IA. In a tree test, the user is presented with a hierarchical list representing the contents of a website and several tasks; the user clicks through the list and selects the places where they think they’d be able to complete the tasks.

A screenshot of one of the tasks in the tree test. Based on the feedback we heard in our initial research, we wanted to make sure that teachers could find where to add new students.

The data we collected from tree testing included where the participants expected to complete the tasks, the paths they took to get there, and how long they spent looking. We conducted several rounds of tree testing with participants who had never used NoRedInk before. After each round of testing we made changes to address places where participants were still having trouble. Sometimes we simply renamed a feature, like changing “Student Leaderboard” to “Top Performers.” Other times we changed the location of a feature, or added another way to navigate to it. All in all, we tested 7 different iterations until we came to a version that nearly all participants completed correctly and quickly.

Phase 4: New IA! Final Design and Validation

Ben transformed the final version of the IA we developed during tree testing into a beautiful new design for the teacher side of NoRedInk. The updated layout features a new menu bar with some renamed pages. “Lessons”, for example, became “Curriculum,” a clearinghouse for our scaffolded pathways, lessons, and tutorials designed to address a pain point we frequently encountered during our research: many teachers weren’t aware of the full breadth of curriculum available to them on NoRedInk. We also added a prominent sidebar menu where teachers can manage their class settings, including student rosters. The biggest change in the new IA is the class-centric teacher dashboard, where teachers can view their classes, see what’s upcoming for the week and how students are progressing on assignments. We knew from our research that those were things that teachers want to see right away, and we organized them front and center so teachers can jump quickly into assignments or student data being better informed about the current state of their classes.

To validate the new design, we tested a working prototype to see whether the real layout, compared to the more artificial layout in the tree test, was still just as easy to navigate. We tested with new users who had very little experience on the site and with NoRedInk Ambassadors, who use the site regularly. The feedback we got from both groups was hugely positive, with multiple teachers using the word “streamlined” - exactly what we were going for.

Our current dashboard (left) and the new design, not yet in production (right).

What we learned

Looking back, the most important source of information was teacher feedback, via the Support and Customer Success teams and directly through interviews. That feedback heavily influenced the solutions we designed, and tree testing was a great tool to fine-tune and validate them. Card sorting, though a common and logical place to start when it comes to IA, didn’t tell us much beyond what we already knew. A better way to start might have been to brainstorm creative ways of getting teacher feedback related to IA that eventually drove our final solution. We’re really excited to release this more straightforward, user-friendly IA to teachers this fall!

At NoRedInk, our product team is deeply user-driven, and we are consistently pushing ourselves to find even better ways of getting feedback from teachers and students. If you’re passionate about building a product that teachers really want, our team is hiring — we’d love to hear from you!

Christa Simone is a User Researcher at NoRedInk, leveraging research and data to help build a product that teachers love.

[missingpeopleincanada-blog]

How Hamilton police handle missing-persons cases Every year, Hamilton police receive more than 1,500 reports of missing people. Sometimes they are found right away and sometimes they don't want to be found. But each must be taken seriously. When someone is seriously in trouble, every minute counts. Const. Kim Walker is Hamilton's only missing person co-ordinator, a position created in 2011 and that she's held since late 2015. "I see every single one that comes through every day," Walker says. It's her job to make sure no detail is missed. Most reports come in the same way — at a police station front desk — and most are investigated by front-line officers — representing a huge part of the workload for uniform patrol. In Hamilton, there have been near miraculous cases where people have been found days after going missing. In 2015, for instance, Franco Mamone, then 75, was found in a field in Dundas three days after going missing without his medication. Mamone was lying on his back, shirtless and shoeless, suffering from hypothermia but no other injuries. More than three years later, he's alive and well, living in an assisted-living retirement home. There have also been cases that ended tragically, such as the death of 16-year-old Devon Freeman ,who was in the care of the Children's Aid Society, living at the Lynwood Charlton Centre's Flamborough site. Freeman was a frequent runaway, and it wasn't until months after he went missing that detectives took over the case. Six months after going missing, kids throwing a ball at the residential facility found him in the woods. His death was ruled a suicide and sparked several internal investigations. "I go back and review it constantly," Walker says of the Freeman case. "I sit down with the guys and say, what could we have done differently?" But, she says, there was nothing in that case that led them to a ground search. The last time Freeman had been spotted was downtown Hamilton; nobody saw him go back to Lynwood. His case highlights a particular challenge for officers: the "habitual missing person." Of almost 1,200 missing persons reported in the first 10 months of 2018, 342 were "habitual": those who go missing often and live in group homes or in children's aid custody and have mental health, addiction or cognitive issues. When someone is reported missing, time is everything, so there are steps that must be followed. First, the officer does a risk-factors check list. There are 16 points on the check list and if the missing person checks even one, the case is considered "level one" — higher priority and must be reviewed by a sergeant. Typically, police also send out a press release alerting the public to look for that person. Risk factors on the list include suspicion of foul play, history of domestic violence, being Indigenous, being under 12, being over 60 or a vulnerable adult, mental health or mental capacity issues, and high-risk lifestyles. Any level one case must also go through a search urgency chart to determine whether a ground search is needed. The chart notes age, medical condition, number of people missing, weather, clothing and terrain. This assessment is redone every 12 hours for the first 48 hours of an investigation. Hamilton police do about a dozen ground searches each year, says search manager Sgt. Fab Guiliani. There are 12 managers who direct ground searches using all available resources from patrol, ACTION, mounted units, ATVs and canine. There are about 45 specialty-search officers who work in various units across the service who may also be called in. They're experts in navigation and GPS, and looking for clues like tracks. Guiliani takes all the information and maps out searches. This allows him to see if a pocket has been missed or if there is an area that needs more resources. He said this year all but two of the searches ended happily. Two people were found dead — one by suicide and the other of exposure. "For us, everything is time sensitive — the longer a person is missing, the wider the area becomes." The most useful piece of information for a ground search is the last place a person was seen. Without that, police don't have a place to start. It's not true that one must wait for someone to be missing 24 hours. "That person may have been missing 12 times in last 12 days, but you never know when one is going to be the legitimate time and they're going to be a missing person," Guiliani said. Since November 2015, police have partnered with MedicAlert, giving officers access to the company's databank and GPS program. Since then, police have accessed the MedicAlert databank 202 times to help find missing people faster, often in cases involving people with dementia or Alzheimer's who wander. At any given time, there are usually fewer than 20 missing person cases on the go. During an interview with The Spectator late last month, , Walker said that number was quite low: just six. Most cases, even when they're level one, stay with patrol. But the most serious, ones in which there is evidence something is wrong, go to detectives. Usually, that means the criminal investigations branch, where detectives have the resources, experience and connections to dig deeper, including having bank and cellphone accounts flagged. Walker said social media has increasingly become a tool used to measure whether a case rises to the level of a criminal investigation. That is what happened in the case of Monica Chisar, last seen in July and reported missing by family in September. Walker described Chisar as "transient in nature," with mental health and addiction issues. She moved around a lot and it was somewhat normal behaviour for her to not be in touch with family. But what was consistent was her social media posts; she liked to share pictures of her travels. Once police started looking into her case, they found her social media activity had completely stopped. So, on Oct. 23, her case was transferred to detectives. In rare cases, such as the January 2018 domestic homicide of Holly Hamilton — missing for days before he body was found in the trunk of her car — there is enough evidence for homicide detectives from the major crime unit to take over the case. There are also 17 "cold cases" listed on a special missing persons section of the Hamilton police website, stretching back to 1981. The most recent is that of William (Bill) Bokstein, who was 50 when he disappeared in February after dropping his teenaged daughter off at school. Police and family know he went to Niagara Falls where he was captured on surveillance taking out money near the Fallsview Casino Feb. 25. For Christine, his wife of 26 years, the not knowing is agonizing. She believes he has likely passed away. Before his disappearance, Bill faced several losses of loved ones and wasn't taking it well. He would never just walk out on his family, she said. The morning he left, Friday, Feb. 23, Bill was still sleeping as she got ready for work. He woke and said he'd take their then 15-year-old daughter to school. All seemed normal. He took his daughter to school and then, without a word, appears to have gone to Niagara Falls. That night, when Christine and her daughter returned home, she questioned whether she'd heard from her dad that day. Bill used to call and text his family a lot — sometimes 30 times a day — but he also was prone to misplacing his phone and sometimes picked up extra shifts working overnight as a personal support worker. Christine took her daughter to dance and, when Bill still hadn't called by the time they were home, she became more worried. His silence was glaring. Christine said she fell asleep waiting for Bill and then called police the next morning. She had searched their bank account and saw the hotel charges in Niagara Falls. At first, she was bounced around between Hamilton and Niagara police, but Hamilton eventually took charge. Christine believes nobody took the case seriously enough at first because he was an adult man without any known health or mental health issues. She's not sure how extensively police searched for him in Niagara Falls and believes any police investigation was likely too late. Bill was family man who loved to make people smile and loved his daughter, she said. He would talk to anyone and people would remember meeting the friendly, tattooed man. Police later found his cellphone in his car but not his wallet. "I know Bill. If he was not at the gym or working, he was at home watching 'Judge Judy,'" she said. One of his many tattoos is "Judge Judy." The family is also working with a private investigator, John Cowen of J.M.C. Security & Investigations. Walker says police are stuck in this case. They've "exhausted all leads" and are "trying to think outside the box." https://www.themissing.ca/how-hamilton-police-handle-missing-persons-cases/?feed_id=2256