#either a livestream OR a professional recording to go up later

[silverlininghills]

T-minus 1 hour till showtime

how we feelin fam

[jjkyaoi]

i’m surprised there’s not more ghost hunter!sbi au’s or just general paranormal!sbi au’s. anyway, take this.

(yes this is because i’ve been watching buzzfeed unsolved again recently, what about it)

wilbur’s the one with the main youtube channel, and before they started really doing paranormal shit it was mostly,,...,,, like his actual channel? just him doing dumb shit w/ his friends— yes he does play minecraft in this au. don’t ask me how he went from minecraft from hunting ghosts, it is something that none of us know.

techno’s the one who actually came up w/ the idea, because in the family he’s always been the one who’s been most obsessed w/ paranormal things, for a skeptic. he’s always constantly wanting to push the limits of things people aren’t sure actually  exists— he always wants to see how fast he can die when he fucks w/ things that are potentially dangerous, so he’s a dumbass, and he brought up the idea of ghosthunting to wilbur, who’s also  a dumbass & always accepts dumb ideas and plays them out, so of course  he says yes.

the first ever paranormal video they did was a livestream! it was basically just wilbur and techno exploring this old abandoned house in their neighborhood that had rumors of paranormal experiences, and trying (and failing) to find ghosts. it was mostly just them fucking around; just techno calling out and taunting the air, daring it do something, and wilbur laughing nervously and telling him to “shut the fuck up”  most of the time, but then eventually he’d get roped in and then it’d just end in w/ these dumbass twins just taunting the open air. ,,,,it didn’t go successfully. they didn’t find anything worth while, and they’d thought that’d be the end of it— that’d be the last paranormal video they’d ever make, but  it turned out that their viewers really  liked the concept & their general dynamic—the majority of them just liked techno, but shh—so they were like; “ykw,,,,why not. turn this into a thing” & then they did.

none of them are professionals. they’re sort of just taking the paranormal places they’d hear about at face-value and going there just to,,, scream and yell at open air?? eventually  they do get more ‘professional’ and actually get the correct equipment and they do  end up finding actual ghosts, but at first it’s laughable. take the whole ‘ghost hunters’ thing with fucking gallons  of salt

before the paranormal videos started coming out, wilbur only ever really told stories about his family to the viewers— wilbur’s fans hadn’t met the sleepy boi’s yet, so these entire series is just wilbur’s fans getting to know ‘em, basically. ,,,,techno is a fan-favorite

at first it’s just wilbur and techno doing the ghost hunting, and the fandom had gotten used to those two and their general,,, shenanigans?? but for awhile, there was this conspiracy about who was the camera guy, in their videos? there were these theory videos, circling phil’s blurry image holding the camera in mirrors that they passed by in the places they went, “#CameraManConspiracy” was trending for like,,,. so  long until wilbur and techno made a whole video revealing it and just went “oh yeah btw this is phil; he’s our dad and he records the videos so we don’t like. burn the places we go to down or somethin’”. everyone on the internet lost their fucking minds . phil actually showing up in one of their videos and talking was a pretty big demand for awhile until it actually happened, and ever since then he’s been known as dadza; the man who brings the camera and the common sense. (half the time, though, he’s just egging his son’s mischief on, but shh he’s the common sense).

tommy didn’t join their little group until like way, way later? in the paranormal videos he was just spoken about by phil, techno, and wilbur? he was more just an afterthought— just mentioned like ‘oh i bet tommy would hate this’ or ‘should i bring this home and show it to tommy?’ and everyone on the internet was like; ‘who the fuck is tommy’. he was one of the family members who’s arrival was like,,, really dragged out? the sleepy boi’s kept teasing him coming on, kept saying ‘well, he’ll come on eventually, when he wants to, be patient’ and for like months he did not ever show up, and the fandom theorized that tommy wasn’t even fucking real  for a decent amount of time until, finally, he showed up.

it was a Q&A video, actually, where he showed up— their first and their last. they’d gotten a question about tommy—well, they’d gotten millions, but they just answered one—and they did this whole dramatic pause, looking solemn and saying ‘yeah, you got us, tommy isn’t real —’ and then tommy immediately burst into the room, screaming at the top of his lungs, and ran at the camera. that’s where the video ended. on twitter for days there were blurry screenshots of tommy’s form and the hashtag “#HE’SREAL???” was number 3 for days. he’s been apart of their group ever since

out of all of ‘em, techno’s the one who’s constantly at the forefront of taunting the ghosts. amongst the fandom, he’s known as the one who isn’t human, because of the fact the motherfucker always does shit that would kill the regular person, but he always comes out unscathed— half of the fandom thinks he’s possessed. he’s either taunting the ghosts or pranking tommy just to scare the shit out of him—who, always falls for it, despite how much he denies it—either that or he’s just in the background making jokes— motherfucker never takes it seriously.

wilbur’s the one who tries to take it seriously, but because he’s w/ these fools it always backfires on him. he’s always the one who’s asking the ghosts questions abt their personal life or doing theories about how they could’ve died, but in the end he’s always roped into some stupid shenanigans by his brothers and then just ends up taunting the ghosts. he’s known as the fandom’s conspiracy theorist— also, no one fucking knows if he actually believes in the ghosts or not??? man just makes theories. he’s more of the common sense than fucking phil is sometimes

phil is the camera man, as he’s established, but as well as wilbur he’s the one who communicates w/ the ghosts more often, and by that i mean the motherfucker is a ghost magnet. when the activity by techno and wilbur is always stagnant, on phil’s camera’s there’s always orbs caught by him, there’s always voices heard whispering by him— the ghosts seem to like him. half the time he’s just laughing behind the camera, but also the other time he’s trying to converse w/ the ghosts; he’s the only one who actually gets ‘em to speak and he’s never phased by any of it.

tommy is the one who’s the most scared out of all of ‘em, of course. motherfucker is always yelling, regardless if there’s something going on or not. he’s the type that thinks his increase in volume hides the fact that he’s scared, and he’s always challenging the ghosts to a duel or yelling ‘IM NOT SCARED’ only to piss his pants a second later. either that, or he’s wandering off ‘cause he got bored— there’s been more scenarios than the sleepy boi’s would like where they’ve lost tommy in the places they visit to. and, he ends up scaring himself even more when he gets lost. he’s also always the target for wilbur and techno’s pranks because he’s just that easy w/ paranormal shit

tubbo is also a pretty reoccurring character in the paranormal videos, but he doesn’t ever stay. he was first introduced by tommy, of course, coming onto the video as the ‘family friend’ (which is deadass just a roundabout way of saying he’s the unofficially adopted kid), and whenever he’s on their videos he’s also one of the most scared ones, but simultaneously,,, man constantly tries to talk to the ghosts? he gets scared by a too sudden sound or gets freaked out by the ghost stories, but a second later he’s in the corner fucking talking to,,, thin air? man’s known as the cryptid of the group. he constantly makes friends w/ the ghosts but it just looks like he’s talking to himself. (,,,, perhaps.,,,, tubbo can see,,,,, a little bit more of the paranormal world than we can? but that’s just spoilers)

[save-the-spiral]

PLS PLS LIST THE SWAPS!! TELL ME ABOUT THE SIBLINGS AND ALSO HIFUMI BECAUSE I LOVE HIM (IF YOU WANT!) I will also send more questions in the morning too, excited to see what you’ve been working on!!

OK OK OK !!!!! AHH! So, before assigning talents, I swapped the pools, so for the first game, I use the talents from the second game, and vis versa! For some i listed gender, sexuality, or neurodivergencies, though this isn’t all of them, and I haven’t developed them all to the same level!

This is SO long. I didn’t even bother mentioning things like my plans for the killing games. (I have DR1 planned out in full, but only parts of DR2 and the v3 anime)

THANK YOU FOR THE ASK MY HEART SKIPPED A BEAT IN HAPPINESS WHEN I SAW I HAD NEW ASK NOTIFS!!

LIST:

Trigger Happy Havoc (first game)

Kyoko Kirigiri- Ultimate Luckster- Mastermind (: Sometimes lesbians can be evil okay! was trained as a detective like everyone in her family and didn’t get the ultimate :) she’s definitely not mad about that :) her luck cycle depends on how far she plans things ahead. her good luck is when she’s spontaneous! She hates when ‘normal’ people are accepted by ultimates.

Makoto Naegi- Photographer (Mostly wildlife and nature photography, with Sayaka helping him for some animal photography (: trans and bi <3 One of sayaka’s birds nests in his hair like all the time)

Kiyotaka Ishimaru- Ultimate Swordsman (AUTISTIC ICON, has trained in kendo since he was a kid, then was essentially given away to the Fujisaki clan by his very stressed dad. Semiverbal, rarely speaks.)

Chihiro Fujisaki- Ultimate Yakuza (Taka is her bodyguard! His family is in debt to hers, the Fujisaki clan is the most powerful in Japan. trans icon, of course, dates Sayaka! Very direct, though she’s far more delicate and polite when talking to taka, her best friend)

Sakura Oogami- Ultimate Nurse (Works as an EMT- her clan still is in martial arts, so she’s still very buff, she assists in injuries at the family dojo. Autistic Icon)

Asahina Aoi- Ultimate Gamer (ULTIMATE ADHD. streams and has a ton of fun, will ramble while breaking records, demigirl who loves her girlfriend sakura :)

Mukuro Ikusaba- Ultimate Chef (Works best with ‘cheap’ food, and making them taste good. a byproduct of growing up on the streets with junko, and junko being bored of the same old food they dug out of the trash. now works closely with junko for her teams’ nutritional needs! autistic and sapphic.)

Junko Enoshima- Ultimate Team Manager (there are SO many sports she can never get bored, and the professional scene is always changing! prefers coaching womens’ teams, because being an ultimate brings them more publicity and usually higher pay :)

Mondo Oowada- Ultimate Prince (OH MY BOY. trans adhd icon. now the crown prince of Novoselic, with a reagent in his place until he comes of age. His service dog Chuck is a maltese and an absolute sweetheart. Chihiro takes him under her wing to teach leadership. also dates taka later OF COURSE, though they’re poly and I may add more ppl to their relationship later.)

Celestia Ludenburg- Ultimate Musician (specializes in violin, most strings, though she can play any instrument. grew up poor, dedicated herself to an instrument and persona to cope)

Byakuya Togami- Ultimate Musician (Yep. two musicians. two catty trans gay icons about to throw down. they HATE each other and grew up as rivals. specialize in classical, they literally tore a professional orchestra full of grown adults apart trying to make them side with who was the best musician. they’re so good that they’re matched, and Hope’s Peak accepts them as one student and combined ultimate. they room together. they fight. Literally if one of them gets expelled, the other does too, so they’re STUCK. eventually they become literally inseparable and insufferable together like the WORST siblings. I love them.)

Sayaka Maizono- Breeder (animal handler) (Specializes in birds!!!!!! has songbirds on her shoulders all the time. will give unsettling animal facts without realizing they’re unsettling. sends her songbirds to serenade chihiro when they start dating <3)

Yasuhiro Hagakure- Gymnast (you see this tall goof who acts like an older brother to everyone and wonder HOW he’s a gymnast. he’s completely different in competitions, though still lighthearted. becomes a big brother figure to mukuro and junko especially <3 also trans bc i say so.)

Leon Kuwata- Traditional Dancer (he just. kinda hates it. it takes SO much work and effort but he takes to it naturally. his cousin kanon is NOT like in canon, instead she’s helpful. he’d literally rather be doing anything else. doesn’t know how to do anything like... basic either. can’t cook. cant do his own laundry. everything was dedicated to traditional japanese dancing before he attended HPA.)

Toko Fukawa- Engineer (writes schematics and is very good at it. gets VERY upset when her plans go wrong. her notes are orderly and perfect. host for their system!)

Syo- Mechanic (a factive of genocider syo, NOT an actual killer. she’s a protector mainly, and also is more adept at hands on skills when it comes to fixing things, her hands are less shaky. Her notes are a disaster and she does it to spite Toko.)

Hifumi Yamada- (???) (reserve course) Protagonist! My BOY. HIFUMI IS GOOD OKAY. He’s autistic and loves anime and gaming! he’s not particularly ultimate-leveled at them, or anything else! Attending Hope’s Peak as a reserve course student! At one point he joins the student council as a reserve course representative even if he’s only a freshman :) He’s also a moderator in Hina’s livestream chat, under the username of JusticeHammer, fastest ban hammer this side of the internet. He's internet friends with hina and sakura, and doesn’t realize Oh We Go To the same SCHOOL until he bumps into them. and realizes hina doesnt know what he looks like. but sakura does. its hilarious. he’s aroace, and during the year they’re locked in HPA, is in a queer platonic partnership with Hina and Sakura, while they’re dating each other. it’s great.)

Goodbye Despair! (second game)

Peko Pekoyama- Lucky student (ohohoh. her luck relies on her conviction. if she has doubts her bad luck strikes HARD. trans!, was taken in by Fuyuhiko’s family when she was a baby, grew up as just another kid in the family. They all expected Fuyu to go off to HPA on his own and then BOOM acceptance letter)

Fuyuhiko Kuzuryu- Programmer (He. gets so angry while coding. He has an array of rubber ducks to talk to and work through his coding issues with. trans of course. Very protective of Peko when people say she doesn’t have a ‘real’ ultimate. ADHD and Autistic)

Sonia Nevermind- Writer (Literary Girl) (Her family immigrated to Japan when she was young! She writes a lot of serial killer novels, murder mysteries and horror and all that! Trans and bi :)

Gundham Tanaka- Detective (YEAH my guy is a detective. still talks Like That. Trans and bi and he and Sonia were kinda-dating (t4t autistic power couple in the making) when things started happening. He spends some time with his cool older sister who he looks up to a LOT. He and Sonia talk through things together a lot, they both have those red string walls, one for murder cases, another for a fictional plot lmao.)

Mahiru Koizumi- Moral Compass (my GIRL. autistic. Her morals rely a lot on people taking responsibility and being reliable, and she ends up having to work through some biases she didn’t realize she had when she arrived at HPA. Is still protective of Hiyoko, though that protectiveness is spread a bit thinner to extend to the rest of the class.)

Hiyoko Saionji- Clairvoyant!!! (HI YES I COULD TALK ABOUT HER FOR DAYS. Has actual visions in dreams and when she suddenly faints, but doesn’t really realize they’re uhh Real Visions for a WHILE. uses her status as an ultimate clairvoyant to trick and bully kids when in school for a LONG time, though her homelife wasn’t great with her grandmother trying to find ways to make her visions more consistent. SHES ALSO 12 WHEN SHE JOINS THE 77TH CLASS. she’s just so advanced in academics and her ultimate is so interesting hope’s peak cant HELP but scout her early. she has SO many issues guys no one appreciates hiyoko enough, autistic gifted kid hiyoko my beloved.)

Akane Owari- Gambler (started gambling to help out her family and Got Good at it. is very very conscious of money and food like all the time. Runs the hope’s peak betting pools once she arrives. these ultimates bet on a lot of things. she ALWAYS wins. until she doesnt!!!)

Mikan Tsumiki- Martial Artist (ohhhh Mikan. Still anxious and clumsy (though not like THAT in canon) and literally no one looks at her and thinks Oh The ULTIMATE martial artist?? it isn’t until you see her in the ring that you understand. She started learning self defense as a kid because her (bad) parents essentially said she had to rely on and protect herself and no one else would help.)

Kazuichi Souda- Pop Idol (OH TRANS ICON? he’s nervous and paranoid about Everything still, though now it’s like. oh the entire world is always watching my every move this is Okay (: has the brightest neon album eras. he literally keeps up a like. weird chad persona when interacting with people because he’s masking how hard he’s constantly just internally screaming.)

Nagito Komaeda- Soldier (AHAHAH my mans got issues problems disorder he’s a messssss, this trans guy, this absolute gay. this boy leveled a city of thousands of people with his own hands and some bombs. Still has medical issues, but most of his like. treatments and medicine is hold hostage as long as he stays in line. believes the ends justify the means and anyone who dies to him is obviously weak, because look at him! he’s weak, but that doesn’t matter because he doesn’t have to be the strongest, he just has to be stronger than the weakest scum.)

Chiaki Nanami- Heir (OOF. Agender, uses any pronouns. Doesn’t really. enjoy being the heir. grew up with Byakuya in the same circles. she treats the economy and stock market and stuff like games. enjoys gaming but isn’t good at them. collects so many things. has halls full of collections. Her parents stopped controlling her once she was able to prove she had more money than them and could literally bankrupt them if she wanted.)

Hajime Hinata- Baseball Star (Chiaki’s best friend, his family was upper middle class until he hit it BIG as a baseball star. wants to do BIG things and wants to attend hope’s peak more than anything!! Doesn’t really think of baseball as his THING, just a means to an end! trans :)

Teruteru Hanamura- Biker Gang Leader (started with shaking down some jerks who didn’t pay their food and drink tabs at his mama’s restaurant. now he RUNS their tiny town. His siblings are essentially gang mascots, he works hard to keep them out of trouble (while bringing them to like. meetings where he ends up beating a dude almost to death. its fine). most of what he does it to get more money to keep the restaurant afloat and care for his mama with her health conditions.)

Nekomaru Nidai- Fashionista (the drama. the CHAOS. most people are like ohhh we can never understand this artistic genius when he’s literally just. vibing and has ADHD and a love for coffee. Works a lot on accessible clothing lines for disabled people! Also he and Kazuichi work together sometimes, Nekomaru is good at calming Kaz down and seeing like, the root of whatever problem and making it better. ALSO A TRANS ICON and just flaunts it.)

Imposter- In the hope’s peak days they are impersonating Ryota Mitarai, as a part of the 77th class. In the Killing Game they impersonate Mondo Oowada as the Ultimate Prince. They’re doin’ their best.

Ibuki Mioda- (???) (Izuru Kamakura) Protagonist! Gundham Tanaka’s older sister (though they’re in the same school year). Nonbinary and using just. an array of pronouns alongside she/her, and jokingly fights with gundham for neopronouns like MOM said it’s MY TURN on the rawrself pronouns. She attends the reserve course to stay at her brother’s side. She dresses loudly and acts even louder because !!! she wants to stand out!! in the middle of this drab reserve course hell!!  but when things go down, she wants to be someone, to be worthy of being her amazing brother’s big sister. so she accepts some offers.

NON-KILLING GAME:

Ryota Mitarai- Ultimate Analyst (stays in his room. He’s terrified of the outside world but fascinated by it. watches hope’s peak academy through security feeds, picking up on little details. he just wants to understand things but never looks at the big picture.)

Chisa Yukizome- Ultimate Boxer (Homeroom teacher!! She’s working really hard and believes in everyone! Some are intimidated by talent, but she’s never hurt anyone outside of the ring! Dating Kyosuke)

Juzo Sakakura- Ultimate Student Council President (Has anger issues, though his work at reigning them in assisted in becoming an Ultimate. Was responsible for security and the Hope’s Peak student council. Dating Kyosuke)

Kyosuke Munakata- Ultimate Housekeeper (Meticulous, works himself to the BONE even if he’s good enough to not have to do that. Is working on establishing another Hope’s Peak! Dating Chisa and Jozu!!!)

Seiko Kimura- Ultimate Blacksmith (GIVE MY GIRL KNIVES!! She’s an anxious gal, always wearing a facemask that filters the air in her forge because she has some respiratory problems. she prefers making more decorative pieces like an artist, but sometimes can create utilitarian pieces or tools to fit specific needs. Still a doormat)

Ruruka Ando- Ultimate Pharmacist (She constantly asks Seiko for new tools for her developments in medicine, saying its all for the advancement of humanity, so Seiko denying any request is SELFISH, though she never thinks to make anything for seiko’s health issues. Dating Izayoi. Specializes in medicine for mental health. Not Doing Great :)

Sonosuke Izayoi- Ultimate Confectioner (He loves sweets. LOVES them. Creates things that look plain, ordinary. but taste so GOOD you CRY and maybe ascend for a little bit. sometimes Ando makes cool new drugs to put in the sweets, who knows! It’s a mystery! He always has like. a huge refrigerated case of fresh cakes, and constantly has a lollipop in his own specialty recipe in his mouth.)

[buncompass]

“Are you ready?”

I opened my backpack for one last check. 

“Flashlights, EMF reader, laser grid, night vision camera, backup batteries...Yeah I think I’m set!” I pulled my flashlight out and closed up my bag.

“Okay, let’s go.”

We stepped out of the car and looked around. Other than the solitary dome light from the car, the abandoned yard surrounding us was a void being carried on a breeze. The branches of low-hanging trees swayed and beckoned as they danced into the shallow pool of light around us, raising the hair on the back of my neck in an instant. Despite the full moon, the tall reaches of the pines blocked off almost all of the night sky. I glanced over at Adam. He pulled his own flashlight out and clicked it on before closing the door behind him. The beacon he produced got lost up the front walkway before landing squarely on a crooked, heavily-graffitied door. I turned my light on - the equivalent of an additional match in a coal mine.

“You should start filming before we even get in.” Adam suggested. He sent his flashlight across the yard to illuminate various odds and ends. “I don’t want anyone saying we faked anything.”

“You got it.” I stuffed my flashlight away, pulled my phone out of my pocket and attached my tripod and light. No more holding a flashlight and phone at the same time for us, no sir. We were professionals now. I opened the livestream and pointed my rig at Adam. “Five seconds,” I said. He hurriedly ran a hand through his hair as he turned. After a breath, he set his regular “I’m amped to be ghost hunting” grin to his face.

“What’s up, ghoulfriends?” He asked, his focus entirely on the camera. A few of our streamers began to respond immediately. The chat box along the bottom of the screen was awash in ghost emojis and greetings. One of my many jobs was to keep an eye on the chat for any hints or tips. There was nothing there for me yet.

“I’m Adam, the creature behind the camera is Carlie, and we are here at the Angel House for our Halloween spooktacular livestream event!”

I panned away from Adam and focused on the walkway leading up to the abandoned structure. With a jerk of my head, I directed Adam to get walking. The Angel House wasn’t close enough to be in focus yet. He fell into step next to me, out of view of the camera. 

“The Angel House, so named after its late owner, Maurice Angelo, has been recommended to us multiple times. We’ve read the reports you’ve tagged us in and decided that Halloween was the best option for our investigation.” I said, filling my role as historian. “For those not in the know, Maurice Angelo died under mysterious circumstances in the early 1880s. He had no known children, and evidently left his home and grounds to the town. Now, nearly 150 years later, the Angel House sits way in the back of a conservation land. It has been unoccupied this entire time.”

As I spoke, the house began to fill the frame of my phone. What had once been a handsome Victorian manor home was now a sagging, warped building. I paused to let the viewers get the full effect of its broken windows, peeling siding, and crooked front steps. A section of wall to the far left side of the house was broken open. The front porch had a collapsed roof and broken floorboards. It was like the house itself was discouraging entry.

The chat box continued to fill as more viewers signed in to the stream. I watched for a couple seconds and smiled when one viewer posted a gif of a small girl with black pigtails.  The gif was then repeated by others, all agreeing on what the house looked like.

“They’re creepy and they’re kooky, mysterious and spooky..” I sang softly into the phone. More emojis lit up my screen. Our viewers were thrilled.

“They’re all together ooky, the Addams family!” Adam picked up the tune as we marched up the steps to the front door. He leaned forward and pushed it open on shrieking hinges. Our lights filled a cavernous foyer. Adam stepped ahead of me and I held back, careful to keep both him and the room in frame. A double staircase faced us, leading into the two opposite wings of the house. A broken, dusty chandelier hung above us. We paused again in the middle of the room, scanning the area for both the benefit of our viewers and ourselves.

“Do do do doo,” 

Adam clapped.

“Do do do doo!”

He clapped again.

“Do do do do, do do do do, do do do do,”

Someone clapped directly behind my head. I yelped and whipped around. The camera was pointed directly where I heard the sound. Adam, wisely, stayed put. This was our first piece of evidence - we didn’t want viewers thinking we were messing with them.

“What did you hear, Carlie?”

“Someone beat you to the last clap for the song, Adam.” I said. There was nothing behind us. I was staring out the open front door. My camera light bled out onto the porch, illuminating only a few feet out. Two busts sat on either side of the door on the inside along the wall. There were no additional doorways on the front wall of the house.

“Okay ghoulfriends,” Adam said. I panned slowly back around to where Adam stood. “This right here is why we wanted to do our first ever livestream at the Angel House! It seems we have a kindred spirit in here with us.” He grinned at his own pun. I provided the obligatory groan, glad to hear my voice had evened out. It’s hard to take ghost hunters seriously as is, let alone one who shrieks at the first piece of evidence. 

“The Angel House has exactly two reported deaths. The first being Mr. Angelo himself. The official report stated that he died of an undisclosed illness in his bed. The second reported death took place in 2001, on Halloween night. Exactly 19 years ago today.” 

“October 31, 2001 had the happy happenstance of having a full moon on Halloween. In fact, today is the first Halloween full moon since that night.” I added. Adam gestured to the rooms on the first floor beyond the staircases. The investigation had begun.

“On that date, local urban explorer and photographer Shawn Johnson decided to do a walkthrough of the Angel House. Now, Johnson was not a paranormal investigator. He was just a guy who loved exploring. While researching the house, we discovered his blog. The link will be posted on our page after the livestream.” Adam’s voice grew softer as we passed the staircase and walked towards an open doorway to the next room. It was a common theme for him - he started each investigation big and boisterous. When it came time for the actual investigating, he softened his tone. Something about big, empty, derelict buildings gave the same feeling as being in  a church. As though simply by talking, we were being  disruptive.

“Johnson believed that it was the unknown that made people nervous, not spirits or ghouls. So he opted for a nighttime exploration of the Angel House to prove, without question, that there was no such thing as ghosts. He wrote a preliminary blog post about it and outlined his plan for the night.” I explained. My tone matched Adam’s. 

“Unfortunately, Shawn Johnson never posted his follow up entry. He never made it out of the Angel House. His roommate woke up and checked his bedroom the next morning and found it empty. The police found Johnson in a guest bedroom on the second floor of the house, where he had died from blunt force trauma to the head. To this day, no one has found his camera.”

The chat box on the livestream was nonstop. Our fans were suggesting their own theories, expressing hope that we would find Johnson’s camera, and recommending what rooms to look in. I glanced through the thread. Nothing of relevance to the moment. 

We tiptoed over the threshold and found ourselves in a large kitchen. A cast iron stove lined one wall. The kitchen table, which at one point must have been beautiful with its intricate carvings and detail, was missing a leg and slanted to one side. Dust covered everything around us. Each step filled the air with an additional cloud. We poked through closets, looked out the windows, and opened every cabinet door. Nothing stirred. After a few more minutes of exploring. Adam signaled me to focus on him.

“So the main reason Carlie and I decided to start livestreaming was for better accountability. Believe it or not, we do read every single one of your comments and it breaks my little ghost-loving heart that you guys think we fake evidence.” Adam laid both hands over his heart and looked off into the distance, an exaggerated look of betrayal on his face. The chat box pinged with assurances in response. I grinned. 

“Whenever we investigate, we really do come alone. We don’t scope out places ahead of time, we don’t set anything up ahead of time. We do as little editing as possible, we just trim down on time to fit our investigations into a reasonable length. And to prove to you that it really just is us here, I want to direct your attention to the floor.”

I aimed the tripod down to our feet. Both of us wore heavy combat boots laced up tight. It had taken exactly one step on a rusty nail wearing Converse back in our early days to encourage safe footwear. 

“As you all can see, the floors of the Angel House have a pretty thick layer of dust. No one else is here. Every touch, every footstep, is 100% us.” Adam continued. I recorded our last few footsteps. The heavy treads of two pairs of boots, one smaller than the other, marked our way across the dilapidated kitchen.

“No activity has been found here, so it’s time for us to move on!” Adam walked back into frame. I recorded his feet for good measure, so that the viewers could see the footprints he left on the 140-year-old floors, when he stopped.

“Carlie, what the hell.”

“What?” I asked. I panned up to his face. He was looking at the floor ahead of us. I walked forward, keeping him in frame until I scanned farther up to the entryway to the kitchen. 

A third set of footsteps was clearly imprinted in the dust. It looked as though a third person had peered into the kitchen before walking away.

“Oh my God,” I whispered. 

“Come on!” Adam walked briskly toward the doorway. The third set of prints had come up from the perimeter of the foyer beyond the room. They were large, clearly men’s, but the tread did not match Adam’s in the slightest. I aimed the camera up to Adam’s face.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“I think we should follow them back to their source. If there’s someone else here, that could be unsafe for us. I want to see where they came in, because we would’ve heard someone come in the front door.”

“Right.” I agreed. We left the kitchen and walked along the third set of tracks. The chat box continued to roll. A few people thought we were messing with them, because why else make a big deal of our footprints if not to set up a mysterious third set? One commenter suggested we were intentionally misdirecting them. 

“It looks like whoever this was came down from the second floor.” Adam pointed at the tracks on the side of one of the grand staircases. I aimed my camera light around the area behind us. Only our tracks followed the third. 

“I guess we should just follow it up.” I suggested. Adam nodded and took a breath. Me and our viewers watched him steel himself as he led me forward to the staircase. 

“Oh, hey, battery and service check.” I reminded him. “If it ends up being just some creepy rando I want to be able to call for help.” He pulled out his phone and checked. 

“87%, full service.” He showed his phone screen to the camera and held it as the lens adjusted to his screen’s brightness. Once the camera registered his home screen, he pulled it down and tucked his phone into his pocket. Immediately, the chat box exploded. I held up a hand to keep Adam where he was. The thread was filled with exclamations and questions.

“Adam, the viewers saw something behind you.”

“What?” He looked behind him and shouted. I rushed forward and looked where he was pointing. The third set of steps had circled back behind him and gone up the stairs. I scanned up the staircase. In my first shot of the footsteps, they had been leading down on the left side. Now there was another set of the same footprints going up the right.

“EMF, now!”

I turned away from Adam so that he could access my bag. I kept the camera level as he dug through the pockets, searching for the tiny, handheld device that read electromagnetic frequencies. In a previous video, we proved that it was not set off by either of our phones or equipment, so Adam bypassed the explanation and held it  up. The little range of lights flashed immediately from green to red.

Something was in there with us. 

“Okay ghoulfriends!” Adam said, his voice an excited whisper. “The mysterious third set of tracks starts down the staircase and it looks like they loop around the back of the foyer. Whoever is here with us must have peeked in on us in the kitchen before going around the far end and then up the stairs behind us.”

“It can’t be some random person!” I said. “Our prints are the only ones from the front door and these steps originate somewhere upstairs! Unless some homeless person floated up there we can rule that out entirely.”

“Okay, let’s go!” Adam led the way up the stairs. We walked up the middle, keeping the mysterious footprints clearly on either side of us. At the top of the stairs we looked around. The EMF reader remained staunchly red.

“If we follow the prints to our left, we’ll see where they came from. If we follow them to the right, we’ll see where they lead. What do you think, everyone? Which way should we go?”

The chats were evenly divided. The viewers erupted into an argument about what made the most sense for capturing evidence of a ghost. Some argued that seeing the source would debunk the possibility of a third person in the house with us. Many argued that if we followed to where they lead, we’d see if it was a person. Some pointed out that either way, we’d be able to figure something out through a real-life sighting or process of elimination.

“It seems like our ghouls can’t decide!” I said.

“Well, then it’s a good thing we live in the future! Extra tripod please!” Adam reached for my bag again and took out a smaller handheld tripod and light. He pulled his phone out of his pocket, set it up, and held it up. 

“If you go back to our main page, you will see that we now have two streams! Stick around with Carlie if you want to see the source, and bounce on over to me if you want to see where they’re going!” 

I watched as half of our viewers left the current chat. 

“Okay Team Carlie, are we ready?” I asked. The chat lit up. 

“And Team Adam, are we set?” Adam asked his own chat. He shot me a thumbs up.

“Then Let’s Ghoul!” we both chanted. With a little wave at each other, we both turned to our respective quests.

The left hallway was as dark and dusty as the foyer below. A few doors to my right hung open, and a few more seemed to not have doors at all. They were simply yawning expanses of darkness until my camera light passed over them. The loss of Adam’s massive presence heralded the return of the creeping feeling on the back of my neck. I felt my entire body stand at attention, took a breath, and walked into the darkness. I directed my camera down to the floor. The mysterious third set was still to my left.

“As you guys can see, the footprints are a pretty decent size.” I stomped my foot next to one of the steps. Even with my big boots on, the extra set was larger. “I’m not sure what shoes looked like in 1880, but I’m fairly certain they didn’t have running sneakers. I wonder if we’re looking at the footsteps of the late Shawn Johnson?”

Talking to the chat made me feel less alone. I read their responses and theories as I walked to the far end of the hallway. The trail led me to the last door on the left. 

It was closed.

“Now that’s weird. Look at this! The steps clearly walk out through the doorway, but the door isn’t open. Do you think whoever did this doesn’t have to worry about doors?”

I took a breath.

“I guess there’s no use delaying this, huh? Okay, ghoulfriends. Let’s do it.” 

I kept the camera focused on the doorknob as I reached forward, grasped the cold, tarnished brass, and turned. The door opened inward, dragging along the dusty floor and mussing up the footsteps. I quickly panned up and did a sweep of the room. Nothing stirred.

“It looks like we’re in a bedroom.” I whispered to the chat. “It doesn’t look grand enough to be old Mr Angelo’s bedroom. This must be a guest bedroom.” 

A section of the wall was broken open. A massive branch had long since crashed down into the bedroom, leaving its rotted corpse behind. The furniture, having been exposed to the elements for who knows how long, bowed out at odd angles after absorbing moisture from outside. An ancient broken mirror stood facing the gaping hole in the wall. The shards of glass had been scattered along the floor. 

With my scan of my surroundings complete, I panned back down to the footsteps on the floor. Debris from the broken mirror and furniture pieces obscured what had once been a clear path. I followed them around the derelict bed towards the broken section of wall, placing my steps carefully.

“I’m not sure how secure this section of the house is.” I said to the chat. A few well-wishers told me to be careful. “If I feel like there’s any chance that this floor is unstable, I’m going to go find Adam. I’m looking for ghosts, not construction projects.”

I picked my way over to the mysterious source of the footsteps. The soft, rotted branch covered it up. I placed my foot on the floor next to it and pressed.

“I’m slowly applying pressure to the floor here. I’m not hearing any creaks or groans or anything, so I think I should be good.” Confident that the floor would support me, I stepped over completely and pushed the branch with my foot. It barely moved. The footsteps were clearly coming from beneath it. I looked around and spied a dresser not far behind me. 

“Okay guys, I’m going to put you right here and see if I can move the log. Don’t worry, I’ll be careful!” 

The camera light was aimed directly where I needed to be. I carefully squatted down, placed my hands underneath the damp, rotted trunk, and heaved. The tree creaked against the remaining wall. 

“One more time, I think!” I called back to my camera. I pushed again, and with a crack, the branch broke over, exposing the floor below. 

The footsteps came from the broken wall.

“What the hell?” I looked at the section of wall. There, nestled between the interior and exterior walls, was a battered camera. 

“Oh my GOD you guys, I think I found Shawn Johnson’s missing camera! Hold on, this is insane!” I stuck my arm into the wall. The moment my fingertips met plastic, I heard a rush of footsteps behind me. 

“What the--” Something sharp hit the back of my head, and I went down.

***

The floor was cold and hard beneath me. The back of my head throbbed. I opened my eyes, but saw nothing. Terror flooded my lungs as I blinked. I waved my hand in front of my face. In the darkness, I saw the stirrings of movement. My vision was fine; it was the room that had gone dark. I groaned and pushed myself up. Nausea stabbed through me. I leaned back against the wall and waited for the feeling to pass. 

“Okay,” I whispered. “Someone else was here. They hit me. They took my phone and tripod rig.” I sat on the floor and stared around the room, willing my eyes to adjust to the blackness. Shapes gradually appeared around the room. There was the bed, the dresser that had held my camera, the broken mirror across the room. Once I was sure my eyes were as focused as they could be, I pushed myself up against the wall and eased myself up. 

Whoever hit me had done an excellent job. Standing made me aware of how out of proportion I felt - my arms and legs felt too long for my body. Could I have brain damage? Was this just leftover dizziness? I shook my hands in an attempt to change the way they felt. No luck.

“Shit.” I whispered again. I shook my head and made myself focus. I had to find Adam. We would call the police, wait in the car, and everything would be okay. A shaky plan, but a plan nonetheless. I left the room feeling asymmetrical. 

The darkness enveloped me in the hallway. I paused to listen but heard nothing. Adam’s voice was so distinct, so easy to pick out, that he couldn’t be up on the second floor anymore. I would’ve heard him even if he were doing his excited livestream whisper. I walked down the hallway, keeping my hand on the wall for support. The camera light had spoiled me; I had never known such intense darkness. If Angel House had been creepy with poor lighting, it was menacing in the dark. I kept my focus on one thing: finding Adam. Whoever blitzed me thought I was already down, so I had to assume they were otherwise preoccupied. I stared around me, hoping for a break in the darkness, when my hand left the wall and found the railing to the grand staircase.

Quickly and quietly, I stole down the staircase and looped back to the kitchen. Just before the doorway I paused and listened, hard. Not a single noise. I peered around the frame and looked in. The kitchen, like the rest of the house, was an expanse of darkness. I could make out the shapes of the lopsided table and stove, but not much else.  

“Adam?” 

No answer. I kept heading forward. We had only explored a small portion of Angel House, so the rest of the building was an unknown. I had no idea what else was on the first floor. My hand trailed along the wall next to me. The far corner of the room approached, a faded picture staring back at me. As I walked nearer, the face in the picture grew larger.  I stopped and stared. The face in the picture was hard to make out in the darkness. I took another step. The face in the picture grew larger still. Panic had finally started to settle in my ribcage. I strode forward, determined. The expression in the picture matched mine. 

He had a long face, a broad nose, and dark eyes. I turned my head to get a better look. He turned with me. I shook my head. He did the same. 

It was a mirror.

“What the hell. What the hell. What the hell??” I shouted. 

My voice, his voice, echoed across the empty foyer. It didn’t matter that there was someone else in the house. It didn’t matter that someone had tried to attack me. What mattered was that, somehow, I was staring out of someone else’s eyes into someone else’s face in a mirror. He was tall and thin, though somehow familiar. I leaned against the wall, bracing my considerably larger frame on a man’s hands and stared into the mirror. I took in the bold eyebrows and stubby facial hair. 

“Shawn Johnson,” I realized. Adam and I had studied his blog. There had been exactly one picture of the photographer. While he was exploring some old church somewhere he ran into another urban explorer. They had stood, arm in arm, grinning into their camera before exploring the church together. 

The camera!

Pieces began to fall into place. Shawn Johnson had died in a second floor guest bedroom. The report we read named blunt force trauma. That would explain the head pain. Had he been murdered? Did I have to relive his last few moments because I found his camera?  Or was the ghost of Shawn Johnson trying to get me to understand something else? I dropped my hands from the wall around the mirror. Of course. The tree. The trees surrounding Angel House had swayed so easily in the breeze when Adam and I had pulled up. The branch I moved had been huge. It must have fallen into the tree, hit Shawn in the head, and knocked him out. 

So why was he here? And why was I with him? I paced in front of the mirror. Shawn hadn’t been a paranormal investigator. He was an urban explorer and photographer. He had come here to disprove the paranormal. I snorted. Before I could even begin to think of the irony of that theory, a car door slammed in the distance. 

“Adam!” I called out. Had he gone out to the car to look for me? I ran along the side wall of the foyer and stopped in front of the window. There, down the front walkway, stood Adam. He was facing someone and gesticulating at the house. A bright light shone in my direction. Adam must have gone for the police. He obviously couldn’t expect to find out that I had been possessed by the ghost of the guy we were hoping to find. He had gone for help. I smiled. This was going to be an interesting conversation. But on the bright side, I’d be able to take Adam and the cops to Shawn Johnson’s camera. 

I watched Adam fall into step with his companion. They walked up the walkway together, and I heard their voices lilting back and forth. There was no hurry in their stride. Their conversation sounded formal, informative. I pressed my - Shawn’s - face against the glass. 

Adam was walking up the walkway with a young woman, carrying a tripod. He was walking up the walkway with me. 

I watched us trek across the front porch and heard my own voice begin to sing.

We were walking up the front walkway the way we had earlier in the evening. I was watching myself film Adam as he clapped in tune to the theme song. The front door shrieked open, just as it had when I had been the one operating the camera, Adam and the other Carlie walked into the foyer. I approached us, stunned. We were staring around the foyer, panning across for shots. I came to a stop directly behind what should have been me.

“Do do do doo,” 

Adam clapped.

“Do do do doo!”

He clapped again.

“Do do do do, do do do do, do do do do,”

I clapped.

[onisiondrama]

PART 10 - videos #18 & 19

(Click here for video mirrors) - These are not my words or thoughts, I’m just summarizing what Greg / James is saying in his videos. Apologies for any offensive language or comments that may appear. - I am not repeating stories anymore and will replace these stories with brackets describing what he’s talking about. If you don’t know these stories you’re going to have to go back and read previous parts or watch his previous videos.

just super...

- Greg says basically every commentary channel has made videos about him. Says this is because they noticed he stayed quiet for so long so they felt safe, like predators, to approach and attack. They think now it’s safe to make a video and they could say whatever they want. Everyone will believe it because there’s no other side to the story. Now that they know the truth, what are they going to do? [Sarah blackmailed them, apologized] Now these channels have a choice to make. Are they going to ignore his detailed recalling of everything that happened, which is documented? Says if you look back at his old videos about these things his statements all match. He doesn’t have time to watch these old boring videos to get his stories straight. If you go back and watch there will only be a 5% error and that’s from memory problems, it was 8 years ago and some details might be blurry. - Says this is a consistent story line of him enduring crazy bitch after crazy bitch and dumping them for being crazy bitches. Like Billie. When they broke up with her she slept with a drunk dude. Sounds like she r-a-p-e-d him, unless she was drunk too then they r-a-p-e-d each other. She just casually went out and slept with someone and when he said they could get back together she said they might not want that. He told her she wasn’t dating them so it’s fine. The dude had whisky dick. - PSA to people, you don’t sleep with people when they’re intoxicated [mind blown gesture]. VeeOneEye allegedly slept with a 15 year old when she was drunk and everyone loves him now. Back then he admitted to what he did and no one cares anymore. People selectively decide to forget. When someone’s drunk they can’t consent. - Says he always wanted to pursue a relationship with his ex sister-in-law someday. They were three years apart. He was 18 and she was 15 or 16. He didn’t pursue that because it was weird. One night she was drunk and she tried to kiss him when they were alone. He dodged it, he moved his head and she missed kissing him entirely. Later that night they held hands until the morning. In the morning she said “what the F”, not realizing she held hands with him all night. As he understands, she tells the story differently, which is weird because she was drunk. - He says people talk about the FBI as if they’re so interested in someone who slept with an 18 1/2 year old. [Sarah blackmailed them, apologized] Seems like you should investigate her. He would press charges, but he can’t prove it happened. He didn’t voice record everything that was said. She apparently held onto a laptop for years and somehow just now came across things that were offensive to them? There would instantly be SWAT on someone who actually had that. She’s a liar and says she has evidence, but nothing happens. He’s telling the truth, but has no evidence so nothing happens. He can’t do a rape kit because it was a legal thing and not a psychical force thing. People say he’s older so he can’t he raped, that’s rape apology. He respected that she acknowledged what she did and apologized, but apparently she didn’t mean it because she denied it later on. What happened between the apology and now? Was it that he said he can’t handle people with BPD in a video? Says if you’re medicated you’re probably fine, but if not people with BPD are a problem to people around them. They get crazy emotional, mix up stories, it’s a psychotic world to be in. When they’re mad at you, you feel like you’re going to get murdered. They look at you with black eyes, like Sarah. They have no love for you and the rage they have for you builds up inside and they get a murderous feeling. Someone said she doesn’t have BPD, then what did she have? She was taking medication. She took his video about BPD personally and that’s when she launched the malicious and vindictive attack on him. He stayed silent because he didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but it’s gone too far and he has to defend himself. - He heard nothing from the FBI. The only thing he head from the police is that people online are crazy. They were professional until they went on a livestream. That’s so weird to go on a livestream and imply he’s guilty with no proof. - Someone tried to SWAT them. Allegedly it’s because Hansen paid someone to dox them. That’s according to Chris’ former Facebook page Vince took over. Vince probably knows a lot of dirt on Hansen, so if you want dirt you should go to Vince. This is why you don’t burn bridges when you’re running a corrupt investigation because you’ll wind up getting what you give. When you go after someone who is innocent and tell the world they’re guilty it’s going to come back to bite you in the butt. Sometimes what’s biting you in the butt is someone finally standing up for themselves and pointing out what a liar and fraud you are. Tells Hansen to stop being a con artist. [Hansen’s financial issues, went to jail]

email

- Reads an email from someone who apologizes for being unfairly biased toward him. They say they didn’t know how to contact him without buying the perk on his channel. He says he does that to filter out trolls. They say they were biased because they were assaulted in the past. He says that happens to him a lot, people compare him to their ex who did bad things to them. He’s not like their ex because they probably broke up with their ex for being a creep, but he breaks up with people for being a creep. [Locked in the garage story, door frame story] - This person says they can’t find a single thing Greg did wrong. He says he could have been more gentle with rejecting people, but he doesn’t let people down easy. - They say Kai was the real victim, everyone was consenting adults. Greg agrees and clarifies Shiloh wasn’t technically an adult at 17 1/2, but was legal. [Kai wanted to be Sarah’s friend, Sarah pressured him.] Greg says it was like trickery on his part because he would kiss Kai, then pull Sarah over. He and Sarah did that to Kai. Person says it’s probably harder on Kai since he’s trans and has dysphoria. Greg says a lot of dysphoria, Kai talks about slicing off his boobs all the time. - Person says people probably believe Hansen because he’s famous, but he’s not professional and a fraud. Greg agrees and says Hansen is creepy. [Chris’ wife left him] - Person says they are glad Greg told Tobuscus to speak up. Greg says when Tobuscus spoke up everyone embraced but, but Greg is a different case. He doesn’t expect to be embraced. People want to love Tobuscus, but Greg is hated. The difference is Greg calls people “fucking asshole morons” and Tobuscus doesn’t. People run on emotions, not mentally, so they lash out at him because he hurt their feelings. People are morons and he’s not going to suck everyone D’s because he wants their approval. That’s the attribute of an honest person, you can’t say what everyone wants to hear. If they do they’re lying. Says there was a guy who lied about people’s stocks always going up and now he’s jail. Never trust someone who pretends to be perfect. Greg says he has admitted his many faults. - This person says they were a Patreon before everything went down and apologizes. Greg says because he wasn’t saying anything people thought he was guilty. Even though it should be innocent until proven guilty. Karma will come around for them. - He says deep fakes aren’t 100% there yet and you can see blurs on the necks. He thinks in the year 2100 the concept of reality won’t exist because everything will be so easily deep faked on camera. No one will know what’s real. [Saw screenshots of people threatening to deep fake him.] He says he’s seen fake screen shots of his twitter. They’re just hurting their case. He doesn’t care because he’s innocent either way. [Sarah apologized for r-a-p-e] This is the reason this has been going on for months and months. People have jack shit. Says this is what happens when you pin your career on a lie, Hansen. Now you have to pay the price when your house of cards falls apart. This is Hansen’s life now until he takes responsibility. Hansen is going after someone innocent pretending to be a hero. White knights always end up villains. 

[zellabell19-blog]

Anime Genre Legacy Challenge

I decided to try and create a legacy challenge. I will probably be attempting it soon and recording my progress, so if you’d be interested in following my story please do! I’ll break the rest of it down under the cut.

Like every legacy challenge, original legacy rules apply. Don’t use cheats that give you an unfair advantage, start with normal lifespan, choose your rules, etc. I would go into it more but I don’t want to make this longer than it’s already going to be. 

With some generations, I also added a second alternative genre or a “harder” version of that generation. The main idea is that I wanted to provide as many different options as possible for people. You can mix them up as you please and play which ever option you want to. 

Generation One: Slice of Life

You just started your life and you’re trying to get things started for yourself.

This would play out like a regular legacy challenge. You’re trying to get your sim and their family established so really anything goes for this generation.

Want something harder?

Generation One: Dystopia/Apocalyptic

After the great war, the world’s super powers destroyed themselves and the world around them. You are one of the lucky survivors and need to rebuild a life for yourself.

Start off on a lot with nothing on it and with no simoleons (you can cheat this if you need to).

You can only live off the land and can only make money through collectibles or crafted items. There isn’t a society anymore so there are no jobs at this point.

Your goal is stability; get a roof over your head and insure your friends and family will be safe and taken care of.

Generation Two: Sci-fi 

You’ve always had an interest in everything space and science related. As such, you’ve always wanted to get to space and create many inventions.

Recommended trait: Genius

Build a rocket and make it to space (max out rocket science skill if you want to).

Become good friends with at least one alien

Join the scientist career and reach the top.

Create at least one of every invention in the scientist career

Want an alternate genre?

Generation Two: Game/Gaming

You’re somewhat of an awkward shut in but love games and surround your life with them.

Recommended trait: Geek

Go to every geek con event.

Only talk to people you meet online or at the geek con because you’re too awkward to socialize with people otherwise.

Max out the gaming skill

Join the tech guru career and choose the eSport gamer branch.

Gain at least 10,000 followers from livestreaming through console and/or pc gaming.

Generation Three: Action

You’ve always been interested in the thrills of life and crave danger and action. However, you love those close to you and would do anything for them.

Have the outgoing trait.

Have more than one good friend and maintain those relationships.

You love your friends and try to go out to every event they invite you to. No matter how you’re feeling, you hardly ever refuse.

Join the secret agent career track (you can choose either branch you want).

Want an alternate genre?

Generation Three: Sports

Your life revolves around your favorite sport. It’s all you think of and you always want to get better at it. You spend every waking moment possible to improve your skills.

Have the active trait.

Make a best friend either during childhood or high school. This is your best teammate who loves your sport as much as you.

Any free time you have, you spend practicing your sport. You would rather spend your time practicing than working on extra credit and projects from school. You feel homework is enough.

Join the athletic career when becoming an adult and choose the professional athlete branch.

Generation Four: Music/Art

You want to follow your passion more than anything else in life and that passion as always been art and/or music.

Have either music lover or art lover trait.

Max out singing skill and at least one instrument or max out the painting skill.

Have either the Painter Extraordinaire aspiration or the Musical Genius aspiration and max out that aspiration.

Join the painting career or musician career.

Have a low relationship with your children and spouse because you focus all your time on your passion.

Want an alternate genre?

Generation Four: Fantasy/Vampire

You have always had a fascination with the supernatural and anything that doesn’t follow with the mundane.

Research into the vampire lore and become a vampire as soon as possible.

Recommended aspiration: Master Vampire

Buy the powers that give you supernatural abilities when they become available to you.

Generation Five: Kids

You love your children and have always been in touch with your inner child.

Max out your childhood aspiration.

Recommended aspiration: Super Parent

Have the childish trait.

Have kids as soon as possible.

Become a stay at home parent.

Have more than one kid.

Have a strong relationship with your children and help out with school work and projects when you can.

Generation Six: Romance

You’ve always wanted to find your one true love and have your “happily every after”.

Have the soulmate aspiration.

Have the romantic trait.

Date only one person and marry that person.

Go on dates with your spouse every week.

Always have a close relationship with your spouse because your love for them is so strong.

Grow old with your spouse. If your spouse ever dies before you, you will become severely depressed and never leave the house. Even if this happens as elders.

Want an alternate genre?

Generation Six: Harem/Reverse Harem

You feel you need to do down many different paths and have different experiences before you find your “true” path.

Must have the Serial Romantic aspiration.

Have at least four different partners before settling down.

The last sim you date is your “true route” so this will end up being who you marry.

Never stay with one career because you feel that you still need different experiences and that this isn’t the “right path”. When presented to choose a branch in a career is when you would change careers or before that point.

Generation Seven: Josei/Seinen

You’ve always felt that you related more with people older than you and you have always felt more mature than those your age. However, you’ve always had a problem with your jealousy that you feel holds you back. You resent this part of you.

Must have the jealous trait.

Recommended aspiration: Renaissance Sim 

Always have a friend who is older than you because you can relate with them better.

Play with the doctor set as a child often because you spend a lot of time honing your skills rather than playing with kids your age.

Join the doctor career when you’re an adult because of your childhood interests.

Marry someone who is older than you.

Want something harder?

Generation Seven: Drama/Angst

You try to live life to the fullest but always experience some hardships. You try your hardest to make the best of sad situations but you’re not sure how much you will be able to take in the future.

Make a childhood friend and fall in love with them.

Marry your childhood friend and have children with them.

Eventually learn that your childhood friend has a serious terminal illness and dies after your second or third child.

Eventually learn that one of your children has the same terminal illness and dies before adulthood.

Become severely depressed and blame yourself then move out to leave remaining child/children to raise themselves.

Generation Eight: Police/Psychological

You don’t really trust anyone and have always relied on yourself.

Have the loner trait.

Join the detective career or criminal career and place all your focus on your career.

Get married to someone but never have a higher romantic relationship level than a friendship level.

Have only one kid because you don’t have the time to worry about having another child.

Get divorced because you focus on your career so much your spouse gets angry. Never remarry after this.

Don’t ever have a close relationship with your child and only provide bare necessities for them.

Generation Nine: Comedy

You want your life to be full of fun and laughter. Your favorite thing in life is making others laugh and enjoy themselves.

Have the goofball trait.

Have social butterfly aspiration as a child.

Have the Jokester aspiration when you become a teenager.

Join the entertainment career and choose the comedian branch.

Max out the comedy and charisma skill.

Get pregnant or adopt one child but never get married.

Have a close relationship with your child/children. You want their life to be as happy as possible.

Generation Ten: Historical

You’ve always been curious about your family’s history and wonder what stories they can tell.

Have the bookworm trait.

Max out writing skill.

Visit your founder’s gravestone and as many other generations’ gravestones as possible.

Eventually write an autobiography about your family’s legacy and the stories of each of their lives.

I hope that this challenge looks interesting enough to try out! I’m sure I will be updating it as later expansions and packs come out. Especially if supernatural packs come out and stuff like that. 

If you have any recommendations or feedback on anything, please let me know! I would love to make this more enjoyable in any way that I can. I would also love to see any pictures or stories that come out of this. Thank you so much for taking the time to read through this!

Happy simming!

[charly-ra]

B2B Video Marketing on LinkedIn: How to Embrace Video in Your Content Strategy

Does your B2B marketing program include LinkedIn video marketing?

If it doesn’t, it should.

LinkedIn video content generates five times the engagement as image or text-based content and Live video on LinkedIn generates a whopping 24x more engagement.

87% of LinkedIn video marketers say it’s been an effective channel for them.

41% of marketers think video is THE best content format for building relationships that generate leads. Marketers prefer video for their lead generation goals over any other content format.

But maybe you knew all that already. It’s no secret that video works, or that social media is one of the best places to use it. But maybe you’re still not totally committed to video as a medium for your B2B content strategy.

Is it maybe… perhaps… because you’d just rather not appear on screen?

If it is, you’re not alone. “Fear or hesitancy to be on camera is still the #1 barrier to video use,” according to recent research from Vidyard. 36% of their study’s participants said they were avoiding video because of hesitancy about being on camera.

This is a real issue, whether it’s a logical one or not. But if 2020 has been good for anything, it’s been good for getting us all used to being on camera – on live video. So now that you’ve got a couple hundred Zoom meetings under your belt, hopefully you’re no longer among those hesitant 36%.

If you are still on the fence, consider this: What would it mean to get 5x (much less 24x) more engagement from your content – to get that much more of a response from your target audience?

With engagement levels like that, you might even be able to consider creating less content. You might be able to generate enough MQLs and SQLs to get the raise you want, and you might still have enough time in Q4 to land a nice year-end bonus… if you get started now.

So given all that, the question isn’t if you should be doing Linkedin video marketing. It is how you should be doing Linkedin video marketing.

There are four ways to use video on LinkedIn:

LinkedIn Video Ads

Linkedin Native video

Embedded video posts

Live video

Let’s dive into each of them.

LinkedIn Video Ads

These, of course, are paid ads that run on LinkedIn or the LinkedIn Audience Network. They can be used for brand awareness on LinkedIn, used in combination with LinkedIn’s pre-filled forms for lead generation, or used to drive traffic to a site or landing page, either to do lead generation on a page you control or to send prospects to a product page or anywhere else you’d like.

The current specifications for LinkedIn video ads are here. One of the most important specs on that page is that LinkedIn ads can be up to 30 minutes long, though LinkedIn will tell you that the “most successful video ads are less than 15 seconds long”.

It’s highly recommended for video ads to:

Be short.

Use captions. About 80% of videos on LinkedIn are watched with the sound off, so having text to guide the viewer through content is paramount.

Be accessible on a small screen. According to LinkedIn, 57% of their B2B content is consumed on mobile. So keep the visual simple and consider increasing the text size of the captions.

Maximize the first three seconds of the video.

Include a call to action.

Here are some ideas for great LinkedIn video ads to get you started:

Brief customer stories or testimonials. These can be used to engage your existing audiences, or to warm up cold audiences for lead generation ads later on.

“Day in the life” style videos of employees for recruiting.

Project or process videos showing your team and company at work doing what they do best.

Mission statement style videos, either from your CEO or from a mix of the C-Suite and front-line employees.

Product videos.

For some examples of great LinkedIn ads, see our blog post, B2B Advertising: 20 Examples of Terrific B2B Social Media Ads.

Demand generation marketers can make use of LinkedIn video ads to drive registrations for online or offline events, or to build excitement for a product launch, or simply urge business buyers to explore a better way to optimize their work.

If you want to add some sophistication to your campaign, also consider pairing LinkedIn video ads with LinkedIn Conversation ads. Videos are especially good for eliciting responses, so the two ads formats are complementary.

LinkedIn Native Videos

This is the format many B2B marketers will spend most of their resources on. Native videos on LinkedIn do extremely well and are familiar enough to adapt for day to day content production.

But here are some things to consider for that production:

Short videos work best on LinkedIn. In fact, you can’t post a native video that’s longer than 10 minutes. Even three minutes is now considered a “long” video; one minute or less often performs better.

As with ads, always use captions. Or, as LinkedIn suggests, “design for sound off but delight with sound on.”

Limit those brand introduction animations. The first three seconds of any video are critical. Don’t bore viewers with a brand intro that’s more than a second or so.

Professionalism rules on LinkedIn, but good video also needs to humanize. Some LinkedIn video authorities, like Allen Gannett, encourage video producers to prioritize being accessible and relatable over being overly professional. Remember the old rule in B2B: People do business with people.

Both personal profiles and company pages can publish native videos. For a deep dive on everything you can do with native videos, see LinkedIn’s on-demand webinar, [Lights, camera, action] How to wow your audience with video on LinkedIn. It’s one of the best, most data-driven, detailed explanations of LinkedIn video we’ve come across. It’s worth watching twice.

One of the webinar’s particular strengths is talking about how to repurpose video assets. This is key for those of you who are cool on video because of the cost and the time and resource investment required to produce good video.

There’s good reason to be cautious about that investment, but if you can create even one or two large video assets, then break them down into smaller chunks of video content, you can produce an enormous amount of video cost-effectively. One brand was able to take a one-hour recorded event and break it into over 40 different video excerpts, which is nearly half a year’s worth of video content.

LinkedIn Embedded Video Posts – and why you might not want to use them

You can republish videos from other platforms, like Facebook and YouTube into your LinkedIn feed. This is a way to distribute your company’s video content, but it’s not ideal.

For starters, LinkedIn’s algorithm strongly prefers native video. But even more importantly, using video from other platforms may result in low engagement rates, simply because the content is not platform-specific.

LinkedIn, as you probably know, is a unique social media platform. It’s not Facebook. It’s not Twitter. It’s not YouTube. It has unique social norms and content preferences. And so while it might be more efficient to create video assets and then just share them across every platform, the best social media pros discourage this. The social media platforms have evolved so much (and so much in just the last year) that any content that isn’t expressly designed for each platform may well fall flat. This may be part of why engagement rates on social are dropping… the old tactic of “publish everywhere” is working less and less well all the time.

Convince and Convert did a podcast recently about this shift to platform-centric content and about LinkedIn video in particular with Allen Gannett, author of The Creative Curve and founder of TrackMaven. Gannett has earned global recognition for his own LinkedIn videos, which are one-minute interviews with famous people.

Gannett’s episode on Convince and Convert goes into detail about how he approaches LinkedIn video, but also about how he schedules and plans it (hint: consistency is key). It’s a very good case study in how one marketer has chosen to commit to a platform and just do it really well, rather than trying to be everywhere at once. LinkedIn video can deliver enough returns to be worth that kind of investment.

LinkedIn Live

LinkedIn Live is still in beta, but the early results from marketers who are using it are too compelling to ignore. Case in point: LinkedIn Lives get 24 times more engagement than other content formats on the platform.

If your company has a strong LinkedIn presence and is already published quality video on the platform regularly, you might be able to get in early by applying for the beta program. Here’s the application page.

Some key things to notice on the application page:

LinkedIn “reviews applications and prioritizes approvals based on a specific set of selection criteria, such as:

– Video and overall content creation history – Audience size and engagement history – Member or Page account has been in good standing – Two Factor Authentication (2FA) enabled in account settings

You’ll need a third-party tool to Livestream to LinkedIn.

Current tools to do this are:

Socialive

Restream.io

Wirecast

Switcher Studio(iOS mobile only)

Wowza Cloud

StreamYard

Brandlive

Easy Live

Vimeo – Enterprise and Premium

Live U

That tool list is going to change over time, so see LinkedIn’s company page about which tools work for live streaming.

Review LinkedIn’s guidelines and best practices specifically for streaming content.

Some of these guidelines may surprise some marketers. Here’s what the guidelines were, verbatim, as of publication:

No selling or promotional streams.

No pre-recorded content. All streams should be live and happening in real time, or you may confuse members and potentially betray their trust.

No live streams shorter than 10 to 15 minutes because there won’t be enough time for the audience to increase and interact. You can share shorter videos from your homepage.

No meta streams. Avoid talking about how to use LinkedIn on LinkedIn.

Avoid sponsor logos that dominate the video. If you must use sponsor graphics, keep them small.

No long “starting soon” screens. Don’t keep your audience waiting for more than one or two minutes.

No unprofessional streams. All live content is publicly visible and should be appropriate for a LinkedIn audience.

The three biggest surprises there are

No pre-recorded streams.

No selling or promotional streams.

No talking about how to use LinkedIn on Linkedin.

If you want to get approved for the beta, also make sure your profile is publicly viewable, especially the following sections: Articles & Activity, Current Experience, and Education.

For further reading, the LinkedIn Live best practices guide is here. They also have a broadcast producer’s guide that covers the technical nuts and bolts of making the tech for LinkedIn Lives work.

LinkedIn Video marketing in 2020 and beyond

So that’s the landscape of LinkedIn B2B video marketing right now. B2B marketers have several different formats to work with between native videos and Lives, plus a great way to promote videos with video ads.

Those formats also allow for two big themes in video marketing right now: Long form and short form video. As you craft your editorial strategy for this medium, those two “containers” (long form and short form) should be treated carefully. What messaging fits into 15 seconds? What other topics require the 20 minute minimum of a LinkedIn live?

Fortunately, there’s plenty of time and creative opportunity to figure it all out.

from https://bit.ly/31vlICX

[jobsearchtips02]

SpaceX simply introduced a full-size Starship rocket model numerous feet above Texas

The SN5 Starship design lifts off for a “hop” test, August 4, 2020, thanks to the LabPadre live eat YouTube.

LabPadre.

SpaceX is developing a totally reusable rocket system called Starship-Super Heavy in Boca Chica, Texas.

The latest Starship model, called SN5, performed a speculative “ hop” hundreds of feet into the air on Tuesday.

Go to Company Insider’s homepage for more stories

SPadre.com, which has actually an electronic camera trained on SpaceX’s launch site from about 6 miles away on South Padre Island, recorded the entire launch from start-to-finish with a 24- hour live feed on YouTube In the background audio of a livestream hosted by NASASpaceFlight.com(which captured yet another view with a various video camera and angle), audible cheers might be heard coming from on-site SpaceX staff members and professionals.

The clip below programs a profile of the entire flight from SPadre‘s feed.

In the movie, the model takes off utilizing a single Raptor rocket engine, translates throughout the launch website, deploys a set of short landing legs, and touches down on a concrete pad.

Musk later on tweeted that Starship’s next set of landing legs “will be ~60%longer” and that a variation further down the line “will be much broader & taller” like the legs of a Falcon 9 rocket booster, “but efficient in landing on unimproved surfaces & auto-leveling”– simply put, optimized to landing on the moon or Mars.

LabPadre, which hosted a live feed of SpaceX’s launch site featuring multiple video camera views, likewise taped the flight.

If Starship and its Super Heavy rocket booster end up being totally reusable, Musk has actually said, the system may decrease the cost of launching anything to space by about 1,000- fold and enable hypersonic travel around Earth

However initially, SpaceX has to see if its core designs for Starship work.

Monday’s “hop” flight– Musk said ahead of the flight that SpaceX was targeting an altitude of 150 meters (492 feet)– represents the very first flight of any full-scale Starship hardware.

SpaceX had hoped to attempt a flight of SN5 on July 27, but Typhoon Hanna harmed an element that had actually to be fixed, Musk stated

Prototyping toward Mars

SpaceX’s serial no. 5 or SN5 model of its Starship rocket system goes through a fixed fire test with a connected Raptor engine on July 30, 2020, in Boca Chica, Texas.

Elon Musk/SpaceX by means of Twitter.

The above picture reveals the SN5 prototype from above throughout a test-firing of its engine on July 30.

SN5 is the most recent of several major Starship models that SpaceX has actually integrated in Texas. The previous variations have actually either folded throughout tests or, as held true on May 29, catastrophically exploded

Starship Mark 1, or MK1, sits on a stand in Boca Chica, Texas, in September2019 The vehicle’s hull was later breached during a pressure test that November.

SpaceX.

Each failure has actually taught SpaceX important lessons to notify design and material modifications– tweaks that Musk says are already being infiltrated SN6, SN7, and SN8 models, which remain in numerous phases of assembly within the company’s expanding and dynamic work yards in South Texas.

The steel vehicles do not have wing-like canards or nosecones attached, in case something fails in their earliest stages of screening, so they look more like flying fuel tanks or grain silos than rocket ships.

However, as last year’s test launch of an early Starship prototype called Starhopper showed, the flights of even experimental automobiles (shown above) can impress: On August 27, Starhopper skyrocketed to a similar height as SN5, translated across a launch site, and landed on a neighboring concrete pad.

SpaceX gotten a launch license from the FAA to send Starship prototypes on a “suborbital trajectory,” implying the speculative rocket ships could reach lots of miles above Earth prior to returning and landing. On July 23, SpaceX asked the FCC for authorization to communicate with models flying as high as 12.4 miles (20 kilometers) within the next seven months

” We’ll do numerous short hops to ravel launch process, then go high elevation with body flaps,” he tweeted on Tuesday.

SpaceX is likewise pursuing a launch license for major, orbital-class Starship-Super Heavy vehicles. Musk hopes Starship will introduce a freight mission to Mars in 2022, send a private crew around the moon in 2023, return NASA astronauts to the lunar surface area in 2024, and even begin sending people to Mars the exact same year.

This story has been updated with brand-new information.

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from Job Search Tips https://jobsearchtips.net/spacex-simply-introduced-a-full-size-starship-rocket-model-numerous-feet-above-texas/

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The Use and Abuse of Social Media in the Cath Lab

I learned something new recently. Did you know that the average person has five social media accounts and spends about an hour and 40 minutes browsing these counts every day, accounting for 28% of total time spent on the Internet? In Britain, the English are slightly less digitally obsessed, spending an hour and 20 minutes each day (courtesy of Dr. M. Chadi Alraies — see below).

Social media has become a ubiquitous part of our daily life and in particular, involves how we in cardiology and the cath lab exchange experiences, educate, discuss, notify, and create forums for information exchange. Just so we are on the same page, social media is defined as forms of electronic communication (such as websites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (such as videos) (Table 1). If you have a modern cell phone, you have access to social media and, whether we like it or not, are exposed to and influenced to various degrees by what we see on social media. At the American College of Cardiology (ACC) Annual Scientific Sessions in March 2019 in New Orleans, I was honored to be asked to participate in a debate on the pros and cons of social media. Dr. Martha Gulati, Chief of Cardiology, University of Arizona, Phoenix, Arizona, took the role of the proponent position on the benefits of social media. I took the role of a skeptic as to its value (although I am on Twitter @drmortkern and Facebook) (Figure 1).

The session had quite a lively discussion, bringing a wide disparity of views from both panelists and audience members. Although I am a relatively infrequent user of social media, I have a basic understanding and high curiosity, because my 30-something-year-old daughter has educated me to just above a beginner’s level. Having participated in the discussion and read a great article on the subject1, I thought this might be a good opportunity to share with our cath lab colleagues and others some of the important concepts and comments that highlighted the use and abuse of social media as it might apply to our workplace.

One of the best explanations of social media for those who are not familiar with it comes from an article by Drs Parwani, Choi, Lopez-Mattei, Raza, Chen, Narang, Michos, Erwin, Mamas, and Gulati, all members of the ACC interest group focused on social media and its opportunities in cardiovascular medicine. Their paper1 clearly summarizes the basics of social media, and its uses in education and advancement for the individual cardiologist and overall research (Figure 2). Social media is useful in creating new cardiovascular networks and communities. It is applicable for journals and conferences to notify users about recent events or publications. It has the capability for promotion of cardiovascular health initiatives. At the end of the article, Parwani et al also list suggestions for social media best practices.

The Pros of Social Media

At the 2017 Cardiovascular Research Technologies (CRT) meeting in Washington, D.C., Dr. M. Chadi Alraies, MedStar Washington Hospital Center, Washington, D.C., and Dr. Sheila Sahni, David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA, Los Angeles, California, presented and later published2probably the most comprehensive description of social media, describing its importance in medicine, and use in learning, educating, promoting work, and for personal branding and networking (Figure 3, Table 2).

Differences Among Social Media Platforms

Numerous social media platforms are available to the individual such as Doximity, Snapchat, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, etc. As social media users, we do not need to be conversant in all, but we should be aware that many of our professional societies, colleagues, and fellow team members will be a participant in at least one or more of these platforms. While I may be dating myself as an outmoded old guy, I use Twitter, as do many of my professional colleagues, along with a couple other modalities (e.g., Facebook and Instagram) to keep appraised of different cath lab techniques, publications, meetings, and opinions. Some media are better than others at graphic display (Instagram), notifications (Twitter, Facebook), or conversations (Twitter, Facebook) [Note: These are my own assessments. Others may disagree. MK].

Using social media helps learners by highlighting journal activities, society and organizational meetings, and by transmitting opinions from experts in the field. Social media often involves peer-to-peer and colleague collaboration and discussions. Many of our most prestigious scientific journals have and continue to make their content known through these media.

Twitter as a Search Engine and for Remote Meeting Engagement

Something shown to me by Drs. Alraies and Sahni was that Twitter can function as a search engine to look up particular topics of interest such as drug-eluting stents or left atrial closure, and allow you to see instant results. Social media has the ability to enhance participation in scientific meetings, either in person or remotely, through polling and livestreaming. The use of social media at such meetings can engage colleagues in debate or support public health care messages. Providing scientific meeting updates, updates, learning, and engagement at these meetings are just some of the benefits of the social media platforms. It is now easy to conduct online polls to get immediate feedback from peers and colleagues interested in a controversial topic. Opinions can be quickly solicited via social media by using methods such as Twitter polls to see current thought on a critical subject, presentation, or procedure.

Social Media Use for Patient Education

In some regions of the world, general clubs and chats on cardiovascular disease topics have become useful for educating both patients and care providers. Platforms such as Facebook Live have been used in academic practice and discussions. Twitter and other similar platforms have been able to expedite information exchange. Of course, any time patient information is discussed online, we must be aware of the HIPAA rules protecting our patients’ confidentiality.

Downsides of Social Media

When I was asked to discuss the pros and cons during the ACC panel session, I listed them in an old-fashioned format, with a pen and paper, a device that rarely runs out of battery, never needs to be recharged, is relatively inexpensive, and is always available, unlike some of her more modern media platforms. In my own handwriting, I listed the following 8 things I consider critical to the discussion of social media (Figure 4):

Social media is here (whether I like it or not, and I think I do).

It has its limitations as a communication tool, but it can reach huge audiences.

Its major functions appear to be marketing and notifications. It is used to share opinions and (presumed) facts.

(Anyone can be a) media expert? No qualifications needed to be a Twitter maven.

Social media posts are not peer reviewed, are not vetted science (and may be inaccurate).

Discourse may not advance science (or may be frankly rude).

Social media will not get you grants.

Social media will not advance your scientific career goals (but will advance your visibility on Twitter; see #4).

My major concern about using social media is that at times, it is a true waste of time. Moreover, the information exchange can become unreliable, personal, or unhinged. In presenting clinical material, personal or patient information may be overlooked. We should adhere to the rules of privacy and protected health care information law. However, there are no ways to enforce these or any other rules on the Internet. As a consequence, it is not rare for one to witness the dark side of social media, presenting as biased, untrue, unfair, and/or unvetted diatribes substituting as facts, making the platform substance propaganda, rather than news.

My Suggested Rules and Best Practices for Social Media

Do not violate HIPAA or the General Data Protection rules of the European Union.

Use common sense and avoid being rude. Remember your tweet is a permanent record of your thought and will stay with you wherever you go.

Comment when you think it adds to conversation or to support a position, but keep it professional. Don’t say something you wouldn’t want to see printed on the front page of The New York Times.

Don’t spend too much time when you have real things to do.

What Are # and @ Used For?

For those new users, it is confusing to be in the dark about the symbology of the social media world.  For a bit of clarity, here are what the # and the @ mean if you don’t already know. A hashtag (#) is a word or phrase preceded by a hash sign (#), used on social media websites and applications, especially Twitter, to identify messages on a specific topic that can then be searched. Whenever a user adds a hashtag to their posting, that word and the post are able to be indexed by the social network and become searchable/discoverable by other users. A hashtag archive is consequently collected into a single stream under the same hashtag. For example, adding or searching for the hashtag #RadialFirst allows users to find all the posts that have been tagged using that hashtag and people (@drmortkern) who are interested in or who have participated in this topic. The @ sign is used to call out usernames in tweets. People will use your @username to mention you in tweets, send you a message, or link to your profile. A username is how you are identified on Twitter, and is always preceded immediately by the @ symbol (Figure 5).

The Bottom Line

Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms have changed the way we see our world. Social media will be the way we communicate, educate, notify, and share our views across wide groups of users, particularly in the cardiovascular space. Corporate, university, business, and personal branding provides the ability to display your profile, contact information, and likes/dislikes, as well as promote your research, clinical expertise, practice and institutional clinical programs of special note.

I hope this short review on social media is helpful. I thank Dr. Alraies and Dr. Sahni for sharing their CRT presentation with me. Finally, be safe and have some fun out there in the Twittersphere. 

Disclosures: Dr. Morton Kern reports he is a consultant for Abiomed, Abbott Vascular, Philips Volcano, ACIST Medical, Opsens Inc., and Heartflow Inc.

[siliconwebx]

11 Online Places To Learn WordPress Inside And Out (Paid And Free Options)

WordPress runs over 30% of internet, and it shows no sign of slowing. People list it as a job skill on resumes, WordPress Professional is now a job listing, and it’s used by the technical and non-technical to have a quality online presence. Blogs, news sites, ecommerce stores, portfolios, even full web apps are using WordPress these days. Whether you are looking to learn WordPress for the very first time, or if you’re a veteran who wants some refresher WordPress training, we’ve curated some of the top WordPress classes and resources that you can use to hit the ground running.

1. Lynda (LinkedIn Learning)

Lynda.com (now LinkedIn Learning) is one of the best online learning spots around, and that’s no different when it comes to how to learn WordPress. While there are many courses on the platform by wonderful teachers, the ones by Morten Rand-Hendriksen are some of the top. He takes you step-by-step through his WordPress classes, and by the end, you will have a real grasp on what the CMS is capable of. Morten was involved heavily in the creation of the new WordPress editor released on 5.0, so you know he knows his stuff.

In terms of teaching style, Morten is not one of the rapid-fire talking heads. Instead he breaks things down to their constituent pieces and takes advantage of the platform to make sure you comprehend the material. And if you never thought about WP child themes like playing with Legos, you will after this.

Whether you’re just beginning or coming to WP with a lot of background, Lynda/LinkedIn Learning has some of the best tutorials around. While it is a subscription service, you can work with a free trial, and many public libraries have a subscription that patrons can use on-site. So that eliminates the cost for you, which may be the biggest barrier for some.

Price: $29.95 per month | More Information

2. Team Treehouse

Team Treehouse offers WordPress classes online like many others, but where they differ is that they designed their platform to accomodate in-sync coding and interaction. They want you to be as hands-on as possible, which happens less often than it should with online courses. But if you want to learn WordPress, you need to get your hands dirty, figuratively speaking.

In general, Treehouse’s WP courses are broken down into tracks, and each of them is labeled as either beginner, intermediate, expert, or so on. You get quizzes to make sure you comprehend the material, and they have apps that you can use that are fully functional for on-the-go learning. This is top-tier WordPress training, and their instructors are amazing. Zac Gordon, specifically, has made a name for himself in WordPress training circles, and he does not disappoint here, either. You can easily grasp what he’s talking about because he presents the topics and individual lessons logically and straigthforward.

The UI is also spiffy, and it’s hard to get lost. The community forums are incredibly helpful, and if you have a question about a lesson, either the student or instructor will respond to help. It’s pretty useful.

Price: $25 – $49 per month | More Information

3. WPBeginner

As their name says, if you’re a WP beginner, the content here is for you. They cover topics that almost everyone can benefit from, but they cater to simple and easily implemented solutions that don’t require a lot of code. So if you Google how do I do this and that with WordPress, one of the results will probably be a plugin that WPBeginner found that can do the job well…for beginners.

Veteran WP users may not get as much out of this resource, but that’s okay. They’re not the target demo. The blog is totally free, and they offer videos, guides, regular content with lots of links, and tons of resources. The only real catch is that their video content is behind a members wall. You don’t have to pay, only give them your email address. Which seems fair, given the quality of the tools you can use to learn WordPress with.

Price: FREE | More Information

4. WP Apprentice

WP Apprentice can really take you from Zero to Hero in no time flat. If you’re not technical, no worries. They have a quick-start course you can access for free, essentials, and various courses that go down as deep as SEO marketing and ecommerce website blueprints. WP Apprentice wants you to succeed.

This is absolutely not an advanced resource to learn WordPress. It is, however, a great option for people who want to know what in the world WordPress is and does without a lot of jargon or extraneous information. The WordPress classes can get into more intermediate topics like theme mechanics and how they work under the hood, but you’re not generally going to be diving into the Core files and editing PHP. Most of the resources deal with the WP software that you see and walks you through it in such a way that you can even be comfortable taking notes without having to pause the video over and over again.

Price: Free intro course, then from $29 and up | More Information

5. WP101

Just like a 101 course at a university, WP 101 offers classes for you to take that break down the fundamentals of the platform so that you can be sure that you are learning WordPress in exactly the right way. As a premium service, the WP 101 plan is affordably priced: just $49 per year. In fact, this is a resource that developers and designers could use to send their clients to. Most people have handed off sites to clients who call with very basic questions because they’ve never used the platform before. This is ideal for people who need the basics in WordPress training.

They’re not the slowest videos, either. They are paced well, but are easy to understand. In fact, they have a plugin available so that you can send the videos to your clients through your own subscription. Even the intermediate courses are over topics like RSS and permalink functionality, so you won’t learn how to make WordPress sites here, but you will absolutely learn how to use them from the backend.

If you’re coming from a platform like Blogger or hosted website service and are a bit overwhelmed by what WP has to offer, head over to WP 101. You will be creating content in no time.

Price: $49 per year. | More Information

6. WordPress.tv

WordCamps are amazing conferences put on by Automattic and the WordPress community. Hundreds of talks and lessons are given each year across the world, and they’re all recorded. And made available for you here. From WordCamp Europe, WCUS, or the Camp in a small down halfway across the globe, you can learn from the best and brightest WordPress Professionals just like you were in the room with them. Somtimes, there are even livestreams of the events on WordPress.tv where you can tune in and see the interaction as it happens. It’s not quite like being there, but it’s the next best thing.

Also, because each and every conference session is recorded and posted, it’s not nearly as big a deal to pick which panel to attend when you are at a WordCamp. Whatever rooms you miss are going to be posted up soon, so you won’t miss out on anything at all. Ever.

The content at WordCamps vary from place to place, but generally there are design tracks, beginner tracks, advanced development tracks, business tracks…lots of things. So everyone can find something for their skill level here.

Price: FREE | More Information

7. iThemes Training

You probably know iThemes because of their awesome plugins. iThemes Security and BackupBuddy, specifically. They also provide WordPress training for folks, and their webinars knock it out of the park. And by it, we mean your WordPress knowledge. If you’re a designer, they have stuff for you. If you’re a developer, you’re in luck. Are you a marketer and need SEO help? They have you covered there, too.

The webinars are interactive and live, which differs from platforms like LinkedIn Learning and Treehouse. Instead of recorded lessons and support forums, you get direct feedback from the instructors and presenters right then and there. That’s what makes the iThemes Training so special. Now, on the other hand, you might get frustrated if you watch of the sessions that’s recorded at a later date because the presenter will be interacting iwth folks through the live chat, which you also have to follow. It’s included, thankfully.

That nitpick aside, the iThemes Training folks know their stuff and strive to make sure the content they’re putting out is top-tier. Oh, and did we mention they’re free? Well, they’re all free. Just sign up and show up. Easy peasey.

Price: Free | More Information

8. WP Sessions

WP Sessions updates their content on a monthly basis, and their content tends to be skewed more toward the intermediate developer than total beginner. How to create your first plugin and using WP-CLI and the command line are not topics that you tackle with your first installation, but they are topics that you will want to learn as you dive deeper into the WordPress platform. The content that comes monthly feels a lot like conference presentations, and some of the most beneficial professional development comes from that kind of panel. For just $15 per month, you can access their archives and check out what’s constantly being added.

Price: $15 per month | More Information

9) WP the Podcast

Podcasts are awesome. WordPress is awesome. That means that WP the Podcast has to be awesome, too. Well, outside of that terrible logic that just doesn’t work, WP the Podcast really is a great resource to learn WordPress or to just brush up on particular topics. Whether you sit and listen actively or let it play while you do housework, drive, or exercise, you will pick up lots of nuggets as you hear the speakers discuss the plugins they love, the pitfalls they’ve fallen into over the years, or whatever else may be worth mentioning.

The episodes come out regularly and the hosts, David Blackmon and Tim Strifler, know their stuff when it comes to WordPress. They’ve worked in the field long enough that we all probably have something we could learn from them. So hit the subscribe button and get those headphones on.

Price: FREE | More information

10) Udemy

Udemy has a lot of WordPress content. This platform works a lot like Lynda or Treehouse, except that anyone can create their own course here. While that can be dangerous to an extent, the reviews tend to keep the true gems up top so we can all see them shine. If you’re a beginner, there are tons of courses for you. Same for advanced developers wanting to get that extra bit of performance out of their code. And as WordPress updates, most teachers update their courses, too. You can check the reviews to see which instructors do this so you know where to spend your money.

The platform itself is intuitive, and you won’t feel overwhelmed as you watch the course material. And while the courses may seem expensive at times, Udemy often runs sales that are up to 70-90% off the entire site. I have personally snagged courses that retail for hundreds of dollars for a fiver. That means that you won’t be out a lot if you find that the teacher isn’t your style. While the open platform can be scary to invest in, the content that you can find on Udemy is so wide-ranging that it’s worth looking through to see if there’s something you can learn. Because there is. The sheer number of WordPress classes here prove that.

Price: varies course to course | More Information

11. Smashing Magazine

I tend to think of Smashing Magazine as The Atlantic of the tech space. The articles are thought-provoking, and the editorial quality is through-the-roof. They run their own conference, host a job board, and put out premium and free content that breaks down the topic better than some instructors I had in college. Their WordPress content is some of their best work, if you ask me. But I may be biased, working in WordPress and all.

Sometimes they post a think-piece on what we can learn from a snafu that happened during Gutenberg development. While others, they give a step-by-step breakdown of how to use the WP-REST API to run the backend of your mobile app. It can vary day to day, but their WordPress training is some of the most consistent out there. Rarely does it rehash content that you’ve seen elsewhere, and the best part is that it’s all free. Smashing does offer books and ebooks on wider topics than WordPress than can be applied to the platform, however (UX, web design in general, digital adaptation, etc.), and they’re all premium products.

Additionally, their non-WP content is often WordPress-adjacent because of how closely it’s tied to either PHP development or various JavaScript libraries that we’re using each and every day as WordPress grows and expands. As a free resource to learn WordPress, Smashing Magazine might be the last on our list, but it is certainly not at the bottom.

Price: FREE with premium publications | More Information

Conclusion? Learn WordPress Any Way You Want!

Do you prefer free blogs? You can learn WordPress that way. Like step-by-step instruction? There are WordPress classes with that. Want to talk with your teacher live? Yep, once again, there’s WordPress training where you can do just that. And it’s all available, free or paid, just depending on where you look. So whether you’re new to WordPress or completely invested and just need a few refreshers, there is something out there for you. Now, get to clicking on those links above, sample what you can, and find out which ones of these work the best for you. And good luck!

How did you learn WordPress? What can you share about your process?

Article thumbnail image by 0beron / shutterstock.com

The post 11 Online Places To Learn WordPress Inside And Out (Paid And Free Options) appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.

😉SiliconWebX | 🌐ElegantThemes

[cathrynstreich]

Sell Listings in Record Time Using Video and Social Media

What does it take to go from being the new REALTOR® in town to rock star selling success? Rocking your social media with video is a great option. It’s what Sue “Pinky” Benson did when she moved to Naples, Fla., three years ago. When she entered a market with 4,000 REALTORS®—who knew a lot more about Naples than she did—video seemed like her best option for making an impact. It took her two-and-a-half years to see the results of her decision, but her efforts have paid off handsomely.

Benson, a national speaker covering video and social media marketing, has been featured in NAR and other real estate magazines, like RE/MAX’s Above. She was also recognized inFlorida Realtor® magazine as a top real estate video rock star to follow.

After moving to Naples, she jumped off the social media cliff, figuring she’d either learn to fly on the way down or learn a lot from the experience. She flew, and she learned.

That flight began with her success with Facebook live streaming. She passionately believes other agents can have the same success—if they’re willing to learn and consistently show up and produce the right kind of video. What stops most agents isn’t the technical aspect of the video, she said. It’s a lack of confidence.

“We’re afraid of how we look—we think we have to lose 10 pounds before we get in front of a camera,” she said. “We don’t like the way that we sound—our voice is too high, too low, too squeaky—or we’re worried we might have an accent, or that we won’t look professional.”

Other people already know how we look and sound, and they’re okay with it, she explained. It’s the agent who has to learn to love themselves on video.

REALTORS® tell her “I might make a mistake.” She tells them, “We all make mistakes every day. Own it and move on.”

The biggest excuse she hears from other REALTORS® is, “I’m too busy.” “No, you’re not,” she said. “That’s the same reason people don’t go to the gym—it’s not important enough. When you see value in it, you’ll do it,” she told webinar attendees.

What do I videotape? You’d be surprised at what people want to see. What you do every day in your life might not seem like exciting content, but your followers like to know what you’re up to. Show the little parts of your life, like what you’re fixing for dinner or what life as a mom is like. It’s all about engaging with your audience—people get to know you and like you, and, then, when they’re ready to buy or sell, they’ll message you, “Hey, I want you to sell my house.”

“Stop posting three-bedroom, two-bath crap,” Benson said. “You don’t see your dentist posting, ‘Hey, I pulled four teeth today, I’m the Mac Daddy!’ Embrace who you are, what you do, and post about that. I know a guy, Zack, who’s a kite surfer, and that’s what he posts about. He attracts an audience that identifies with him.” Connecting with your buyers or sellers is much more fun if you have things in common.

Share fun facts. Benson loves to look up fun facts about a community, and her followers love to learn what she has to share.

“Ask the owner about fun facts about their house—maybe what was there before the house,” she said. “Then make short videos that showcase that fun fact.”

For instance, the wire cables on the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, a well-known bridge in Florida, are yellow to represent sunshine rays.

People will come back to your Facebook page or Instagram page because they’re curious, interested, and like to see what you’re doing every day. 

Showcase your community and local businesses. When buyers get in Benson’s car, they’ll ask things like, “What’s your favorite seafood restaurant?” or “Where’s a good dry cleaner?” That tells you what buyers want to know about the community. So, shoot a video about a stain your dry cleaner got out. The dry cleaner will love it and share it and show it off to their customers, who will then learn about you and what you do. Networking is a great way to generate new business.

Video is powerful. Video reaches a vast audience:

55 percent of people will watch a video online every day

59 percent of people will watch a video up to one minute of completion

20 percent of Facebook Videos are livestreamed

Viewers watch live videos eight times longer than on demand

Facebook has eight billion daily views and 100 million hours of video watched daily

Be authentic. Do you love golf? Shoot videos of you playing golf. Yes, you can pay to have a professional video created. Chances are you’ll love it. but it’s the day-to-day cell phone videos that capture people’s attention—it’s that authentic, in-the-moment look they like.

Business Pages vs. Personal Pages Do you follow your car salesman’s business page? No. No one does. That’s why business pages are graveyards. They don’t get you the engagement you want. Post your videos and photos and life on your personal page. If you want more, create a community page where you share community events and information about local businesses. That’s what your community wants to see and engage with. The more you post on your personal page and participate in online conversations, the more you’re going to bring people back.

Tips for Making an Engaging Video

Keep it short and simple. You can go longer if it’s essential, but in general, keep it short.

Good Lighting: Don’t wait until you start shooting to notice your scene is dark and poorly lit.

Audio is critical. People will tolerate lousy lighting or even poorly staged scenes as long as the sound is excellent. So, if you go out to do video in the community, and there’s music playing, ask the owner or person to turn it down until your interview with them is over.

Invest in a microphone. A good lavalier microphone is under $20 on Amazon.

Background: Pay attention to what’s happening in the background of your shot. Your viewers will! Make it interesting and engaging.

Caption your video with engaging text that tells the viewer what they’re looking at. You can go back and change it later if you don’t like it.

A good smile will make you feel better, and your audience loves to see happy people.

Say hello. Greet your viewers and thank them for watching.

Get straight to the point. Grab their eyeballs right from the beginning. Start with the good stuff; don’t build up to it. They may not stay around that long.

Don’t wait for people to join your live video. Start immediately.

The power in a video is in the replay. People watching the replay don’t want to wait for five minutes for people to show up.

Doors are boring. Start your video somewhere exciting. If the pool is the best area, start there. Not sure where the best part of the house is? Ask the seller what their favorite part of the house is and start there. Find out what they love about the house and start with why they love it.

Equipment You don’t need a lot of expensive equipment to get started with video. Start by shooting video with your smartphone. Practice by taking video of your dog or your kids (to get used to hitting that video button!). You always have it with you, and a good smartphone has the resolution you need, making it the perfect video recorder.

One thing you should invest in is a tripod. Tripods cost under $30 on Amazon. Don’t wait until it arrives to start shooting. Start using the equipment you have now. You can also take some classes at your local community college or online. You need practice more than expertise, though, so just start. The skills will come!

For more tips, information and strategies for using video to promote your business, watch the webinar here.

Joe Sesso is an author and national speaker for Homes.com. For more information, please visit marketing.homes.com. 

For the latest real estate news and trends, bookmark RISMedia.com.

The post Sell Listings in Record Time Using Video and Social Media appeared first on RISMedia.

Sell Listings in Record Time Using Video and Social Media published first on https://thegardenresidences.tumblr.com/

[flauntpage]

We Were Inside the Arena at the Big Baller Brand's Lithuania Debut

The crowd erupts as LaMelo Ball catches a cross-court lob and performs a blind backwards bounce pass to his teammate, Tomas Dimsa, for an easy layup. It took what seemed like forever to get here—to Prienai, this small Lithuanian city of about 10,000. But now that the Balls have arrived, it’s triple-B moments like these that stand out in their international debut.

My first impression of Prienai Arena, the Ball family’s new home away from home, is that it doesn’t even deserve to be called an arena. The home of Vytautas Prienai is no larger than the average high school gym. When I arrive two hours before LiAngelo and LaMelo’s debut, the parking lot is already full. One of two security guards tears my ticket as a pair of volunteers frantically dole out press passes to a stampede of media.

Outside of the press line, the scene is calm. There’s a laughably small wooden bar stocked with beer, soda, and Lithuania’s national snack, kepta duona, which is fried bread served with a mixture of cheese and mayonnaise. A pair of Vytautas warm-up shirts for sale hang on a nearby coat rack. That and a shelf behind the bar form the club’s entire merchandise store. No one seems to notice Tina Ball make her way into the stadium and onto the court.

BC Prienai, the Ball’s new team, currently bears the name of 15th century Lithuanian king and folk hero, Vytautas, but in previous years, they’ve also been named for sponsors like TonyBet and Rudupis. In 2008, their first year under head coach Virginijus Seskus, BC Prienai won the NKL, the second tier Lithuanian national league, and thus earned a spot to compete in the LKL, the premiere Lithuanian league. Since then, the club has slowly fallen to the bottom of the LKL standings, barely avoiding relegation in the 2014-15 season.

Two weeks prior to the Ball’s debut, I watched a game between Zalgiris and Olympiacos in front of a sold out crowd of 15,400 in Kaunas, Lithuania’s second-largest city. There was a four-sided jumbotron, multiple levels of seating, several concession stands, tons of merch, and fan-involving fun during commercial breaks. I make this point to say that it’s not like Lithuania doesn’t have impressive venues for their national pastime.

The team the Ball brothers face tonight is actually an under 18 squad of Zalgiris 2, the main club's reserve team. Based in Kaunas, BC Zalgiris is the most notorious Lithuanian basketball team. The club has made it to every LKL final since the league was created, and even played a few exhibition games against NBA teams in 2007. Donatas Motiejunas played for Zalgiris 2 before he went to the NBA.

As Vytautas warms up, a few eager fans take photos of the Balls but the stadium remains mostly empty. One wears a Lonzo Ball Lakers jersey. I tell him I’m from Los Angeles and ask him what he thinks about the younger Balls coming to Lithuania.

“It’s the best thing to happen in Prienai,” he says with a grin, “I’d like to see them play together in Staples Center one day.”

At least one young Lithuanian sees LaVar’s vision.

Around the time Zalgiris 2 begins warming up, more fans and cameras begin trickling in, and the scene starts to feel like something Lavar Ball orchestrated. The edges of the court nearest the doors become congested with spectators taking snaps of Melo and Gelo shooting. A smiling Ball family sits courtside behind a large LED strip emblazoned with triple B's while “X Gon’ Give It To Ya” blares from the loudspeakers.

The seating area reserved for the team’s sponsors is secured on either side by G4S security guards, yet another BC Prienai sponsor. As the warmups wind down, Jurgis Didziulis serenades the sold out crowd with his electric guitar. He sings “Welcome to Lithuania,” which earned his former band a second place finish in Lithuania’s Eurovision qualifier in 2006. I must admit I laughed when I heard the the final verse, “It’s somewhat depressive/I must say it’s true/We like to party/The first drink’s on you!”

Since they are wearing numbers 1 and 3 respectively, LaMelo and LiAngelo are the first players to have their names called in the pseudo professional lineup announcement, complete with cheerleaders and lighting effects. Melo starts the game on the bench while Gelo debuts from the get go. Gelo struggles initially, missing an open three and a few inside shots. He finally scores his first points from the foul line. Shortly after, Melo misses his first pro shot, a pull-up three from way out that hits the backboard then the rim (and draws groans from the fans).

Then, with two minutes left in the first, he makes up for it with the aforementioned no-look pass. Near the end of the quarter, Melo takes a fastbreak pass to the hole with what may be considered a dunk and the crowd eats it up, chanting “Ball Komanda” over and over. “Komanda” the Lithuanian word for team. Melo’s next few passes are unsuccessful but not because they’re bad, it seems the intended players just aren’t expecting them. The kid doesn’t telegraph his passes, which will lead to some spectacular assists when his teammates start to adjust to his style of play. These turnovers coupled with a few steals by Zalgiris leads to the coach benching Melo with about five and a half minutes left in the first half. The last Ball touch of the first half is a brilliant steal by LiAngelo followed by a missed layup. Vytautas trails Zalgiris 2 by two points at intermission.

At halftime, it seems like half the arena is crammed into a small gated smoking area outside the doors opposite the entrance. “What do you think of the game so far?” I ask a group of young Lithuanians.

“Melo is immature, he makes dumb decisions,” says a man between drags of his cigarette. “Did you not see that pass?” retorts a woman wearing a Vytautas jersey nearby.

A heated discussion ensues but the excitement is palpable. I decide it’s best to move on to the next group chatting in English. While no official story has yet been penned that outlines the reasons for the creation of the BBB Challenge—a series of exhibitions the team is playing— and the decision by the club to leave the Baltic Basketball League for this season, I hear some juicy local gossip. Apparently, an entrepreneurial young Lithuanian, Antanas Baksys, attempted to negotiate a deal with ESPN on behalf of BC Prienai. He sought to monetize broadcast rights to the Baltic Basketball League games, in which the Balls were expected to play most. It turns out that the BBL itself, rather than the team, owns the exclusive rights to air the games.

When the enterprising young man tried to create a win-win deal for the club and the league, they told him to get lost. Perhaps this is why the team decided to pull out of the BBL and create their own exhibition series. The 5,000 Euro fine (nearly $6k USD) the club is forced to pay should be offset by whatever Facebook is paying the club for the rights to livestream the Big Baller Brand Challenge series. Word is that Baksys himself engineered the current deal with Facebook for an undisclosed amount.

The second half begins with Melo and Gelo both on the bench. Vytautas begins to build some momentum with excellent ball movement and great defense. It’s clear this team has chemistry and the Balls haven’t quite found the same rhythm with their other teammates. After close to eight minutes of play, Vytautas leads Zalgiris 2 53-47 and Melo takes the court once again. Not even thirty seconds later, he takes another deep three that misses the mark. This one isn’t any closer. The fans aren’t amused but Seskus is smiling. The Vytautas coach is known for his liberal approach, he allows his players to improvise and is happy to tolerate an errant shot or two in the name of creativity.

As if to affirm his confidence in the young point guard, Melo makes a beautiful reverse layup that receives an ovation from the crowd. A few minutes later, Melo drives the lane again and delivers an exceptional behind-the-back pass to Dimsa who is fouled hard on his layup attempt. The third quarter ends with pair of made freebies by LiAngelo and a ten point lead. The fourth quarter is all Gelo, he scores ten points, four of them off passes from his younger brother. Melo then misses one last three in the final seconds.

Though it was by no means a standout performance, LaMelo’s passing was impressive. The nine assists recorded don’t accurately reflect his instincts and decision making. He created lots of opportunities for teammates. When the rest of the team learns to anticipate his bold passes, he’ll have double digit assists in every game. Gelo led the team with 19 points despite missing all but one of his threes and half his shots from inside the arc. When the jet lag wears off and the team builds chemistry, Vytautas will probably be as fun to watch as Lavar Ball's postgame celebration.

Photos by Josh Womack

We Were Inside the Arena at the Big Baller Brand's Lithuania Debut published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[attendantdesign-blog]

New Post has been published on Attendantdesign

New Post has been published on https://attendantdesign.com/with-new-version-of-ios-imminent-banks/

With new version of iOS imminent, banks

On June 5, as Apple held its annual event in San Jose to announce new merchandise and software, the New York office of Solstice hosted a viewing birthday party.

The virtual innovation company had invited over some of its economic services clients to observe the Worldwide Developers Conference Livestream and make a word of what they located most interesting. A brainstorming session with Solstice employees followed.

This collecting has come to be an annual subculture, in line with Jared Johnson, a most important digital strategist at Solstice who attended the assembly. It reflects the volume to which banks and credit score card corporations have come to rely on Silicon Valley in an effort to serve their clients. (Solstice holds a similar accumulating for GoogleIO, the parallel event of some other Silicon Valley titan recognised for its cell operating device.)

The shift to cellular has largely been a boon to banks  monetary vendors, version  iOS 

letting them interact with customers in greater locations and at a lower cost than is possible thru bodily branches on my own. But it is able to additionally be a double-edged sword.

When Apple or Google releases a new edition of its operating machine, banks are compelled to respond by means of updating their own cellular apps—jogging just to live in a region. After all, says Johnson, 80% of users replace their running device in the first month after a new edition is made available.

And while such a tech titans introduce a prime new feature—inclusive of Apple plans to do with the aid of offering builders with device learning APIs as part of the iOS eleven operating gadget in September—then banks clearly have their work cut out for them. Lumbering cruiseliners must act like speedboats.

The more popular cellular banking will become, the much fewer preference banks have: They can either live at the cutting aspect or lose market proportion to groups that do. Forward-thinking establishments have answered by way of making their virtual teams more nimble and conscious of trends.

Alex Carriles, the pinnacle of cellular and on line banking at BBVA Compass. Buckle up “Banks shouldn’t be frightened of trade, due to the fact that is going to be the only consistent,” says Alex Carriles, the top of cellular and on line banking at BBVA Compass. One of these is Citigroup. The megabank has retooled within the decade since the economic crisis, ultimate branches, and pouring assets into its virtual channels.

“We are maniacal approximately serving virtual clients in approaches they demand, and in new ways, they do not count on,” stated Alice Milligan, the leading patron and virtual experience officer of Citi’s worldwide cards enterprise. “This calls for us to stay at the slicing edge of device and running machine trends within the industry.”

Citi was one of the first banks to provide an app for the Apple Watch, pronouncing the app earlier than the smartwatch had even hit the marketplace. Milligan says her team is currently exploring integrations with Siri, Apple’s voice-controlled non-public assistant.

There is not often enough manpower to do the whole thing, so banks have to learn how to prioritize such high-price integrations no matter their backlog.

“OK, we’re going to flow this feature down [the list] and we are going to get the Siri package in,” stated Johnson, imitating a digital team leader.

Old-college software program improvement might not do.

“It was that you might write a sequence of specs and business requirements, they would move into technical and felony and compliance evaluate, and after six months of anybody reviewing that stuff it would visit the builders, and then another six months later they would come up with some thing, which possibly via then is completely irrelevant,” stated Alex Carriles, the head of cell and on line banking at BBVA Compass.

BBVA now employs nimble, integrated teams of software program developers, legal professionals, engineers and others so that it will speed up the development technique, Carriles said. On average, BBVA now releases a new edition of its app for iOS and for Android every month.

At first, clients puzzled why the updates had been so common, however they soon realized it caused “a richer set of functions, matters they really wanted,” Carriles stated. “Sometimes it could be small improvements, now and again it could be big improvements, occasionally it is able to be simply bug fixes.”

Today, some forty% of BBVA’s clients are mobile-best.

The gain of being first to capitalize on a brand new feature of the cutting-edge operating machine can be fantastic. Johnson as soon as asked a Fortune 500 govt how he prioritized innovations and became instructed, “We can spend hundreds of thousands on a TV advert or we may be a primary mover on an iOS feature.”

Ashish Toshniwal, CEO of the cellular app developer Y Media Labs, notes that iOS eleven ought to have implications for cellular bill pay—a “sticky” function for most banks. Once a purchaser has introduced numerous payments to his account, he normally might not need to repeat the process at every other bank. But it can be hard to get customers to apply the characteristic because of the setup procedure—plugging in all of the statistics for each invoice—is troublesome.

Apple’s new edition of iOS, however, will offer QR code scanning as a local feature of its digicam app, permitting customers probably to factor their smartphone digicam at an AT&T bill with a QR code, say, and prepopulate the invoice pay screen with the important records.

Consequently, Toshniwal, whose Silicon Valley-based totally agency works with Apple, PayPal, and American Express, predicts that QR codes—readable, till now, most effective with sure 1/3-birthday party apps—will soon turn out to be mainstream.

As he pointed out iOS 11, BBVA’s Carriles supplied a rare glimpse of what his human beings are running on.

Thanks to the natural-language processing that Apple has built into its new running machine, BBVA is actively developing a “completely one of a kind manner to navigate through the app,” he said.

Today, users navigate thru menus, forcing them to seek round for particular functions. Many people remain unaware of the whole skills of the app. Carriles thinks the solution might be an “unmarried command line” like that of Google’s search engine, or perhaps a voice interface that allows a user to offer Siri commands. Millennials, he stated, have a tendency to type rapidly on their telephones and can decide upon tapping out terse commands to talking aloud.

“I assume that is going to be a large shift in interfaces, as soon as you may have an intelligent interpretation of what the person wishes or needs to do,” Carriles stated.

Such a drastic overhaul of the bank’s app isn’t easy. But status still isn’t always an alternative.

“Banks shouldn’t be fearful of exchange, due to the fact this is going to be the best consistent,” said Carriles.

[flauntpage]

We Were Inside the Arena at the Big Baller Brand's Lithuania Debut

The crowd erupts as LaMelo Ball catches a cross-court lob and performs a blind backwards bounce pass to his teammate, Tomas Dimsa, for an easy layup. It took what seemed like forever to get here—to Prienai, this small Lithuanian city of about 10,000. But now that the Balls have arrived, it’s triple-B moments like these that stand out in their international debut.

My first impression of Prienai Arena, the Ball family’s new home away from home, is that it doesn’t even deserve to be called an arena. The home of Vytautas Prienai is no larger than the average high school gym. When I arrive two hours before LiAngelo and LaMelo’s debut, the parking lot is already full. One of two security guards tears my ticket as a pair of volunteers frantically dole out press passes to a stampede of media.

Outside of the press line, the scene is calm. There’s a laughably small wooden bar stocked with beer, soda, and Lithuania’s national snack, kepta duona, which is fried bread served with a mixture of cheese and mayonnaise. A pair of Vytautas warm-up shirts for sale hang on a nearby coat rack. That and a shelf behind the bar form the club’s entire merchandise store. No one seems to notice Tina Ball make her way into the stadium and onto the court.

BC Prienai, the Ball’s new team, currently bears the name of 15th century Lithuanian king and folk hero, Vytautus, but in previous years, they’ve also been named for sponsors like TonyBet and Rudupis. In 2008, their first year under head coach Virginijus Seskus, BC Prienai won the NKL, the second tier Lithuanian national league, and thus earned a spot to compete in the LKL, the premiere Lithuanian league. Since then, the club has slowly fallen to the bottom of the LKL standings, barely avoiding relegation in the 2014-15 season.

Two weeks prior to the Ball’s debut, I watched a game between Zalgiris and Olympiacos in front of a sold out crowd of 15,400 in Kaunas, Lithuania’s second-largest city. There was a four-sided jumbotron, multiple levels of seating, several concession stands, tons of merch, and fan-involving fun during commercial breaks. I make this point to say that it’s not like Lithuania doesn’t have impressive venues for their national pastime.

The team the Ball brothers face tonight is actually an under 18 squad of Zalgiris 2, the main club's reserve team. Based in Kaunas, BC Zalgiris is the most notorious Lithuanian basketball team. The club has made it to every LKL final since the league was created, and even played a few exhibition games against NBA teams in 2007. Donatas Motiejunas played for Zalgiris 2 before he went to the NBA.

As Vytautas warms up, a few eager fans take photos of the Balls but the stadium remains mostly empty. One wears a Lonzo Ball Lakers jersey. I tell him I’m from Los Angeles and ask him what he thinks about the younger Balls coming to Lithuania.

“It’s the best thing to happen in Prienai,” he says with a grin, “I’d like to see them play together in Staples Center one day.”

At least one young Lithuanian sees LaVar’s vision.

Around the time Zalgiris 2 begins warming up, more fans and cameras begin trickling in, and the scene starts to feel like something Lavar Ball orchestrated. The edges of the court nearest the doors become congested with spectators taking snaps of Melo and Gelo shooting. A smiling Ball family sits courtside behind a large LED strip emblazoned with triple B's while “X Gon’ Give It To Ya” blares from the loudspeakers.

The seating area reserved for the team’s sponsors is secured on either side by G4S security guards, yet another BC Prienai sponsor. As the warmups wind down, Jurgis Didziulis serenades the sold out crowd with his electric guitar. He sings “Welcome to Lithuania,” which earned his former band a second place finish in Lithuania’s Eurovision qualifier in 2006. I must admit I laughed when I heard the the final verse, “It’s somewhat depressive/I must say it’s true/We like to party/The first drink’s on you!”

Since they are wearing numbers 1 and 3 respectively, LaMelo and LiAngelo are the first players to have their names called in the pseudo professional lineup announcement, complete with cheerleaders and lighting effects. Melo starts the game on the bench while Gelo debuts from the get go. Gelo struggles initially, missing an open three and a few inside shots. He finally scores his first points from the foul line. Shortly after, Melo misses his first pro shot, a pull-up three from way out that hits the backboard then the rim (and draws groans from the fans).

Then, with two minutes left in the first, he makes up for it with the aforementioned no-look pass. Near the end of the quarter, Melo takes a fastbreak pass to the hole with what may be considered a dunk and the crowd eats it up, chanting “Ball Komanda” over and over. “Komanda” the Lithuanian word for team. Melo’s next few passes are unsuccessful but not because they’re bad, it seems the intended players just aren’t expecting them. The kid doesn’t telegraph his passes, which will lead to some spectacular assists when his teammates start to adjust to his style of play. These turnovers coupled with a few steals by Zalgiris leads to the coach benching Melo with about five and a half minutes left in the first half. The last Ball touch of the first half is a brilliant steal by LiAngelo followed by a missed layup. Vytautas trails Zalgiris 2 by two points at intermission.

At halftime, it seems like half the arena is crammed into a small gated smoking area outside the doors opposite the entrance. “What do you think of the game so far?” I ask a group of young Lithuanians.

“Melo is immature, he makes dumb decisions,” says a man between drags of his cigarette. “Did you not see that pass?” retorts a woman wearing a Vytautus jersey nearby.

A heated discussion ensues but the excitement is palpable. I decide it’s best to move on to the next group chatting in English. While no official story has yet been penned that outlines the reasons for the creation of the BBB Challenge—a series of exhibitions the team is playing— and the decision by the club to leave the Baltic Basketball League for this season, I hear some juicy local gossip. Apparently, an entrepreneurial young Lithuanian, Antanas Baksys, attempted to negotiate a deal with ESPN on behalf of BC Prienai. He sought to monetize broadcast rights to the Baltic Basketball League games, in which the Balls were expected to play most. It turns out that the BBL itself, rather than the team, owns the exclusive rights to air the games.

When the enterprising young man tried to create a win-win deal for the club and the league, they told him to get lost. Perhaps this is why the team decided to pull out of the BBL and create their own exhibition series. The 5,000 Euro fine (nearly $6k USD) the club is forced to pay should be offset by whatever Facebook is paying the club for the rights to livestream the Big Baller Brand Challenge series. Word is that Baksys himself engineered the current deal with Facebook for an undisclosed amount.

The second half begins with Melo and Gelo both on the bench. Vytautus begins to build some momentum with excellent ball movement and great defense. It’s clear this team has chemistry and the Balls haven’t quite found the same rhythm with their other teammates. After close to eight minutes of play, Vytautus leads Zalgiris 2 53-47 and Melo takes the court once again. Not even thirty seconds later, he takes another deep three that misses the mark. This one isn’t any closer. The fans aren’t amused but Seskus is smiling. The Vytautus coach is known for his liberal approach, he allows his players to improvise and is happy to tolerate an errant shot or two in the name of creativity.

As if to affirm his confidence in the young point guard, Melo makes a beautiful reverse layup that receives an ovation from the crowd. A few minutes later, Melo drives the lane again and delivers an exceptional behind-the-back pass to Dimsa who is fouled hard on his layup attempt. The third quarter ends with pair of made freebies by LiAngelo and a ten point lead. The fourth quarter is all Gelo, he scores ten points, four of them off passes from his younger brother. Melo then misses one last three in the final seconds.

Though it was by no means a standout performance, LaMelo’s passing was impressive. The nine assists recorded don’t accurately reflect his instincts and decision making. He created lots of opportunities for teammates. When the rest of the team learns to anticipate his bold passes, he’ll have double digit assists in every game. Gelo led the team with 19 points despite missing all but one of his threes and half his shots from inside the arc. When the jet lag wears off and the team builds chemistry, Vytautas will probably be as fun to watch as Lavar Ball's postgame celebration.

Photos by Josh Womack

We Were Inside the Arena at the Big Baller Brand's Lithuania Debut published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv