#like seriously it looks like some sort of graphing tool

[the-music-keeper]

And Objective #14 is done! I have to say, I'm very curious about what sort of musicological analysis can be done with this software.

[doctorocsid]

THE MAKING OF PHOENIX WRIGHT’S SECOND DAY OFF

Or: The Immense Struggle of Trying to Make Decent Content

A good year and a half. That’s how much time passed between me starting Phoenix Wright’s Second Day Off and me uploading it to YouTube. What a hell of a load off my back that was. If you couldn’t tell, making this video was a bit of an undertaking, to say the least. And by “undertaking” I mean “an exercise in pure agony”. So, I figured I’d do a bit of a writeup here so I can get across to you the absolute hell of an experience making this video was.

PART 1: THE INITIAL PLANNING STAGES

The original “Phoenix Wright’s Day Off” was released in February 2018 to, though not a lot of views, a generally very positive response. Despite its janky animation, people seemed to enjoy it for its complete ridiculousness, comedic timing, and overly-choreographed fighting. Not to mention literally being the only Ace Attorney-themed Garry’s Mod video ever made that actually uses the Ace Attorney characters. (I’m still the only person to ever do that as of the time of writing. Woohoo.)

Given the positive reception and the fact that I literally ended the video with a “To Be Continued”, I was ready as I could ever be to start work on a sequel. The first one only took me a couple weeks to make, so surely a sequel wouldn’t take much longer, right?

Oh, how wrong I was. Still, I started planning out exactly how things would go. Throwing around ideas in my head. I needed it to be bigger and better than the original, of course. How was I gonna do that? Well, my initial plan was, uh, misguided, to say the least. What I wanted to do at first was create the sequel entirely in Source Filmmaker, along with giving it a darker, more serious tone to contrast the ridiculous slapstick of the first. Not a great idea for a sequel to a video that mainly relied on throwing ragdolls around for comedy.

https://streamable.com/taxrn

The original intro for PW2DO, based off the intro for “Fargo”. A lot less cool-looking than the final intro I made. (Even though I intended the video to be made in SFM, I made the intro in Gmod solely because I could just film myself driving the car instead of having to animate it manually.)

The final intro was done in a not too difficult fashion - the characters were animated in Garry’s Mod on top of greenscreens, which I then imported into Premiere and changed to solid colors. Added some extra video effects I found in places. Set it to an instrumental of Propane Nightmares. I’m proud of how it turned out, mostly. I won’t deny after I introduced the characters I didn’t exactly know what else to do with it, so I just filled it with some random actiony shots I thought might look cool. Incidentally, this was the only part of the final video that was made in Premiere - the rest of it was just edited together in Vegas Pro. Which crashed many times during editing. Fun.

PART 2: THE PAINS OF INDECISION (AND ALSO SOURCE FILMMAKER)

Nonetheless, I got to work, despite not actually knowing how to use Source Filmmaker. “I’ll figure it out as I go along,” I figured. And over time, more or less, I managed to figure it out. Sort of. And by “figure it out” I mean “become subject to the true hell that is SFM”.

Let me give you some quick background here. SFM has two main editors for animation: The “motion editor”, and the “graph editor”. The motion editor uses a relatively easy-to-understand method of animating: you select an object you want to animate (a prop, weapon, ragdoll, etc), select the span of time in which you want the thing to move to its new destination, and then you move it to the new destination. Sounds simplistic, but can be used extensively to create good-looking animation. (I myself used this method for the bar fight in PW2DO.) The graph editor on the other hand, is much more involved, depending on the tried-and-true method of using keyframes for animation. Some people prefer this one because it allows you to directly edit and fine-tune each little animation curve to your liking. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUXnpk8xDLg

This unfinished PW2DO prototype was animated entirely with the graph editor in SFM.

Really, you can use either one for animating, whichever suits you best. For me, personally, the graph editor feels like something designed in the seventh circle of hell specifically to torture me. Why does adding a new keyframe screw up all my preexisting animation? Why does adding a new keyframe make the ragdoll’s bones stretch out to infinity? Those are just a couple questions I shouted at my computer screen while trying to figure it out.

Eventually, I just gave up. I came to terms both with the fact that I wasn’t satisfied with what I was making, and with the fact that trying to use SFM’s graph editor to animate was making me want to julienne my keyboard. (I hadn’t figured out, or really even considered the motion editor at the time.) “Screw it,” I said to myself. “I’ll do in Gmod, like the last one.”

PART 3: OH RIGHT, GMOD SUCKS TOO

The first PWDO was relatively simple to make, at least compared to the second one. There were two main tools I used: Stop Motion Helper (a tool for animating stuff within Gmod itself without the need for actual stop motion or whatnot), and the classic technique of “throw stuff around in front of the camera”. I had little to no experience doing 3D animation when making it, but it worked out anyway. It let me practice some camera framing stuff, too. All I was really doing for most of it was animating the characters moving along with the camera. But for the second video, I desperately wanted to up the ante. I wanted it to be cooler. More edgy. More cinematic. Turns out, there’s one main reason that proved difficult for me. And that’s that Garry’s Mod kinda sucks for long-term animation.

Here’s the difference between animating in SFM and animating in GMod. SFM is made for animation. GMod isn’t. So, if you want animating in GMod to be anything less than horrendously tedious, you need some addons to help you. Stop Motion Helper is a neat little addon that lets you animate stuff in Garry’s Mod with the “tweening” type of animation. Simply put, you pose something in point A, make a keyframe, move it to point B, and then make another keyframe. Stop Motion Helper will then automatically animate it moving between the two points. Thus, instead of the stop motion method where you have to pose every individual frame, you technically only have to pose the beginning and end. Not that it looks very good if you only do that. Of course, like any kind of animation, it’s still something that requires a lot of effort if you don’t want it to look cheap and robotic. But it works. Sort of.

Doesn’t work too well with vehicles, though.

There were a multitude of small limitations and annoyances, however, that proved to be annoying to deal with in GMod nonetheless.

FIRST PROBLEM: Because GMod isn’t made specifically for animation, resuming a project within it is kind of a hellish endeavor at times. Unlike Source Filmmaker where you can just open a project file and everything remains the same, Garry’s Mod’s saving tool doesn’t save a lot of the addon-related data when you create a save file of whatever scenario you’ve made. That includes stop motion helper animation. While SMH does have its own support for saving animations, you have to save every single animation as its own separate file. Take the scene in PW2DO, for instance, where Phoenix shoots those cops to get the security footage.

https://streamable.com/2ikd1

There are seven moving parts in this scene - Phoenix, the picture frame, both cops, the gun, the shampoo bottle, and the camera. Note how many of these are moving in each camera shot along with how many shots there are (ignoring after the cop goes out the window, because that’s not done with SMH). That’s ten shots, if you didn’t want to count. If I wanted to save this whole scene for potential later tweaking, I’d have to make a save file for the session along with saving the animation data for all ten shots - that’s ten separate animation files for this one scene - and then I would have to manually reapply the animation to each individual moving element. 

On top of that, not everything can be saved at all just by sheer concept. The muzzle flash, for instance. While the flash graphic over the gun was added in post, the actual light emanating from it was something I had to do in-game, and it’s not something you can animate with SMH. Therefore, I had to play the animation in GMod, and then specifically time me hitting a button on my keyboard to make the flash happen at just the right point. That’s just one workaround in a program that, when animating in it, is like 80% workarounds.

But nothing about Garry’s Mod frustrated me quite as much as the final fight scene.

PART 4: THE BAR FIGHT

The final fight scene of PW2DO was the one thing that kept me from releasing the video sooner. Seriously, out of that year and a half or so, I’d say only a month or so was spent working on the GMod portions of the video. The rest was just that stupid, godforsaken fight scene. (And mostly procrastinating on making it.) Allow me to try and outline to you what I went through doing this.

Now, the fight scene went through three specific incarnations. They were all based around Maya and Athena tracking down Phoenix and beating the crap out of him, it just differed on two basic things: the location, and the fight music. The first idea I had was them fighting Phoenix in an alleyway while ABBA’s “Waterloo” played in the background. (i know that sounds silly but i swear i couldve made it work) That one didn’t get beyond planning stages - I’d kinda choreographed some of it in my head, I know Phoenix was supposed to get a crowbar at some point, but it didn’t get any farther than that.

The second incarnation was much more well-developed. The way I figured it was as such: Phoenix, after retrieving the security footage from his office, would go on the run and get on a bus. However, when he got on the bus, it’d be revealed that Athena was driving it, and Phoenix would fight Maya as they went down the road. (No comment on how Maya and Athena got a bus.) This was gonna be set to “Let’s Go Crazy” by Prince, inspired by the opening car chase scene from Kingsman: The Golden Circle. (Meh movie, neat fight scenes.) Eventually they’d crash the bus, all go flying out the window, and then Phoenix would get arrested by the cops as he did in the final video. Sounds neat, right? So, what stopped me from doing this?

jesus christ so many things

Everything wrong with this concept centered around one particular problem. I absolutely could not, for the life of me, figure out how to animate a fight scene in a bus that was moving down the road. In SFM that might’ve been possible, but in Garry’s Mod? Good luck with that one. I practically tore my hair out trying to come up with a single working solution to this. Allow me to present to you the various ideas I had and why they all failed miserably.

IDEA 1: Animate the bus moving and the characters moving in it at the same time

This was the fastest-thrown-out idea because the complexity of something like this was just too much for Gmod and an animation addon. What’s that? You want to be able to stay with the scene as it animates? No, that’s basically impossible to do. It’s not like SFM where you could just attach yourself and a camera to the moving vehicle and animate from there. It just wasn’t feasible.

IDEA 2: Create moving textures and place them outside the windows to give the illusion of movement

This one went out the window too, unfortunately, as rotating the camera to any degree kinda just seriously killed the illusion. I could’ve done the scene without the cool cinematic fighting camera movements, but… is it really Phoenix Wright’s Day Off without those?

IDEA 3: Create a 3d video of going down the street in GMOD and paste it onto a greenscreen outside the bus, and animate it rotating properly in Premiere

I don’t blame you if you don’t understand what the hell I’m talking about. See, miraculously enough, there is actually an addon for GMod that allows you to record 360 degree videos within it - and after a decent amount of finicking around with it, I actually managed to make one that seemed to work fine. It was from this point I actually set out and started making the scene - I got about ten seconds in, mostly comprised of driving shots, a neat easter egg with Homestar Runner (not something i’d do nowadays tbh) and a single shot of Phoenix beating on Maya. I was all set to get going.

And then Premiere just refused to work with the 360 video. Don’t get me wrong, I was able to animate it rotating and stuff, but it wouldn’t let me do this at the same time as the normal 2D video that was meant to be pasted on top of it. It frankly just. Wouldn’t let me. And after a lot of struggling, I just. Gave up. That ten seconds of video, trashed.

https://streamable.com/4omnep

I did manage to re-piece it together from the old files on my drive, though. With mostly missing sound effects.

So, that was scrapped. I wasn’t doing the bus fight. What, then, would work out better than a fight scene based off the first fight scene of Golden Circle? Apparently, my mind decided that would be the last fight scene of Golden Circle. Cool.

Thankfully, things went a lot smoother there, but it wasn’t without hiccups. Now, if you’ve seen Phoenix Wright’s Second Day Off - I don’t know why you’re reading this if you haven’t - there’s a chance you might’ve found the music choice for the bar fight scene a bit odd. If you’re not aware, it’s a cover of the 1986 Cameo song “Word Up”, by a German country band called The Bosshoss. This is the song they used in the movie so you’re not allowed to question me on this.

Given how western-y the song sounds, though, I had to at least make the context fit. Despite that, I couldn’t really find any GMod maps that had a good enough bar interior for a while - and I really wanted it to be a bar fight. Bar fights are cool. Thankfully, I did eventually manage to find one. This one, in particular: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=806759276&searchtext=

Yes, that’s a My Little Pony based map. I worked with what I had, okay? That was the least of the issues, anyway. By this point I’d had enough of trying to animate with GMod, and as such I’d decided to move back to SFM, but that caused a whole new issue. This map wasn’t made for SFM. And opening it in SFM just. Crashed. I won’t go super into detail of how I fixed this, but essentially I had to download a program called BSPSource so I could decompile the map, re-open it in Hammer, and export it to properly work with SFM.

Still left me with some annoying issues though, as you can see. Not too difficult fixes, though - The first one I just covered up with another corkboard, and the second thing was fixed by typing mat_specular 0 in console. Was a bit annoying that I had to do that every time I reopened SFM, but whatever. It was working, at least. (that’s something you’ll think to yourself a lot if you ever get into using SFM.)

 Anyway, things went pretty okay from this point on. You know, aside from me proceeding to barely ever work on the thing for like a year and a half. I didn’t have many hardships during it other than my own procrastination, so instead take a look at some of the funny tricks I pulled to get this scene to go the way I wanted.

https://gfycat.com/OldfashionedForkedFlatcoatretriever

Engineer telekinetically swooces his shotgun back to himself.

https://gfycat.com/SleepyShadowyLadybird

I had to make Phoenix hover over Engie to let his arms reach him without his legs obscuring the camera.

https://gfycat.com/AptHomelyGoral

The rope was way too short to reach the soldier, so I had to have Phoenix basically throw the rope in order to reach his gun. I also forgot to detach the rope from his hand afterward, so it kinda gets flung around with it off-camera.

https://gfycat.com/AgonizingScrawnyAbalone

Phoenix apparently decided for himself he wanted to go out the window.

Aside from all that, though, things finally went okay. Eventually. I managed to finish up the animation, add some extra ending stuff in GMod, and do a neat credits sequence to David Bowie music. All in all, it went okay.

And that’s it. After all that waiting, I finally managed to put an 8 minute video out from one and a half years of it not being finished. It was quite a load off my mind, for sure, and to this day it stands as my proudest video. It’s silly, has its down moments, but I can at least confidently say it’s the best Ace Attorney gmod video. If only because there is basically no competition.

So, what’s in store next? Not much of anything as far as I feel right now. I could make a third one, one day - I did envision it as a trilogy - but although I do have some ideas for it, I still have zero motivation to actually make it. So who knows. We’ll see how it goes. Maybe Phoenix Wright will escape from prison one day.

So, this was the experience of making Phoenix Wright’s Second Day Off. I hope this gave you something of an idea on how agonizing this video was to make, and totally means you should go and share it everywhere to get me more views because I DESERVE it after the hell I went through.

Seriously, though, thanks for reading, and may this post serve as a warning if you ever decide to do Garry’s Mod or SFM videos. Not a warning against it, mind you, you can make some totally cool stuff. Just be prepared to suffer a bit in the process.

[lovemesomerafael]

Destroying The Planet To Save It   Chapter 6:  It wasn’t bleedin’ Mother Nature

Chapters 1-5      Read it on AO3

Sam’s phone rang as he and Anita stood facing one another, stilled in the midst of their dance.  He gave her a pointed look.  “We’re not done talkin’ about this.”

He reluctantly let go of her and pulled his phone from his pocket, seeing that Tony Stark was calling, checking in now that he and Steve had landed in Atlanta.  Sam told him about Anita’s call from Arias, and they adjusted the team’s plans.

“Be careful, man,” Tony said.  “Seriously, watch your back around that guy.”

“Believe me, I don’t trust this guy as far as I can spit him.  Agent Herrera and I will be there together, and we’ll be watchin’ each other’s backs. We’ll be careful.”

“I reserve the right to give you shit about you and her at some point in the future.  But right now, Rogers is pulling my arm out of the socket trying to get me off this plane so he can get to Barnes.  I barely restrained him from jumping out of the jet without a parachute when we were over the crash site.”

“Yeah, he does that.”

Tony and Sam ended their call, and Sam turned back to Anita. Since he’d put the call on speaker, there was no need to tell her anything.

“So, now, let’s get back to the part where you wanted me to notice you?  And where you think I didn’t?”  Sam raised an eyebrow.

Anita’s flirtatious smile, coupled with the fact that she stepped back to him to resume their dance, did marvelous – but dangerous – things to him.  “Well, you never talked to me before the other night.”

“Doesn’t mean I didn’t notice you,” Sam assured her, taking her hand with one of his, and placing the other on her hip again. He began a sexy salsa step he suspected she’d know.

He was right.

Anita was more than graceful.  She followed Sam step for step, and somehow also found a way to shift within his arms, moving against him in exactly the way the dance was intended for.  They smiled at each other, neither worried about the fact that there was no music.  For them, suddenly, there was.    

“Tell me,” he murmured into her ear.

“C’mon, Sam.  You really want to talk right now?”

“I wouldn’t mind hearin’ about you wantin’ me to notice you.”

“That’s a little conceited, you know,” Anita purred, moving closer.

“So sue me,” Sam whispered, tightening his arm and leaning in to meet her lips with his.

Sam had thought Anita was good at following his dance moves.  When he kissed her, he learned a whole new meaning to the phrase “following his moves”.

*****

Steve had no desire to go to the crash site once he learned that Bucky was at the hospital.  Bucky had refused to check in, or even to be examined, just insisted on being at Joss’s side in the helicopter and then in the ER.  She was taken directly into a treatment room. The paramedics and several hospital personnel tried to keep him from following her into the room, and were quickly silenced by the mere look on Bucky’s face.  

That is, until a very young-looking Asian nurse who could not have been five feet tall, with a name badge that identified her as Li, RN, placed herself in front of Bucky, right in the doorway, and smiled sweetly up at him.[1]  “I apologize, Sir, but I can’t let you in.”

Bucky growled menacingly.  

Li nodded with understanding, completely unimpressed. She only smiled with added warmth and empathy.  “I know. I understand how you feel.  But the first thing we’re going to do is cut off all her clothes and examine her.  It’s not very dignified.  No matter how close you two are, if it was me, I wouldn’t want you to see me like that. You’re not really going to do that to her, are you?”  

It wasn’t a question.  Besides which, Bucky had a very long lifetime of reading his opponents that told him he was overmatched here.  

So he was in the waiting room, intimidating everyone and pacing angrily, when Steve burst through the sliding doors, followed at a more reasonable pace by Tony and Sharon.  Seeing Steve approaching at approximately Mach 2, Bucky could do nothing but brace himself for the impact of two hundred-plus pounds of overwrought muscle.  It actually hurt.  Bucky was ashamed of the little squeak he emitted as Steve crushed the air from his lungs.  

“Steve, shit!  Got some cracked ribs, there, pal.  Not helping.”

“Shut up,” Steve snapped, not letting up.  “You gotta quit fuckin’ dyin’, Buck, I can’t take it,” he muttered into Bucky’s shoulder.

“Yeah, same, Steve.  Same.  Now let go of me.  Seriously. Or you’re just gonna kill me again.”

Steve loosened his hold, but didn’t let go. Bucky could tell that was, in part, because he was too emotional at the moment, so he just put his right arm around Steve’s back and patted him until he quieted.  “OK, buddy.  I know.  I’m fine.”

At long last, Steve relaxed his hold on Bucky and took a step back.  Tony and Sharon stepped up.  Sharon gave Bucky a quick, one-armed hug, while Tony went to Bucky’s left and took his arm in his hands.  

“Arm’s not working?”

“It’s busted up.  Worked for a while after the crash, but it’s dead now.  You bring your tools?”

“Always.”  Tony lifted the leather case he carried in his hand, which looked like a briefcase, but was obviously very heavy.  “Got more on the jet, if we need ‘em.  There a place we can take a look?”  

“I’ll get us a place,” Sharon said, already on the way to the nurses’ station.

Steve watched as Tony began examining Bucky’s metal arm.  “Coulson says Lattimore and two of the Secret Service agents died in the crash.”

Bucky grunted affirmatively.  “Singer’s already in surgery; he’s hurt pretty bad.  Joss, though, she’s in there,” he indicated the double doors from the waiting room to the treatment area.  

“Joss, huh?”  Steve asked, with only the slightest hint of amusement in his voice.

“Yeah.  Joss. You gotta meet this girl, Steve, she’s something.”

“She hurt bad?”

“Looks like it.  They wouldn’t let me stay with her.”

At Bucky’s words, and the deep concern in his voice, Steve and Tony glanced at one another over Bucky’s shoulder.

Sharon returned quickly with a man wearing scrubs. “There’s a room we can use.  Julio’s going to take us there.  Had to promise you’d let them treat your injuries, though,” she said, looking at Bucky.  He simply nodded once.  

As they followed Julio into the treatment area, Sharon said, “They’re taking Joss to surgery, Bucky.  She’s bleeding internally.  They’ll keep us updated.”

Bucky nodded again, face grim.

Steve nudged Sharon with his arm as they walked.  “How do you know that about Agent Emerson?  Aren’t there rules against telling non-family members anything about how a patient’s doing?”

“You’d be surprised what S.H.I.E.L.D. credentials and a certain attitude can get you.”

“Huh.  You’re a little scary, you know that?”

“Damn right.  Keep it in mind.”

*****

By one A.M., Bruce and Catherine had about exhausted the limits of caffeine’s ability to help them concentrate.  Both were rubbing sore eyes, and had switched contacts for glasses.  Bruce took his off and wiped a hand down his face, sighing heavily.

“I think I gotta take a break.  Did we eat dinner?”

Catherine made a negative sound, moving something on her display that changed the shape of a curved line on the graph she was studying.

“You find something?”

“I’ve pretty much got these atmospheric disturbances sorted. And the wildfire?  That was lightning, from the same sort of storm we saw in Atlanta.” She looked through the display at Bruce. “These storms are not natural. They’re too uniform.  Not only individually – the storms have a shape and pattern that is entirely too perfect to be natural – but collectively.  They’re shockingly similar in many ways.  Buggered if I know what’s causing them, but I know it’s something other than bleedin’ Mother Nature.  The earthquake, you���re on your own.”

“How about you?  You doing OK?”

“I’m knackered, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Anyone ever tell you, you get more English when you’re tired?”

Catherine started to grin, but appeared to think better of it, choosing instead not to respond.

Seeing that, Bruce flinched slightly and stammered, “I’m, um… I gotta get a sandwich.  Maybe a nap. You hungry?”

“A little, yeah.”

“Let’s go raid the kitchen.  I could find you a place to crash, too, if you like.”

“Let’s see how I feel after we eat something.”

In the common kitchen on the residential floor, Bruce found plenty of materials to make a late-night meal.  He also found some very good wine, and thought a glass would be nice right then, but didn’t suggest it.  Catherine already seemed edgy.  Maybe even edgier than he was.  

She was sitting at the table, head in hands, resting her eyes when he set a plate and a bottle of sparkling water in front of her, startling her a bit.  “Ooh. Guess I’m a little more tired than I thought.”

“You’re entitled.  We’ve been at this for a while.”

“What’ve you found?”

“That earthquake in Zambia.  It wasn’t on a fault.  Way too shallow, too.  To quote a friend, ‘it wasn’t bleedin’ Mother Nature’ that caused it.”

Catherine grinned tiredly.  “We’re friends now?”

“Yeah, Cathy,” Bruce sighed.  “Always.  At least, I’m your friend.”

“I’m sorry, Bruce.  I shouldn’t have said that.  Forget it. I’m just tired.”  Catherine took a long drink and didn’t look at him, muttering afterward, “I’d kill for a bevvy.”

Raising an eyebrow and pushing back his chair, Bruce said, “At least there, I can help you.  No murder necessary.”

When he showed her the bottle, Catherine’s face lit up. “You open that, we’re definitely friends.”

Bruce searched for a corkscrew, wanting desperately to continue the conversation.  All day, as they’d worked side by side, he’d been reminded of their time together at Oxford, the only time their careers and lives had actually allowed them to live together for a while.  He’d ached all day to tell Catherine how much he still cared about her, and ask her whether she hated him for what he’d had to do.  To beg her not to.  But he knew how selfish that would be, and of all things he did not want to be to her, selfish was at the top of the list.  Not number one – number one would always be ‘dangerous’ – but definitely in the top five.  So he let the opening go, and changed the subject.

“I need to call Coulson,” he said as he pulled the wrapping from the neck of the bottle.  “We need some core samples from Zambia.”

“You have a theory?”

“Several, and I’d like to see whether any of them are possible.”

They batted around Bruce’s theories as he opened the wine and found glasses.  Sitting back down across from Catherine, he poured generous portions for them both and they held their glasses up briefly to one another before taking their first sips.

“Oh, yeah,” Catherine sighed, “That’s nice.”

“No kidding.  This kind of stuff is the reason I hang out with Tony Stark.”

“Not his sparkling wit and impish charm?”

“That, too.  And, you know, the fact that he’s one of the few people I know who ever knows what the hell I’m talking about.”

Catherine grinned.  

“Present company excepted, of course.”

“Of course.”

Bruce hadn’t intended for them to finish the bottle. He’d never have dared hope that would happen.  But they’d always had a lot to talk about, and they’d always enjoyed each other’s company. Tonight there might have been a minefield of topics they had to avoid, but there was also a fascinating scientific mystery to solve that more than made up for the things they couldn’t say to one another.  Which meant they spent almost two hours talking seriously about scientific theories and possibilities, tests and simulations they could run, interspersed with laughter and occasional short tangents about what they’d been doing since they’d seen one another last.  

Catherine’s short hair reminded him of the style she’d worn when they’d met, although it was shorter now.  He lost track of what she was saying as he studied the always-stunning combination of her jet black hair with her emerald green eyes and pale, English complexion. It was the first thing he’d noticed when he’d first seen her at the Technical University of Munich eight years before. Bruce and Catherine had been panelists at a weeklong seminar on modeling interactions between the natural and technical environment for an audience of masters degree students in the Environmental Engineering program and, never particularly smooth with women, he’d been struck nearly speechless as she’d walked into the vast lecture hall to take her place near him at the long table in the front of the room.  

The semi-circle of raked seats rose thirty rows above them, making the area at the base of the hall seem strangely intimate.  Even so, Bruce would probably never have found the courage to make more than polite conversation with her except that the students had turned out to be a tough crowd.  It wasn’t until later that he and Catherine learned that their mutual friend Andris, a Greek smartass and tenured professor at TUM tasked with organizing the seminar, had required the students to challenge the panel to the best of their ability.  Their grades would depend, in part, on how well they performed that task.

On the third day of the seminar, one kid had actually managed to get Dr. Banner and Dr. Mulready to disagree on the artificial neural network model developed at the University Brunei Darussalam for testing the effects of weather on solar radiation reaching Earth’s surface.  They’d politely agreed on some of its results: solar radiation is directly proportional to the atmospheric temperature while it is inversely proportional to the relative humidity, and wind speed has little influence on solar radiation.  But they’d vigorously debated the functional relationships between solar radiation, atmospheric temperature, and relative humidity.  

They’d still been arguing about it at the panelists’ dinner that night.  Andris, thoroughly amused and smugly proud of himself, kept raising the topic every time they tried to move on.  In the end, they realized he was baiting them and dropped it for good, instead joining forces to good-naturedly provoke him in retaliation.  But by then, the damage was done.  They were sitting next to one another at a long table in Andris’s apartment, halfway through dinner and thoroughly smitten with one another.  

Bruce knew when they agreed to share a cab back to their hotel that he was playing with fire.  If the disastrous demise of his relationship with Betty Ross had taught him anything, it was that he  could never again try to have a relationship.  And he didn’t kid himself about Catherine Mulready.  Even then Bruce knew that he could fall hard for a woman like that.  If he was being honest with himself, he was already well on his way.  When they’d met three days before, he’d been a goggling teenager.  After that, he’d listened to her and become fascinated with her research and the way her mind worked, becoming even more tongue-tied around her, the more impressed and intrigued he became.  Then, today, when that little German twit had proposed his asinine theory and Catherine had agreed with him, he’d suddenly forgotten all that as they launched into a full-blown professional difference of opinion followed by a smooth transition to partners in crime when they realized they’d been had.

He’d hoped maybe she would bid him a professional good night, right up until the point when he’d walked her to her door and, before she could get her key into the slot, watched himself reach a hand out to stroke her hair. She’d leaned into his hand and turned her face to him, and before he’d known what he was doing, he had her crushed to him and her warm, soft lips under his.  Bruce didn’t remember now how they’d gotten into her room, all he could remember was the way he’d pressed her up against the back of the door once it closed behind them.  

It wasn’t like in the movies.  They didn’t tear each other’s clothes off right then and there. They’d taken their time.  They’d flirted and kissed, teased and gotten distracted, so that by the time they were standing next to her bed, they still had most of their clothes left to take off of one another.  They only got as far as footwear and jackets before they were lying side by side, which meant that, when they began to unbutton and unfasten, they could go very, very slowly.

Which, as it turned out, was Bruce’s specialty.  One of the side effects of all the time he’d spent working on calming and focusing was that he could be an excruciatingly patient lover.  Each button on Catherine’s blouse meant long minutes of kissing while his fingers made their incremental, lazy way from her neck to the next button.  Nothing she could say or do would speed him up, which was as intoxicating as it was deliciously frustrating.  She got all the exquisite thrill of suspense, while he got to listen to her whine and beg while she moved against him, trying to encourage him.  

By the time he finally bared her breasts, she’d had his shirt off for over half an hour, and she complained that the worst part was that she couldn’t even be mad, because the way he used his mouth made it oh, so entirely worth the wait.  It took even longer to get her skirt off, and another eternity before he slid her panties from her.  All of that anticipation meant that when he was finally, blessedly inside her, it took him all of five seconds to give her the first climax.  Best of all, Bruce’s implacable patience meant that, by the time the sun rose, she’d lost count.

In the end, the German kid got a great grade for the seminar, and Bruce and Catherine ended up spending the rest of their nights in Munich together.  And every possible night thereafter.                                    

It wasn’t until Catherine yawned that Bruce realized he was staring at her in his reverie, and how late it was.  The wine had been gone for a while by then, and he was a little buzzed.  Not too much, the world just had a nice glow and the idea of somebody being able to dial up disasters on command didn’t seem quite so cataclysmic right now. He stood, trying not to yawn himself.

“I’m sorry.  I shouldn’t have kept you awake.  I can show you to a guest room where you can get some sleep.”

Catherine smiled tiredly as she pushed her chair from the table.  “That would be good.”

Bruce led her to the floor above, where his apartment was.  There was a vacant apartment next to it, which he knew Tony kept ready for situations like this.  Opening the door for her, he stood just inside, meaning to step aside for Catherine, but when she took a step, he found himself unable to move.  In the soft nighttime light from the hallway, with only a table lamp inside casting a glow on her face, she looked beautiful. It reminded him of Munich, and of all the times they’d met in hotels and apartments all over the world, wherever they could arrange to be together before their obligations would force them apart again.  Of the sweet anticipation of stealing a night, or a few nights, together, when they’d been so in love and so passionate every time they were together because they were apart so much.  Before she’d learned his terrible secret.  Before London.  

“Cathy…” he breathed.

She stopped just in front of him, looking up with sudden concern.  “What is it?”

“I just, um, thought that you might maybe want to, aah…  Maybe stay with me.  I’m just next door, and I… we…”

For a moment, they stood face to face, inches apart, in the shadowy entrance of the vacant apartment.  Her eyes shone, and he could see that her pupils were slightly dilated, either with the dim light or with want, he couldn’t know.  He reached for her, touching her soft cheek with two fingers and sliding them down to trail along her jaw, then taking a shallow breath in as he slowly, tentatively leaned toward her.  

“Don’t, Bruce.”  She whispered.

He froze where he was, but didn’t take his fingers from her face or move away.

“Please don’t play with me.”

“No, Cathy -“

“Don’t kiss me unless you plan to stay this time.  Because I was gutted when you left.  You know that.  I can’t do that again.”

“Cathy…” he said again, putting a hand on either of her shoulders and laying his forehead to hers.  “I can’t. You know I can’t.”

“Then let’s just have a kip and we’ll see each other in the morning, yeah?”

It seemed a long time before Bruce was able to pull himself away from her.  “Yeah.  Yeah, OK,” he sighed.  “Sleep well.”

“You, too.”

*****

Santiago Cárdenas wasn’t supposed to be out of Site B, but he ran out of smokes, and he sure wasn’t gonna spend the next ten hours down in that hellhole without garros.  Besides, the boss was having his big party down in the Keys, and Santi’s ass was stuck up here in D.C. while a bunch of the paisas got to go down there and do security.  It sucked, and he was pissed.  So he was heading to the bodega, and fuck Arias if he didn’t like it.

The redhead crying on the curb outside the little store was a surprise. The first thing he noticed - after the crying, of course – was that she was fine.  Like, really fine.  So, being a gentleman, Santi slowed and then made a command decision. 

“Hey, lil’ mama, what’s wrong?”

She looked up at him, and the pain in her eyes actually touched him.  She gave a weak little smile and shrugged.  “I’m OK,” she said.  

Well, that was obviously bullshit, and her very short skirt gave him a look at some really nice legs.  So he stepped a little closer.  “Nah, man, you ain’t OK.  You need some help, something?”

That apparently made her cry a little more.  She wiped her eyes, but the next smile was a little bigger.  “I just…  I got dumped. I know, it’s pathetic, right? Sitting here on the street crying?”

“Nah, Mami, it ain’t pathetic.  What’s pathetic is some asshole dumping a woman as fine as you.” Santi went over and actually sat next to her which, a little to his surprise, she allowed.  

“He cheated.”

“See?  Pathetic asshole.  I told you.”

She laughed a little through her tears.  “You’re nice.”

“Nicer than that piece of shit, anyway.  Listen, can I do anything?  You, um… I was just gonna get me some smokes. You maybe want a smoke?”

“That would be great.  Shit, I don’t even have my purse or anything.  I just ran out of the apartment.”

“I got you, Mami.  Be right back.”

When Santi came back out of the bodega, she’d dried her eyes and was standing up. Oh, yeah, this one was a real looker. That tight T-shirt under her jacket, and the short skirt…  Santi was in love.  He made a big show of lighting her garro for her.  

“So, I’m Santiago.  Friends call me Santi.  You?”

“Natasha.”

“Beautiful name.”

“Thanks.”

They smoked in silence for a few moments.  “So, Natasha, you live with this guy?”

She shrugged.  “I don’t know.  I mean, yeah, we live together, but I don’t know if I’m going back.  I just…  I need some time to think.  To get my head on straight, you know?”

“Sure.  ‘Course I know.  So, listen, I gotta go, I gotta get back to work.”  Santi looked down and ran a hand across the back of his neck.  “I’m not even supposed to be out of the building right now, I just ran out of smokes and had to get some.”

Natasha’s face clouded with what Santi thought looked like fear.  

“Oh,” she said.  “Oh, yeah… I guess.  Yeah.”

“Hey, listen, Mami, you gonna be OK?  He isn’t gonna, like, hit you or nothin’, right?”

“Oh, no.  Nothing like that.”

This Natasha was a terrible liar.  “He does.  He hits you, don’t he?”

“No. I’ll be fine.  Thanks for the smoke, Santi.”

Reluctantly, Santi began to turn from her, then turned back.  “Hey, you wanna, uh…  You wanna trade numbers?  So you could let me know you’re OK?”

“Really?”  Natasha said, her face lighting up as she pulled her phone from her pocket.  

So they put each other’s numbers into their phones.  Santi then pushed his phone back into the pocket of his jeans and got ready to shuffle back to work.  Waving at her in a way he immediately realized was idiotic, he turned around and made his way back down the block, looking back at her as she settled back down on the curb.  

The last time he looked before turning the corner, he saw that a dude was standing behind her on the sidewalk, talking loudly to her.  She seemed to know him, and not to be happy about him being there. Santi couldn’t make out what they were saying, but he could tell from their voices it wasn’t pleasant.  The boyfriend.  Had to be.

The guy looked like he had some serious muscle on him.  Just the way he stood, the way he moved.  Still, she’d said he cheated on her, and she was really nice looking.  He liked her low, silky voice, too.  This could be his chance to score some big points with her.  She’d given him her number, right?  She was into him.  So Santi decided to take a chance.

Sauntering back toward the bodega, putting a little extra roll in his hips as he did, Santi waited until the dude noticed him before calling out, “Hey, Natasha, this guy botherin’ you?  You need me to get rid of him?”

Natasha looked a little scared.  She shook her head without looking at Santi and looked down at the street.  The dude stood a little straighter, waiting for Santi to approach him before he said, “Look, this is between me and my girlfriend, amigo.  Why don’t you just go back the way you came, huh?”

“Nah, I don’t think so.  If you’re Natasha’s boyfriend, that means you’re the one cheated on her.  How about you just leave her alone.”

The dude took a step toward Santi, trying to look taller as he did.  He wasn’t very tall, a couple inches shorter than Santi was, with light-ish blue eyes and short, almost military-short, dark hair. Santi was a little unsure about this, because the guy did look fit.  But he didn’t seem all that confident, not really.  He was putting on a bravado Santi was pretty sure he was faking.  That, and the way Natasha was looking at him like he was her hero, made Santi’s decision for him.

“I’m not gonna ask again.  Get to gettin’.  I mean it. Natasha wants to see you, she’ll come to you.”

“Who the hell do you think you are, talkin’ to me about my woman?”

“Whether she’s your woman, that’s her decision.  Which she’s makin’ right now.  You want her to see me wipe the street with your ass when she’s tryna decide whether to take your cheatin’ ass back?”

The dude stepped closer, so Santi stepped closer.  They were practically chest to chest, and Santi was glad, because it accentuated the fact that he was taller.  

“You better shut your mouth, Junior.”

Santiago grinned in what he hoped was an evil way.  “Make me. Grandpa.”

The guy telegraphed his swing like Santi couldn’t believe.  Which made it easy to raise his forearm and block it, although it hurt a little.  At the same time, Santi made a solid connection with the dude’s chin, and the guy turned around, leaning down, hurt. Santi felt ten feet tall.  His hand hurt for sure, but he wasn’t gonna let Natasha, or this dude, see that.  

The scuffle that followed was short, but brutal.  Both of them were bleeding when it was over, but Santi was thrilled to find that he got the better of it.  Holding the guy’s arm behind his back in a way he hoped hurt, Santi told him in no uncertain terms to go home and leave Natasha alone.  The guy cussed him out like Santi hadn’t heard in a while, but he left.  

As he did, Santi went over to Natasha, who had stood up and was cowering near a car parked on the side of the street.  

“He gonna give you any trouble about that?”  Santi asked.  

“He… He might,” she answered weakly.  “I probably shouldn’t go back to the apartment tonight.”

“You got somewhere else to go?”

“Um… Not really,” she said, looking down at her feet.

“Well, you can… If you want, I mean, I’m not supposed to or nothin’, but… If you want, you could come to where I work.  You could hang out until my shift is done, then see what you wanna do.”

Natasha hesitated.  “I don’t know…”

“C’mon, Mami.  It’s late and this is D.C.  You shouldn’t be out here by yourself, especially if that maricón comes back.”

“Well…  Is it far?”

“No. A couple blocks.  Come on.”

Natasha made sure to brush against Santiago’s arm several times as they walked toward their destination.

[1] Li means ‘plums’ in Chinese.  I’m not even sorry.

[heartslogos]

seas who could sing so deep and strong [129]

“Wait, there’s more than one?” Judge asks, incredulous as he watches four dogs running around Punk with great and boundless enthusiasm. “They’re all named Pug?”

“Yup,” Chic says, popping her lip at the p. “The best part is that they all know which one of them he’s talking to when he calls. I don’t know how it works. For a while I was trying to graph it to the pitch and timbre of the way he was saying it but it got to be too much work with little to no evidence so I gave up. It’s probably some sort of freak Tenno-kubrow bond thing. I don’t know. I mean, Alpha somehow talks to all animals without talking so it isn’t entirely unrealistic.”

“Punk having three different Chroma Prime warframes suddenly makes more sense now that I know he has four kubrow named Pug,” Judge says.

(“This seems like a waste of arsenal space,” Judge said, examining Punk’s arsenal screen.

“No, it’s like. A job necessity? I have my Graxx Chroma Prime for everyday use. I have my Chroma Prime all decked out with my sponsorship logos for competition. And I’ve got the Deluxe skinned Chroma for…well. Date night. Or when I’ve made Chic super mad and need to earn her forgiveness. I need all three because I had to mod one of them just for competition, and that’s an entirely different thing from what I do normally.”

Sure, it makes sense when Punk says it like that. But the reality of it is that he’s using up three whole warframe slots for the same warframe.)

“I’ve known both of you for basically years now and I don’t know how this hasn’t come up sooner.”

“Well. He knows which Pug he’s talking about, the Pugs know which Pug he’s talking about. No one else ever knows, so that’s probably why,” Chic points out. “I mean. To be fair, we had no idea what the hell you guys were talking about whenever you referenced Spooky. And now we can’t ever not know, so thanks for that.”

“She’s a sweetheart,” Judge replies automatically, coming to the unfortunate kavat’s defense because Kore certainly wouldn’t.

If Kore heard something bad about Spooky she’d just say something like, she doesn’t need me to defend her, she is her own defense.

“Sure she is,” Chic says, “But that face.”

“Looks aren’t everything.”

“Yeah, but with a first impression like that can you blame a person for not wanting a second one?” Chic retorts. “Anyway. Pug one is the one you know, the little one. Pugs two through four are the other types of kubrow the ones that aren’t the sneaky boys. Because Punk having a sneaky kubrow makes no damn sense.”

“Huras.”

“Yeah, that one. You know, I didn’t call you over to gawk at Punk’s dogs,” Chic says bemused.

“Right, sorry,” Judge says, slowly turning away from the spectacle of Punk saying the word Pug over and over and getting a variety of responses. “You needed help with something?”

“Yes,” Chic says, “I’m working on tooling my new MOA and I could use some help with the program tweaks. The one you made Persephone is choice - it would be even better if she actually let it do its job.”

“I know! I keep saying that!”

“So help me build one that I will definitely let do its job,” Chic says, “I’ve never been much for tinkering. But I do have some ideas. Come on, ignore their noise. They’ll get tired and dog pile eventually.”

“Is that flavor text or literal?”

“It can’t be both?”

-

“Holy shit, you can’t just body check him like that,” Chic snaps, “Punk, he’s a newbie!”

“I’m sorry!” Punk says, “I didn’t mean to! I mean - he did say he knew how to play so I thought - “

“I hate sport,” Kore hisses and Judge groans, feeling a tightness in his chest as someone slowly helps him sit up.

Judge looks around, a little disoriented. It takes him a second to recognize the Lunaro pitch - empty except for Punk, Chic, Kore, and himself. He sees a bit of glimmering gold floating around him and he recognizes the Alpha’s familiar aura - steady and deep, thrumming like some sort of growing sound in the bones - washing over him.

He slowly turns and sees that the Alpha’s Oberon is holding him in his lap while releasing steady waves of Renewal.

“Judge, are you okay?” Chic says, stepping out of her Trinity and looking at him with concern. “The idiot decked you with an unstable Lunaro ball.”

“I’m sorry!”

“It’s fine,” Judge says, feeling a bit woozy but no worse for wear. He feels worse getting hit by Bombards, honestly. “Everything feels okay.”

“Don’t get out of your warframe just yet,” Chic says, “Wait for Alpha to finish stabilizing you.”

“I’m sorry,” Punk says, looking like he might cry - a horrible look, his nose is all scrunched up and his face is a blotchy red. “I didn’t - I thought you’d throw it back or dodge!”

Judge sees Kore behind the other two Tenno, her Nidus’ arms folded and hip cocked. He can feel her concern but it’s also a lot of general amusement.

“When you said know how to play Lunaro to Punk,” Chic says, “Do you mean you actually played Lunaro or just watched games of it?”

“Uh. The latter?”

Chic pinches the bridge of her nose. Punk looks even more distraught.

“Judge, I would’ve taught you the basics of how to handle the ball,” Punk says, “There’s more to it than what you see on streams. It’s a lucky shot you were in your Inaros, I might have actually killed you.”

Alpha pats Judge’s Inaros on the shoulders and gently pushes him off, golden waves of energy receding as Alpha cuts off the Renewal.

Judge carefully steps out of his warframe, leaving Inaros inert on the ground behind him as he stands up.

“I’m fine,” Judge says, “I’ve taken Bursa hits worse than that. Seriously. I’m fine. Come on, guys, let’s just go back to playing? I was having fun before the ball exploded on me.”

[tradinggatorcom]

How to Find Good Investment Newsletters

You may have heard of them called investment newsletters and may have even received some in the mail. They are usually newsletters of one sort or another, and they are geared towards investing in certain stocks and bonds. There are so many to choose from, though, that you can never make sense of them all. You need to read some of them more than once before you make your decision. Some of them will be much more useful than others. If you are serious about making investments that will help you grow your wealth, you will do well to follow the advice of good investment newsletters.

You should not feel obliged to take the advice of someone who writes an investment newsletters. After all, they are doing it for personal reasons, and their motive is to try to earn money as well. You should therefore take some time to determine what their motives really are. What you should look for, however, is consistency in their recommendations. They should be able to give you a reason for subscribing to their newsletters over another that does not have the same recommendations.

Good investment newsletters will include charts and graphs, as well as other kinds of information and data. These charts and graphs should show you what kind of investment you could potentially make. The kinds to look for include the relative strengths and weaknesses of various companies or areas in relation to each other. Also included should be information on the ups and downs of the stock market in general. This will help you keep track of what is happening.

Another thing to look for in good investment newsletters is specific language. You will find that certain words, when used in a highly technical way, can make the whole thing sound highly confusing and difficult. If there is vague writing, the reader might not understand what you are trying to say. This can lead to them picking another newsletter that uses simpler language.

One thing that you can also look for is how up to date the material is. If you are investing in stocks or other securities, it’s almost certain that the information in circulation will be outdated at times. Be sure to keep yourself informed so that you can follow the trends accordingly.

Newsletters often offer you information that you can use. They tell you about split-second decisions and stock pick trends, for example. Be sure to take advantage of such information in order to stay on top of the investments you plan to put your money in.

Finally, you may want to look for a company that you can trust. A company that offers good investment newsletters should be able to offer some proof that they know what they are doing. For example, a company that has been in business for more than a few years should be able to offer you proof of that. They should also be willing to offer you historical data so that you can see how their investment newsletters have done in the past.

You can easily choose a good investment newsletters based on how much information they provide. It’s important that you also look into the company offering the information. This way, you can be sure to have a reliable source for all of your investment needs. With a little help from newsletters, you should find that you are better off when it comes to putting your money to work.

Keep in mind that you should always think of newsletters as a tool. In other words, you shouldn’t use them to always tell you what to do. Rather, a good investment newsletters should be used to provide you with ideas and information that you can then act upon. By using these newsletters to your advantage, you should find that you are more likely to make money from your investments.

Of course, it will take some time for you to find good investment newsletters. There is a lot out there for you to choose from, and it will certainly take some time to sift through all of the information that you can find. Still, it can be worth it to be well-informed about your investments. You may even find that good investment newsletters can help you manage your investments more successfully in the long run.

When it comes to looking for good investment newsletters, keep in mind that you should be skeptical of some of the less-reputable sites out there. It is important that you get information from a reputable company. This way, you can be sure that you are getting sound advice and that you aren’t wasting your money on a worthless piece of writing. After all, investing is a big decision, and it needs to be one that you take seriously. Always keep in mind that your financial future is potentially very dependent on the decisions that you make today.

The post How to Find Good Investment Newsletters appeared first on TradingGator.

source https://www.tradinggator.com/how-to-find-good-investment-newsletters/

[destinationtoast]

Some notes on my fandom stats.

I sometimes get questions or criticism regarding my fandom stats.  (I welcome both.)  Sometimes critics have missed something that I clearly stated in the post, but often, criticism indicates that I could be doing a better job explaining something.  So this is an attempt to explain what fandom data can and can’t show, where I’m personally coming from, and what I’m intending my analyses to do.

This is a v1 attempt -- please give feedback about where I can further clarify! I'll be continuing to revise and update based on responses, so please click through to the original post.  

The most common critiques I get fall into a few broad categories:

Incorrect or misleading. Some of my methods/stats/visualizations are wrong, misleading, or don’t match up with someone’s personal experience.  (See “My goals,” “The limitations of my ability to issue corrections,” and “How you can help with limitations in existing analyses”)

Wrong focus. I don’t do enough stats about some important topics -- e.g., race. (See “The limitations of my methods” and “How you can help with limitations in existing analyses”)

Not representative. I’m overgeneralizing about fandom and misrepresenting fans by only looking at certain fanworks or by failing to give important context.  (See “The limitations of focusing primarily on AO3”)

Overly authoritative. I’m speaking as an authority on fandom and acting as if my stats are The Truth. (See “My goals” and “What fandom stats can and can’t tell us”)

Agenda-driven. I’m using stats to try to justify fandom practices that some people disagree with, such as creating fanworks primarily about men or white characters -- or else I’m using stats to harangue fans into behaving differently, e.g. leaving more comments on fic. (See “The Toast agenda”)

I’ll try to explain where I’m coming from and address some of the most common criticisms here, but if you have more questions or concerns, please pass them along.

My goals

My fandom analysis posts are intended as fanworks -- by a fan, for other fans.  Meaning that:

I’m assuming the audience has personal experience in fandom and goodwill toward fans.  

While I sometimes have beta readers, these are imperfect works, put together in my spare time.

These are shared out of love for fandom and other fans, and because I think other fans will be interested, rather than to further my career.

As some possibly useful context, I didn’t even mean to end up making a bunch of fandom stats posts in the first place. But when I was curious about fanworks and made a few graphs mostly for myself, other fans turned out to be really interested.  So I’ve kept on sharing what I’ve learned as I’ve continued to be curious.  And I started a dedicated stats sideblog because some fans who aren't interested in the other content on my main blog asked me to.

I do the best I can to be accurate and clear in my fandom stats posts.  But I sometimes make errors in analysis, gather unrepresentative data, fail to give context, present something unclearly, etc.  I really appreciate feedback from people who want to engage in thoughtful critique or ask questions when they spot issues with my work. It’s my goal to always update & correct/clarify my posts as I continue to learn more.

I don’t have plans to publish any of my work for a broader audience, or an academic audience. I have a separate career that doesn’t have to do with fan studies, and I do this for fun in my spare time… I think trying to rewrite for a different audience and publish things via official channels would sap a lot of my desire to do it.  When I’ve shared things at cons, they’ve been fan conventions, not academic conferences, and I’ve been there because fans expressed interest in hearing me talk about some of my stuff.

(Note: this doesn’t mean I don’t think fandom analysis can be worth publishing, or worth having a career in!  And I’m happy to share data and methodology with academics or other interested parties, and to have them redo the analyses/do similar analyses & present the results to other audiences.)

It’s possible I sometimes sound like I’m writing/speaking as An Authority On Fandom, but that’s not my intent. In fact, in fandom I rarely feel like an expert -- because I haven’t actually been active in the online fannish community for all that long, and I only have personal experience with a pretty narrow range of fandoms, fannish platforms, and fannish experiences.  I strongly value hearing the experiences and opinions of other fans.  

The limitations of my methods

I tend to do analyses of fanworks only, and I analyze aggregate metadata (e.g., number of uses of tags) about large amounts of fanworks at once (thousands or millions of works).  That means I’m not looking at any individual works.  Those are good techniques for answering questions like:

Which ratings are most common on AO3?

Which are the most common fandoms, characters, or ships?

How has that changed over time?

How many kudos do different AO3 tags get?

What are the most popular genres on Fanfiction.net?

Sometimes I also compare data between archives (AO3, FFN, Wattpad), or look at fandom tagging activity on sites like Tumblr or DeviantART.  And occasionally I get access to a bunch of data taken from a site like IMDB and incorporate that, as well.

These methods/data sets have limitations:

I haven’t hand-categorized the data.  There may be errors.

I’m relying on other people to tell me what’s in their fanworks, so anything that’s not in the tags, my methods don’t catch.  

Different people sometimes use the same tags differently, and I usually can’t detect that, either.  I assume that this usually just adds noise to my large data sets, but I also try to think about any systematic biases that might be introduced and to highlight them in my writeups.

I can’t add new information, like a character’s race, country of origin, canonical (a)sexuality when known, etc.  Neither AO3 nor FFN specify these attributes (although fans can and do sometimes create tags like “Canon Character of Color” or “Canon Asexual Character,” so to the extent that fans widely use these tags, I can do analyses).  I would really love to have data about race and other factors not in the tags; if you have ideas how to get it, I'd be grateful.

I can’t answer anything about the creators of the fanworks (e.g., demographics).

These are the methods that I am personally best equipped to do (in terms of tools, skills, experience).  I’ve enjoyed learning some new methods as part of doing these posts, but I’m definitely not good at everything.  So when my methods can’t provide the right data for someone’s question, it doesn’t mean the question is unanswerable, but I might not be the best person to answer the question.  See “How you can help with limitations in existing analyses” for more information.

The limitations of focusing mostly on AO3

I use AO3 a lot because:

it has the most flexible and best organized tagging system

it's easiest to search, sort, and filter

it already gives you a bunch of stats in the Sort & Filter sidebar, whenever you select a particular tag or combination of tags

I have now written a bunch of scripts to help me quickly get data from AO3

I have the best intuitions about AO3, because I use it the most, so I can do a better job catching errors in my work there

That doesn’t mean I think AO3 contains all fanworks or is representative of all fandom/fanworks.  It’s only one home of many for fanworks, and it’s got a lot of unusual characteristics.  For instance, because it was founded to provide a home to works that were considered sensitive or banned on other archives (explicit works, RPF, slash, etc.), it tends to have more of these kinds of works than many archives.  Initially, I didn’t tend to point this out and overgeneralized about fanworks from AO3.  These days I try to point out the limitations in generalizing.  (Though I do still find it interesting to learn about AO3 as an archive!)

The limitations of my ability to issue corrections

One good aspect of Tumblr is the way that it can reach broad audiences beyond one’s immediate followers.  However, the same easy reblogging that leads to this broad circulation comes with frustrations.  Even if I update the original post with corrections or clarifications, the old version of the post often continues to circulate.  Another difficulty is that not everyone sees the same conversation thread, so I often end up responding to the same concerns from a whole bunch of different people who aren’t seeing my response to others in different reblog branches.

There’s not that much to be done about this, but readers might want to keep in mind that what they see cross their dash is often not the latest version.   You can usually find my latest updates by clicking through to the original post.

How you can help with limitations in existing analyses

I wish I could do more stats about understudied topics like race in fanworks using my methods, and I wish others were studying these topics more, too. Fortunately, my methods are not the only methods, and I am not the only one doing analyses.  As one great example, if you are interested in how race factors into fandom demographics or into shipping, I strongly recommend @centrumlumina​ . They’ve done a demographics survey of 10K AO3 users and annual stats about the most common ships on AO3 (with hand-categorization of race).

There are many other great fandom stats folks as well (I’ve amassed an incomplete list).  If none of us have answered the questions you are interested in, I encourage you to try to answer questions yourself!  A lot of what I do is not actually very complicated (seriously, a lot of it is just doing a search on AO3 and writing down the number of results, or clicking on a tag and writing down the number of results) -- and there are some fan-made tools to help.

As one starting point, I recommend taking a look at the tools at fandomstats.org. I collaborated with @annathecrow​ and @esgibter​ to help fans do some types of quick stats -- right now only on AO3, but we welcome help broadening that!  I’ve also written some tutorials on gathering data, and as part of my fandom stats posts I generally share my raw data, which you are free to use to dig into my work further/continue the effort.

Time permitting, I am also happy to answer questions and help you brainstorm how to do your own analyses.  

What fandom stats can and can’t tell us

I don't think my fandom stats tell deep truths about fandom. They can provide some insights into some aspects of fanworks: what kinds of fanworks exist on different platforms; how fans are using metadata (tags, etc.); how reader/consumer response to fanworks; etc. But trying to figure out what exactly that data means, and why fans are producing/consuming the things they are, is beyond the scope of the numbers.  So is determining the direction of cause and effect between variables that seem related (and ascertaining whether there are hidden underlying causes).

It’s additionally important to keep in mind that the results of fandom stats depend on the questions asked and the types of analyses done. There isn't any one right way to analyze data (there are sometimes bad ways to do it, but often several good ways). Different ways of looking at data tell you different things.  Even a good analyst can only see part of the story, depending on what they think to ask, and how.  My goals are to clearly explain my thought processes and methods in gathering data, doing analyses, and presenting the results -- in large part so other people can spot potential issues with my assumptions and methods.  I always welcome suggestions for follow up work or clarifications, when people think there is more to the story.

A final point: I don’t ascribe any moral judgments to my fandom stats -- that is, I don't intend to imply any opinions about whether fans are doing good or bad things. You can form your own opinions from the numbers, or use them to support arguments.  But I try to keep any opinions or judgments out of my stats posts (though I may sometimes share them in other meta).

The Toast agenda

I’m not setting out to prove anything when I do an analysis -- I’m motivated by curiosity (or sometimes a desire to help other fans answer questions or find rarer fanworks).  I’m also never setting out to justify (or argue against) any fan behaviors.  As I said above, I don’t think fandom stats data can answer questions like “Is it right/good for fans to do [X]?”

A few of my personal tenets regarding data and its role in discourse:

The answer to almost every interesting question about fandom (or any complex system) is “It’s complicated/nuanced, and the answer depends on the details of how you ask the question.”  I try to explain my starting assumptions and to map out some of the complexity of the data, where I can. There’s always more to the story, though.

There are many reasons that groups of people do things.  We shouldn’t ever look for just one reason.  I don’t like questions like, “Is there so much fanfic written about white cis men because of bias in media or bias in fandom?” -- I don’t think it’s an either/or, nor are those the only possible factors.  My own data gathering is not an attempt to support either side of such arguments.

For example, there are strong systemic biases in my society (US) based on race, gender, sexuality, class, size, ability, and other factors.  This leads to, among other things, a lack of balanced representation in media, and a tendency to privilege certain kinds of storytelling narratives over others.  Both media creators and fan creators (and fan consumers) exist in this same stew of biases, and we're all affected by them. This makes it unlikely that only one of these groups is responsible for phenomena like lack of representation in fanworks.

Data is good food for thought and discussion fodder, but can't tell us what to do.

It’s also the case that I have opinions about lots of things.  Nobody is truly impartial.  When I set out to gather data and test hypotheses, I try not to let my own beliefs or assumptions bias my conclusions, and I am often surprised by what I find in the data -- but it’s unavoidable that my own worldview influences the questions I think to ask and other factors in the analyses I do.  

A few facts that may affect my methods, assumptions, and blind spots:

I’m white.

I’m a cis woman.

I’m queer, and I have identified as queer/bisexual for my entire adult life (~20 years).

I’m poly, and I have been in poly relationships for almost my entire adult life.

I live in the US.

I’ve always lived in suburbs or cities.

I’ve always been financially secure.

I’m not religious or spiritual.

I’m liberal to extremely liberal on most political issues.

I have academic background in science.

I work in tech.

As an adult, I’ve mostly been active in the Sherlock fandom, since 2013.  I previously read some fanfic in the Harry Potter fandom in ~2005-2008.  When I was a teen (mostly pre-internet), I was producing fanfic and fanart (for just me and my friends) in the Star Trek and Peter Gabriel/Genesis fandoms.

I write queer fiction of many stripes -- fanfic (mostly M/M and/or queer poly) and original (mostly F/F and/or queer poly).  A lot of it is mature or explicit, and occasionally kinky.

I write het.

I write gen.

I’ve written RPF and self-insert stories.

I love a lot of problematic media.  I’m happy both loving it and critiquing it.

I’m in favor of more people (and more diverse people) writing stories, and I’m fine with people writing any kind of fiction that they want to.  I’m also in favor of having critical discussions about storytelling, and getting creators to think critically about the kinds of stories they are and are not contributing to the world.

Whew -- thanks for reading! :)  Another fact about me is that I’m strongly in favor of self-examination and self-improvement.  I’m always striving to do better, and I welcome feedback on my fandom stats, on these notes, or on anything else.

Edit: Thanks to @flourish and @fffinnagain for some insightful feedback on earlier drafts of some sections of this post.  All errors and issues are mine!

[creative-type]

Why Tony Tony Chopper is my Least Favorite Straw Hat

I feel conflicted when I see people list characters from greatest to least favorite. Cut and dry lists in general - whether featuring power levels, most attractive, saddest backstory, etc - tend to elicit this reaction, because they’re so subjective and I think if an author has done a good job then the audience shouldn’t be able to make the list at all.

Which wouldn’t stop people from trying, but still. 

Using One Piece as an example, there are certain characters that resonate with me personally, the chief of whom is Nico Robin. I’m a total sucker for the misunderstood badass bookworm - Raven from the original Teen Titans cartoon, Tris Chandler from Tamora Pierce’s works, Roald Dahl’s Matilda, and Thistle from Daughter of the Lilies are just a few examples of this in other media.

But apart from Best Girl Robin, my feelings about the cast of One Piece tends to vary depending on how you define “favorite”. I love Luffy as a main character, but would hate to meet him in real life. I appreciate Zoro’s place in the crew, but find him boring and long wistfully for the days when he was allowed to be a goofball. Nami, Usopp, and Vivi grew on me over time, and if I could graph my feelings on Sanji over the course of the series it would look like I have ventricular tachycardia 

And then there’s Chopper. 

Just as I’ve liked Robin since her first appearance, I have never liked Chopper. I know typing it is akin to blasphemy amongst the One Piece fandom, but I was left unmoved by his backstory, and he’s never grown on me in the hundreds of chapters since then. The first thing I thought when I first saw his unused concept art was “what a wasted opportunity”. 

 A lot of this is subjective. I work in health care, so the quack doctor Hiliruk rubs me the wrong way on a purely professional level, which in turn makes it really hard for me to care when he dies. I dislike Chopper’s “mascot” status and how it’s affected his character design. I wish he would do more onscreen doctoring. I find his naivete annoying. I think his post-timeskip transformations look dumb. And so on and so forth, ad nauseum.

At the same time, Nami is never shown drawing maps and I regularly have her in my top 3-4 Straw Hats. Usopp and Luffy are just as stupid, but their antics don’t bother me half as much as Chopper’s do. When I decided to sit down and write about Chopper, I had to figure out what made me less tolerant about him specifically when there are plenty of others who share his same flaws. This is what I came up with.

Want vs Need and Forgotten Development

In his book The Anatomy of Story, John Truby describes the difference between a character’s want versus their need. While written with writing screenplays in mind, many of Truby’s techniques can be used regardless of medium. It’s an excellent tool for would-be writers, and I highly recommend it.

When looking at Chopper through the lens of want and need, it’s pretty easy to see what Oda had in mind.

Chopper wants to become a doctor who can heal any illness, but he needs to reconcile his human and reindeer natures and see himself as a complete person. Ironically, in doing so he willingly becomes the “monster” he was so afraid of.

 Since this transformation is for the sake of and with the support of his friends, it’s coded as positive when before it was negative. Chopper is no longer isolated and lonely, but an accepted and important member of an infamous pirate crew. Compare the above to his fight on Fishman Island

So Chopper does have a complete character arc through the first half of the series, and it’s a good one - simultaneously unique to him while bolstering the themes of One Pieces as a whole. Good job, Oda.

At the same time, I think there’s a secondary need that’s overlooked by the narrative, and by this point I doubt will be relevant to the story, and that’s the fact that Chopper needs to grow the fuck up.

To be fair, Chopper is only 15 at the start of the series, had spent the first years of his life as a reindeer and the rest isolated from the world for his own safety. It is understandable that he’d be naive. Dr. Kureha points this out for herself when he first joins the Straw Hat Pirates

What sets Chopper’s immaturity apart from, say, Luffy’s is that it is presented as something that he needs to overcome. This is especially true during the Skyepiea arc.

Remember that early on in the arc Chopper is left alone to guard the Going Merry. Chopper fails, losing quite badly to the Priest with all the strings whose name I can’t remember. Even with Gan Fall’s intervention it was plot armor sheer luck that kept the both of them from being killed. 

This loss nicely sets up Chopper’s battle with Gedatsu, which ended with Chopper’s first solo victory of the series. 

Chopper screams to the heavens that he’s a “real” pirate, which in context refers to reliable, brave, and strong. Note that this ties into his main need of self-actualization as the chapter before Chopper calls himself a monster just before hitting Gedatsu with his finisher. 

In doing so, Oda is effectively saying that Chopper needs to mature before he can become a complete character. In this way Chopper is like Usopp, whose desire to become a brave warrior the sea necessitates that he face his problems head on instead of run from them.

Later during the Davy Fight Back, Chopper is temporarily lost to the Foxy Pirates. He is understandably upset, but he goes overboard with his hysterics, causing Zoro to call him out.

Zoro in essence tells Chopper to man up. Now, masculinity as defined by One Piece is a pretty broad topic, and this isn’t the only time Chopper is told how to act “manly” by other members of the Straw Hat crew, one of the best examples I can think of being Sanji telling Chopper that “a man doesn’t believe a woman’s lies” when Robin tries to leave the crew. In this instance, however, I think “being a man” is interchangeable with “acting like an adult”, specifically in the area of taking responsibility for one’s actions. 

So we have the problem of Chopper’s naivete brought up by Kureha, the first steps of maturity seen during Skypiea, and the exposure that Chopper still has a long way to go during the Davy Fight Back. There’s even a moment during Thriller Bark when he has to deal with the realization that one of his idols is an evil dirtbag of Spandam-like proportion - a loss of idealism that most go through as a normal part of growing up.

The development isn’t fast nor especially profound. It’s never the main focus of Chopper’s arc because it’s not his primary need, and in a gag-happy series like One Piece I think Chopper’s childishness would always be the brunt of some sort of joke. But there is a sense of steadily marching forward toward a goal, and if things had kept trending in that direction I think it would have been enough to elevate Chopper from his dubious position as my least favorite Straw Hat.

But immediately after the timeskip we have this abomination of a scene

Words cannot express how much I hate this scene. Every other Straw Hat gets an awesome reintroduction. Nami and Usopp, who along with Chopper make up the so-called “weak trio”, even get to beat the crap out of some of the Fake Hat Pirates. 

Chopper mistakes creepy cucumber lady for Robin and runs away crying, undoing hundreds of chapters of development in one fell swoop. It’s stupid on so many levels I can’t even articulate enough to type them all out. The gag falls flat and makes it impossible for me to take him seriously going forward. I will admit that I’ve not done a lot of rereading of recent chapters to double check, but where Usopp and Luffy get plenty of moments post-timeskip to display a new-found maturity while maintaining their fun-loving nature, Chopper does not. He’s the same old Chopper.

I don’t have any way to confirm this, but I think part of this stagnation of character is due to Chopper’s status of cute mascot. To disrupt this status quo is to lessen his marketability. There is a reason why Chopper’s so damn cute when Oda originally wanted him to be kind of ugly. I mean, say what you want about Oda’s use of realistic body proportions, but there was a time when Chopper’s head wasn’t bigger than his torso.

Whether I’m right or not, I don’t think that it can be disputed that Chopper has gone through what I call “forgotten character development”. He’s just as immature (and in some places more so) as he was early in the series, and personally I can’t stand that kind of character. 

And again this is a highly subjective thing, but I don’t even think he’s that cute anymore. It’s a serious problem when your mascot ceases to be adorable and has no development to fall back on.

In the larger picture of One Piece, the loss of Chopper’s secondary development is a small thing, but it’s enough for me to not care about him at all. Sanji, for all his polarizing actions, at least makes me feel something. These days Chopper is just...there. 

I will admit that I might have let my initial distaste cloud my objectivity, so let me know what you think about Chopper’s development, or if there’s any other character that everyone else seems to like but you can’t stand. I’ll commiserate with the burden of having an unpopular opinion.

[1vet2another]

1vet2another: Keep it simple stupid with Microsoft Excel

By Matt Medhat

During the military, I didn’t use any computer programs that would be relevant to my future career.   College was my first real introduction to programs that would be integral to life in the corporate arena. With a business major, I had a few courses that taught basic software knowledge in Microsoft products like Excel, PowerPoint, Visio and Access.   There were two major issues.  1. I didn’t take these tools seriously enough (the majority of the blame falls on me).  2. I don’t believe our professors put enough emphasis on how important these tools were for our career.  

For now, let’s look at Excel.  Know enough to be dangerous.  If you get assigned to project that requires more detailed knowledge, you can learn on the job (Google, YouTube, nearby experts, etc.)  In fact, I urge you to not fill your head with details of every function and capability these programs offer.  Use your time more efficiently, learn enough to be dangerous and do deep dives as needed.  

As an analyst, I would often run into situations where I needed to utilize functions, graphs, or other capabilities of Excel that I wasn’t familiar with.  I would go straight to google and ask the question.  So far, I have been able to find a step-by-step “how to” guide or YouTube video for every unique scenario I ask about.   The best part is (in addition to learning new things), people become impressed and start thinking you’re some kind of Excel guru (ha!). Here are some tips to simplify Excel…

Have a goal for your spreadsheet

Every document serves a purpose.  Know what you are trying to accomplish every time you build a new spreadsheet. Corporations often have hundreds of spreadsheets floating around.  Many of those spreadsheets are either way too complicated or lack updated information. Unless you are using Excel for quick ad-hoc analysis that only you will see, I suggest you put some thought into it.

What analysis do you need to perform?  What is the goal of bringing this data together?    Who else will being using or seeing it?  Do we really need another spreadsheet out there (might be another one already out there that just needs an update)?  Answer those questions first.

Mind your audience

Make the assumption that the people opening your document are either very busy or have limited skills/experience using Excel.  Make it easy for the user to see the analysis and navigate the document if needed.  Use a cover page on the first tab with a brief description of the document and its purpose.  

Bring key results or metrics from the data to the front tab/s.  The point is, don’t let a giant spreadsheet with all the raw data be the first thing they see upon opening the document, it is overwhelming.  Present the data in either table or graph format, whichever highlights your analysis and makes it obvious for the user.

Less is more

When you start gathering data in a spreadsheet, it is easy to keep adding more columns.  We keep thinking of more things we would love to analyze and track over time.  This can be somewhat of a trap.  Try to stay focused on the goal of the spreadsheet and resist the temptation to make it more complex.  More columns mean more data, and more data means more time updating and potential accuracy concerns.

More data also can be more overwhelming and confusing for the user.  Keeping your spreadsheets focused on the goal is important.  Each column, in general, should be NEEDED to support the goal of the spreadsheet.  If you run across a column that is just nice to have, you can likely delete it.  Every time you or someone else thinks of adding more information, give it the same “nice to have” vs “need to have” test.

If they need to navigate and use the raw data, make it as easy as possible.  If you have a spreadsheet with multiple columns and rows, do your best to organize it in a way the user would likely need it.  Prioritize the important columns and either place them in the beginning or highlight with another color (try to avoid using more than 1 or 2 colors, nobody likes a confusing rainbow spreadsheet).  

Sort the data so it looks uniform and groups information in a way that makes sense.  The point is, it should look clean and organized. Finally, turn the filter on each column and allow them to easily find what they need (assume they don’t know how to turn on the filter).  

Know your options

Assuming you are not just sending out the raw data, you will likely need to show the analysis/major findings in a way that people understand.  Learn how to create pivot tables, graphs and tables that are simple and easy to read.  Don’t try to get fancy.  No need to add colors or cool designs that don’t add value.  Only include the data that is absolutely needed to support your analysis.  

Once again, weigh the “nice to have” vs. “need to have” when building tables and graphs.  Label things appropriately so every number is understood. Finally, make it all look neat and organized.  Take pride in your work.  Bring the highlighted analysis to the front of the document (cover page or next tab). The raw data should be the last tab.

Good luck and remember, keep it simple stupid.

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[askrophobe]

I decided to respond on this blog because I remembered last week that it exists, so I might as well use it!  Sorry that it took me ten days to respond -- I appreciate that you let me know that your presentation is far away so that I knew this ask wasn't time sensitive.

Two important disclaimers. 1) I know absolutely nothing about your field! I have literally never taken a standalone biology course, not even in high school. 2) I have unorthodox opinions about presentations -- I think my opinions stand on very solid ground, but they’re not standard. 

Also, before I get going, I’ll acknowledge that I’ve written a huge amount! This is because I took this ask as an opportunity to say all of the things that I wish I could say to everyone in academia. Unfortunately a lot of it will probably not apply to you (I guess it all technically falls under “any general tips”), but a) since I have very little information about you I can’t really guess which parts will be most useful for you, and b) this is a nice opportunity to write down my general thoughts about presenting complicated information.

With that in mind, here's the simple truth: most academics give awful presentations. I think chances are good that your professor doesn’t really know how to give a good presentation. Pedagogy is devastatingly unimportant in academia, and the total apathy towards effective transfer of information means that people never learn how to give good presentations at workshops, in their own departments, or at conferences. In my opinion, maybe 3/4 of the battle has very little do with content; so many people adopt such a terrible style in academic presentations that the information is completely obscured, so by adopting an accessible presentation style you can already deliver an unusually effective presentation.

To help fix this, I'll lay out my rough guide for how to give good academic presentations! First I'll make three points about style, then I'll give a very short outline of the content that I recommend including.

The basics of style for academic presentations:

The biggest mistake that people make in academic presentations is overburdened powerpoint slides. Here’s my rule of thumb: every visual in your presentation should communicate something that really is best conveyed visually. Putting blocks of text on a powerpoint slide is the worst culprit; I see it almost daily, but of course you can say words much more effectively than people can read-while-also-listening. In fact, I’m quite extreme in this regard: I avoid slides completely if possible, and if I have to use them then I almost never put words on them (with obvious exceptions, like axis labels on graphs). Here’s a great example of how to use images, delivered in the TEDx format by a wonderful former supervisor of mine whose job description includes giving really good presentations (I would recommend watching maybe 3 minutes to understand my point, but also the whole presentation is great and everyone should watch all of it). Consider also that things like equations, chemical reactions, and those absurdly complicated protein synthesis diagrams can only be communicated as images, so these all pass my test.

Keep your eye firmly on the prize: academic presentations have precisely one goal, which is transferring information. Most of the professors I’ve had in graduate school constantly forget this. If I showed you the equation below, spent 15 seconds naming each of the variables, said three sentences about it, and then switched to the next slide, there are two possibilities. Either nobody in the room will be able to follow it, or I’m talking to a room full of accomplished astrophysicists. If nobody followed it, why did I show the equation? Usually in academia the reason is that I wanted to look really smart by confusing my peers. If the room is full of stellar evolution experts, what was accomplished by showing the equation rather than just naming the property of it that mattered, like “as we know from relativistic degeneracy, even as core density increases core temperature actually does not tend to zero”? The only case in which I should show the full equation is if I need to have a detailed discussion of it, and either I’m going to completely explain it from the ground up or I can assume that everyone in the audience already knows it. If something in your presentation doesn’t help you communicate the information you want to share with people, take it out. If everyone even tried to follow this rule, most of the classes I’ve taken would have been unrecognizably improved. I should also note that this rule can be taken too seriously; I’m completely in favor of, say, funny anecdotes, because they usually do increase the information that people get from you and they also align with other goals we have as human beings such as not being dull.

My last style point is much harder for some people than others, and don’t worry about it if it’s just not something you can do. But as much as you’re able, make sure to physically include your audience. Memorize and practice what you’re going to say as much as you can, so that you can make eye contact with your audience and make them feel engaged. Talk loudly enough for people to hear you properly. If the format allows, try to ask a simple question of your audience every once in a while. These small steps dramatically improve how effective your presentation is. I pay way more attention when I feel some level of accountability and inclusion: frankly, if the presenter is regularly glancing at me and soliciting audience responses then I know that someone’s going to notice if I’m not paying attention, and I definitely take in more information. Having said that, especially if you’re shy or nervous, don’t get hung up on policing your mannerisms. There’s an instructive video online of me introducing a panel discussion I organized last year, in the first ~2 minutes of this video. I’m doing a few things well: I didn’t rely on visuals because I didn’t need them, I’m trying to say complicated things simply and accessibly and concisely (particularly because I’m talking to a general audience), I’m leaning in and looking directly at the audience (until I have to read something that I didn’t have time to memorize), and I’m talking loudly enough and with active intonation. But from my many years as an amateur actor I can also point out tons of things I’m doing poorly: I have some distracting verbal ticks like loudly saying “um” and this visual tick where I brush my hair back, I’m clearly not comfortable in my skin (there are about 200 strangers in the room and it always takes me a few minutes to get comfortable in front of a crowd), I’m dancing around too much, I didn’t have the time to get as solid on Justin’s bio as I should have, and so on. If you watch a minute longer you’ll see Justin take the stage; he does this sort of thing for a living and he’s much more polished than I am. But my point is that flaws like weird mannerisms and nervousness don’t really matter for academic presentations; what you should focus on is bringing your audience in and conveying information in the best way you can; unlike in acting, style in academic presentations is not an art so much as a tool for conveying information.

Bonus point: be enthusiastic!! Science is awesome, you’re studying a subject you love because you want to be an expert in it, you’re in a room full of your brilliant and interested peers, and your job is to share the fruits of human discovery with people who want to hear! This presentation is a wonderful thing and you should try to show with your whole body and your every word that this is something to be excited about!

On to content! My content points are much shorter. I want to outline the three broad questions that a presentation which summarizes a paper should answer, with the very important caveat that I’m not a member of your field. I’ll assert that what I’m about to say goes for how to summarize papers in both astrophysics and political science, though, so it probably also applies to molecular biology.

What’s the background for this paper? This is probably just a summary of their literature review, maybe with some added context if you like. Don’t spend more than a few minutes on this

What did they discover? Again, there’s probably not a ton to say here

Why should we believe them? This is usually the major part where you’ll spend most of the presentation

Once you’ve covered those three, spend a few minutes wrapping up. One maxim I like is this format: here’s what I’m going to tell you, here’s what I’m telling you, here’s what I just told you. Usually the introductory part should take about 1/4 of the time, the middle part should take about 1/2 the time, and the conclusion takes the last 1/4, although in practice of course it’s never this clean.

Concerning your specific questions: figures are great! They’re a perfect example of good visuals to include. If the authors made a figure of something, it means they think it’s *really* important, since space is the most valuable commodity in journals and figures take up tons of space. You almost certainly should include those.

As for worrying about spelling things out for your classmates, I would honestly be more worried about not spelling things out enough. Academia is full of pompousness and pretense; everyone pretends to know way more than they do, and people rarely admit when they don’t know something. I worry that we often talk right over peoples’ heads and don’t even realize it. I do completely understand your concern about appearing condescending, but I have two responses to it. The first is that I am more offended if someone assumes that I know something that I have no reason to know, or that I can do something that’s basically impossible. For example, a well-meaning professor who I respect tremendously will frequently go to conferences and show equations staggeringly more complicated than the relativistic degeneracy equation up there, but just breeze right through them. The implication seems to be that everyone in the room should either know every equation intimately (even ones that were just invented) or they should be able to instantly parse some giant triple integral followed by 20 Greek letters. Nobody can, so everybody feels bad and nobody learns anything. That’s so much more disrespectful than telling me things I already know. My second response is that there are ways to undercut this. I will sometimes start obvious-sounding sentences with “because not everyone has taken a probability course I should quickly explain that [insert basic thing about probability]”, or “just so everyone’s on the same page, when I say [common jargon word], I mean [meaning of common jargon word]”. I think these are way better than just assuming that everyone has a very high level of common knowledge.

Now, I would have a whole lot more to say about this if I knew anything about your field, but I shouldn’t try to give specific advice about the content of a presentation that I wouldn’t even be able to understand. Thanks for giving me this platform to rail against the standards for public speaking in academia, and good luck! Please always feel free to reach out if you have any more questions or if you want anything clarified.

[criscura]

Notes

THIS IS ANGST. GENOS IS DEAD. HE IS NOT COMING BACK. Now that that’s out of the way, this is very much inspired by a conversation I had with….I think it was @teasnspices ?? I think.

He should have realized.

The kid was a ticking time bomb…literally. Saitama heard him set off the self-destruct at least once every serious fight for the first few months he lived with him. It didn’t go on for very long—just that small blip and the tiny whine before his teacher came bounding over, but…

But…that only worked if Saitama came for him…

And if he didn’t…

He should have fucking realized.

“Saitama…”

‘You’re always on time,’ he’d said once, like his teacher was a magician or a god or…

…Or an actual hero.

“You are welcome to stay here, as long as you’d like.”

He couldn’t have been more wrong. “…Is there anything left?” Saitama asked, looking up at a giant screen covered in numbers and lists and graphs…and then at the room littered with pieces of him, with remnants from the places he’d been… “Any…messages, or videos, or…”

An entire lab filled up, overflowing with him, and still—

“Is there…anything left of him?”

Kuseno read the screens as they flashed by, looking like he’d done this a million times. “There are years’ worth of his picture and audio files here, as well as what he left behind when he moved in with you. But…I don’t think that’s what you’re asking.”

…No. No, it wasn’t. But…but he couldn’t ask it, because…if he did…

If he did, then…

“…I cannot bring him back, Saitama.”

…Oh God.

~~

He did stay, for a long time. It wasn’t…it wasn’t that he wanted to. It wasn’t that he wanted to do anything. He just…stayed. Kuseno gave him tea, and he drank it. He gave him food and he ate it. He brought him to a closed room and told him to sleep there, mumbling, “I think it’s best you spend the night in here.” Then he gave him pajamas and opened the door…

“This is…”

The man stepped in after him. “M-hm. This was his room.” There were pillows, books, boxes, stacks and stacks and stacks of journals… “It became a bit of a storage area once he left.”

They both stared, glued to one of the few empty places on the floor, weighed down by the only thing that wasn’t there.

“Do you know…how he felt about you, Saitama?”

The smallest smile pulled at the corner of the man’s mouth. “He told me all the time, it was hard not to know. I couldn’t walk into the apartment without having him gush about how great he thought I was.” It disappeared immediately. “He was so wrong…”

There was a long quiet. “That wasn’t… Have you ever read his notes?”

Saitama gaped at him. “What? No, they’re his. It would be like reading his diary.”

The doctor padded over to a tower of books and pulled one out, flipping through the pages. Then he handed it over. “I think you should.”

It was bright blue and worn out.

…Saitama was scared to take it.

“I’m sure he would have wanted you to read them, if…something like this happened.”

Saitama slipped it from the man’s palm, overtaken by how gnarled his knuckles were. The cover was cold, and smooth. Holding it made him feel like a criminal. “Why?”

Kuseno stared, that million-year look in his eyes again. “You were important to him, Saitama. You were…very important, to him.”

He studied the cover again, stomach welling up with frustration, with fury, injustice… “I shouldn’t have been.”

A hand gripped on his shoulder, heavy and warm. Then Kuseno walked out, leaving him to…

…everything.

Saitama glanced at the neat piles around him, trying to catalogue it all. There was a tool kit, a computer, shopping bags filled with clothes that still had the tags on them. Behind that a closed closet, hundreds of journals (how did he write so much in six months?), a burnt comforter…

He went for the blanket and picked it up, the yellowed edges rough under his fingers. Then he wrapped it around himself and sat down. …It smelled like him.

…Saitama didn’t know he knew what he smelled like.

He stared at the journal on his knees, trying to push down the flood of fear and anger rolling into his throat.

“Sensei Notes,” it said. “Volume 24.”

And underneath it, he’d written…

“Genos.”

He opened it to the first page and was bombarded with diagrams. “Running alongside Sensei” was the label, and he’d been recording how fast his teacher could move over different terrain, if talking, while laughing…

There was a note above a small dip in his speed. “We ran into a monster along the way and Sensei slowed his pacing a mere .43 km/second in order to destroy it. Amazing!”

Saitama’s automatic reaction would have been to call him a dork, if reading it didn’t hurt as much as it did.

He went through the journal, finding most of the same. The note next to one graph read, “Sensei can cook udon until it is precisely on the precipice of soft and hard. He is incredible!” Above a stapled receipt he scribbled, “I am fascinated by his ability to scan a sale and target only the most significant discounts.”

Then, all alone on another page he wrote, “There was a child whose parent had died during a fight.

“She described it to me when I went to pick her from the rubble. I could not begin to explain how much I felt for her, and nothing I said could relieve her pain. She was inconsolable, until Saitama-sensei came and spoke to her. Her sobs eased and she cried in his arms until her mother found her.

“Sensei’s penchant for calming victims during a catastrophe is truly awe-inspiring.”

God, he remembered that. It was terrible… There was still blood on her fingers from trying to pull her dad out from under the rocks. It stained his hero suit…

A few pages later he found another section, this one a little longer.

“My nightmares have ceased since I’ve begun living here. I thought at first it may only be the change in scenery that caused it, but it seems sleeping at Sensei’s side is enough to put me at ease. It has been a month since I dreamt of the attack in detail, and a week (!) since I’ve had any sort of nightmare at all.”

They happened that often? Saitama knew he had some bad dreams, he’d hear him mumbling at night, but…he didn’t know they were that bad. He wished…he would’ve told him…

“Being with Sensei has given me…much back, by way of lifestyle. I had forgotten how enjoyable trivial things could be—shopping, watching television, cooking. I have told Kuseno this, and he believes…I should stay here, for as long as I can.

“…I agree.”

There was a little surge in Saitama’s chest.

“I had no intentions of leaving, and…I have a feeling that perhaps this may be…more complicated than my desire to get stronger, but…

“I will stay. For as long as Saitama-sensei will let me, I will stay.”

The cover made a soft fwip as he shut it, breathing deep to work back the ache. This…this was Saitama’s fault. If he was a better teacher—if he’d gotten there faster, if he hadn’t sat on his ass for as long as he did, if he paid more attention to the news—

If he let himself care the way he wanted to, then…

He inhaled, accosted by the blonde’s scent, and opened back to the page he left off on, reading through until the end. Once he was done he placed it next to him on the carpeted floor and pulled another journal from the stack.

It was older, much older. It seemed like it was from a few months after he’d moved in. There were all the same diagrams with the same kind of notes—“Sensei has amazing technique when it comes to cutting carrots,” “I have not yet determined the limit of destructive power the aftershock of his punches carry”—but…some of them were different.

“According to auditory record, Sensei snores the most past 11 PM. It doesn’t seem to affect how sweet his face looks when he wakes up in the morning.”

“Saitama-sensei bought a plethora of drinks from a discount bin today. I believe he tried to surprise me with them, as he had asked what flavors I like the most the day before. I am…flattered that he thinks of me. The most expensive were all mine.”

“Sensei’s muscles swell and deflate much more quickly than a normal person’s during battle. That may be why his suit is tailored to be somewhat loose around areas of tension (arms, chest, legs). …It is difficult not to wonder what those thighs would feel like under different circumstances.”

He stared, and reread the last sentence. He stared some more and reread the others. Then he flipped forward, tearing through the notes, all the way through another notebook, stomach sinking lower and lower until he felt like it wasn’t there at all.

“Our hands touched, and though he didn’t notice…I was glad.”

“Jack-rabbiting has proven successful in avoiding severe damage. Today…Sensei said he was proud of me for it. I will continue to find better methods.”

“I no longer have a stomach, nor do I have lungs, but I believe I still feel butterflies when he calls my name. I will need to research this with Dr. Lorenz when I see her next.”

His eyes were burning, on fire, and his throat might as well have been siphoned shut by the time he got to the last page.

“I complained to Sensei today about a disrespectful attendant at the supermarket, though I must have said something strange because he began laughing before I had finished speaking. When I asked what was so funny about what I was saying, he tried to explain but only ended up laughing harder.

“It took me a moment to realize he was not making fun of me. It was another before he told me that ‘You take things too seriously’ and gave me the biggest smile I’ve ever seen him show…anyone.

“It was beautiful… He looked truly beautiful.

“I know I do not have a heart, and everything in me is a mechanical response. I know also that any other sensation is due to phantom pain, and is not genuine. Still, though…

“Still…when I see him smile like that…it makes my chest feel full, like it would have…before. Like if I was human.”

“Being with him makes me feel human.”

His cheeks now too, they were scorching, and he could feel trickles searing down them when he read all the way at the bottom of the page, in small, cramped writing—

“I love him so much.”

An idiot. Saitama was an idiot. He was an absolute, total, complete fucking dipshit.

Loved him. He loved him.

And he wasted the last months of his life hiding it.

Saitama spent…hours, reading. There were no windows or clocks in that room, and he never got up from that spot unless it was to get another journal. He’d stained countless pages with tears he didn’t think he had anymore, and surrounded himself with towers of old notes—all of them filled with his drawings, his neat handwriting, his recordings…

And his thoughts, his hopes. His voice.

His dreams. His wishes.

His love.

He was surrounded by his love. He could hear it in the compliments he wrote, in the little stories he told…in the way he talked about his sensei. He could feel it in this worn-out blanket, the one that smelled overwhelmingly of him, see it in the boxes of keepsakes that were hidden around the room.

And what hurt, what hurt more than that he’d never said it, that Saitama could never tell him how much he appreciated him or how much he loved having him around…

That he could never try to show it…

…was that it was so familiar.

The warmth and happiness stuffed inside his room… It felt like home. That same warmth filled the apartment as soon as he started living there, replacing the garbage and dust in every corner until the whole place reeked of his love. All the cleaning, and the cooking, and the greetings of “Welcome back, Sensei,” or “Please be safe while you are out”…

It crept in so slowly Saitama didn’t notice it was there. And now…

Now, when he’d go back…

Saitama doubled over the journal in his hand, teeth grating against the heaves. He couldn’t think about it. He wouldn’t. He wanted to stop it, he wanted to stop all of this. He wanted to go back and find the cyborg and tell him he was an idiot and that there were thousands of other people that would be better for him, that would take care of him.

That would keep him safe. That would appreciate him.

That would��that would love him…

Saitama listened to the quiet, knowing it would be waiting for him at the apartment. He let the heat wash over him, knowing that once he left this place, he would come back to too-big kitchen and too-big bathroom and too-big living room that would always feel…cold.

He sat, letting that ache settle in, knowing it was the only kind of ache he wasn’t strong enough to carry and that he’d have to carry it for the rest of his life, because…

He had. He had loved him. He could have been that person.

He should have fucking realized.

[markmceachran]

Pacing Algorithm for Advertising Campaigns and Inventory Allocations

I’ve was trying to figure out what to do with my Sunday. My options were: build a little header bidding ad server plugin for WordPress; run, sleep and eat; or write up some blog post on a pacing algorithm, because people still seem to be producing crappy ones. Since you’re reading this, you can probably guess which choice I made. I mean, it’s not the first post I’ve written on the subject.

It showed up again last week. I didn’t expect it, but I guess I never do. A saw-tooth pattern on a chart, indicative of a capping of sorts. A chart that says, “I want a thing to happen, but only so much.” In this case it was a traffic allocation. This was a surprise.

A little history

Most of the time when I run into a bad pacing algorithm it’s in the form of a campaign trying to limit itself. It only needs to acquire a few thousand impressions every five minutes, for example. So the hastily written algorithm might divvy up the impression allocation into five minutes buckets. Effectively that’s 12 buckets every hour. So it takes an hour’s worth of impression needs and divides it by twelve. One twelfth of the impressions are purchased every five minutes. Unfortunately at that point it switches to a simple counter that says, “for the next five minutes buy impressions until the number purchased reaches 1/12th of what I need in this hour.”

You end up with a purchase graph that looks like this.

See that blue spiky thing? That’s the one that’ll get ya.

The algorithm has no idea how much inventory is available for the campaign. In many cases it is plentiful. So the campaign serves it’s entire five minute allocation of impressions in the first minute. Then the buying goes dormant for four minutes until the next allocation is released and we start the dance all over again.

Apparently this can happen on both ends of the equation. A media owner or seller can cap the amount of media made available to particular technology partners. In much the same way a campaign pacing can reveal itself with the buying pattern, an impression allocation can show up in a similar way.

Details on the cause

How might one come to write such a curiosity? If this happens to speak to you, then yes, I’m talking to you. You’ve written a odd thing. In an effort to really speak to you about this, I’m doing my best to get inside your head.

Whether due to inexperience, or lack of thought about the magnitude of the problem you were about to introduce as your solution to another problem, or a lack of faith in an alternative approach, you thought this might be a good solution. The thought process probably when something like this:

We have you campaign or impression allocation for the month. Let’s start by dividing that by 30. Now we have a day. Let’s break that down by 24. Now we have an hour. Okay – well, buying all the impressions in an hour right up front might lead to a big spike at the beginning of each hour, right? So, well… let’s just divide it by 12 and we have five minute intervals. That can’t possibly cause a problem, right?

Impact

Problems are what it causes. Not just for you, but for your partners, and their partners, and they tell two friends and so on, and so on. Imagine if everyone did this. We’d have a sixty second blitz of liquidity every five minutes followed by four minutes of empty ad space.

We’d have intensely busy servers to handle the inventory for one minute, and then absolutely idle machines for the other four. Now you’re thinking, “Wait, would I need five times the infrastructure to handle that momentary load?” Yes, yes you would. And so would your partners, and they’d tell two friends… you get the picture now, right? It’s a snowball turned avalanche.

Fixing your pacing algorithm

You might be asking yourself, “How then might one go about fixing this, or rather, build a proper pacing algorithm in the first place?” I’m so glad you’re thinking about this, because I think about it all the time. I think about it a lot when I see some crap, saw-tooth graph. But even when one of those is not available, I still think about it. I imagine the graph just so I can get mad at it.

The answer is akin to flipping a coin, as my friend Dr. Neal Richter might suggest. Rather than basing your pacing algorithm on counting and capping, base it on a percentage allocation of impressions. Instead of serving til you hit the cap, flip a coin and only serve when it lands on heads. Of course, this simplified model only works if you need 50% of the inventory (or are allocating 50% of the inventory to a partner). For a moment though, imagine that it’s a D&D die instead of a coin. Then imagine that you only need to occasionally win, like you need the equivalent of two of the sides of that die, relative to the other 18. Winning twice in every twenty roles is just about perfect.

How to apply a simple percentage based pacing

Mathematically you’d want to boil this down to an equation so that you can write code against it. I’m not going to challenge you with a series equation here. You’ve already written a questionable algorithm, let’s not test the deeper mathematical waters just yet.

Instead I’ll write something akin to pseudo-code. Let’s say allocation requirements are 15% of the available inventory. Your algorithm should do something like:

Choose random decimal number (float) between 0 and 1.

If that number is less than 0.15, then serve.

Almost anyone can write that into code. It’s like two or three lines. Nice, right?

Determine the volume

At this point you should have figured out that you need to know how much inventory is available in order to calculate the percentage that your campaign or inventory allocation needs. Good. You’re asking the right question.

Fortunately you don’t need to burn the house down to make a perfect forecasting solution in order that you might have a better pacing algorithm. You could, I suppose, if you wanted to. Nothing’s quite as nice as a perfect forecasting tool. It’s like a fluffy pillow or a warm blanket. You can cozy up on the couch knowing the exact availability of the thing you’re looking for.

My friends all love to quote Akin’s laws of spacecraft design. In this case: 14. (Edison’s Law) “Better” is the enemy of “good.” So don’t run down the rabbit hole of a perfect forecasting tool.

How much inventory do you have left?

You simply need to determine how much volume you’ve got left available for your campaign’s duration. For that, you just look at what happened in the past, like yesterday even. “Hey, how many impression did I have yesterday? 1,000,000. Cool. So let’s just assume I’ll have 1,000,000 every day.” Seriously, it’s that simple. I mean, you can make it more complicated. Look at last week and divide it by seven, or even last month and divide it by 30. You did that before, remember. It produced a piece of garbage and cost everyone a 5X on their AWS bill, but hey, “learning.”

So, if your campaign needs to run for three weeks it looks like you’ve got about 21,000,000 impressions available to it. If you’re campaign only needs 3,000,000 of those, then you’re allocation percentage is 14.3%.

3,000,000 / 21,000,000 = 0.142857142857143; about 14.3%

Seems like I’m writing a lot of fluff in here for a few simple equations. I’ll be sure to highlight the important bits. Most of us are skimming posts these days and miss things. I guess for news it’s okay. Skimming posts like this might lead you to write a “pacing algorithm,” but maybe not the right one. If you are skimming, you might also be missing all my snark. Sad really. My snark is top-shelf.

Varying the time frame

One of the fun parts about pacing with this algorithm is that you get to follow the rise and fall of the traffic tide with your allocation. It just naturally happens! If there’s more traffic at noon, you’re still buying your 14.3% of it. When traffic dwindles at 11PM (23:00) your just buying a bit, but still 14.3%. You get to follow the ebb and flow of internet traffic for free!

Your old algorithm didn’t do that, did it? If it did, you had to do some crazy coding gymnastics to make it work. I tried to help you avoid all this, and I guess I failed some of you. This other post is on the same subject, but it had those tricksy series equations in it.

Varying the addressable audience

We’ve got three more points to cover before you’re ready to go. Firstly, the audience factor. Really this can be any sort of targeting parameter applied to the campaign or inventory allocation. Basically you want to look at how much of the inventory had that parameter in the past, to determine the allocation percentage. It will modify your equation’s denominator. Instead of 21,000,000 impressions you will have fewer. Maybe your campaign is only aiming at shoe enthusiasts and your system only expects to see 8,000,000 of those in the next three weeks. That means your allocation percentage is now 37.5%.

3,000,000 / 8,000,000 = 0.357; 35.7%

Competing campaigns (and how to address)

Now you’ve got your campaign humming along buying 37.5% of all shoe enthusiast impressions. This a really fantastic progress. Consider where you started. It’s really quite astonishing. Nothing can stop you now, except maybe another campaign that is also, for whatever reason, buying up your shoe enthusiasts. Holy Moly! Now what?

Are you supposed to look at all the campaign targeting and try to determine which campaigns are targeting the same users that your campaign is targeting? Good lord, what a mess that would be, right? Can you imagine the (Mom’s) spaghetti code you’d have to write in order to accomplish such an omniscient technology? That’s some Nobel Prize winning ad-tech is what that is. (Yeah, I’m totally in the “dash” camp of ad-tech. Deal with it.)

Don’t overthink it

There must be a simpler solution. There’s totally a simpler solution. All you need to do is incorporate the win rate (or render rate) into your calculation. Imagine you are only winning 65% of the time. Oh, snap! That’s gonna hit the denominator again because the reality is that you’ve only got 65% of your 8,000,000 impressions available to your campaign now. So I guess the math gets a little trickier now.

3,000,000 / (8,000,000 * 0.65) = 0.576923076923077: about 57.7%.

This just makes your campaign buying a bit more aggressive than it usually is. It’s the equivalent of giving your campaign a dagger to go all stabby on the other campaign.

Of course, an alternative here would be to raise the price your campaign is paying for the inventory. I’m not going to assume your system is in a bidding environment. If it were, you could also pull the pricing lever to actually change the win rate to something more to your liking. That’s where things get a little more complicated. You have to monitor how the new prices change the win rate and populate a lookup table so you know what happens at different prices.

For this exercise let’s keep it simple. I’m thinking that you’re just trying to make pacing decisions with non-monetary levers to pull.

Now you’ve got a complete algorithm that, in a perfect environment, will conclude your campaign exactly at the correct allocation without over or under performing. Then again, when was the last time you saw perfection?

Guardrails

Total Cap

Much like the Price is Right, you want to get the exact amount without going over to win that bonus $100. So you need to add a little logic to your pacing system to put the brakes on when the campaign hits the goal. Ad-tech systems are kinda big these days with servers spread out all over the world. Sometimes you just need a handbrake to stop buying on the thing when it’s done what it needed to do. So add that.

Overburn

The other thing you’ll want to do is run your campaign hot. Add five percent to the numerator. If your total cap function is working then you should hit the hard stop in advance of the final hours of your end date. I’m saying five percent for simplicity’s sake. Maybe you over burn at one percent at the beginning of the campaign and five percent toward the end, with some graduated increase over the weeks or months of the run. Heck, maybe you run hot at the beginning, slow in the middle and hot at the end.

I asked my good friend Neal. He says overburn for the first 80% of the campaign’s budget, then you can let it chill on the beach for the last 20%. He didn’t use those words, but the sentiment is there.

I don’t know. Do what feels natural. Fly casual.

Recalculate again and again and again

Absolutely reevaluate your campaign hourly, every half hour maybe? Do it often. Redo the numbers:

How much inventory is available in the time I have left?

How much of that inventory does my campaign need?

What’s my win rate?

The equation

In case you want to start adding more fun stuff to the equation here’s the template to follow:

allocation percentage = campaign goal / (available inventory * win rate)

You’ve finished and you’re winning

If you’ve made it to the end here, good on ya. Thank you for reading. I hope this helps, really I do. I know I’ve been hard on you for the questionable decisions you’ve made in the past, but that’s all behind us now. Let us look forward to a bright future where your campaigns are humming along, or your inventory allocations are distributing smoothly. Turns out that unbeknownst to any of us, you’ve just implemented a sensor feedback proportional controller. Tell your grandparents, they’ll understand.

If you enjoyed this post, pick something out something nice from my Amazon wish list and hit the one-click.

The post Pacing Algorithm for Advertising Campaigns and Inventory Allocations appeared first on Mark McEachran.

https://j.mp/3fGtvDd May 11, 2020 at 01:33PM

[thelmasirby32]

How to grow your YouTube rankings with the right SEO tools

We’re all aware that YouTube’s video consumption grows every year, so it’s kind of obvious that YouTube search engine is huge, possibly being outdone only by Google. 

There is also a simple fact: YouTube video content will always have lower competition compared to text.

Still, to rank high, SEO matters. Optimizing for YouTube includes many tasks, and doing them right requires some tools.

From writing the perfect description to looking up what your competition did right, there is SEO software for all aspects of YouTube optimization.

In this list, those tools are organized first by functionality: keyword research, channel audit and competition research — and second by the tools’ complexity.

YouTube SEO tools to choose the perfect keywords and topic

Tool highlights: YouTube Autocomplete, Google Keyword Planner, Rank Tracker, Keywordtool.io, Kparser, Keywords Everywhere.

The topics for your YouTube videos need to be carefully optimized. What you need to do is communicate to the search engine that out of all the videos targeting a particular keyword you are the best one. This is done by filling out your title, description, and tags.

For beginners

If we’re talking about just getting suggestions for this one YouTube video, we don’t need to go beyond the free tools.

SEO is not always about advanced, expensive software packs. Here, we’ll use what YouTube gives to us by default.

Go right on YouTube and type into the search bar the beginning of the topic you may have vaguely in mind. YouTube will then present you with a list of options, showing what people mostly search for connected to that.

Simply go through a bunch of letters of the alphabet. You’ll get plenty of video ideas that you can then further research and find out if this is your topic.

So while this is free, which is always a bonus, and it doesn’t require you to go anywhere from YouTube, there are still some drawbacks. Like you can only look up one word at a time, and there’s zero info on your results, and so on.

Sure, if all you’re after is creating one video a month, that method could suit you fine.

But if you’re looking to implement YouTube into your marketing strategy fully, it won’t be enough. You’ll need a more convenient SEO tool covering YouTube optimization.

For a full-on video campaign

To go a little more in-depth, turn to Google Keyword Planner. There, you’ll have an easier time putting in a bunch of possible topics and getting some good results in return.

Now, not to be blasphemous. But I was never a fan of Keyword Planner. For example from the screenshot: I searched for “Turkish rap” and the data on searches it gives is “10K to 100K”? There’s a 90K difference in there that really matters.

On top of that, you can only search 10 keywords at a time. And if you’re serious about YouTube SEO, you’ll be looking up dozens of them.

So if what you’re looking for is seriously comprehensive data, turn to Rank Tracker (full disclosure: it’s my project). Since it’s a holistic tool, you’ll get a bunch of things there, but for now, we’re interested in Autocomplete Tools.

There, choose YouTube Autocomplete, and get extended results.

As this is the full-on YouTube rank checker and keyword research solution, suitable for SEO in general also, you will get a whole bunch of info.

A useful feature, among other things, is that you can sort your keywords by their length — this helps you better target those amazing long-tail keywords, which usually bring your videos a lot of clicks.

That said, this is a desktop-based tool, and as such, it takes a download and an installation to actually start using its full functionality.

If you can’t spare the time, Keywordtool.io and Kparser work perfectly for this aspect of YouTube marketing.

The catch with them is just that they are actually freemium-based. You can use them for free, but their functionality then is severely limited.

Both these tools give a good number of keyword suggestions specifically for YouTube. That said, they don’t give any additional information about them. They also aren’t free, and require you to cough up some dough to access their full functionality.

That said, as paid software, it fits a digital marketer working with a campaign of pretty much any volume.

If you’re dead tired of using additional tools in general, look into using a nice free tool, Keywords Everywhere. It functions as a nice and light extension to your browser.

You’ll get a slew of SEO information right in your browser, and will be able to do parts of your research “on the fly”.

What’s important is that you implement your keyword research, not just by adding keywords to your title, but to your description and tags, as well.

Tools for SEO audit of your YouTube channel

Tool highlights: YouTube Analytics, Social Blade, Quintly, TubeBuddy, vidIQ, Tubics.

For any kind of business, an audit is paramount. Running a YouTube channel is no different. You need to keep your hand on the pulse of what does and doesn’t work. You’ll be able to use those insights further on when building your YouTube strategy.

For beginners

Turn to the very useful YouTube Analytics (YouTube’s native tool) first. You’ll get a bird’s eye view of what’s happening with your channel.

And for a lot of us, YouTube Analytics is actually quite enough.

You get the info about your viewership, and what they prefer watching overall. You get a neat graph with the history of your viewership all laid out.

It’s not super comprehensive, but it gets the job done if all you want is a little statistics.

A good supplementary tool would be Social Blade. Simply enter your channel’s name and get some numbers on your channel.

There’s also a very fun Future Predictions feature available, which will show you how much your videos are projected to grow.

And although quintly is not a specifically YouTube-oriented feature, it works pretty nicely. In addition to data on subscribers, engagement, watch time of your videos, and so on, it provides a convenient reporting feature, useful for anybody managing a larger team.

For a full-on video campaign

Of course, if you want to go deeper, you should look into a tool like TubeBuddy. It is one of the best supplementary tools to YouTube Analytics, and, really, it deserves the hype.

There is an abundance of features presented here:

You can analyze your channel’s stats, get data on your videos, and perform competition research. You also can edit the thumbnails, annotations, and descriptions of your YouTube content.

From suggesting you tags (which, by the way, doesn’t seem to influence your actual SEO rankings much), to translating your video’s title and description, TubeBuddy is one of the best suites on the market right now, and it comes at an affordable price.

From $9/mo to $49/mo, you’ll get varied functionality. That said, even the free version is good enough to vastly improve your SEO.

Or, maybe you’d like to try something like vidIQ, which is also an all-in-one YouTube SEO solution.

It’ll give you tips on best publishing times, suggest your niche’s influencers to connect with, and so on. A handy browser extension lets you research competitors in the same way.

It also has the bulk editing of end cards for your videos. A small thing, but it’s such a time saver. That’s really the advantage that only those of us working with large-volume video marketing campaigns could appreciate.

Tubics is a similar tool. You get, in the same Swiss army-knife package, instruments for keyword research, and channel audit.

And if you need to check your videos’ and channel’s rankings, you could use a rank tracking tool. The tool can get pricey for a smaller channel, but the trial is free, and if you don’t feel like you’re getting enough out of it, you can just cancel any time.

Research your YouTube competition

Tool highlights: Rival IQ, NoxInfluencer, Socialinsider, Vaizle.

In the exact same way as with more traditional SEO for Google, YouTube SEO includes competition research.

Keeping an eye on what makes your competition’s YouTube content rank is one of the best things you can do for your own SEO.

Here the market leader is definitely a tool called Rival IQ.

With it, you will get a panoramic view of your YouTube competitors and their SEO rankings. Take a close look at what’s been working exceptionally well for their YouTube videos. From the kind of tags they use to title formats, try and learn what the best-ranking people in your niche are doing.

I also found NoxInfluencer to be suitable for competition research. For pretty much any niche or location you’ll see exactly what your biggest competitors’ YouTube profiles are.

There’s also YouTube Competitors Analysis Tool by Socialinsider and Vaizle. They provide a breakdown and comparison of your channel and videos to those of your competition, comparing the frequency of posting, videos’ stats, and more.

Conclusion

In 2020 SEO, businesses and agencies that pursue a holistic YouTube strategy will always be three steps ahead of everyone else. We need to determine every opportunity to create videos that will engage our potential clients.

Creating YouTube videos as part of your marketing campaign is tapping into a huge well of billions upon billions of searches for video content that was previously unavailable to us.

And that’s a well we shouldn’t dismiss out of hand.

Aleh is the Founder and CMO at SEO PowerSuite and Awario. He can be found on Twitter at @ab80.

The post How to grow your YouTube rankings with the right SEO tools appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

from Digital Marketing News https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2020/03/20/how-to-grow-your-youtube-rankings-with-the-right-seo-tools/

[rob-davis]

Best Online Football Betting website - UFA

You can place football bets on our website page at any hour within the incredibly best football tournaments and leagues on the globe, along with the Language Leading League, Tournament, FA Cup, Italian Serie A, Spanish Liga , French Ligue 1, German Bundesliga, Champions Europa and League League. Exceeding 150 football leagues from around the globe, you will certainly never use up all your betting opportunity. Top-quality chances are constantly seen on today's football matches, in particular in-recreation deals on experience games. We also present you much better chances and at no cost bets on some functions, rendering basketball wagers additional profitable.UFA

Our company offers a really superb sporting events betting practical knowledge which includes more than 2,000 models of bets for pre-tie in with and survive choices. In almost every football game, you can possibly guess on Champ (1X2 FT), Handicaps, Dual Probability, Draw No Wager, Goals and objectives Close to / Beneath and lots of other sorts of bets. You can even put accumulators with selections from various football complements and also on the equal match with "Create your guess".

Football is easily the most prominent activity in the field and, for this reason, huge numbers of people all over the world also like to set bets on video games. Globally there are countless leagues and competitions you can bet on, even though england has the Premier League, which is one of the best football betting markets. As one of the best online bookies, you will have access to a wide range of football offers and exclusive tools to boost your betting experience. Watch your mail for campaign possibilities giving fully free wagers inside the most significant leagues and games.

Course of action is extremely important with regard to betting on football. Even though many devotees love to guess on their most popular teams or native leagues, its actually truly worth reviewing the statistics for much more ideas. At this site on the webpage you will find a great deal of statistical details every tie in with for all important leagues and plenty of other moderate competitions. Just click the logo design from the graph next to the tie in with of the selection of leagues to open up the data centre which offers a large of playing information of top of your head-to-venture solutions, excellent scorers and newly released game enthusiasts, towards graph league standing, regular goals each game, in addition to fascinating a look at every squad. The harder particulars you obtain, the more effective informed you will certainly be if you decide the simplest way to bet on football meets. Just about everyone, from first-timers to people who see themselves as precise gurus, is cared for. But there is however be sure to a whole lot more to learn about gambling on rugby. With much information, it can be hard to figure out the place to start. Our nfl football betting advise will say everything you need to know. So let's go - read on!

Which consists of big world and stars widley known golf clubs, the Leading League is regarded as the preferred sporting betting markets in the market. But persons who would like to gamble in the wonderful game seriously should not necessarily restrict their own self to participating only around the top level of Great britain because there are ample options to consider. On, you can buy most of the popular basketball betting chances and put nfl wagers 7 days a week over the incredibly best hockey tournaments and leagues in the market, which take place in The european countries and round the modern world. Such as the home of giants like Barcelona and Proper Madrid, the Spanish La Liga, plus the entire top 5 European leagues - Italian Serie A, French Ligue 1 and German Bundesliga, which all have a lot of different meetings each week -side of time. Surely, you are unable to only option on just the league move, as a promotes likewise incorporate a great tournaments of European organizations just like the Champions League plus Europa League. And for those that want to focus on Language football for their own betting will need, there are various areas for FA Cup and Championship mmorpgs and for the Highest regarded League. In reality, has across 150 basketball leagues from everywhere around the world, and once you enroll for an account, it is certain you'll by no means run out of betting opportunities.

From the proliferation of social bookmarking, using the internet is packed with basketball tipsters distributing entirely free betting tips on football. So if you're a fan of football betting, it is always a good idea to check out the opinions of some of the world’s experts.

[doesitreallywork]

What’s inside Fan Victor, and can it help me improve my situation? That’s what our review tries to answer, and that’s what you’ll find inside!

Get The Lowest Price Now

Visit Official Website »

Fan Victor Review – Does It Really Work?

There is a lot that enters into getting and also playing dream video games which is the reason that you require to see to it that you have this plugin that will certainly permit you to obtain as well as play these video games that you require without also requiring genuine loan to progress what you are doing.

With this evaluation, we are mosting likely to take a look at what this is everything about. We will certainly base what we inform you on the testimonials of individuals that have actually purchased and also utilized this set. That is just how you will certainly obtain it all.

There is a lot to understand when you intend to purchase what is below which is the reason you require to make certain that you reach have this set. It will certainly have all things that you require when you wish to play as numerous dream video games as you desire.

With all the chances and also the data outlined for you, this is the supreme means to have a good time.

What Does Fan Victor Entail

This is a program that has actually been produced to assist you quickly maximize your everyday dream video games schedule. You likewise reach develop your very own winning make-ups within a brief time. This control panel reveals you the most effective sort of video games that you can play as well as all the statistics that you require.

You will certainly reach see the most effective stats making use of the tools of this program, protection video games as well as far more. If you do not understand, dream sporting activities get on fire and also they are made to assist you obtain what you require when you require it. That is as a result of the gain access to that so various as well as limitless.

It takes the typical sort of sporting activities and also from it develops competitors that will certainly test you ahead as well as play. You are enabled to produce your very own sort of gamer as long as you remain within the wage array that you have actually been offered. That is something that will certainly transform the video game as you understand it.

With this you will certainly reach have accessibility to one of the most vital info aesthetically, one of the most proper stats and also projection are the thumbs-ups. When you wish to obtain the very best video games with all these functions, this is what you will certainly require which is the reason that you need to obtain it.

What Are The Very Best Attributes of the Fan Victor Plugin?

When you are mosting likely to purchase something similar to this, you will certainly require to recognize what they are everything about to make sure that you can enjoy with all of it. That is something that I believe all of us desire. We likewise need to know that what we are mosting likely to purchase is not a fraud.

The testimonials might be radiant yet can this set truly provide what it assures.

Accessibility to All Timetables for All Gamings

This is something that you will certainly be used when you utilize this set which is the reason you will certainly require to see to it that when you are choosing, you consider this set seriously. You will certainly discover that there is a lot that you will certainly get from utilizing it that you will certainly not need to fret a lot.

You will certainly be offered all these timetables as well as they will certainly aid you when you intend to make certain that you recognize what video game is playing when. That is what this is everything about as well as you require to see to it that you have it. That is something that is challenging to locate when you have these plugins.

All Video game Information

There is a whole lot that enters into the entire video game information as well as just how it impacts you when you are playing in relation to what choice you need to make at what time. That is the reason that you require to ensure that you have this side that will certainly allow you to take pleasure in the dream video games.

The video game information will certainly consist of all the probabilities which will certainly allow you to choose what will certainly have the greater possibilities of winning. That is something that all of us desire when we are playing.

The video game information will certainly likewise have the outcomes which will certainly allow you to determine the important things that are taking place to establish where you wish to place your cash.

Easy Establish

If you are going to obtain a software program similar to this one, you will certainly require to recognize that it will certainly be very easy to utilize and also this is one point that I can ensure you around. You will certainly not require to fight with this, it is very easy to utilize and also you will certainly locate that something really enjoyable.

Is Anybody Purchasing the Fan Victor Plugin?

You will certainly obtain various software application that resemble this set however there are aspects of it that makes it stand apart from others. Aside from the incredible functions that it has, this software application is distinct in numerous methods. They are all created to assist you have that experience.

Of all it is available 24/7. It does not matter what time it is or what is occurring. If you are a participant you reach talk with various other participants at your very own ease.

Every area as well as function of this website is readily available for your usage throughout with no constraints regarding what you intend to do.

There is absolutely nothing that will certainly require you to utilize genuine cash to enjoy which is something that will certainly make dream video games simple for everybody to obtain.

The Remedy Supplied By Fan Victor

At some point back, you will certainly locate that there is a great deal that would certainly need to take place prior to you might obtain a video game which is something that I assume a great deal of individuals really did not such as. With this Plugin, you can be able to do a lot even more and also obtain even more quickly which is simply great.

With this one, you will certainly not require to battle that a lot. You will just require to download and install and also mount it and afterwards you can have all the enjoyable that you desire.

This entire procedure of obtaining and also making use of the program are simple which is the reason numerous individuals enjoy this.

As you can see, from all these qualities, it is unreasonable to assume that individuals are denying this. There is a lot to be obtained from it and also the testimonials are all so fascinating.

The Final Verdict

This Fan Victor is an outstanding software application that does not make use of actual loan as well as you can win genuine costs and also bonuses. The day-to-day dream sporting activities could simply have to do with video gaming yet one point that is for certain is the reality that you will certainly have some significant enjoyable with it.

From the testimonials that have actually been provided by customers from the main site, it is really noticeable that this program is official which client complete satisfaction is offered the top concern. If you were to acquire anything after that I would certainly advise this for you.

rogram are simple which is the reason that numerous individuals enjoy this.

As you can see, from all these advantages, it is ridiculous to assume that individuals are denying this. There is a lot to be received from it as well as the evaluations are all so intriguing.

Pros

– From its ranking you will certainly understand that it is amongst the leading companies of everyday sporting activities organizations chances and also outcomes when you wish to play dream video games.

– You stand up to specifically comprehensive records that will certainly reveal you where you will certainly get on the graphes which is so simple to make use of.

– This website gives extremely thorough chances as well as results graphes that make it very easy for you to enjoy.

– The customer’s discussion forum is constantly energetic with the participants eager for conversation.

– You can constantly obtain suggestions or aid from the participants in situation you are having problem with the control panel.

– You obtain aesthetic info from the plugin and also the website that it will certainly guide you to when you have questions.

– You reach have a lot enjoyable with this reputable plugin.

Cons

– You require to have net link for you to access it. If you a running reduced on web after that there is no other way you can access the video games which will certainly suggest you are out.

– If you intend to make a gamer, you are restricted to the income variety that you are provided.

– The settlement is done on a monthly basis so it is even more of a registration and also not an one-time settlement point.

Summary

This is a program that has actually been produced to aid you promptly enhance your day-to-day dream video games schedule. You additionally reach produce your very own winning structures within a brief time. This control panel reveals you the most effective sort of video games that you can play and also all the statistics that you require. You will certainly reach see the most effective stats making use of the tools of this program, protection video games as well as a lot more.

Get The Lowest Price Now

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The post Fan Victor Review – Does It Really Work? appeared first on Does It Really Work?.

#DoesItReallyWork, #review #reviews

[timmtimm78-blog]

The Mystery Of Musically Hack

How Near But Wealth With Free Musically Fans?

So aren’t a person motivated to generate the most effective by using the app by putting on a massive variety of followers? In other words, the idea might appear to become charge free way but ultimately i am spending to help you attain free addicts and also and so at this time there isn’t any cutting or maybe criminal tool require. Musically user name, then you've gotten long been the level of fans an individual desire. If you want grow ones consideration, look at additional about musically fans hack. While the logo and also reputation on the app become varied, the central element kept on being the same in the form of short films that lives for as much as 15 seconds or perhaps minus. It offers registered an area one of several best 3 apps around the iphone app graph and or chart and may actually be taken around the machine plan. How often do you think the scheduled these stations just isn't approximately the assumed levels. You'll be stunned for you to see the minute TikTok followers to an individual retain receiving when you contribute to the cartridge. As you'll find numerous fake services inside marketplace in which can demand you regarding overload connected with currency only to receive traffic on the websites, you'll want to recognize how in fact does this particular work out. How often does one feel that the on these means seriously isn't approximately the anticipated degree. While the logo with star with the app become replaced, the focal point feature stayed a similar such as small online video media that will pasts pertaining to up to 15 seconds or even minus. That working I just now moved followers, likes along with overhead for free. http://dinlarthelwa.info/psp-game-console-offering-a-number-of-enjoyment-options/ becomes musically fans hack. No matter whether their Instagram or perhaps some other public media, this particular app is pick up all the eyeballs everywhere. Will you aim as a famous performer?

In which Is The Best Musically Hack?

In case you remedied “indeed” to a single as well as most of these query, TikTok is the proper app for you personally. I am now having a exclusive musically tool, which permits you achieve nearly 20,000 followers and 10,000 fans upon your current credit every period which too without having even paying a single penny. Great result becomes musically fans hack. Consequently presented under is often a screenshot of which definitely talk about the amount of real followers along with fans around the bill of many users before then considering making use of your tool. That doing the job I simply acquired followers, likes and crown for free. If you want extend your current consideration, speak further on musically fans hack. How To Instantly Increase 100,000 TikTok Followers, Fans And Likes. A offering method of the quiz associated with music's sources is targeted on how music is employed in which takes place, the item various functions. Here you can get musically likes app for free. You never wish the belief that it's not possible to chose the right switch while you're reside, retain people through realising success along with your primary videos. How many times have you ever think disappointed at the meagre variety of followers, Fans, likes as well as criticism that your music garners? Numerous effective submitted online video of these executing humor and other kinds of movie, this sort of because frame along with head of hair assessments. It is it will always be an app in which you can download by your smartphone, processor or even any other way. In the event you answered “yes” to at least one or even these problems, TikTok would be the correct app for you personally. Put simply, this may be becoming a price free way however in a roundabout way i am paying to help you attain free consumers in addition to therefore generally there isn’t any hacking or illegitimate tool required.

[kennethherrerablog]

Single? Our 30-Day Challenge Will Whip Your Finances Into Shape

Sure, it might seem like everyone in the world is coupling up.

You’ve basically mastered the art of third-wheeling — or fifth-wheeling.

Each day, your friends post engagement announcements: “I’m marrying my best friend!” Then, what seems like a week later, they’re posting month-by-month baby updates.

Yeah, sometimes it sucks you don’t have a go-to wedding date or built-in sounding board, but there’s also something beautiful about being single. You have time to focus on yourself, your career, your relationships and your finances.

If you need some help with that last one — the little ol’ money thing — we put together a 30-day money challenge just for you.

Day 1: Get a Bird’s-Eye View of Your Finances

Now, when someone tells you it’s time to start focusing on yourself, your next question might be, “How? What should I do first?”

Honestly, it’s difficult to know where to start when it comes to getting your money in order, but we suggest tapping into your credit score and credit report.

Yes. Your credit score is very important. The better your score, the better rates you’ll get on a mortgage, car loan or credit card. Heck, a bad credit score could even mean you have to put down a deposit when setting up internet.

Go ahead and peep your credit score to see how you’re doing. You can do so for free through Credit Sesame.

Not only will Credit Sesame give you your score, it’ll also provide you with a free “credit report card,” which breaks down your credit report into easy-to-understand terms and action items.

Day 2: Start Tackling Credit Card Debt

If you don’t have any debt, good for you! Feel free to kick back today.

If you do (and many of us do, so don’t feel ashamed), then think about this: Credit card interest rates can reach more than 20% these days. That means you’re wasting good money that could go toward paying down the principal.

If you’re in this boat, consider refinancing your debt with a personal loan.

A good resource is Fiona. Nope, you didn’t find her on Tinder…

Fiona is a search engine for financial services, which can help match you with the right personal loan to meet your needs.

Fiona searches the top online lenders to match you with a personalized loan offer in less than 60 seconds. Its platform can help you borrow up to $100,000 (no collateral needed) with fixed rates starting at 4.99% and terms from 24 to 84 months.

Day 3: Build a Budget (No Math Required)

All right. Remember, it’s Wine Wednesday (that’s a thing, right?), so don’t be afraid to pour yourself a glass before tackling today’s challenge.

But really, this won’t be as painful as you think it will be, thanks to a free app that basically does it all for you.

The Empower app is a powerful budgeting tool that can help you figure out how you’re spending your money and develop a budgeting plan to keep you on track.

Link the app to your bank accounts, and it will track your spending. It will also categorize your spending so you can see exactly where you are overdoing it. That’s right: It will show you just how many times you went out for dinner because you didn’t want to do the dishes.

Set a monthly spending limit, and the app will show you a graph that can tell you in one snapshot just how you’re doing for the month. Are you over the line or under it? It’s that simple to see how you’re doing so you can adjust your spending accordingly.

Sometimes a little accountability is all you need.

Day 4: Look out for Yourself, and Start an Emergency Fund

When you’re single, you have to take care of yourself. To do that, build an emergency fund, a stash of money hidden away in case any unforeseen events pop up.

So… where to begin?

Try Digit, an innovative app that automates saving for you. Simply link it to your checking account, and its algorithms will determine small (and safe!) amounts of money to withdraw into a separate, FDIC-insured savings account.

Bonus: Penny Hoarders will get an extra $5 just for signing up! Additionally, savers will receive a 1% bonus every three months.

If you need that money sooner than expected, you’ll always have access to it within one business day.

Digit is free to use for the first 30 days, then it’s $2.99 per month afterward.

Days 5 and 6: Snag Cash-Back on Your Weekend Indulgences

It’s Friyay and Caturday (if you’re into that sort of thing), which means it’s time for a night out with friends or maybe a family brunch.

Before you indulge, download Ibotta, a free app that’ll pay you cash for taking pictures of your grocery store and gas station receipts.

You can also earn cash back at your favorite restaurants and bars. For example, if you buy yourself and a friend a bottle of Stella Artois, take a photo of your bar tab, and Ibotta will give you $5. (Offers change regularly, so keep an eye for new deals!)

Once you hit $20, cash out. Oh, and you’ll get a $10 sign-up bonus through The Penny Hoarder, so you’re already halfway there.

Day 7: Fight Your Sunday Scaries With Fun Games

Welcome to the Sunday Scaries. It’s time to grab your husband (and by husband, we mean that cozy pillow that tucks right around you) and turn on Netflix. Then, play games to save money.

Yep! The folks who created Long Game have you covered with a game that’s fun and helps you achieve your financial goals.  

As you save and accomplish missions, you’ll earn coins to play mini games for cash prizes. We’re talking the classics, like slot machines, scratch-offs and spin-to-win wheels.

I used Long Game to save money. Every two weeks, it would sneak $5 out of my bank account and reward me with coins.

In two months, I saved $35.70, just by playing games on my phone. Plus, my winnings amount to a gain of about 2% — way higher than interest on any other savings account I have.

Once you link your bank account, you’ll earn 300 coins, so you can start playing immediately.

Day 8: Find More Affordable Car Insurance Rates

Did you know your car insurance rates can be dependent on your marital status? Yeah, not fair.

Either way, it’s time to check your rates to see how much money you could be saving.

The Zebra, an online car insurance search engine that offers “insurance in black and white,” compares your options from 204 providers in less than 60 seconds.

Here’s how it works:

Head over to The Zebra’s search platform.

After answering some questions, it’s time to compare. The Zebra gives you an “Insurability Score,” which is similar to your credit score except it’s for car insurance, and it  teaches you how to get better rates. The site also gives you different options for coverage.

Day 9: Insure Your Most Valuable Asset (or Costliest Expense)

OK, being single is great and all, but admittedly, it sucks when it comes to your monthly living expenses. If you don’t have a roommate, who do you split rent with? No one. And it’s dang expensive.

At least you can shop around for the best renters insurance rates.

Start by pulling a free quote. We recommend the online insurance company Lemonade, through which renters insurance starts at $5 a month.

Beyond affordable rates, Lemonade adds a layer of transparency you don’t often see in the insurance world. Instead of profiting extra when it doesn’t have to pay out claims, the company keeps a set 20% of your premium for itself, and 80% goes into a pool for paying claims. Money left over after paying claims each year goes to a cause of your choice.

That also means Lemonade isn’t going to be super stingy about granting customers the claims they deserve — ’cause the money isn’t going into its pockets.

Day 10: Find the Cheapest Internet in Town With One Click

Today’s the day you’re going to stick it to your internet provider. Seriously. You don’t need anyone’s help.

It’ll take only a couple of minutes to compare rates around town and save a bundle on internet (without committing to a bundle package) when you shop through Squeeze.

Squeeze is free, and it allows you to either switch companies or negotiate with your current provider.

You can also check out its “cord-cutting” comparison. If you haven’t yet cut the cord, go ahead and compare how much your cable costs versus how much a handful of streaming services will cost.

Day 11: Trim Your Cell Phone Bill

OK, does it seem like your cell phone bill increases each month?

Well, it’s time to call in a robot. The negotiation bot Trim will negotiate your AT&T cell phone bill down for you.

You can sign up simply with Facebook or your email address. Then, enter your plan’s account information, and Trim’s AI-powered system gets to work. If at first it doesn’t succeed, it’ll keep negotiating until it can save you some money.

Trim takes 25% of the savings tab, and you get the rest.

Day 12: Pay off Your Debt Even Faster

This challenge will help you cut your monthly expenses. That’s awesome! Now, instead of using that money saved to pay for a Really Bad™ Tinder date, put it toward your debt payoff efforts.

You can also recruit a free app to help out.

It’s called Qoins, and it can help you become debt-free without really thinking about it.

Qoins rounds up each purchase you make to the nearest dollar. The app tracks the roundups and makes withdrawals that it automatically puts toward a debt account of your choice each month.

How it works:

Sign up, and add your lender (the account you want to pay off).

Connect your checking or other bank account.

Start saving and automatically paying down your debt.

Days 13 to 15: Find Some Free Fun This Weekend!

Whoo, it’s finally Friday, so give yourself a break. Have some fun tonight, and let loose on into this weekend.

Got a hot date? Try going on a penny date. All you need is a penny and a 30-sided die.

Or plan a picnic with some friends, pack up the car and go camping, find an open mic night at a local bar, or hit up the local farmers market. If you’re looking to meet new people, you can always find a Meetup group that matches your interests.

Day 16: Breathe a Little Luck Into Your Day

No matter which way you slice it, Mondays kind of, almost always suck.

Before you get too down, it’s time to spice it up with a chance to win some money. Yep. It’s time to get lucky.

The Lucky Day app allows you to play digital scratch-off tickets and enter daily lotteries — for free. You can win cash and tokens to exchange for prizes, gift cards and raffle entries.

It’s all free to play, with no in-app purchases. The company has already awarded more than $3 million in prizes to winners since 2014.

Seriously, you could have that “I just found money in my pocket” feeling today just for playing games and having fun on your phone.

Day 17: Get Paid to Watch Videos

Hey, so you’ve probably got a hot date with Netflix tonight… Why not mix things up a bit and get paid to watch videos?

Seriously! InboxDollars pays you to watch TV online.

The site hosts a ton of stuff to watch, including cooking, entertainment, news and health shows. The shows are sponsored by brands that need to get them in front of as many eyeballs as possible. Every time you watch one, InboxDollars will credit your account with a little bit of cash.

Day 18: Try Your Hand at a Survey Site and Get a $5 Bonus

If you’re feeling sensitive about being single these days, maybe skip today’s challenge. Sure, survey sites can be an easy way to make money online, but they’re also going to ask you a ton of demographic questions… like, tell us your relationship status. Over and over.

If you want to bank a little extra money, though, sign up with MyPoints. You can earn gift cards when you participate in polls and fill out surveys. Plus, once you complete your first five surveys, you’ll earn a $5 bonus.

Day 19: Dip Your Pocket Change Into Some Investments

Want to give investing a try today? Come on! It’s time to try something new.

Start small, and download Acorns, an investing app that’ll round up your debit and credit card purchases and, once it accumulates $5, it’ll invest the spare change for you.

That means if you spend $10.23 at the grocery store, 77 cents gets dropped into your Acorns account. Then, the app does the whole investing thing for you.

The app is $1 a month for balances under $1 million, and you’ll get a $5 bonus when you sign up.

If you’ve got a $50 bill burning a hole in your wallet, then look into Swell Investing, an SEC-registered investment adviser committed to supporting sustainable companies.

Its Impact 400 portfolio features companies whose products and services align with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. It considers everything from gender equality to ending poverty to clean energy.

You’ll get a $50 bonus with the code PENNY after making your initial investment.

Swell doesn’t have any trading fees, price tiers or expense ratios. It charges a 0.75% annual fee — that’s about the cost of one coffee ($3.75) per year if you invest $500.

Disclosure: We have a financial relationship with Swell Investing LLC and will be compensated if consumers apply for an account and/or fund an account with Swell through links in our content. However, the analysis and opinions expressed here are our own.

Days 20 to 22: Master the Art of Earning Cash Back (and Get $10 Free!)

Woah… where did this week go?

All right. You don’t quite get this weekend off, but trust us. This task will be fun, especially if you have big plans to do some online shopping. Hey, it’s a treat-yourself kind of weekend.

Before doing anything, sign yourself up for Ebates, a cash-back site that rewards you nearly every time you buy something online. For example, Ebates gives you up to 10% cash back on online purchases at Walmart.

Plus, you’ll get a free $10 gift card to Walmart for giving the site a try.

Then check out Paribus, a tool that gets you money back for your online purchases. It’s free to sign up, and once you do, it will scan your email for any receipts.

If Paribus discovers you’ve purchased something from one of its monitored retailers, it will track the item’s price and help you get a refund when there’s a price drop.

Day 23: Find a Bank That’ll Treat You (and Your Money) Right

All right. It’s time to break the never-ending cycle of fees… It’s time to break up with your… bank. Duh.

Radius Bank does more than your average bank to make you feel appreciated. The full-service virtual bank offers perks that traditional banks don’t, including up to 17 times the national average interest rate with the Radius Hybrid checking account.

Radius Hybrid is a free checking account that combines the interest-earning potential of a savings account with the flexibility of a checking account. You’ll earn 1% APY on balances over $2,500 (1.2% on balances above $100,000).

You’ll also enjoy freedom from fees: There are no monthly fees or minimum balance requirements, and you can be reimbursed for fees from any ATM in the world (yup).

Ready for someone to go above and beyond for you? You can open an account with just $100 — in as little as five minutes.

Day 24: Hunt Down a Savings Account That Pays out

So you’ve started an emergency savings. That’s awesome! But now it’s time to make sure your savings is making some money for you — to really cushion your just-in-case plan.

An iOS app called Varo Money combines traditional banking tools with modern technology to help its customers become financially healthy.

Here’s the best part: Pair your Bank Account with a Varo Savings Account where you’ll earn 1.75% annual percentage yield. That’s nearly 20 times — repeat, 20 times — the average savings account, based on a 0.06% average reported by CNN Money.

Day 25: Check Into Your 401(k)

Got a 401(k)? You’re on the right track.

Now, you just need to make sure it’s doing what you need it to. However, tapping into that account and deciphering the information — or lack thereof — can be hard.

There’s a robo-adviser for that. Blooom, an SEC-registered investment advisory firm, will optimize and monitor your 401(k) for you.

It gives you an initial 401(k) checkup for free, and you’ll get to know your account a little more intimately. Find out if you’re paying too many hidden fees, have the appropriate amount invested in stocks versus bonds, that kind of fun stuff.

After that, the tool is $10 a month to use to continue to monitor your retirement account. Let Blooom know your target retirement age, and it can help you get there by investing more and less aggressively.

Day 26: Get $150 for Signing up for a New Credit Card

How many times do you reward yourself each day? Probably not enough.

That’s because if you’re not using a rewards credit card for everyday purchases, you’re missing out on free money.

You just have to be sure you don’t get too carried away with those purchases — and that the card is paid off at the end of each billing period.

Here’s an option we like: It’s the Chase Freedom Unlimited card. Its claim to fame? You’ll earn an unlimited 1.5% cash back on all your purchases. Plus, if you spend $500 in your first three months of opening the card (hi, groceries), you’ll pocket a $150 bonus.

Get signed up — and 0% intro APR for 15 months — here.

*The information for the Chase Freedom Unlimited card has been collected independently by The Penny Hoarder. Opinions expressed here are the author’s alone, not those of the credit card issuer, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the credit card issuer. The Penny Hoarder is a partner of Credible.

Day 27: Temper Your Credit Card Use With This Safety Net

Need a little accountabilibuddy when it comes to credit card swiping? You don’t need a human for that. We’ve got another solution.

An app called Debitize basically turns your credit card into a debit card, for free. With it, you can connect any credit card to a checking account.

Whenever you swipe your credit card, Debitize pulls the same amount of cash from your bank account. It stores the cash for you until it’s time to pay your credit card bill. Then it pays that bill for you a week before the due date.

The best of both worlds: You can build credit and get those sweet credit card perks, and also prevent yourself from running up unmanageable debt.

Days 28 and 29: Celebrate the Weekend by Binging Netflix

Whoo! It’s already the weekend again, and you’re almost done with your 30-day challenge!

Take the weekend to binge “The Great British Baking Show” if you haven’t already. Seriously, it’ll make you so happy.

Day 30: Reflect on How Awesome YOU Are!

Congratulations. You’ve made it to the end of your 30-day money challenge!

How are you feeling? Did you finally check off all those financial tasks you’d been meaning to get to? That’s what happens when you have more time to focus on yourself. (No offense, significant others… )

Whatever your goal was, we’re glad you took some time to focus on yourself and your finances. In the end, it’ll set you up for success in the future.

Now, just remember: Before you go jumpin’ into any relationship, be sure to have the money talk before you truly commit.

Carson Kohler (carson@thepennyhoarder.com) is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder.

This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.

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