#or if the site is being deleted to transition to another site under a different name and company

[browserfreak]

I'd just like to say this is NOT about the President threatening to enact KOSA and delete TikTok. Stop celebrating that. Sure, taking down TikTok may be a "good thing" in your eyes, but as much as we hate it there are friends, communities, creators, on there. Them suddenly losing all their contacts and viewers with NO NOTICE would be very fucking evil. Plus, if they banned TikTok (which is mostly for it's amount of pro-left / queer content, by the way) then that's a gateway for them to ban other sites; tumblr, facebook, instagram, youtube... et cetera. Which would be HORRIBLE. Even if THAT doesn't sound bad, that means that no-one can create other social media sites because they would monitor the entire internet. Do you fucking want that. Do you want every fucking shred of content to be policed and controlled, every sentence, every profile, every word. No, you DON'T. You want free expression. So don't follow the cruelty of the morally immature, and you won't add to the problem.

TikTok isn't bad because it's "cringe" (which usually refers to minorities anyway), it's bad because it's a content-stealing, mind-wrecking, echo chamber that is usually filled to the brim with such pretentious pricks and content farms that when something becomes even slightly mainstream on there, no matter how intrinsically pure, it gets torn limb from limb. It's similar to watching one of those simulation videos where the organisms start fighting each other despite abundant resources due to their short-sighted, tunnel vision mind. Any horrible, discriminative, malicious content you can imagine is increased tenfold on that site. Not to mention the fact that it lowers people's attention spans with addictive short-form content, whittling down their brains until they can't research things for themselves. The nerd emoji, the yapping, the negligence of any sort of solid logic or fact. It's real. It's horrifying. It's a internet-ruining machine, along with the likes of AI and Meta. It's a mind-ruining machine. There have been so, so many counts of people's tarnished mental health improving after leaving that dumpster fire of a "social" "media". There's nothing fucking "social" about it, and there certainly isn't any content on there that I'd give the honourable name of "media".

Delete TikTok. Fucking do it.

[alengthyread]

Am in a process once again where am trying to revive my blogging ways. I did about three blogging sites where I ended up with an .xml file with Blogger under Google, and I saved that file, but I was on a desk top when these things were happening, and mind you, that desktop failed on me, so the file ended up in no-mans. Now that am using a laptop, am being really simple, because I don’t want to lose files once again. As for my revival, if you haven’t seen my photos yet, the ones I posted on adriancudal in Facebook, I basically advise, because my photography then was so detailed. I barely blog now, because it isn’t a surprise that am losing my English, and to revive it, am trying to follow Amanda Foreman’s line hoping that I can make it better. My Facebook profile would also be helpful, because geography wise, you’d see the different places I’ve been to. When I was taught with this one-take, unwritten material, I started deleting my published products online, because it was going to be sheerly on speech where there aren’t going to be any evidences. So ended up thousands of photos, and at the same time, transition to Tumblr. But I think am lenient at this time, because there are evidences… I got the trick from Lil’ Wayne where he wasn’t going to write his lyrics, because there can’t be any evidences on the crime scene: I don’t know why it’s like that. The literature and speech both come as the superior element to it, and am just hoping that people would respect this. My vlog with @TheCudal is different, because people stopped listening to it, and am basically avoiding to update it once again, because am out of words at this point. For the most part, people know what I do, a few people know what I do even if they’re not posted online. And that’s my street life, if you and I meet at the mall, that’ll be the crux of it. When homies and I took a vacation to Montreal, guess how I met on the sidewalk? Yes, my doctor Sunny Johnson. I was smiling to him, and he told me to take my medication, so that was kinda’ funny. But the streets are going to talk. Tomorrow I have another opportunity to go to Mississauga, and it’s a tiring trip as I’ve gone three times for the last month, but it’s an opportunity to meet, and discuss things, things don’t need to be uploaded on Instagram. This business is hard, because the fatigue will set in, and it can affect your sleep, it can affect your travelling life. So, I just wanna say thank-you if read this far, maybe if you wanna talk to me; we can meet out in the streets. Pun.

[risingoflights]

Jenova and the Remnants as Mers. This month’s Patreon poll result.

Story under the cut. Please don’t delete my comments while reblogging, cheers!

The existence of Mers has been known for a long time, though they rarely, if ever, live up to their legends. Contrary to popular stories of Mers saving ship-wrecked sailors or luring young people by the beach to their watery deaths, the few documented species of real Mers are elusive creatures with highly particular habitats. Few Mers have ever survived even the transition into captivity, and their capture now outside of sanctioned scientific study is illegal. Moreover, Mers are now often viewed as bad luck, able to bring disaster upon whomever sees them on shore - and that, perhaps, is at least partially due to the rather grim and gruesome story of one instance of tanked Mers that has acted as a cautionary tale for decades...

In the sixties, the Shinra transport plane, the Gelnika, crashed into the ocean, and its remains were traced to the sea floor off the coast of Costa del Sol. While investigating the wreckage, the submarine crew were astonished to discover, circling the area, a group of Mers, moving in what appeared to be a cohesive unit consisting of three human-sized males alongside a huge monster roughly the size of an elephant, which was barely humanoid save for the female torso atop its crown. Further dedicated expeditions charted the territory of the group, and all four were eventually caught and moved to Junon aquarium, where they were housed and studied. Photos of the creatures were soon widely circulated and thought by many to be hoaxes, until, in the late sixties, the Mers themselves became an exhibit open to the public. The hype surrounding them was massive, and for months after their unveiling crowds still lined up for hours to get a glimpse of the strange and beautiful hybrids.

The 'triplets', as the three males were dubbed, were understandably very popular, their shared familial features adding to their appeal. 'Jenova', the larger specimen fondly referred to as their 'mother', despite obviously being a different species, was much less sought after. Indeed, she seemed to repulse people - both her fish and human eyes seemed equally dead - and aquarium staff loathed to be in the same room with her alone. Her human lips, they claimed, seemed always to move, whispering Gods only know what into the watery depths of her tank. Worse still, multiple employees asserted that prolonged exposure to Jenova gave them headaches, or strange hallucinations, or even violent, dark whims...

Regardless, things went well enough for about a year, until the aquarium was brutally targeted by vandals. The motive for the attack was never clearly known and the culprits never caught, though by the time authorities arrived, it was too late to save the triplets, whose tank had been drained. Jenova survived, though was moved off display, and remained in the facility for another few months... before police were once again called to the site. This time, what they found was even more terrible-

The employee on last shift the night before was missing, and pieces of him eventually found floating in Jenova's tank, with the rest presumably eaten. Surveillance videos show eerie footage of the man behaving oddly - walking in circles, talking to thin air - before he willingly climbed into Jenova's tank, drowning before she devoured him. There was no note accompanying this apparent suicide, and the employee's background check revealed no history of mental health or substance abuse issues. His actions before his death were out of character and entirely bizarre. The incident report speculated drug involvement... but the story on the street was far different. Most people were convinced that, somehow, this was Jenova's orchestration. This was her revenge at humankind for the murder of her 'sons'.

After that, Jenova was quietly moved to another facility, with was no public announcement as to where. Some theorise she was euthanised, some claim she was sold to a private collector. Regardless, she was never seen again, and interest in the Mers tapered off after a while, though, to this day, conspiracy hunters still go in search of Jenova, whom they believe to be alive, and still grieving for her children.

(They are, as common in these cases, just a little bit correct. Jenova is alive and in captivity, though her whereabouts have become, for even more sinister reasons, a strict government-level secret.)

[eloarei]

About the process of creating a book (the not-writing part)

I was asked recently about if making a book was easy or tedious or whatever, and I realized that was actually something I’d like to talk about. I’d never done it before (and still I only have a little experience), but I’ve been teaching myself and it’s been... fun?  Behind the cut (that’s still a thing, right?), I ramble about formatting, PDFs, fonts, and some other stuff. (Also pictures, though most of them are the same as the ones I posted yesterday.) 

First of all, I had to pick a Print-On-Demand (POD) website. That was easy for me, because finding the website was actually what made me want to make the book. I used Lulu.com, which has worked very well for me the two times I’ve used it. (It has a bunch of bad reviews, but honestly I got just what I paid for both times. They apparently offer editing and marketing services; I can’t vouch for those because I only used the POD service. But personally I wouldn’t trust anyone to edit or market my book, let alone some randos on some website. They’re a POD site. That’s what they’re good at, so that’s what I use.)  It would have been almost too easy if they just let me copy-paste the text to them, but understandably they wanted a PDF. PDFs are kind of the bane of my existence, but I downloaded a template from them (for a 6x9 inch novel, with appropriate margins) and then copy-pasted my fic into it using LibreOffice. (I’m so-so about LibreOffice, but it does create PDFs reasonably well.)  From there... well, then I had to go through the process of reformatting it. I’d copied the text from my AO3, and that meant that it had spaces between every paragraph and no indents, which is how AO3 fics are typically formatted. It was a lot of Tab-Left-Down-Down-Down-Backspace-Backspace-Enter-Repeat. For 140k words, it took a few casual days.  After the bulk of that was done, I realized the indents/tabs looked... weird? They were too big. ^^; Luckily there was a setting in LibreOffice to change them all automatically. I almost cried at the thought of having to do it manually haha.  Adding data to the headers and footers came next. I chose to only add the page number to the footer, and nothing to the header. Normally people will have the author’s name on one side, and the book’s title on the other, but I skipped that for the time being. Not sure if I’ll do it for the ‘official’ release.  (Somehow my footer ended up being too small, so that’s something I need to look into.)  Next I had to pick a font and a font size. I decided to do something a little gimmicky: I have alternating chapters that take place in modern and historical times, so I chose different fonts to represent those chapters. For the historical chapters I chose “Century”, which is a serif font (meaning that it has little embellishments, like “Times New Roman”), while for the modern chapters I chose “Verdana”, a sans-serif font (meaning that it is sans/without the embellishments, like whatever font Tumblr uses).  It’s typically agreed that novels are best in serif fonts, because it’s easier to read them for a long session. The embellishments make the letters blend together into visually recognizable words, which is apparently how we read, as opposed to looking at every letter individually. However, because I wanted to be quirky, more than half of my book is in sans-serif, which I’m just hoping doesn’t annoy people.  I used Verdana size 11 and Century size 12. Even so, the Verdana still looks too large to my eye, so I’ll probably change it again.  After that was mostly aesthetic formatting, which was the actual fun part. I tabbed down I think about 10 spaces at the start of every chapter, then went back up a space or two, increased the font size and changed the font to something slightly fancier and wrote the chapter title (which for me were just “Chapter Five”, etc).  (UPON FURTHER SCRUTINY, apparently not all of my first chapter pages are tabbed down the same amount. ugh. ^^; They’re close but not identical. How messy.)  Under the chapter titles, I simulated “drop caps” on the first phrase of the chapter, because I didn’t have a good drop caps font. I just did this by retyping the whole phrase in caps, and then changing the first letter to a slightly larger font size.  Next were a few easy things: a title page, a few silly “praise for” pages of reviews I got from online readers (these probably won’t be in the “official” version; they just make me smile), a mock-up copyright page (mock-up because I don’t actually have a copyright or anything yet), a short dedications page (mine was just one sentence), and then an empty page so that the story text starts on the right, which is standard. I have bought another self-published book which otherwise looks pretty good, but it starts the story on the left page and it’s just so jarring.  At that point, the PDF was pretty much done. I added a few other little touches, like some little fancy dagger icons during in-chapter scene transitions. I ended up with the “the end” page being on the left, which, again, is really awkward, so I found a chapter that only had like two lines on the last page, and went back in and deleted a handful of words in the chapter so that it would end on the previous page instead.  THEN came the fun but agonizing part, as I’m not as much of a graphic designer as I sometimes wish. I had to make a cover. The other self-published book I bought looks really nice with a beautiful illustration on the front, but the spine and back had just tiny white text, and didn’t even include a synopsis. So I downloaded a template for a 6x9inch wrap-around cover, tossed it up in Photoshop, paint-bucketed it black, and went to work. I pasted in my synopsis in off-white sans-serif font about the same as my internal font, and bolded some of the key words for... ease of skimming and/or funsies? At the top I added a short dialogue exchange from the first chapter that I thought represented the story as a whole, chose a different font that stood out, and gave it a red shadow so it would stand out more. For fun I added some faint red blood-splatters behind the text.  For the front I chose a big bold block-letter font in off-white, then gave it a red and a yellow shadow so it would stand out. I rasterized the font (turning it into a picture), and then used the tool to highlight the letters, and splashed some red blood-splatters on them. I did the same for the spine. (Though really what I should have done was copy the logo from the front and resize it. Silly me. Now the two logos don’t match.)  I used Unsplash.com for a few free photos that I quickly manipulated into a passable cover art. Ultimately, I would like to have something either professionally photographed, edited, or drawn, but what I found was vaguely similar enough to what I wanted that I figured it’d do for now.  Maybe the last thing I had to do (besides uploading it all to Lulu) was decide on a pen-name! I ended up going with L.A.Rayborn, instead of my legal name. I used my legal first two initials, but chose my birth surname (which is twice removed from my legal name, since I was first adopted and then married). To be perfectly honest, the reason I chose not to use my legal name is mostly because I don’t want to associate my in-laws with possibly-sensitive content that they probably wouldn’t like.  SO. Then it was done, and I uploaded it to Lulu, and chose a few options on the site, such as cream pages instead of white, and matte exterior finish instead of gloss. (I highly suggest the cream for novels, but the matte is really just personal preference.) I paid them (I ended up getting it printed and shipped to me for under $20), and then about 2 weeks later I had the 400 page darling in my hands, ready to be eviscerated with a set of neon hi-lighters!  After this current round of edits, I already know there’s a ton of stuff I’m going to have to fix (and this is to say nothing of the story).  1. The font is slightly too large, but could probably use a 1.5 or maybe 1.2 spacing between lines. I’ll have to fiddle with it, and see what others do.  2. The back cover text is too close to the edges to really look good.  3. The page numbering just looks odd for some reason.  4. Figure out how to get the page numbers to stay off the copyright and dedications page, etc.  5. MORE THAN ANYTHING, I need to change the... I’m not even sure what to call it? I need to make the text space out evenly so that it creates a block on each page, rather than creating messy ridges on the right margins. I didn’t even think of this until I got the book and started comparing it to professional books I’ve read and enjoyed. It seems like a very rookie mistake. 

(lol I’m in the process of changing the main character’s name, which is why the crappy MS Paint edits.)  PHEW, that was long. But hopefully my journey was at least a little insightful. Please do let me know if you have any thoughts, questions, or suggestions about how I could better format the book for the “real” printing! 

[kindabraveandlittlestupid]

Why Tumblr Chooses Censorship

It’s a strange day to jump online and suddenly hear about a major policy change on Tumblr from a few people I talk too. Words like “Total Bullshit”, “End of Tumblr”, “Burning Garbage Heap” and so on tossed among them to describe the policy change. Curious enough I logged on began reading over all the purposed changes and I admit I am a bit disheartened. Usually when a digital institution like AOL, Yahoo, Napster, or MySpace falls it because they didn't evolve and became stagnant in what they were providing the internet. I can’t think of a time where a site willfully regressed its own freedom of speech on a broad scale and basically swallowed a poison capsule that destroys their user base (perhaps deservingly so) but here we are.

That point aside, I am trying to have insight and hindsight to understand how/why they were pushed to this reckless conclusion (I will be leaving foresight out because I think Tumblr lacks foresight, the exodus from Tumblr will dramatically change the culture of this site likely for the worse). Tumblr like any social media medium is struggling in the current age of the internet; Bots, Far Right Extremists, Fake News, Illegal Porn, Data Theft, and so on. Many companies are walking this fine line between trying to combat these problems while preserving freedom of speech.

I struggle to find my own footing on this topic because I believe that society with LESS censorship historically does better. You look to countries in the past that repressed sexuality, individual thought, and so on; those countries were often the ones to invite the rise of repressive groups doing atrocious acts in history. While on the other hand because of this open and free social media platform we all see the echoing of those same repressive groups (who are also on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and Youtube) and to simply say/do nothing about their posts will inevitably allow them to rise still. This is where I struggle as I believe in that concept of a free society but I do feel that removing fake new stories is essential for the health of democracy.

I imagine the reason why sexual images are the target is that Tumblr makes things so easy to post. It's not hard to imagine pictures of minors getting liked or reposted from one blog or another happening. The problem is many of those pictures will circulate for a long period of time not being flagged as underage and there is good chance that every user has knowingly or unknowingly looked at an image like this on the web. I explore the porn side of Tumblr and have once or twice encountered a Tumblr full of these images at which point I couldn't close that tab fast enough and get the hell out of dodge. So Tumblrs solution of handling this problem instead of playing whack a mole with these underage accounts? Ban all adult content.

I can understand this motivation being a foolproof way of making sure there is no underage porn because there will be no porn. I imagine the result will be very effective, so effective that the various members of the community be they straight, bi, or gay who had their own private collection of legal adult material on Tumblr will stop visiting the site. A slow-moving exodus of users from Tumblr this site to perhaps a new blogging alternative that isn't so restrictive. I don’t suspect Tumblr will be closing its doors the week after the policy kick in (though they will see a HUGE decline in traffic) but even the PG accounts will likely move on because a sizeable user base shifted away and people want to be where the party is at. And much as I love Tumblr, it will not be here (sadly).

PC Culture VS Censorship Culture

One thing I noticed on the various posts is some people attempting to blame this policy change on the PC Culture. I am not sure I believe that as a valid argument. While I don't get along with PC Culture all the time (part of my free society is believing that humor is apart of it and PC Culture doesn't always like humor), I do think PC Culture has a broad/accepting view of orientation and sexuality. Just important is people having the right to explore those thoughts and feelings of their own free will. Tumblr has been one of those sites allowing emerging gay men and women to find others like them but also explore their sexuality with images/gifs/videos. What Tumblr might have not noticed is that the site itself is kind of a cultivation of the best images from the web, sure you can find some pretty hard porn on occasion but of all the adult sites on the web, Tumblr provides an almost artistic lense to the images that come thru the site.

Censorship can come from various political/social/religious groups but this sort of censorship against the human body, sex, and sexuality, in general, comes from a very conservative mindset. People who don’t wish to see nudity in any form on any medium; people who think a woman's nipple is lewd, that breastfeeding publically is disgusting, and that anything remotely sexual is a sin. And by the nature of Tumblrs policy change their beliefs align themselves alarmingly close to these individuals.

There is a thin veneer of progressive views on the site that remains where they say they are ok with this and that like gender orientation surgery but its just that a veneer. Once a person has transitioned anything that is shared of their new body (nudity or sex wise) beyond the initial transition falls into the realm of ‘smut’ by Tumblrs policies. I imagine the perception they are trying to sell us is “Hey we are still the same progressive safe haven for LGTBQ community! Stay with us!” but secretly thinking “Everything you enjoy in the bedroom is horrible and we fucking hate you.”

Perhaps I am being hyperbolic in that statement but damn if it doesn't feel like a vast policy of censorship on the human body. And whenever this happens (historically) it always comes from hyper-conservatives.

A General Attack On Expression and Orientation

I touched on this topic a little bit above but I feel it's worth stating again that Tumblr might be losing its safe-haven status for gender expression and sexual orientation. When scrolling through Tumblr you will likely see those new expressions of genders that is beyond that of ‘traditional’ male and female definitions. And while I don’t have any attraction to some of these new expressions, I understood why they are there and don’t get upset if/when the cross my feed. Like two men having sex my mind thinks “Not for me but I am sure that will make someones day”. I view sex (in all its forms) as natural, I don’t have to be into it for me to be ok with it (if that makes sense). It’s visual participation if that image you see isn't a turn on for you and does nothing for you, simply move on.

Tumblr’s policy doesn't seem to care about this concept of visual participation and while it is taking away my straight/lesbian porn I enjoy. It is also sweeping up all these new forms of expression and orientation in the process.

I am not sure what else to say... I am a straight male and I try to have a deep empathy for other people when I can. I feel this argument can be better structured but I also come from a position where I don’t know all the details. I add this to the post because Tumblr seemed to go out of their way to suggest that they would protect this community but from a long view that doesn't seem to be the case.

A Lessons To Be Learned

I am not going to say fuck Tumblr. I don’t want to see them fail. I liked what this space was about and what it provided. I prefer they reconsider changing the guidelines and consider a different course of action but I also understand why they want to do this. It’s “The Easy Way” to do things. If they ban all porn then it simplifies managing underage nudity and allows the site to have less criticism drawn to it.

I do, however, think this broad censorship approach will ultimately hurt the site and the community though. People will leave, alternative websites will arise and Tumblr will eventually become no more. I am not going to tell anyone to boycott or delete their accounts. I plan to collect my writing and images, backup my favorite adult gifs (might need to buy a hard drive) and settle into this new reality. I know I will personally be visiting the site less as I used to look at porn here at some of the better cultivated Tumblr archives. That lack of traffic by me and all the other users will hurt the company. I hope they understand eventually I won't show up at all and over time, eventually, no one else will either. Maybe the site will survive and change into something else but right now under these conservative policies of censorship, Tumblr won't last.

Sad Regards, Michael California

Update: Posted this originally with a woman in a shower with large censorship bars over the naughty bits. Flagged despite the fact she was more covered than most Sports Illustrated models. I know I just wrote above I am not advocating leaving the site... but after all this and the fact that Tumblr Support finally responded to a far-right Tumblr blogger photoshopping/doctoring a PM conversation we had before posting it to his blog. I feel as though Tumblr A) hates sex and sexuality B) not only enables but protects racism and harassment on this website. I think it’s time to move on.

[laynefaire]

FanFiction is Derivative

Anonymous said:April 2nd 2019, 5:41:39 pm · 6 minutes ago

Devils advocate here, I hate wattpad thinks it's a hell hole of a site. You make the point they are thieves and plagarising work. Yet the whole point of FF is you steal real peoples characters,,names lives or in ficitional cases worlds etc. and you play with them for awhile. So yeah sort of a mute point.

First of all - It would be a moot point, not mute - 

From Merriam-Webster (you know, the dictionary people)

moot - 1a: open to question :DEBATABLE  b: subjected to discussion :DISPUTED  2:deprived of practical significance : made abstract or purely academic

as opposed to

mute - 1: unable to speak : lacking the power of speech 2: characterized by absence of speech

In the future, you may choose to remain mute on what you consider a moot point, as your simplifed, and misguided, attempt to justify the actions of thieves is ludicrous. 

IF, in fact, fanfiction authors were “stealing” the original works, how would a fanfiction author be able to file copyright claims to have their plagiarized works removed from the sites they’ve been reposted on? They couldn’t - and yet, we’ve successfully had our stories removed, and the re-posters accounts are being deleted.

REALITY - Fanfiction is derivative from a source material, and as a derivative work, is covered under Fair Use practices. 

Derivative -  having parts that originate from another source : made up of or marked by derived elements

Anne Rice is one of the few authors to have ever actively pursued cease and desist notifications with fanfiction authors, and has since reversed her position on fanfiction.  ("I got upset about 20 years ago because I thought it would block me,’ she says. ‘However, it’s been very easy to avoid reading any, so live and let live. If I were a young writer, I’d want to own my own ideas. But maybe fan fiction is a transitional phase: whatever gets you there, gets you there." Metro UK 11/11/2012)

The truth is, MOST authors do not have a problem with fanfiction unless a fan author attempts to publish a work having liberally stolen from canon to support the storyline THAT IS PLAGIARISM. 

 There is a HUGE fucking difference between playing in someone else’s sandbox and stealing the whole damn thing out of their backyard, putting it in your yard, and acting like you made it all on your own.

Attitudes like yours are exactly why people think its okay to steal all methods of fanworks. 

Which is why this is a post, and not an ask reply - because I’m blocking you for being unbelievably ignorant/stupid/lacking a moral compass.

 It’s like a choose your own adventure book! And I’ll even allow you to use my ideas to finish the story. 

[selfmademan121318]

Hi everyone,

           My name is Shane. I am a 28-yr. old transsexual male “a tranny”. I am from New York. I work as a bus aid. I believe my transition is a gift from the universe. I thank the gods and the universe for the opportunity to transition everyday (as should everyone). It’s people like Buck Angel that paved the way for a lot of us younger people to be able to transition. You are NOT entitled to transition. It is something that comes with a lot of hard work. I believe that you don’t have to have Dysphoria to be trans, but you should be diagnosed with Gender Dysphoria in order to medically transition. Or at least have an okay from a mental health professional to make sure that’s what you really want. Because let’s face it, it will be extremely hard to de-transition. If you seek to medically transition you should do it the right way. Plus, being diagnosed with gender dysphoria or having a letter from your therapist stating that it is okay to start hormones and or have surgery can allow you to be covered by your insurance. I realize that in a lot of areas you could be denied because of this, however, a lot of insurances will not cover anything with out a diagnosis or letter. Also, you should NOT lie about having dysphoria to transition. Sometimes transitioning without the presence of Dysphoria can lead to having Dysphoria. That being said I do understand sometimes people mistake dysphoria for something else and end up de-transitioning. I empathize with those people and wish them well.

          I believe that Non-Binary people are valid, but should not identify as FTM Non-binary or MTF Non-binary. My reasoning is because MTF (Male to Female) and FTM (Female to Male) means going from one binary to the other. It seems rather redundant to identify as both. You could use terms like: trans-masculine, transfeminine, gender non-conforming, etc. But it really doesn’t make sense to identify as Binary and Non-Binary. Buck Angel has often suggest creating another acronym such as FTX or FTNB (Female to Non-binary)/ MTX or MTNB (Male to Non-Binary). I think this is a great idea. This is creating something that the Non-Binary folks can claim for themselves.

          Things I do NOT condone under any circumstances: pretending to be trans because you think it’s a fashion statement or some sort of fad. Being disrespectful of people’s opinions. Everyone is entitled of having an opinion you don’t have to like it, but you should respect it. Listening and respecting other people’s opinions with in the community helps us grow as a community. That being said… I know that there is extenuating circumstance to being respectful. Ex: people who believe pedophilia is okay (I am in no way saying you have to respect those people. I do not condone pedophilia. It is absolutely NOT okay.) I am aware that there are people on this site that are and if they try to interact with anyone who is under age i.e, condition them on my page, they will find themselves blocked and reported. Another thing I do not accept is when people say not wanting to date trans people is transphobic. It is NOT transphobic. It is a preference. Just like not wanting to date brunettes.

             These are my beliefs and somewhat rules (I.e, about the maps and being respectful). You are welcome to challenge them or share a different opinion on the matter as long as you are RESPECTFUL. Except pedophilia because that is GROSS! Welcome to my page. I post a lot of different things, not only things that just pertain to the transgender/transsexual community. You are encouraged to message me or send me asks, but again please be respectful of me and others. If you are not respectful you WILL be deleted and blocked.

Disclaimer: I am NOT a medical professional. These are simply my beliefs and opinions. Nothing more and nothing less. Do not accuse me of spreading false information because that is not what am seeking to do. I am stating again my beliefs and opinions. If you are seeking validation or for someone to tell you, that you are transgender or trans enough... go to a therapist or a psychologist because I am niether. And I may not give the answer you want. While I do not label myself as a transmed, I do believe some of their beliefs ring with some truth. Like seeking a mental health professional before medically transitioning. This in my opinion is the right way to go about things. If you want to transition, fine transition. I am in no way going to stop you from it. I have my opinion, y’all have yours. End of story.

[cannabisrefugee-esq]

If A Disease Is Untreatable, Incurable and Progressive, Is It A "Medical" Condition at All?

December 2, 2018

I have seen it pointed out elsewhere that some “conditions” for which the medical establishment offers consumerist goods and services are not actually bona fide medical conditions at all and are in fact money-making schemes advanced by wealthy investors and others who stand to make a fortune off of anyone stupid, naive or deranged enough to accept them.  The conversation I am most familiar with pertains to the medicalized transgender movement where people are persuaded that they can achieve the impossible through medicalized interventions, in that case, that “transgender” individuals can change their biological sex through consuming expensive and dangerous cross-sex hormones, puberty blocking drugs, and surgeries including castration, so-called “facial feminization” surgeries and others.

Whether anyone accepts the psychological or physical transgenderism of individuals or not, the issue remains that there are billions of dollars to be made globally on this phenomenon and thinking people are prone to thinking about such things.  “Follow the money” is a familiar admonition and politically-minded people understand what that means.   They generally accept the reality that where there is money to be made, there will be corruption and wealthy people and entities working in the shadows to further their own interests.  In the above-linked article by Jennifer Bilek entitled “Who Are the Rich, White Men Institutionalizing Transgender Ideology?” she asks and answers that question and names names.  She concludes that it is “Exceedingly rich, white men (and women) who invest in biomedical companies [who] are funding myriad transgender organizations whose agenda will make them gobs of money” including billionaire businessmen George Soros, “Jennifer” Pritzker and others. And it’s difficult to argue with that conclusion which is demonstrably true.  But let’s go further.

Whether the potential or actual opportunity to make “gobs” of money under a capitalist patriarchy renders a potentially legitimate project illegitimate on its face is a discussion for another day.  However, in the case of the legitimacy of medicalizing transgenderism Bilek identifies a specific social discourse that “institutionalizes and normalizes” transgenderism in a way that convinces people that consuming medicalized goods and services literally for life — the entire life of the patient throughout and following medicalized transition — is in the interests of both the patient and society at large.  According to her, it does this by manufacturing a medical condition which arguably does not even exist, and then by encasing the created medical and consumerist issue within a civil rights framework. In the case of transgender, the intended and actual result is to socialize all people (aka “consumers” whether they themselves are transgender or not) to believe both that there is something physically wrong with so-called transgender people which medical goods and services can fix, and that it is those people’s unalienable human right to have the condition corrected no matter the cost to themselves or to society. She concludes that:

It behooves us all to look at what the real investment is in prioritizing a lifetime of anti-body medical treatments for a miniscule part of the population, building an infrastructure for them, and institutionalizing the way we perceive ourselves as human beings, before being human becomes a quaint concept of the past.

As her argument is narrow and addresses only the issue of transgenderism, I cannot fault her for coming up with such a narrow conclusion.  She does not broadly criticize Big Medicine in general, favoring specificity to make her point which appears to be that medicine does not behave this way in any other area besides transgenderism and that the (alleged) difference should be parsed.  In making that point, she necessarily implies that medical overreach is a small-scale problem affecting only a miniscule part of the population (and that medical consumerism is not inherently problematic and that we needn’t follow they money except in the case of transgender); that “building” social and medical infrastructure to accommodate these new patients is worse than absorbing new patients into the existing infrastructure, or expanding the existing infrastructure to include people it shouldn’t; and that Big Medicine is not fundamentally about “institutionalizing the way we perceive ourselves as human beings” already, and is not generally intended and used as a tool of social control.

And although she rightly characterizes transgender as a problematic “lifestyle” issue, she misses the opportunity to discuss the apparent fact that medicalized goods and services are not effective in treating the (alleged, self-reported) mental and physical pain and symptoms of transgenderism, which analysis would only support her skepticism that transgender is a legitimate diagnosis of a medical disease/illness at all.*

But what if the problems she identifies with the medicalization and normalization of transgenderism are actually a feature and not a bug of Big Medicine and Big Pharma when it comes to defining — if not outright inventing — what constitutes both illness and treatment and engaging consumers long-term or for life?  Feminists have long known and noted that patriarchal medicine “invents” both illnesses and treatment for women as a part of our oppression — hysteria and its dubious treatments being perhaps the most obvious example but there are others. But the evidence suggests that invented treatments aren’t “just” for invented illnesses: Big Pharma and Big Medicine actually invent “treatments” for untreatable (yet objectively verifiable) disease, for example, in the case of Crohn’s disease which notoriously does not respond to conventional care.

And this has everything to do, in fact, with “institutionalizing the way we perceive ourselves as human beings.”  Doesn’t it?  We have to engage with Big Medicine because that’s what human beings do, it’s one thing that separates us from animals, it separates the sick from the well, even when the medicine itself does nothing but make us worse it is the willingness to engage that’s important.  In cultures that extoll Big Pharma and Big Medicine we seem not to include untreatable disease as part of the human condition and “the way we perceive ourselves” despite all evidence that it is and has always been part of the human experience (and untreatable illness such as autoimmune disease has only become more prevalent over time).  Think about that for a minute.  It is striking.

And if transgender patients can rightly be seen as “lifestylists” making medicalized consumer choices in the absence of therapeutic benefits, and I think they can, what could be said about chronically ill people whose lives revolve around medical interventions which are not therapeutic and which therefore must be something else?  This is a serious question that, I think, deserves serious “treatment” but is a sticky wicket; as far as I can tell it is rarely if ever discussed.  Our alleged “civil right” to medical treatment seals the deal where perhaps Americans in particular will die a million billion deaths before they will fail to exercise a perceived or actual “right,” even if the alleged right has no basis in natural law, and even where the fight and even the prize will likely kill us, and that includes women and feminist women.

They will die on the hill of “rights” again and again and again and again and again, but in the case of the alleged right to medical treatment of chronic illness no one will ever question why and how a condition for which Big Medicine offers no effective treatment and no cure has been “medicalized” in the first place and what that actually means, for one, that a health condition equals a medical condition (meaning that health and medicine are the same thing).  That our alleged “right” to medical care is not a right at all, but an obligation and that we are therefore coerced into engaging with Big Medicine and Big Pharma.  That “the way we perceive ourselves as human beings” in a medical/medicalized context has been institutionalized (meaning, dictated and normalized) by lying, scheming and powerful men. That untreatable illness has been written out of the human experience, and that “human history” is therefore fiction.  It’s fiction, as is our human present and our future.  It probably means other things too, but it definitely means that.

And don’t even get me started on the goddamned “disability advocates” who aim to protect sick (and transgender) people’s “civil rights” to a lifetime of painful, dangerous and ineffective medical treatments, but notably do not advocate for anyone’s right to refuse unwanted medical care, even in the United States where that right of refusal is protected by the Constitution, and where so-called disability advocates would universally remove euthanasia from the table for mentally competent yet seriously, incurably and even terminally ill patients because the disability advocates say so. And thus spake capitalism and patriarchy: (alleged) positive rights yay!  Negative rights, meaning, the right to do nothing, the right to abstain, the right to be left the hell alone, the right to cease to exist at all, especially when it comes to women (and where women are particularly vulnerable to developing untreatable chronic disease) (crickets).

*Note: until very recently there was an excellent online resource providing citations from the medical literature indicating that medical transition is not a reliable treatment or cure for the (alleged, self-reported) distressing symptoms of transgenderism but that site no longer exists, having been deleted by WordPress for speaking ugly truths about the transgender movement that Bilek does not address and which are beyond the scope of this post.

[therebelwrites]

A longtime Madison Metropolitan School District educator has been placed on leave and is under both school district and police investigation after allegedly pushing, punching and pulling hair out of the head of an African American 11-year-old girl at Whitehorse Middle School last week, Madison365 has learned.

The girl’s mother, Mikiea Price, said she has seen security video of the February 13 incident, which she said shows Rob Mueller-Owens, 52, throwing her daughter to the ground and punching her before another teacher covers the girl with her own body to protect her.

“As a District we take any situation of this nature very seriously,” MMSD Representative Rachel Strauch-Nelson said in a statement. “All of our students need to be safe and supported in school, and we have a thorough investigation process and protocol that we follow. While we cannot talk about the details of a specific student or personnel situation, it is our responsibility to consider all of the facts of the situation and determine the right next steps.

“The staff person was put on leave while the situation was investigated. Based on that investigation, the staff person will not return to Whitehorse Middle School, and we are determining next steps. In addition, our team is coming together to create a full support plan to ensure that students are safe and fully supported at school.”

Mueller-Owens is the seventh educator to be caught up in racial incidents at Madison schools since November 1. Four teachers and two substitutes have been terminated or forced to resign after using racial slurs in class over the last three and a half months. Additionally, in Middleton, a school bus driver was terminated last fall for striking a black child and a high school teacher resigned after using a racial slur in class.

Price, herself a substitute teacher in the district for the past five years, told Madison365 in an exclusive interview that her daughter, a sixth-grader at Whitehorse Middle School, called her last Wednesday and was clearly upset.

“She was just like … crying and extremely upset,” Price said. “I could tell, like by the way she was crying and talking, that something traumatic had just happened.” She said her daughter told her, “Mr. Rob hurt me,” referring to Mueller-Owens.

Price said she immediately went to the school where three adults were speaking with her daughter about what had happened.

“She was crying and her lip was cracked, bleeding, and she handed me three of her braids that were pulled out from her scalp,” Price said.

Price said a classroom teacher had called on Mueller-Owens, who is dean of students and was acting principal that day, because Price’s daughter and another student had sprayed too much perfume or body spray on themselves and each other. When Mueller-Owens asked the girl to leave the room, she initially refused, and things apparently escalated.

“When he came in, he asked (my daughter) to step out and she didn’t listen, and didn’t step out and as he walked toward her, she said she went toward the window and just wasn’t following direction, and he told her in front of the whole class, to the teacher, ‘Take the class somewhere else,’” Price said. “And (my daughter) said, ‘No, that’s fine. They can stay, I’ll go.’ And as she was heading out, she said he pushed (her) with two hands trying to push her out the classroom, and she turned around and said, ‘Don’t put your hands on me.’ And he pushed her again … and she said he started punching her.”

She said the video, which she reviewed on Friday along with her mother, as well as Pastor Marcus Allen of Mt. Zion Baptist Church and Urban League of Greater Madison CEO Ruben Anthony, did not capture what happened in the classroom but does show what happened in the hallway.

“I didn’t see the punching but on the actual video that I was able to review on Friday from the school district, I did see him throwing her down,” Price said. “And you see another teacher that I also spoke with that said that she had to lay on top of (my daughter) to prevent her from getting hit or punched.”

Strauch-Nelson said the school district intends to release the video later this week, after police conclude their investigation. Madison365 has not viewed the video but has requested to do so. Allen corroborated Price’s account of the video to Madison365. Allen also said the man in the video resembles a photo of Mueller-Owens, and that in meetings, school district staff had referred to the man as “Rob.”

Price said she called police on Wednesday, and followed up on Friday after viewing the video to ask why Mueller-Owens had not been arrested.

“The police told me that I said that I didn’t want to press charges, and that’s not true. I never said that. That’s the whole point of me calling the police,” Price said. “I told (the police officer) I wanted to press charges, and when I told him that he turned around and told me (Monday), if I press charges on the teacher than my daughter is facing charges as well for disorderly conduct.”

Madison Police Department spokesman Joel Despain declined to comment because the investigation is ongoing.

“I know those investigating want to talk with more school staff members before reaching conclusions,” Despain said in an email to Madison365 Tuesday morning, and Wednesday said officers were still looking to interview more witnesses.

Mueller-Owens’ public persona is that of an educator committed to positive behavior reinforcement and restorative justice, and he seems to have positive connections with many community leaders.

On his Facebook page, which has now been deleted or hidden, Mueller-Owens listed his title as “Director of Culture and Climate” at Madison Metropolitan School District. His LinkedIn profile lists his current position as Positive Behavior Support Coach and Coordinator of Academic and Career Planning. Online records indicate he started as a teacher at Malcolm Shabazz City High School in 2000 and a Teacher/Coordinator at the Transition Learning Center from 2008-2014. He then moved to East High School, where from August 2014 until June 2015 he was Positive Behavioral Specialist and held “community-building circles regularly,” as part of his approach “in which participants are guided in candid, confidential discussion,” to help strengthen student-teacher relationships according to an MMSD article where his work on restorative circles was amplified. He was later Interim Assistant Principal at Madison West before moving to Whitehorse in November 2017. Most recent public State records indicate he earned $93,303 per year in that role.

The Capital Times reported that he attended a conference on “Rethinking School Discipline” with MMSD Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham and Elementary Schools Chief Nancy Hanks in 2015. In a 2016 Q&A with Madison Magazine, he touted the virtues of restorative justice as a means of school discipline.

“Healing happens in a relationship, and that is what we often miss,” he said in that interview. “There are incredible demands placed on teachers, and most non-teachers do not understand the emotionally grueling work that every teacher experiences on a daily basis. The real power of restorative practices (which include circles, restorative dialogues and mediation) is that they are all predicated upon restoring meaningful relationships so that common goals can be accomplished. In our setting, that common goal happens to be education.”

Just last November, he told online news site Madison Commons that greater understanding of cultural differences is required when it comes to school discipline.

“The dominant culture lacks an understanding of how other cultures interact with each other,” Mueller-Owens said in that article. “Sometimes there are different ways of working together. And those differences allow for those disparities to exist. We need to work together more often. There is a lot of misunderstanding in Madison about diverse cultural ways of being.”

Price said Mueller-Owens’ background just means he should have known better.

“If he has all that training, why would you approach that and why, when a kid told you don’t touch me, why did you come and meet them with more force?” she said.

“It’s very frustrating, you know,” Price said. “Even as a mom, like I can’t protect her. This is an educator. This is not a kid that jumped on her. And you’ve got to be patient and talk to the parents. This is an educator.” 

Whitehorse Middle School, near Olbrich Park on Madison’s east side, has a student body that is 46 percent white and 21 percent Black. Overall, MMSD is about 42 percent white and 17 percent Black.

[slowlynuttyobservation]

Mac Mini For Photoshop

The entry-level Mac mini offers a 3.6GHz quad-core i3 processor for £799/$799 which may not fulfil the needs of the typical designer, but the £1,099/$1,099 version offers a 3.0GHz 6-core i5. Apple FINALLY updated their Mac Mini product line late in 2018 (with a minor update in March 2020), making it a pretty good option for photographers to run Lightroom and Photoshop. This buying guide provides insight into which model and what configuration options photographers should consider. The best budget Mac for photo editing is the 2019 Mac Mini for about $900 and the best budget PC is the Dell Inspiron 3670 for about $650. Add the ViewSonic VA2719-2K-SMHD 27 Inch display for about $220 and a 4TB hard drive for another $100. So you are a photographer on a tight budget in need of a computer to run Lightroom and Photoshop. Hi John - The PA272W-BK-SV 27' 16:9 IPS Monitor with SpectraViewII from NEC comes equipped with the NEC SpectraViewII color calibration tool and features enhanced color accuracy covering 99.3% of the Adobe RGB color space, 94.8% of the NTSC color space, and 146.4% of the sRGB color space. With a variety of input connectors including DisplayPort, Mini DisplayPort, HDMI, and DVI-D Dual-Link, you.

Mac Mini For Photoshop Cs6

Mac Mini For Photoshop Software

What is Final Cut Pro X like running on a new Mac mini? We take a look at the new model, its features and how well FCPX performs. It even beats an iMac Pro in one of our tests!

Before we plug the new Mac mini up, it is important to understand that this version of the unit has changed. Changed a lot.

Back in 2005, the Mac mini was designed for switchers from PCs. It didn’t come with a screen, keyboard or mouse and keeping the price down helped make the transition to Mac OS 10.3 Panther and a PowerPC processor as painless as possible.

Times and technology have changed, no need now for the DVD slot or a spinning hard disk for storage.

The switchers of today are buying MacBook Airs and MacBook Pros as their first Macs, not the mini.

So this gives Apple a chance to change and retarget the use of the Mac mini. Consequently, that’s exactly what they have done with the new range of models.

But instead of offering (To quote Steve Jobs) a ‘stripped down Mac’ they’ve actually put the logic board on steroids!

The fourth generation Mac mini now has a choice of quad and 6-core processors, up to 64GB of Ram, up to 2TB of SSD storage and the option of a 10GigE port over the standard GigE.

There are also four USB-C Thunderbolt 3 ports fed from two controllers, an HDMI port that supports 4K and two USB 3 ports. So yes, you can plug your own keyboard and mouse in without having to buy any adaptors.

Can the user upgrade the RAM in the new machine? Yes, it is possible, but it is not a case of flipping up a slot and exchanging the cards out.

You have to remove the cooling fan and then slide out the logic board. Make a mess of it and you’ll invalidate the warranty, so it is best to stick to an Apple approved centre for the upgrade. Should you want to get your spudger out and see the insides of the new Mac mini, head over to the excellent iFixit site.

The machine on test is a 3.2GHz 6‑core 8th‑generation Intel Core i7, 32GB 2666MHz DDR4, Intel UHD Graphics 630, 1TB SSD storage and the 10 Gigabit Ethernet option.

If the colour of the Mac mini looks familiar, it is exactly the same as the iMac Pro and (after seeing them side by side) the Blackmagic external GPU. This also makes sense of the decision for Apple to sell the black keyboard and mouse and also probably hints at the new Mac Pro colour. (And possible footprint- a skyscraper sized oblong trashcan?)

Connecting it up

I’m lucky to have 2 10GigE connections on the back of my QNAP NAS. Final Cut Pro X needs fast drives to be able to build the ‘always live’ waveforms and thumbnails.

Plumbing the Mac mini into the edit system is easy and I’ve detailed how to do point to point 10Gig connection before if you haven't got a router/switch.

If you need the internet on the machine, a cheap USB to Ethernet adaptor from Amazon for $15 works as well as anything else. Run a speed test to make sure you are accessing the NAS via the higher speed route.

I powered a 4K monitor from the HDMI port; this works well and avoids any more dongles having to be bought.

After 25 years of Mac ownership, I have enough keyboards and a spare mouse to finish off the system!

Power On

The machine comes with Mojave installed and defaults to dark mode on the now silent boot. The machine is very quiet and can’t be heard over the fan of the nearby QNAP, which isn’t that loud either. This machine could easily sit on your desktop and not annoy you or your co-worker.

I read a recent review that the sound was pretty terrible out of the Mac mini. I’d disagree. It isn’t great, but it isn’t bad either. I’d say it was better than the old cylinder Mac Pro, but not in the league of the Mac notebooks. You wouldn’t want to use it as edit monitoring.

The Mac mini does have a headphone socket and I can see many editors sitting in offices with the machine on the desk and headphones on editing all day.

Although I worked the machine hard with rendering, the shell didn't get too hot. However I did feel the warm rush of air out of the back of the machine which caught me by surprise when the mini was angled away from me.

I wouldn't have it in this orientation for continuous use, ie situated under a central monitor post with cables pointing at you. Instead I suggest putting the cables and heat exhaust to the back. It will make plugging the headphones in a bit trickier, but I hate sitting in draught!

Final Cut Pro X Performance!

Let’s give it a real test and put it up against an iMac Pro!

I thought I’d dive straight in with a 4K Project and use a Library with a short minute and a half sequence with large still images, transitions, multiple title and adjustment layers.

It is in a Library that I duplicated to both machines with the media staying on the QNAP. The cache was set to both desktops respectively as the RAM in both runs at up to 3Gig speed.

Mac Mini For Photoshop Cs6

Although I didn’t time it, it felt like the thumbnails were taking a longer time to draw than I’m used to on the iMac Pro. All render files were deleted before all tests.

Unrendered, the Mac mini played the sequence back in Better Performance, but dropped frames on Better Quality. The iMac Pro played back in both settings without a problem.

Skimming seemed just as fast as the iMac Pro and it didn’t feel underpowered when navigating the timeline or browser.

The iMac is an 8 core machine with 64GB of RAM and more importantly a Radeon Pro Vega 64 GPU.

Both machines are connected to the same storage via 10GigE and renders and exports went to the respective desktops. (Ok I know it is NBase-T which supports 1Gb, 2.5Gb, 5Gb and 10Gb)

Render time Mac mini 7’03” iMac Pro 1’43”

Mac Mini For Photoshop Software

4K ProRes 422 Export Mac mini 6’45 iMac Pro 1’40”

As expected here as FCPX uses the GPU for image processing, the much lower powered Mac mini takes a lot longer.

Compressor Convert to HEVC 4K 8Bit Mac mini 54” iMac Pro 55”

Well, the Mac mini beat the iMac Pro! This is because all of the conversion is done on the CPUs.

Not really worth testing for Motion as apart from a few things like particles, Motion almost lives on the GPU.

Compressor Clusters

No, not a new breakfast cereal, but Compressor allows you to share the work out over connected machines.

I didn’t realise that the ability to set up a cluster of machines running Compressor was easy to do. Well, when I say easy my first attempt failed, but that might be down to my slightly quirky network topology with the QNAP.

To build a cluster, on the machines you want to add, open up a copy of Compressor. In the preferences, turn the option on for other computers to process batches.

Then on the host machine, make a cluster from the available machines in the list. Here you can see we have got something very wrong! We will be revisiting this topic with the issue fixed when we have more time.

Then having named your cluster (or other single machine), you can then toggle the processing destination in the dropdown menu on the bottom of the host machine's Compressor GUI.

To work properly and fast, all the machines need to be connected with 10GigE via a 10GigE switch. The costs of this networking is now a lot cheaper, Netgear and QNAP make a suitable budget switch.

There is no limit to the amount of Mac minis you can have in a cluster. You'll probably run out of switch ports first!

One note here. For distributed processing, it has to be a self contained movie that gets automatically diced and sliced and sent off to the cluster machines.

Conclusions

Not what I expected. I guess I was in the state of mind thinking that the Mac mini wasn’t a serious machine for anything other than web browsing, Plex serving or basic Photoshop.

It’s a lot more than than. It is a component in building a modular system, which is a new thought considering that Apple has been criticised over the past few years for lack of upgradability in the Mac Pro and iMac Pro.

There are two reasons for this new direction. The first are Thunderbolt 3 connections giving the option of using an external GPU and therefore factoring out the limited onboard Intel offering.

The second is the option of a 10GigE port. Being able to connect to high speed shared storage without going through an adaptor is a huge plus.

Why? Take sever centres for example. Every App on the iOS App Store has been compiled on a Mac. Rack up rows of Mac minis connected with 10GigE and you have a facility that can get apps ready quickly. No need for costly large GPUs here, all the work will be done by the CPU cores. Once set up, the Mac mini is more than happy to run in a headless mode. I've worked with a few producers like that.

This is also true of building a small Mac mini cluster to do the hard work of making all the different deliverables of an FCPX exported finished movie - while you carry on editing something else with your main machine. It would make sense for a large production or facility house to have a rack of these that everybody could access when needed.

Put five or ten of these together in a rack and you have a very fast DIT tool for making proxies and dailies on set. The Mac mini above gets its first on set DIT experience tomorrow!

I’ll leave you with a final thought.

Spec up a 6-core Mac mini with 32GB of RAM, 1TB of SSD storage and the soon to ship Blackmagic RX Vega 56 eGPU and you have a machine that’s not too far from the base model iMac Pro, wait for it... with over £1,200 left spare.

Granted, you’ll have to supply your own monitor, keyboard and mouse, but if upgradability is important to you, this could be a very clever way of getting the power with the flexibility.

Hopefully we will have an eGPU to test soon :)

Peter Wiggins is a broadcast freelance editor based in the UK although his work takes him around the world. An early adopter of FCP setting up pioneering broadcasts workflows, his weapon of choice is now Final Cut Pro X.

You can follow him on Twitter as @peterwiggins or as he runs the majority of this site, you can contact him here.

[cladeymoore]

The art of a seamless migration of Coinbase’s internal ledger

Lessons learned from a large cross-database data migration on a critical production system

By Alex Ghise, Staff Software Engineer

If you’re interested in distributed systems and building reliable shared services to power all of Coinbase, the Platform team is hiring!

In 2019, Coinbase set out to strengthen the infrastructure upon which its products are built and to create a solid foundation to support current and future product lines. As part of that effort, we decided to adopt AWS RDS PostgreSQL as our database of choice for relational workloads and AWS DynamoDB as our key-value store.

One of the first areas we decided to focus on was how to keep track of balances and move funds. Our products had each devised their own solutions and some legacy systems were also plagued by tech debt and performance issues. The ability to quickly and accurately process transactions is central to Coinbase’s mission to build an open financial system for the world.

We designed and built a new ledger service to be fast, accurate and serve all current and future needs across products and have undertaken our biggest migration as of yet, moving over 1 billion rows of corporate and customer transaction and balance information from the previous data storage to our new PostgreSQL-based solution, without scheduled maintenance and no perceptible impact to users.

Our key learnings:

Make it repeatable — You may not get it right the first time.

Make it fast — So you can quickly iterate.

Make it uneventful — By designing the process so that it runs without disrupting normal business operations.

Here’s how we did it…

Migration Requirements

Accuracy and Correctness: Since we’re dealing with funds, we knew this would be a very sensitive migration and wanted to take every precaution, make sure that every last satoshi is accounted for.

Repeatable: Additionally, the shape of our data was completely different in the new system vs the legacy system. Further, we had to deal with technical debt and cruft accumulated over time in our monolithic application. We knew we needed to account for the possibility of not getting everything right in a single go, so we wanted to devise a repeatable process that we could iterate on until getting it right.

No Maintenance Downtime: We wanted every transaction on Coinbase to execute while working on this. We didn’t want to do any scheduled maintenance or take any downtime for the transition.

The Setup

We can deconstruct the migration into 2 separate problems: Switching live writes and reads over the new service, and migrating all of the historical data into the new service.

For the migration we decided to take a dual-write / dual-read phased approach. Phase 1 is before the migration, where we only have the legacy system in place. In Phase 2, we introduce the new system. We dual write to both the legacy and new system the read path we read from both, then log discrepancies and return the result from the legacy system. With Phase 3, we’ve built up the confidence in our new setup, so we favor it when returning results. We still have the old system around and can switch back to it if needed. Finally, we phase out unused code to finish the migration (Phase 4).

We won’t go into details about our dual-write implementation, since the general idea has been previously covered by industry blog posts.

What’s interesting is something that happens in between Phase 2 and Phase 3, namely the backfill of all customer data into our new system so that we can achieve parity.

The Repeatable Backfill Process

We considered multiple approaches to backfilling the billion-plus rows that represent all the transactions carried out on Coinbase from its inception, all with pros and cons.

The most straightforward solution would have been to do it all at the application level, leveraging the ledger client implementation we had in place for the dual writes. It has the advantage of exercising the same code paths we have in place for live writes — there would be a single mapping from old to new to maintain. However, we would have had to modify the service interface to allow for the backfill and we would have had to set up long running processes together with a checkpointing mechanism in case of failure. We also benchmarked this solution, and found that it would be too slow to meet our requirements for fast iteration.

We eventually decided to pursue an ETL-based solution. At a high level, this entailed generating the backfill data from the ETL-ed source database, dumping it into S3 and loading it directly into the target Postgres database. One key advantage to this approach is that doing data transformation using SQL is fast and easy. We could run the entire data generation step in ~20 minutes, examine the output, verify internal consistency and do data quality checks directly on the output without having to run the entire backfill pipeline.

Our data platform provider offers a variety of connectors and drivers for programmatic access. This means that we could use our standard software development tools and lifecycle — the code that we wrote for the data transformation was tested, reviewed and checked into a repository.

It also has first-class support for unloading data into S3, which made it easy for us to export the data after provisioning the appropriate resources.

One the other end, AWS provides the aws_s3 postgres extension, which allows bulk importing data into a database from an S3 bucket. Directly importing into live, production tables however proved problematic, since inserting hundreds of millions of rows into indexed tables is slow, and it also affected the latency of live writes.

We solved this problem by creating unindexed copies of the live tables, as follows:

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS table1_backfill cascade;

CREATE TABLE table1_backfill (LIKE table1 INCLUDING DEFAULTS INCLUDING STORAGE);

The import now becomes limited by the I/O, which becomes a bottleneck. We ended up slowing it down a bit by splitting the data into multiple files and adding short sleep intervals in between the sequential imports.

Next up, recreating the indexes on the tables. Luckily, Postgres allows for index creation without write-locking the table, by using the CONCURRENT keyword. This allows the table to continue taking writes while the index is being created.

So far, so good. The real complexity however comes from our requirement to have a migration that doesn’t involve scheduled maintenance or halting transaction processing. We want the target database to be able to sustain live writes without missing a single one, and we want the backfilled data to seamlessly connect to the live data. This is further complicated by the fact that every transaction stores information about the cumulative balances of all accounts involved — this makes it easy for us to evaluate and maintain data integrity and to look up point in time balances for any account at any timestamp.

We solved for this by using triggers that replicate inserts, updates, deletes to the live tables into the backfill tables. Our concurrent index generation allows us to write to these tables while the indexes are being created.

After indexing is complete, in a single transaction, we flipped the backfill and live tables, drop the triggers, and drop the now unneeded tables. Live writes continue as if nothing happened.

At the end of this process, we run another script that goes through all of the data and restores data integrity by recreating the cumulative balances and the links between sequential transactions.

Last but not least, we run another round of integrity checks and comparisons against the legacy datastore to make sure that the data is correct and complete.

Putting it all together, the sequence looks as follows:

Clean slate: reset ledger database, start dual writing

Wait for dual written data to be loaded into ETL, so that we have overlap between live written data and backfill data.

Generate backfill data, unload it into S3

Create backfill tables, set up triggers to replicate data into backfill tables.

Import data from S3

Create indexes

Flip tables, drop triggers, drop old tables.

Run repair script

Verify data integrity, correctness, completeness

The process would take 4 to 6 hours to run and was mostly automated. We did this over and over while working through data quality issues and fixing bugs.

The Aftermath

Our final migration and backfill was not a memorable one. We didn’t have a “war room”, no standby on-call engineers, just another run of our process after which we decided that it was time to flip the switch. Most people within the company were blissfully unaware. An uneventful day.

We’ve been live with the ledger service for almost a year now. We have the capacity to sustain orders of magnitude more transactions per second than with our previous system, and with tight bounds on latency. Existing and new features, such as the Coinbase Card, all rely on the ledger service for fast and accurate balances and transactions.

If you’re interested in distributed systems and building reliable shared services to power all of Coinbase, the Platform team is hiring!

This website contains links to third-party websites or other content for information purposes only (“Third-Party Sites”). The Third-Party Sites are not under the control of Coinbase, Inc., and its affiliates (“Coinbase”), and Coinbase is not responsible for the content of any Third-Party Site, including without limitation any link contained in a Third-Party Site, or any changes or updates to a Third-Party Site. Coinbase is not responsible for webcasting or any other form of transmission received from any Third-Party Site. Coinbase is providing these links to you only as a convenience, and the inclusion of any link does not imply endorsement, approval or recommendation by Coinbase of the site or any association with its operators.

All images provided herein are by Coinbase.

The art of a seamless migration of Coinbase’s internal ledger was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

from Money 101 https://blog.coinbase.com/the-art-of-a-seamless-migration-of-coinbases-internal-ledger-76c4c0d5f028?source=rss----c114225aeaf7---4 via http://www.rssmix.com/

[siva3155]

300+ TOP JIRA Interview Questions and Answers

JIRA Interview Questions for freshers experienced :-

1. What is JIRA? JIRA is an issue tracking product or a software tool developed by Atlassian, commonly used for bug tracking, project management, and issue tracking; it is entirely based on these three aspects. It is widely used in software development and software testing. 2. What is a workflow? Workflow is defined as a movement of the bug/issue through various stages during its life-cycle Created/Open WIP ( Work In Progress) Completed/Closed 3. What can be referred to as an issue in Atlassian JIRA? In JIRA, an issue can be anything like a Software bug The project task A help-desk ticket The leave request form 4. List out the source control programs with which it integrates? It integrates with source control programs such as CVS, Git, Subversion, ClearCase, Visual SourceSafe, Mercurial, and Perforce. 5. Why use JIRA software? The reason behind using JIRA is Upfront and fair licensing policy Features that is not available elsewhere Get the latest update on the progress of projects It runs anywhere and recognized with many famous companies Easily extensible and customizable 6. Is it possible to access JIRA cloud site via a mobile device? Yes, it is possible to access JIRA cloud site via a mobile device. You have to use the URL of the JIRA cloud site in your mobile web browser. 7. Can you disable JIRA mobile for the site? You can disable JIRA mobile for the site so that users can be unable to operate the desktop view of JIRA on their mobile device. JIRA mobile comes as a system add-on and can be disabled at any time. 8. Explain labeling and linking issue in JIRA Labeling Issue:It enables you to categorize an issue in a more informal way than assigning it to a component or version. You can then search issues according to the label. LinkingIssue: This feature enables you to link an association between two issues on either on the same or different JIRA servers. 9. Name the types of reports generated in JIRA JIRA offer reports that show statistics for projects, versions, people or other fields within issues. Various reports included with JIRA are Average Age Report Pie Chart Report Resolution Time Report Recently Created Issues Report Resolved vs. Created Issues Report Single Level Group by Report Time Tracking Report User Workload Report Workload Pie Chart Report, etc. 10. What is Cloning an Issue? Cloning as issue allows you to create a duplicate of the original issue so that many employees can work on a single issue within a single project. The clone issue can be connected to the original issue. A clone issue holds following the information Summary Description Assignee Environment Priority Issue Type Security Reporter Components, etc.

JIRA Interview Questions 11. What are the things not included in cloned issue in JIRA? Time tracking Issue History Comments 12. What is the use of “Move Issue” wizard in JIRA? The move issue wizard enables you to specify another project in your JIRA instance. Move wizard permits you to change certain attributes of an issue like Issue Type:If your issue is a customs issue type and does not occur in your target project, you must choose a new issue type for your issue Issue Status:If you have assigned your issue as a custom issue status and it does not exist in your project, you must select a new issue status for your issue Custom Fields:If you have determined required custom fields for your issue, which do not occur in the target project, you must set values for them. 13. How is security setting helpful in JIRA? JIRA’S security setting restricts access to the issue to only those person who is allowed to work on the issue or a member of the chosen security level. The security level of an issue can be set either when the issue is created or when the issue is being edited 14. How can you share an issue with other users in JIRA? You can email an issue by using the share option in JIRA. You can also email other JIRA users a link to the issue by sharing the issue with them or by mentioning them in an issue’s Description or Comment field. 15. How you can modify multiple bulk issues? To modify multiple bulk issues, you can use the Bulk Change option from the “Tools” menu of the navigator. All the issues on the current page can be selected for the bulk operation. The following list details the available bulk operations like Workflow Transition Delete Move Edit 16. How you can disable mail notification for Bulk Operations? To disable mail notification for a particular Bulk Operations, you have to de-select the “Send Notification” checkbox in the bulk operation wizard. 17. What does an issue change history include? Issue change history includes Deletion of a comment Deletion of a work log Creation or removal of an issue link Attachment of a file Changes to an issue field 18. Explain what does the three color indicates tracking times or duration for an issue? Three colors will be displayed representing the amount of time spent behind the issue Original Estimate (Blue): The amount of time estimated initially to resolve the issue Remaining Estimate(Orange): The remaining amount of time left to resolve the issue Time Spen or Logged (Green): The amount of time spent so far while resolving the issue 19. What are some of the popular add-ons for JIRA? Some popular add-ons for JIRA include, Suites utilities for JIRA ScriptRunner for JIRA Zephyr for JIRA – Test Management JIRA Toolkit Plugin Atlassian REST API Browser Portfolio for JIRA JIRA Misc Workflow Extensions Tempo Timesheets for JIRA JIRA Charting Plugin 20. What is Schemes in JIRA? Schemes are a major part of JIRA configuration. It is a collection of configured values that can be used by one or more JIRA project. For instance, Notification Schemes, Permission Scheme, Issue Type Scheme, and so on. There are a total of seven types of schemes. 21. What can be configured for the JIRA project and issue type? You can configure the following things for each pair of an issue type and JIRA project. The order of custom fields appears on an issue screen The workflow of an issue including the statuses Which custom fields and system an issue can use Project accessibility Permissions for what a user can do with an issue Versions and components available for an issue 22. Is it possible to get back up your JIRA cloud data? In JIRA, you can take a backup of your JIRA cloud data using Backup Manager. But only one backup file is stored at a time. The existing backup is overwritten by new ones. 23. What data can be backed up? The backup data includes, Attachments if selected Users and their group settings Avatars Issues 24. Give some useful tips on JIRA Workflow As such Statuses are global objects in JIRA. Changing the name of the status on one workflow will change the status on all workflows that use that status Hover over status or transition to see the relevant transition labels One cannot clone transitions in the workflow designer In the workflow designer, one cannot create annotations Directly you cannot set the issue editable property. 25. What are the limitations when editing an active workflow? If a workflow is active, you cannot edit the workflow name (only the description) You cannot delete the workflow steps A step associated status cannot be edited You cannot add any new outgoing transition if a step has no outgoing transitions (Global transitions are not considered). A step’s Step ID cannot be changed. 26. In JIRA workflow, is it possible to transition an issue back to its previous status? Practically, it is not possible to transition an issue back to its previous status. However, you can use the “on hold” feature to transition an issue back to its prior status. Here are the steps, In a workflow, Create a global transition to the ‘On Hold’ state. Now from ‘On Hold’ status create another transition to every other status you want to come back to Since the transition names cannot be the same, add a blank space at the end of it. Now you don’t want the status transition from the ‘On Hold’ and ‘Done’ to ‘On Hold’ So you will hide the other status “On Hold” by adding the value field condition on the global transition. 27. What is the role of Validators in JIRA? The Validators in JIRA checks that any input made to the transition is valid before the transition is performed. If a validator fails, the issue will not progress to the destination status of the transition. 28. What types of Post functions are carried out after the transition is executed? Types of Post functions carried out after transition is executed includes Adding a comment to an issue Generating change history for an issue Updating an issue’s fields Generating an event to trigger email notifications 29. What is an event in JIRA? The events are classified in two a System event (JIRA defined events) and Custom event (User-defined events). An event describes the status, the default template and the notification scheme and workflow transition post function associations for the event. 30. What is the Audit Log? Under Audit Log, you can see all the details about the issue created, and the changes made in the issues. 31. For an Agile project, how user stories in JIRA are created? For an Agile project to create user stories in JIRA, follow below steps. Issue type -Epic and Issue type – Story linked to it. In order to do so, in the ‘Create Issue’ page, go to “Configure Fields” and select “Epic link” field to be included in the issue creation screen. Or you can have a product backlog by creating a main User story and having various sub-tasks under it. 32. What is an “issue collector”? An “issue collector” enables you to easily embed a JIRA feedback form into your own web site. This helps website visitors to log issues into JIRA through our website. To use JIRA feedback form, visitors to our website do not need a user account in JIRA. 33. State the difference between Bugzilla and JIRA? Bugzilla It is an Open Source Using Bugzilla might be little complicated for few due to grouping users and granting permissions Bugzilla allows you to show/hide the whole custom field or specific values based on the value of some other field Bugzilla’s has a powerful advanced search option Unlike JIRA, Bugzilla allows users to select the initial status of a new issue. Bugzilla has only one link type: Blocks/depends and a Bug ID custom field JIRA It is a commercial tool For some using JIRA would be more convenient than Bugzilla JIRA enables conditional configuration based only on Type fields and Project. JIRA lacks advance-level search options. JIRA has a flexible JQL language (JIRA Query Language). It enables you to build arbitrary boolean expressions. Unlike Bugzilla, JIRA enables you to define multiple workflows which are applied based on the issue’s Project and Type. JIRA has configurable link types with user-defined semantics. JIRA enables to link an issue to any other entity outside JIRA. 34. How you can modify multiple bulk issues? You can modify multiple bulk issues by using option “Bulk Change” option. 35. What is JIRA dashboard? JIRA dashboard is a dashboard which you will see when you opens up Jira. JIRA Questions and Answers Pdf Download Read the full article

[auburnfamilynews]

Streaking the Lawn joins us today to talk Virginia Basketball!

Auburn is going to the Final Four! I think by now, it has finally began to sink in for me as the Tigers head to Minneapolis this afternoon to get ready for Saturday’s matchup with the Virginia Cavaliers.

In order to learn more about Virginia, I reached out to Virginia’s SB Nation site, Streaking the Lawn, to give us a Virginia perspective for Saturday’s game. My thanks to Paul Wiley for taking the time to answer my questions! His answers are in bold below.

1. First of all, just talk about the excitement level around the program that’s about to appear in their 1st Final Four since 1984?

“Delirium? Pandemonium? For a fanbase that’s been treated to a lot of firsts or first-in-a-whiles under Tony Bennett—first ACC Tournament title since 1976 in 2014; first #1 seed since the Sampson Era—this is the first-in-a-while we’ve all been waiting for. The litany of NCAA Tournament stumbles on the heels of such dominant regular-season success has made the Final Four seem darn near unattainable, at least in the eyes of most punditry we’ve had to endure. I was up until about 3 AM after the Elite Eight win, just too jazzed to go to sleep, and I know from Twitter that I wasn’t the only one. And if you’re a visual learner, here’s your photo evidence: a crowd-surfing bride outside one of the main sports bars on the Corner, UVA’s main drag of bars and restaurants.”

Finally have service and I’m here to show you a crowd surfing bride pic.twitter.com/yrX0u26Kag

— Ava Wallace (@avarwallace) March 31, 2019

2. Auburn and Virginia are both similar in the number of guys in their rotation and that their team is made up of mostly upperclassmen. I can only speak for Auburn but I would imagine a lot of the Virginia guys weren’t as highly recruited as some guys that went and played at the “blue-blood” programs. Just talk about the coaching job that Tony Bennett has done in Charlottesville to get this program to where it is now?

“There is certainly a sentiment among much of the UVA fanbase that the one-and-done types wouldn’t work at Virginia. Bennett and players alike have said that the Pack Line defense takes at least a year to understand, and Bennett doesn’t give minutes to guys until he trusts them on defense. But Bennett doesn’t hide that fact or apologize for it, which is part of what has helped him find the right guys even if they aren’t considered blue-chip recruits. He has sold a clear vision for the program—its underlying schematic principles as well as its foundational moral principles—to both the fanbase and to recruits. That vision is a reflection of his personality. And that is ultimately what has driven the success: there is no gap between who Bennett is and what Bennett says, and that has made it easier to buy in completely.”

3. Virginia plays a brand of basketball that most people don’t like or use but Virginia makes it work. What’s different about this year’s team compared to previous year’s teams that have struggled once they reach the NCAA Tournament?

“The talent level. Previous teams were filled more with the overlooked guys that Bennett coached up into All-ACC caliber performers. But the players that are leading this program are from the high-water mark of Bennett’s recruiting classes: Kyle Guy was the program’s first McDonald’s All-American since 2008, and his 2015 classmates Ty Jerome, De’Andre Hunter, and Jay Huff were all top-100 recruits; they powered UVA’s class to 7th in the national rankings that year. The year before, Mamadi Diakite was a national top-40 recruit. They have all now had multiple years to develop under strength coach Mike Curtis, and to absorb the offensive and defensive systems until they’re second-nature. Because of that higher talent level, Bennett has also deployed more diverse looks on both ends of the court—it’s not all blocker-mover on offense, and the defense is more willing and able to switch on ballscreens instead of hedge-and-recover.”

4. After what happened last year, Virginia didn’t exactly start off the tournament well this year either against a #16 seed. What were your thoughts at halftime against Gardner-Webb?

“(Expletive deleted, expletive deleted, expletive deleted). Seriously: I was about two minutes from getting thrown out of a bar in Las Vegas because I was NOT hiding my displeasure very well. The Gardner-Webb guards were slipping ballscreens really easily, and it was super frustrating to see UVA not adjust. The offense had the same sort of tight or nervy look that they did the year before, too. But the difference this year is that they had options. Inserting Diakite and Key allowed the defense to start switching, which stopped Gardner-Webb’s dribble penetration. The offense was able to change up their sets, and Diakite’s second-half awakening restored order to the basketball universe.”

5. I’m excited for this matchup mostly because of the different styles we will see on the court Saturday. Auburn scores around 80 points a game and loves to play fast while Virginia is tops in the country allowing only 55.4 points a game. Auburn has faced excellent defensive teams this year and had mixed success against them. What is one of the biggest factors into how successful Virginia’s defense is against their opponents?

“The biggest factor is mentality. Every player who comes to Virginia knows he is going to be expected to play full-throttle defense every possession. If you listen to Jerome or Guy or any of them talk, you’ll hear them say how much they pride themselves on playing stifling defense. That means they fly back down the court to stop the transition game, and they rotate fast behind the on-ball defender. Before Rick Pitino’s ignominious departure from Louisville, he described UVA’s defense as being like five fingers coming together to make a fist. Each player knows his assignment and the responsibilities of the other guys on the court. Add in the length and athleticism of this year’s squad and you get a daunting defensive unit.”

6. Kyle Guy is your leading scorer (15.4 ppg) and he certainly had a rough 3 games in this tournament prior to the Purdue game. Just talk about his importance to this team.

“In years past, if Guy wasn’t shooting well, his contributions were somewhat limited. But he has rounded out his game this year with more ability to drive and finish through contact, and he is a sneaky good rebounding guard to boot. Even when he isn’t hot, he’s enough of a threat to go Human Torch at any moment—and stays so active with cuts and running around ball screens—that he requires a dedicated defender at all times. That allows the offense to run games to create space and get open shots for others. From a more meta perspective, Kyle also has been the most public about how he’s dealt with last year’s UMBC disaster, which has provided some cover to other guys who may not have been ready to deal with it under the same intense spotlight. It’s given him another dimension of on-court leadership as a result: watch who recalibrates Diakite if things start to get screwy.”

7. Virginia has a sophomore forward that looks to be a potential lottery pick (as was Chuma Okeke before his injury) in De’Andre Hunter. How has his game improved from Year 1 to Year 2?

“On offense, his outside shooting. As a first-year, Hunter shot a respectable 37 percent from deep. This season, he has nearly doubled his number of attempts and upped that to 42 percent, making him a legit outside threat. At the other end of the court, he has adopted the mindset of being UVA’s shutdown guy for any player 1 through 4 (and even some smaller post players). It’s the reason he was named both ACC and NABC’s national Defensive Player of the Year.”

8. You guys, like Auburn, played North Carolina, a team that has a tempo similar to Auburn’s. What was the key in that game, a 69-61 Virginia win on February 11th, to slowing down the Tar Heels and do you think Virginia could employ a similar strategy to try and slow down Auburn?

“Limiting turnovers and shooting well from three. Missed shots against teams like UNC and Auburn turn into transition opportunities in a hurry, especially missed shots from three that turn into long rebounds. Carolina just murdered Virginia on the boards—16 offensive rebounds, fully 40 percent of their offensive misses—but UVA did not hand them extra possessions by turning the ball over a ton; even the 10 giveaways that Virginia surrendered were uncharacteristically high, but low enough to survive. If the Hoos commit themselves to stopping the transition game, that should give them a decent chance to control the pace and style of play.”

9. Who is one player that Auburn fans should be aware of that tends to fly under the radar?

“Before the tournament I would have said Mamadi Diakite, but he has flourished into a starter and major contributor (even before hitting the miraculous shot to send the Purdue game to overtime). Now the most under-the-radar guy is probably Braxton Key, who transferred from Alabama and provides Virginia with some redundancy behind De’Andre Hunter. Key has great size at 6-foot-8 and enough quickness to cover most guards. He is actually leading the team in defensive rebounding rate (23.1) and 5.2 total rebounds per game. Against smaller lineups, UVA can go with Hunter, Key, and Diakite in the frontcourt and impose some size advantage without losing much athleticism. When teams go big, Key slots in well as a wing that can help shut down opposing post players. If he can establish a better outside shot, he can also give the Hoos a sneak shot in the arm coming off the bench.”

10. Lastly, who do you think wins the game and do you have a score prediction?

“Guh. That’s my overall prediction: just a night full of ulcer-inducing, chest-clutching stress. UVA’s best case is that the Tigers played out of their minds against Kentucky—a combination of playing for Okeke and the opportunity to slay a conference-rival blueblood—and Auburn finds it tough to reinvigorate that kind of mental energy after a six-day hiatus; the three-point shooting cools and Virginia can take advantage of size inside against a good-but-not-great defense. The Virginia nightmare is that the cold shooting is on the Hoos’ offensive end and Auburn runs-and-guns all over their heads. I am a big believer that March Madness runs on narrative: more often than not, the better story seems to make its way through. Auburn’s run has been a good story, but UVA’s redemption narrative is stronger. Virginia advances to Monday night, 69-61.”

from College and Magnolia - All Posts https://www.collegeandmagnolia.com/2019/4/3/18294080/basketball-q-a-virginia-cavaliers

[lovelyfantasticfart]

What Were The Suggestions Regarding The Fugitive Slave Law

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from Blogger https://ift.tt/32BQ2ez

[usefulstuffmouzon]

2020 Video Workflow

Video

I now shoot with my iPhone 11 Pro, which simplifies things greatly. When shooting a presentation where I’m stationery, I use a mini pod I carry in my backpack. If possible, I sit right behind the projector and set up the mini pod on the projector, assuring me that there will be a clear view of the screen & the presenter. It also is a good bet that I’ll be able to find an outlet so I can keep the phone charged.

Audio

With a camera as good as this iPhone, the weak link is usually audio, although my iPhone X did better audio than my $150 Rode shotgun mic on my Nikon D610, which some consider a professional setup. And the iPhone 11 Pro is better, but the big problem for me is shooting outdoors and getting all the terrible wind noise on a breezy day. So I’ve just ordered a Shure MV88 iPhone mic, which some regard as the best, and a Movo “dead cat” windscreen. I’ll post later how this works out.

Gimbal

I have an Osmo Mobile 2 gimbal, which is highly rated for good reason. It’s just persnickety because you have to do everything in just the right sequence. I’m doing this workflow in large part to document that sequence so I can look it up later:

Be sure to keep it charged, as it takes easily 2 hours to fully charge.

Attach the phone with the gimbal turned off because you’ll need to balance it and it’ll fight you if it’s on, and you won’t get a true balance. Follow the instructions, which basically tell you to adjust the phone with it hanging with the face looking straight down at the floor so it’s flat top-to-bottom and side-to-side.

Unlock your phone.

Power the gimbal on by holding the power button for several seconds until it snaps to attention.

Here’s a tricky part: we actually have two Osmos, one for me and one for Wanda, as she has begun filming with me at CNU each year. I thought I could pair either one with my phone, so I began trying a few days ago to get one of them to work, but the phone would never recognize it. Finally, I decided to try the other one and got it to work. Apparently the gimbal has retained a memory of my phone or vice versa, even though this is the first time I’ve used the gimbal with this phone. In any case, go into Bluetooth on the phone and make sure the gimbal’s connected. Then go to the DJI GO app which is the software of the Osmo and so long Bluetooth is seeing your gimbal, you should be able to click on Connect Your Device after the opening screen goes away.

Once it’s connected, it opens the DJI camera window on your phone. This is important: to get full functionality, shoot from here, not from the default Camera app. The red button on the gimbal is the shutter button; on the left of the screen you’ll see a toggle between video & single shots. The zoom button is on the left, so a right-handed person can easily do everything with just their right hand.

Once you’re done shooting, you need to get the video & single shots off DJI and into Photos. To do this, first power off the gimbal and take your phone out. Then go back to the DJI app and go to Editor, at the bottom menu bar. Click on each video, then the download icon in the lower left corner. Click Save video to your device, which puts the video in Photos. Now you’re ready to move on to post-production.

Post-Production

Here’s how I do post-production on the video itself. I do everything on a Mac, so all the terms used here are Mac terms, and I’ve capitalized them for clarity.

I have an Album in Photos called Movies which filters out everything except movies, so it makes it really easy to focus. This is very important because if I had to sort through the many thousands of photos to find the movies, I would surely miss some of them.

Select the new clips to bring into iMovie and drag them to the Desktop. This will make a copy on the Desktop but leave the original in Photos. if you try to drag them directly into iMovie it’ll just get the opening frame as a still photo. I don’t know why; that’s just the way it works. IMPORTANT: for some reason, if you try to drag 30 or more clips, it can take close to a half-hour to complete, so only drag 3-5 at once and you’ll get done much faster. For some reason, dragging a lot at once chokes it down.

Open iMovie then Open Library to select the Library you want to work in. Because movies take up so much space, I do all my movie work on an external 4TB LaCie Rugged drive. I have two libraries on this drive: one for movies I’m working on, and the other for the completed movies.

In iMovie there are two main windows: Media & Projects. Toggle between them at the very top. To bring in new clips, click the Media button.

The far left column of the iMovie window is the Libraries window. Click on the current year. Then File>New Event or Option-N. Name this event for the clips you’re about to bring in.

Drag the movies on the Desktop into the new Event.

Click Projects, then click the template you want to use and duplicate it and rename it for the new movie. I keep a template for every type of movie I create, so I don’t have to do it from scratch every time.

Open the new Project by double-clicking, which takes you to the project window where you’ll build the new movie. Drag the clips you want into the Project, being sure to “snug them up” to the template’s opening clip so the cross dissolve between the template’s opening & closing clip goes between the clips you’re dragging in and the closing clip.

I have a 4-second opening title and a 5.5-second closing title, which begins in the last 1.5 seconds of the last imported clip then fades to a Gradient screen in the last 4 seconds. The opening title is in the template over the template’s opening clip, but that’s just a placeholder because the title is meant to start at the beginning of the first clip, so drag the title to the beginning of the first imported clip and delete the template’s opening clip.

If there’s more than one imported clip, insert transitions between them. I use Cross Dissolve because it’s simple & doesn’t call attention to itself because my videos are all about content.

Trim clips for a smooth transition. To do this, you’ll need to find the little slider at the center right of the window just left of Settings and slide it pretty much all the way out to the right to stretch the clips so you can trim to exactly the right place. This used be a bit tedious when filming a presentation with my Nikon D610 because it would only let you get 20 minutes of video at a time, so I’d have to edit back to the last complete sentence the speaker said on the early side of the transition, then to the beginning of the first complete sentence on the late side. Now, however, because the iPhone has no such limitation (except for total storage space) I don’t have to worry about that anymore on a single event. So the only transitions I have are when I film several different clips and stitch them together. In that case, if I’m explaining something, I just be sure to leave a second or two of silence at the beginning and the end, which makes it really easy to trim properly. To do precise 

Click on each clip, then make modifications. I used to use the Cartoon clip filter because it makes the images soft, vibrant, and romantic, but a lot of people complained so I’ve decided to use no clip filters at all. Now, I only make two modifications: under the Volume icon I click Auto, and under the Equalizer icon I click Reduce Background Noise and leave it set to the default (50%) and select Voice Enhance under Equalizer.

The movie should now be ready to share. But sharing is a space-hogging process, so before you do, make sure you’ve deleted all the videos you copied to the Desktop, and empty the trash can. If the share fails, you might even restart your Mac and then only open iMovie. I use Clean My Mac, and run that before sharing as well.

There’s an option in File>Share to share directly to YouTube, but don’t do that. It always fails. It seems that really short clips (like my 4-second closing clip) might be the problem. So I share to a file and then upload the file to YouTube (more on that later) which has the added benefit of letting me share that file directly to any other site that might not play well with YouTube, either now or in the future.

In File>Share I write a Description that includes not only the story I’m telling, but also where the video was shot in case someone is searching for videos on a place or building. I give it one Tag such as “urbanism” because tagging is easier in YouTube. Format is Video and Audio, Resolution is 1080p (which is HD), Quality is High, and Compress is Faster.

Click Next, which will take you to a window where you tell iMovie where to put the movie. On my external drive, I have two folders: movies to upload, and uploaded movies. In the movies to upload folder, create a new folder with the name of the movie and click Save.

My title fades in and out at the beginning which is a nice effect, but that means the first frame has no title. Thankfully, YouTube allows you to assign a “thumbnail.” So once the movie has been created, open it (it’ll come up in QuickTime Player) and run off a second or so until the title has fully faded in. Edit>Copy, go to Photoshop, create a new file the size of the clipboard, and paste. Merge Down (Command-E) then Save for Web (Command-Shift-Option-S) in the same folder as the movie using the name of the movie plus title, so the Civic Gift to the Street movie would have a title shot named Civic-Gift-to-the-Street-title.jpg.

YouTube

You’re now ready to post to YouTube, but first a bit of background. I don’t know why Google makes things so difficult to find, so I’m adding this to remind myself how to get back to it whenever I have long gaps between posting videos. Three years ago, I consolidated all my Google stuff under one email address when they finally created “Brand Accounts.��� Previously, I needed one email address for my Original Green content, another for Mouzon Design content, etc. Now, I’m putting up new videos on the Original Green channel but spent hours day before yesterday unsuccessfully trying to figure out how to actually manage the channel rather than just viewing it. I just discovered what I was missing: Under my avatar (my head shot) for my Google account, if I pull down to Switch Accounts, it’ll let me choose any of my other brand accounts. I had seen it but assumed it meant go to an entirely different accounts, like when I had multiple accounts on different email addresses. Once I’m signed in as the Original Green Brand on the Original Green Channel, I do the following:

Go to studio.youtube.com.

Click Upload Video and select your movie file. This will open the window where you can add details about the file. For some reason, YouTube doesn’t pick up the description I wrote in the Share step, so I have to rewrite it.

Just below that is a frame you can click to upload your thumbnail, or title image as it’s called above.

Next is the Playlists window, where you can add it to an existing Playlist or create a new one.

Under Audience, click No, it’s not made for kids. Then under Advanced, do the following:

No, don’t restrict my video to viewers over 18 only.

I don’t do paid promotion.

Tags can help people find videos, so add the obvious ones, including the title of the video plus others like “urbanism,” “New Urbanism,” etc.

Enter the recording date & location.

The category of all my videos is Howto & Style.

I don’t currently add end screens or cards because I don’t know anything about them.

On the next screen I Publish as Public.

Repost & Promote

That’s it! Except to post the video to Twitter, Facebook, and your other New Media nodes.

[d2phuong]

The business of Digital Media

Hi everyone. Today, in this post I would like to Identify and discuss three key trends that will define international media and communications markets in the next decade. This post is also the research that I did last semester. I'm going to analysis of the media and communications market trends in recent years as well as discuss recent and current strategies, successes and failures to justify my choice of predicted future key trends.

Introduction

The field of social media is always changing. This could be in terms of new platforms, different habits of consumption or even the varied forms of communication there are. In recent years, people have found ways to make social media a platform for digital marketing as well as a source of income for most people. Some of the social media platforms that have taken to this trend include YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. They are some of the most popular sites for people to share and post specific information about their lives that they would like others to experience with them. They can view these updates by becoming their followers. This type of contact has made it possible for these online celebrities to make money by promoting certain products to their followers.

Aim

Social media platforms not only give customers a way to give feedback to their favorite online stores but it also allows the marketers to come up with new and inventive ways to capture the attention of their audience.  This post will focus on each of these social media platforms in terms of their background, past current and future strategies as well as any new emerging trend.

Body

Facebook is an American based company that offers services for online networking. It could either be personal networking to make friends or business networking to get contacts for one business. This application was founded by Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz, and Eduardo Saverin. They were all students at Harvard University.  By the year 2012, it had already become the most extensive social network in the entire world.  One of the things that attract people to Facebook is the fact that from the beginning, Mark Zuckerberg insisted that people be open about who they are and the users are forbidden from creating false identities (Lo & Fang, 2018).  The management of this company also argued that for this company to flourish, they needed to have full transparency. This would also help users make meaningful personal relationships.

Facebook, however, had not always served these purposes. Initially, after the invention at Harvard, it had been used by the student body to pass judgment on the attractiveness of a colleague. Since this was a violation of some school policies, it had to be shut down which happened two days after launching it. Mark Zuckerberg later re-launched it later as Facebook the social network in February of 2004. The students at Harvard were able to post pictures as well as their school schedules and the clubs that they had joined. Soon enough students from other universities joined, and by June that year, the network had more than 250,000 more subscribers; all students from thirty-four different schools.

Over the years, Facebook has gone through many transformations, and fourteen years later they are still making more changes. Initially, it was referred to as face mash. This was by October 2003. One of the strategies that they seem to have implemented a lot in their journey is constant rebranding. This includes situations where they even sold their domain to a new company to ensure that they offer the best to the users. At this point in history, Facebook is no longer just a school project but rather a global thing which is why they need to keep coming up with new ideas every day. An example of this idea was the like button (Morrison, 2018). When their like button was introduced, it became the greatest innovation of the time. The like button has been adopted by so many other companies including those hosting various websites and blogs. Another strategy that they seem to be employing is the concept of keeping their customers happy. It allowed them to come up with the ‘Facebook ads’ which would later become one of the essential tools in all marketing classes in most schools. Such innovations have allowed them to stay relevant even with the onset of many other social media platforms offering similar services to those at Facebook.

There is the talk of transforming Facebook from just a very successful technology startup to a public company that will be set for success to outlive all the leaders in place right now.  Proof of this is seen in an address to Mark Zuckerberg from his new board of directors. The address is to remind him that by making his company public, he will no longer be the sole owner but will be reduced to the CEO with a very tight leash on the succession. It is important to note that many companies have often failed at this stage in the transition and not that many can fully recover to where they once were (Susarla, Oh, & Tan, 2012).  As with every other company, Facebook has had to deal with both victories and losses. Facebook has been late when coming into the social networking market, which is why it is not much of a surprise that they have had to deal with some issues like the leakage of certain personal information that belongs to the users. This got so bad that the CEO had to offer an official public apology that did not do much to quell the outrage among Facebook users.  Their late entry could also be the reason why they can keep up so well.

Even after coming into the game so late, Facebook has still managed to catch up and even overtake most of the competition. This has raised some questions among the social networking community. One of the reasons this was possible is that they were able to maintain the cycle of ownership between those who were there from the beginning. They are the only ones who can do what is best for the company (Muñoz & Towner, 2017). The fact that they have been able to stay afloat after so many years and are starting to take over even the new platforms proves that in the next decade it will still be among the key trends of the globe.

YouTube

YouTube is also an American website that has its headquarters based in San Bruno, California. This is the brainchild of three people who were former employees at Pay Pal. These are Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. They came up with the service in 2005 February. In 2006 the site was bought by Google for 1.65 billion US dollars. This site allows its users to view, upload, rate, report, add to favorites, subscribe to the other users as well as comment on any content that they put up (Smith, Fischer, & Yongjian, 2012). YouTube has been a fast-growing site with people now not only using it to view videos but also advertise products as well as provide tutorials on how to use them.  

One of the strategies that YouTube has been employing more often is the YouTube partnership program that allows them to partner with other media corporations to provide content for its viewers.  Some other partnerships are with the video bloggers who get a platform to express themselves. These bloggers have now also started forming their partnerships with brands like clothing or makeup lines to be able to reach their audience (Bahtar & Muda, 2016). Most of these makeup lines will even have the bloggers do videos to teach the clientele how to use their product. This has resulted in excellent customer interface which in turn helps boost sales. The bloggers also get a percentage of the money made by these companies just for showing their product. This shows that not only is it a place to view great content it is also a place where most people especially millennials can make some extra money. YouTube also provides the users with excellent quality video output which is why they have so many users.

YouTube is also able to collect revenue from corporations like Google AdSense who targets specific ads depending on the content and traffic to one site.  The majority of these adverts are free for anyone to view, but there are those that require a premium subscription in order to view. This is how revenue is generated. Over the years, it has grown to be a trendsetter in the social media digital marketing sector. By 2017 over one billion hours in content was being viewed in just a day. By 2018 it had already been given the position of the second most popular site in the entire world. Youtube has been able to use video marketing to its advantage, and all they have to do is provide the platform (Daou, Sarkis, & Nader, 2018).

One of the problems that they have had to deal with is the posting of inappropriate content with the videos. This is most common for video bloggers. On more than one occasion they have had to delete certain accounts due to the message they send. Most of these are either promoting pornography or drug use. This is mainly worrisome because of the underage children whom thanks to technology have access to YouTube.  Video market has now become very important in the marketing business, and this is why YouTube will keep being a trendsetter in social media digital marketing (Susarla, Oh, & Tan, 2012).

Instagram

Instagram is a photo-sharing application. It was started by both Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger in San Francisco. After its launch, it was re-acquired in 2012 by Facebook. This application allows the users to be able to edit and upload, not only photos but videos as well. Users are also able to put captions under their posts which sometimes includes the use of hashtags.  These are also used as indexes to be able to allow other users to see their posts. Hashtags and geotags are also ways to make sure that people who are not followers of a certain page or account can see the post. As with all the other social networking programs, users can like and comment on each other’s posts. Recent developments have also made it possible for one to bookmark the work of another person. They can also be able to send private direct messages to each other. The fact that it is linked to Facebook makes it possible to share photos on both platforms.

By 2012 the company had already skyrocketed with more than 40million users who were active only two years after its launch.  This was when they captured the attention of those at Facebook who decided to buy out the owners (Daou, Sarkis, & Nader, 2018). The application was purchased for one billion dollars during summer in 2012. At this point, people could only post photos of themselves, but by 2013 they had already incorporated the feature that allowed people to share short videos as well.  Over the years they have faced many problems especially when it comes to their policies. One of the policies implemented implied that the photos uploaded by the users could be distributed to unauthorized people. This caused an uproar that resulted in the rewording of the entire policy. Another policy seemed to be censoring some of the content posted on accounts of the content being inappropriate. However further research shows that the majority of the photos are of female users which results in a massive backlash due to the gender sensitivity issues involved. It seemed as though they were discriminating of the women.

Despite all these problems Instagram has been able to rise above some of their competition like Twitter. In only a year they have been able to get seven hundred million users who are more than twice the users on Twitter. One of the strategies that they have been employing is ensuring that they provide their users with a variety of options to choose from.  People are now able to edit their photos to look at how they wish them by adding filters or editing some features like lux which is a feature that helps one lighten or darken the photo. They have also been able to get inspiration from other applications.

An excellent example of this is the idea of uploading stories which was initially on snap chat. Users can now upload updates that disappear after twenty-four hours are over. In the spirit of partnerships, Instagram has also been able to add in more applications to make the experience great. One of these is the boomerang application that can enable one to create their short videos with time-lapse in them (Susarla, Oh, & Tan, 2012). They also had many issues when it came to organizing their content. This is why they came up with the idea to create tags to make it possible for businesses with accounts to sort out the content they have.  

Despite having many issues come up, Instagram has still managed to be not just a key trend,  but also a trendsetter in social media. The one thing that makes the difference between failure and success is the momentum that a company has.  The fact that the Instagram app has been so relentless is what has made sure that they have the number of their users on a constant rise. A brief look into their past, one can tell that the app had a lot of failed attempts before they finally broke through (Bahtar & Muda, 2016). This tenacity is what will ensure their place on the social media digital marketing docket for more years to come.

Conclusion

The various changes that have taken place in the social media digital marketing sector are all geared towards making life more comfortable for users. Most of the applications have been able to achieve this by creating applications with a better user interface that is evolving daily. In order to keep this evolution going, they have to keep track of the needs of their various users and what is unique to each user.  The world today is highly influenced by visuals. This means that they are more likely to click open adverts that have visually appealing thumbnails. This is why most people involved in online marketing will usually have a certain look which is what will attract the clients to the merchandise advertised. The above applications have each made a name for themselves in digital marketing. Some have also been forming partnerships with each other to maximize the traffic in their different sites. Each of them has had major fails and setbacks.  However, instead of succumbing to the setbacks, they rose above it and used it as a stepping stone to great success. This is one characteristic of most successful enterprises today.

Hopefully, this post will provide for you guys an overview of communications market trends. If you guys are interested in this topic as well as the social media market, I really would like to discuss

References

Bahtar, A. Z., & Muda, M. (2016). The Impact of User – Generated Content (UGC) on Product Reviews towards Online Purchasing – A Conceptual Framework. Procedia Economics and Finance, 37, 337-342. doi:10.1016/s2212-5671(16)30134-4

Christodoulides, G., Jevons, C., & Bonhomme, J. (2012). Memo to Marketers: Quantitative Evidence for Change. Journal of Advertising Research, 52(1), 53-64. doi:10.2501/jar-52-1-053-064

Daou, L., Sarkis, N., & Nader, Y. (2018). Impact of Facebook marketing on Lebanese athletes' decision-making process. International Journal of Sport Management and Marketing, 18(5), 402. doi:10.1504/ijsmm.2018.10014487

Lo, Y. C., & Fang, C. (2018). Facebook marketing campaign benchmarking for a franchised hotel. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 30(3), 1705-1723. doi:10.1108/ijchm-04-2017-0206

Morrison, A. J. (2018). Marketing Strategic Alliances: The Small Hotel Firm. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 6(3), 25-30. doi:10.1108/09596119410059227

Muñoz, C. L., & Towner, T. L. (2017). The Image is the Message: Instagram Marketing and the 2016 Presidential Primary Season. Journal of Political Marketing, 16(3-4), 290-318. doi:10.1080/15377857.2017.1334254

Smith, A. N., Fischer, E., & Yongjian, C. (2012). How Does Brand-related User-generated Content Differ across YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter? Journal of Interactive Marketing, 26(2), 102-113. doi:10.1016/j.intmar.2012.01.002

Susarla, A., Oh, J., & Tan, Y. (2012). Social Networks and the Diffusion of User-Generated Content: Evidence from YouTube. Information Systems Research, 23(1), 23-41. doi:10.1287/isre.1100.0339

Susarla, A., Oh, J., & Tan, Y. (2012). Social Networks and the Diffusion of User-Generated Content: Evidence from YouTube. Information Systems Research, 23(1), 23-41. doi:10.1287/isre.1100.0339