#suffixes may be off but those were 100% the prefixes

[samble-moved]

genuinely so nostalgic for the old virtual warrior world proboards forum. wish i hadn't deleted my account from it. it's dead, with almost zero posts from the past 3-4yrs, but i wish it had survived. i don't think id much enjoy feral cat rp nowadays, but wish i knew where my friends from back there went.

[notpreparedblog]

Introduction and Story

The further I get into my life, the more apparent it is that I can’t pass by any Action-RPG in hopes of recreating my experience with Diablo II. After my somewhat disappointing experience with Wolcen, both pre-release and post-release, the next attempt at a new game is Last Epoch.

As a general heads up, Last Epoch is also currently in Beta Release and is incomplete. You can check out the details at their website or on Steam for purchase.

The story of Last Epoch is unfortunately not that important in its current incomplete state. The one thing that should be known (and happens in the first ten minutes of playing) is the realization that you are basically playing through the same maps/areas in different time periods  ala Chrono Trigger. This brings up interesting ideas when it comes to time travel and seeing the same characters across multiple ages, but it also means that unless repeat locations are drastically different, it can get a bit boring. I felt that some of the repeat sections were just not varied enough to really feel like I was playing a new map area.

There’s also a reliance on highly coincidental decisions on the part of the NPC’s you are interacting with. At one point in the story, which I’ll show a screenshot for below, you are traveling with a companion to acquire an item. Before stepping into an obvious boss room, the NPC stops and, well, you’ll see below.

My opinion of story telling going into an unlikable direction.

Some instances are a bit funny and I wonder if there’s just limitations on the back end that we aren’t seeing. There is one story beat where you save a NPC on a boat with the goal of jumping off the boat to escape. Instead of just freeing the NPC and having him follow you, he says he will wait until we are ready to jump off the boat before following. You have to go to the side of the boat, click jump off, then you both appear at an island after a loading screen. The game allows NPC’s to follow you at other points, but situations like this do happen often enough to stick out as being strange.

Skills and Specializations

Last Epoch looks to have five characters available, eventually. Right now, there are four; Acolyte, Primalist, Sentinel and Mage. Each of these character types will eventually have three different master class specializations to choose from. The Mage for example has Spellblade, Sorceror and Runemaster as master classes however, only Spellblade and Sorceror are currently available. That being said, there is a lot to check out in its current state.

Here’s where things get a bit more interesting. Each character has a default passive skill tree which you’re able to put points into either from leveling up or from set quest rewards. To go along with that, each of your characters skills are planned to have a skill tree. And finally, on top of that, opening up the master class of your choosing opens up those passive skill trees for you to put your points into.

Example of what the skill tree for Hammer Throw looks like. Each skill gets 20 skills points to distribute within their trees.

The end result for setups like this should involve a lot of customization towards how the player wants to play, and in some ways I see that succeeding. Early on, I attempted a Sentinel with Hammer Throw as the main attack. Initially, hammer throw shoots in a straight line outward, then comes back to the player. Within the skill tree, you can have the hammers spiral around the player, or shoot out in a nova around the player. You can also opt to skip these skill nodes entirely and head for a more stun orientated hammer. The point is that there are options to change the way you are playing.

Items and Crafting

Items are set up in a similar way to what you may already be used to. You have your white base items without any affixes, blue magic items with 1-2 affixes, rare yellow items with 3-4 affixes, unique gold items and green set items.

Throughout your game time, you’ll inevitably pick up tons of shards. These shards are the affixes that appear on item drops. The idea with the crafting setup is to use these shards to put specific prefix or suffixes onto items (two of each for a total of four mods on an item).

Each of these item affixes are ranked between Tiers 1-5. So tier one of ‘Elemental Protection’ may be a ranged value between 25 – 50, while tier two may have a range of 50-75. You can’t just find shards and rank every affix up to tier 5 though. Each item has stability attached to it. The more unstable a weapon is from crafting, the more likely it is to fracture (can’t upgrade any more mods). This becomes a risk/reward system where you’re more than welcome to attempt a low % upgrade, but the risk is not being able to upgrade it any further.

The crafting screen in Last Epoch. This example shows Increased Health % at Tier 4, Increased Mana % at Tier 2 and Chance to Chill Attacks at Tier 1. You can add one more prefix to this item as well as upgrade the Tiers of current affixes.

Along with finding shards as item drops, you also have the ability to shatter items with desirable affixes on them to potentially receive shards of those affixes. Towards end game, this turns into a sort of mini game of knowing what rare affixes are on items so that you can pick those up, shatter them, get shards of desired affixes and put them onto your item of choice later.

You also have the ability to gamble rare items. It wasn’t uncommon for me to decide I needed new gloves for example, then gamble gloves and hope for at least 2-3 good affixes that I can work with.

I don’t dislike this system, but it also feels a bit cumbersome. There are over 100 affixes in the game and it felt impossible to really understand what is needed for the character I was playing due to tool-tips not currently being included in the game. One way you can tell is by throwing a picked up item into your crafting window. This will automatically bring up the affixes on that item to the top of your screen so that you can upgrade them. Here, they show you how many shards you have of that affix. It’s just not realistic to do that for every item.

Selling items is also awkward because they do not hold much value at all. I could pick up an entire inventory of weapons and armor only to make 1000 gold. For reference, gambling one pair of gloves could run me 1400 gold. The incentive to pick up items is to shatter them for affixes, but the act of knowing what to save outside of memory is too time consuming.

Enemies and Game Balance

Enemy types are typical for ARPGs. You have regular white mobs, blue magic mobs, gold rare mobs and then unique/named mobs or bosses. More often than not, you’ll see yourself facing down a combination of all of the above at the same time.

An interesting aspect that I noticed, was that you can’t really get away from any enemies. In most…if not every other APRG I’ve played, if you want to skip a group of enemies that have an immunity you don’t want to deal with, or a pack of stronger mobs that have an unfortunate set of affixes attached to them, just run by and eventually you don’t have to worry about them anymore. Last Epoch seems to entirely remove that idea.

The reality of this game is that you just won’t be that strong against stronger enemies until much later into the leveling process, and even there, you need to make sure your build is cohesive enough to do any real damage and make progress into the current end game.

To a certain degree, I feel like enemies can be placed into a few different categories; fodder, B-Tier, A-Tier and S-Tier. Fodder are typical filler mobs that will die within one or two hits. B-Tier include more complicated enemies with some sort of more notable mechanic like healing or shielding other enemy types. A-Tier are what you would think are the strongest mob types in the game with high health, high damage output and massive AoE attacks that must be avoided in fear of death. Lastly, S-Tier are everything that A-Tier mobs are, but multiplied.

The affix’s that mobs are given can be both interesting and frustrating. You have your basics like ‘More Health’ and ‘Higher Chance to Critical Hit’ but Last Epoch also has some that I don’t believe I’ve seen before like ‘Revives After Two Seconds’ and ‘Summons a Twin at Half Health.’

Now, I’m all for variation and difficulty in games like this. I think that my greater issue is that enemy placement when looking at these tier lists just doesn’t make sense. There are two different ways I was looking at this; story and end game.

While you’re going through the current story, difficulty seems to progress at a normal pace with spikes once you reach certain areas. Not a problem in itself, but I noticed a pattern. A large portion of the maps were turning into ‘small pathway leading to large opening’ where the large opening had a few fodder mobs, a few B-Tier mobs, and multiple A or S Tier mobs. This typically meant that for every sort of room you go into, you can be there for 20-30 seconds just burning down one of these higher tiered mobs. Once that is complete, you move to the next small path and large room where you repeat the process. It became noticeably formulaic. On my first character going through the last Act of the game, I really just felt burnt out by the time I defeated the boss and got to the end game.

I’ll go into end game a bit more soon, but for these purposes, I felt like it was the bigger offender. End game areas can be quite a mess. I’ve hit brand new monolith maps where the first large room I get to has 8+ A-Tier mobs with massive health pools and massive AoE attacks. At that point, it’s better to just die and get a new monolith map than to struggle for 5+ minutes trying to kill every one of those mobs.

Now imagine all of these things combined. You have multiple A or S tiered mobs in one location, they have affixes such as ‘More Health’ AND ‘Revives After Two Seconds’ which revives that mob at half health, and you can’t get away from them because of how mobs are attached to the player once they see you. Yikes. The experience reward for defeating one of these mobs isn’t worth the time it takes to defeat them.

Endgame

The current end game features two different aspects, arena battles and monoliths.

Monoliths: This is where you will spend the majority of your time in Last Epoch once the story mode is complete. Once you reach end game, you can click on a giant monolith which will send you to a different timeline to defeat monsters. These maps are varied and include most of what you have already seen in the main game and as far as I can tell, contains random combinations of enemies.

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Once clicking the monolith, you have the option to choose from one of two enemy modifications. One example could be ‘For the next two timelines, enemies have +25% critical strike chance’ and ‘For the next two timelines, enemies deal 12% increased damage and have 100% increased critical strike chance.’ The former is obviously better, but the latter actually gives the player higher item drop chances and higher experience earned. There is also the option to re-roll these two mods once every time you choose a timeline. This can become a gamble though as you get further along and you could be giving up a bad enemy modification for a terrible one.

As you complete more timelines, things can get hectic very fast. Early on, enemy mods may stay for two timelines then disappear, but then these modifications stay for four timelines, then seven timelines and so on. The result ends up being a giant mess of increased issues for you to deal with with the idea of more risks involved, more rewards for tackling it.

Arena Battles: Arena battles require you to first find Arena Keys from Monoliths and is exactly what it sounds like. You are in a large room with waves of enemies that come rushing towards you. Every five waves you are given access to your stash, minor item rewards and the ability to choose to end the arena or continue for another five waves.

Joining an arena battle with a found Arena Key.

Overall, this end game setup is decent. Monoliths have enough variety to not get boring too fast. Wolcen had a similar setup but lacked variety to the point to where you really only got a few different maps and a few different bosses/enemy combinations to take on.

I do wish there was another objective here besides simply leveling your character and trying to find decent items with Tier 5 affixes on them. While Wolcen’s end game is boring, the city building aspect was at least an interesting idea. Path of Exile has maps which do get redundant, but having the map Atlas gave an overarching goal to work towards while completing those maps.

Other Thoughts

Pathing: The pathing can be quite strange in Last Epoch. What I mean by that, is how your character moves to certain locations based on where your are pointing with your mouse. There were multiple occasions where I thought I was in a large open hallway and directing my character forward when he would abruptly turn around and head in the opposite direction. This also become a more noticeable issue because my character with the most investment was a Warpath using Forge Guard which seems to increase that behavior.

Bugs: Last Epoch is in Beta, there are bugs and that shouldn’t deter you from giving it a shot if you do enjoy APRGs. If the idea of being locked out of an area and needing to reload does bother you, just skip it for now. There were a few times I had entered a side area just to be locked out from returning. I would have to portal out and use the nearest waypoint to head back to where I originally was.

Harmless graphic bug that you might see while playing.

Damage Tool-tip: As it stands, besides one obscure DPS number on your character sheet which I believe is only attached to melee attacks, there’s no real damage tool-tips for your characters or skills. This leaves you guessing when trying out new items or points on your skill tree. After experiencing Wolcen and it’s skill tree nodes that were just not working, I wanted some reassurance that I wasn’t wasting piles of skill points into skills that were not benefiting my character. I’m sure this feature will be added into the game at some point.

Global Chat: Right now, Last Epoch is a single player game. However, global chat is attached to the game so that you can converse with your fellow players. My experience was a hard mix between Barrens chat from Vanilla WoW and players that genuinely want to help. Any mention of Diablo 3 meant likely crucifixion. Mention of Path of Exile meant that it was no longer stream lined enough. Wolcen, well, is still Wolcen.

Yea, global chat.

Quest Rewards: One thing that I had noticed is that quest rewards that do not result in extra idol slots or passive skills are largely a waste of time. You will receive gold and experience, but they are so insignificant that they just don’t matter. At the very least, the rewards should be increased.

Shrines: Last Epoch includes shrines that actually last for a decent amount of time and have some unique properties. Included in the shrine pool are ones that cause every attack to be a critical strike and another has a unique item drop once clicked.

One example of a shrine in Last Epoch.

Final Thoughts

I had a lot to say about enemies earlier, but I do feel that small tweaks can fix my overall issues. Some affixes need to be adjusted, some experience rewards need to be increased and damage output/mitigation needs to be looked at. All of these have numbers attached to them and I believe they are fixable and necessary to reach more of a balance.

Outside of that, I enjoy that individual skill trees have customization built in to them. You can spec into Hammer Throw and decide between your hammers coming out in a line, nova or spiral. You can spec into ‘Volcanic Orb’ and choose to instead make it a ‘Frozen Orb’ akin to Diablo II. Choices around the skills matter. One skill with one specialization tree, can seem like two or three different skills.

The trick here is to then have Unique/Set items play off these different specializations and increase the variety of things that you can do while combining all of these aspects. I didn’t see a lot of that from the thirty or so Unique/Set items that I had found. More often than not, rares with higher tiered specific mods were much better than any Unique or Set that I had found. I think that’s good for crafting, but there should also be worthy items on the other side to consider.

At the end of the day, and after playing for around 70 hours, I felt that Last Epoch is fun and worth the time to play. There’s a lot of good here, a lot more than I’ve seen out of Wolcen and a lot more user friendly than the current state of Path of Exile. I will definitely keep checking out updates to this game and see what the final product eventually looks like in comparison to now.

  Thanks for reading. I’ve written a bunch regarding Action-RPGs on this site, the following are a few of those times;

Path of Diablo: Part I, Part II, Part III

Median XL: Sigma

Wolcen: Beta Release, Full Release

First Thoughts: Last Epoch (Beta Release) The latest Action RPG that was on my list to check out. Lot of good vibes from Last Epoch and looking forward to the full release. #lastepoch #steam #arpg #wolcen #diablo #torchlight Introduction and Story The further I get into my life, the more apparent it is that I can't pass by any Action-RPG in hopes of recreating my experience with…

[oliveheart-worldbuilding]

Family Fun 2

Heya everyone, Lightningnose here! In continuation with the Family Fun, here’s my submission. The first one of this series went on my my blog, The Clans’ Generations, but the actual first one went up on The Feline Helix because when this thing started up I didn’t have a blog yet.

So, first cat submitted is the sire, second cat submitted is the dam.

Sire: Lichenstream.

Dam: Bluenose.

Challenge: -Create an even number of offspring for Lichenstream and Bluenose, as well as Warrior Names for them. Also, make personalities and slight backstories for all offspring as well as Lichenstream and Bluenose.

Extra Challenges: -One offspring must have the prefix Golden-. -None of the offspring may share a suffix with a parent. -Bluenose, who is currently mates with Lichenstream, previously had offspring with another tom. The offspring are named Minnowcloud, Volefur, and Fallowfang. Come up with a possible sire for Minnowcloud, Volefur, and Fallowfang. Also come up with a Warrior Name, personality, and backstory for the sire, as well as a story for why they ended up having Kits together but did not end up remaining as mates.

Have fun!

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Hello again Lightingnose! It is my turn now, let’s see what can I come up with. I hope I can get this right and hope you all enjoy!

We’ve got some really cool names here! Lichen- is one of my favorite prefixes ever so I came up with something I don’t use much.

I…have probably written too much, to my defense I’ll say that they were a lot of characters hahaha

Let’s go step by step: First we’ll do the genetics and, when I am 100% finished with it, I’ll get with their personality and backstory.

For their genetics, I decided to use a dice and roll the results tough some have been purposely chosen to complete the challenge (genes that aren’t written below are expected to be considered homozygous for the gene not being shown, for example, all cats below have CC for full colored body):

 Main sire and dam:

Bluenose: XoXoaaBbddllmcmcsss. Homozygous non-red, homozygous for non-agouti, heterozygous black carries chocolate, homozygous for dilution, homozygous for long hair, homozygous for classic tabby, homozygous non-white spotting.

àSmall solid blue cat with big yellow eyes and really long and fluffy fur.

Lichenstream: He will be a chimera so I’ll write to sets of genes, since a chimera cat is the result of two embryos fusing in their mother’s womb, the set of genes will change from one cell of the cat to another one. The genes his offspring will inherit depend on whether the spermatozoon carries one set of cells or the other. XOYAaBBddLlMcmcSsSpsp & XoYAaBBddLlMcmcSsSpsp. One set of genes carries non-red, the other carries red. Heterozygous to non-agouti carries agouti, homozygous black, homozygous for dilution, heterozygous for long-hair carries short, heterozygous for classic tabby carries mackerel, heterozygous for white spotting, heterozygous for spotted tabby modifier.

àCream-blue tortie tom with a beautiful spotted fur pattern and green eyes.

Offspring:

XOXoAaBBddllMcmcssSpsp. (born from the red set of genes) Heterozygous for red carries non-red, Heterozygous for agouti carries non-agouti, homozygous for dilution, homozygous for long-hair, heterozygous for classic tabby carries mackerel, homozygous for non-white spotting, heterozygous for spotted tabby modifier. She’ll be a cryptic tortie meaning that while, genetically speaking, she is a tortie, only one of her fur colors is shown à I’ll use Golden for her, rolled –storm as her suffix!

àGoldish cream molly with a complex spotted tabby pattern, she is incredibly fluffy and small in size. One of her ears is badly scarred and bent, her face is really scarred too. Her eyes are green.

XoYAaBBddLlmcmcssSpsp. (born from the black set of genes) Homozygous for non-red, Heterozygous for agouti carries non-agouti, homozygous for black, homozygous for diluted, heterozygous for long-hair carries short-hair, homozygous for classic tabby, homozygous for non-white spotting, heterozygous for spotted tabby modifier. à Rolled Aster- as the prefix and -leaf as the suffix!

àBlue spotted tabby cat, their eyes are yellow. They have a scar running across their muzzle.

Secondary sire:

XoYAaBbDdLlMcmcSS. Homozygous for non-red, heterozygous for agouti carries non-agouti, heterozygous for black carries chocolate, heterozygous for dilution, heterozygous for classic tabby carries mackerel, homozygous for white spotting, heterozygous for long-hair carries short-hair. à Rolled Garlic- as the prefix and –face as the suffix!

àBeautiful white tom. His tail, back of his head and front of his face are black. They have green eyes. (black van pattern)

Secondary offspring:

Minnowcloud: XoXoAaBBddLlmcmcSs. Homozygous for non-red, heterozygous for agouti carries non-agouti, homozygous for black, homozygous for diluted, heterozygous for short-hair carries long-hair, homozygous for classic tabby, heterozygous for white spotting.

àSmall blueish gray classic tabby molly with white paws and belly. She has greens eyes.

Volefur: XoXoaabbDdLlmcmcSs. Homozygous for non-red, homozygous for non-agouti, homozygous for chocolate, heterozygous for dilution, heterozygous for short-hair carries long-hair, homozygous for classic tabby, heterozygous for white spotting.

àChocolate tom with white paws and chest. He has green eyes, a mangled leg and is missing his tail. (medallion with white paws pattern)

Fallowfang: XoYaabbddLlMcmcSs. Homozygous for non-red, homozygous for non-agouti, homocygous for chocolate, homozygous for dilution, heterozygous for short-hair carries long-hair, heterozygous for classic tabby carries mackerel, heterozygous for white spotting.

àSmall white tom. His back, tail, face and head are lilac while the rest of his body is white. He has blue eyes. Has multiple battle wounds.

That settles the genetics! Let’s get started on their personality and backstory!

àBluenose is the kind of cat that you wouldn’t want to be around for too long. She can be extremely nosy and, with her energetic kind of personality, she could tire up anyone. An incredibly skilled tracker, she falls quite behind on any other skill. Bluenose is the most curious cat out there, a simple new smell can make her leave every task at hand and run for the adventure. At times, she will simply leave her clan and disappear until the sun shines up in the sky; she will return empty-handed and sometimes even hurt after falling of a tree or cutting while playing near the stream. She is not the best hunter and not the best runner tough when adventure calls her she will mysteriously disappear leaving no traces behind. Has even gotten in quite some trouble after crossing another clan’s boundaries and facing some of its warriors, she has quite the popularity as a troublemaker. Much to her clanmates despair, Bluenose isn’t quite the religious cat either and tends to mock those around her for believing such ‘nonsenses’. When tasked with something that she finds entertaining she will actually become quite useful; she loves tracking bigger predators through the clan’s territory or finding weird new places to hunt in even if most days she will be found lazing around, that is, if you find her at all. She not so secretly wishes to become a loner but feels that her place is in the clan with those she loves and those who love her.

-Was mates with Garlicface for some time until things got rough between them. Their personalities where too different from each other, Bluenose being carefree and a jokester and Garlicface being serious and extremely responsible. Both expected each other to change their personality over time; neither did change and so they would start constant fights.  They broke up on pretty bad terms and haven’t spoken to each other unless necessary since then.

-Fell in love again with one of her kithood friends, Lichenstream. Their personalities, while not similar at all, complemented each other perfectly. Bluenose finally understood that love is not about changing your partner until they no longer are themselves but adapting your habits to better coexist with them. While the couple will get into arguments sometimes, she is more willing to talk about their issues that she was back with Garlicface where raging battles were constant. Lichenstream knows that she needs time for herself and understands that her free spirit is never to change and loves her nonetheless.

-Before breaking up with Garlicface, she had Minnowcloud, Volefur and Fallowfang. The responsibility of having kits was too much for her and after breaking up with her former mate she became quite neglectful. Her sister, Mudflower, basically raised them on her own. Bluenose loves and cares for her offspring but she was too clueless to properly care for any kittens back then. Garlicface acted more like a parent figure than she did.

-Became pregnant with Lichenstream’s offspring much later. While she showed more enthusiasm about her new litter and tried caring for them as much as she could, she would still run off in search of adventure leaving her offspring unattended. Mudflower acted again as a second mother to them but this time her offspring got to see her more often.

àLichenstream is the responsibility that Bluenose lacks. Caring and compassionate Lichenstream is one of the most popular toms out there. Most question how a cat like him can be with a someone like Bluenose. Lichenstream is the best swimmer in his clan and can’t live without water for too long as he tends to get depressive if he can’t feel water under his paws. His odd fur color only adds to his charm. Unlike his mate, Lichenstream is extremely religious; cat prone to telling mythology and stories to those willing to listen to him, Lichenstream proves to be an example of how a true faithful warrior cat should be. Pretty calm and peaceful, Lichenstream prefers not to use his claws unless it is completely necessary. Tends to think of himself really highly being able of disobeying deputy, leader or seer if he thinks that his plans are better. He works extremely hard for his clan and tends to worry too much about the feelings of his clanmates, becoming quite nosy if he thinks he is doing it for the well-being of those around him.

-He is often the one having to search for Bluenose when his mate disappears without leaving a trace. He accepts this trait of her mate but does worry about her and her safety. Lately, he has started to go with Bluenose on her small adventureshoping to get closer to her and better understand why she enjoys it so much.

-Having to watch all of his family die, Lichenstream has become quite the possessive cat and prefers having his family near him where he can protect them. Bluenose has a hard time coming around his issues with her travels but is trying to spend more time with him to calm him down.

-Had a fling with a warrior from another clan who bore three of his kits. Lichenstream still feels strongly for her and daily daydreams about what could have been. Only Bluenose and Mudflower know about this. Surprisingly enough, Mudflower seems more bothered about it than his own mate does.

àGoldenstorm resembles her mother in more than one way; she is energetic, nosy and a good tracker. However, just like her father, she is extremely responsible and religious. Goldenstorm cannot stand still for more than two minutes; she believes that it is a warrior’s duty to work as hard as they possibly can to maintain their clan fed and protected making herself pass out from exhaustion often. She likes to take charge of situations and can be pretty bossy around others; she is a great strategists and can be seen often talking with the leader or deputy (much to her mother’s disbelief and anger since Garlicface is the clan’s deputy). She only seems to have two moods: cool and collected or completely angry at everyone; her ups and downs are constant and they scare everyone equally. Her slow but constant maturing made her earn her suffix; she used to be a really passive and lazy apprentice until, one day, she went out alone and a fox found her; seeing her as easy prey, the fox was capable of scarring her pretty badly. Much to her good luck, a passing patrol found her and saved her. Her wounds made her rethink about her decisions and start to change for the better. Her clan, praising change and maturing as a trait necessary in all lives, allowed her to have –storm as her suffix. She takes huge pride on her scars and sees them as beauty marks since then.

-Since she started to show interest on the deputy rank and started talking to Garlicface often, her mother has become concerned; Bluenose has tried telling her that Garlicface is only trying to get her to become a miniature himself but Goldenstorm firmly believes every word the deputy has to say. Goldenstorm thinks that her mother should work harder and tells her to do so even if she doesn’t listen to a word. They love each other nonetheless.

-Considers Mudflower a second mother and loves spending time with her.

-She has the best relationship with her father since both share similar beliefs and have a lot of things in common.

-Has a crush on her friend Aspenclaw. She is Goldenstorm’s closest friend and the only cat that can calm her down when she is angry about something.

-Has an apprentice, Eelpaw. He is pretty shy and melancholic; Goldenstorm makes him feel confident and loved since she is one of the only cats willing to listen to him and praise him.

-She spends a lot of time with her sibling, Asterleaf, and feels really proud of having them as their seer.

 àAsterleaf is the complete opposite of their mother. If it wasn’t for their beautiful spotted fur, one would think that they are Garlicface’s offspring instead of Lichenstream’s. Serious, dedicated, kind of a narcissist, religious and cunning, Asterleaf decided that their path had already been told by the gods and left their life as a warrior apprentice to join that of a seer apprentice. Considered one of the best seers their clan has to offer, Asterleaf has climbed to the highest of clan hierarchy by working extremely hard. He feels absolutely self-confident and can and will interrupt or disrespect those who dare proving him wrong. Asterleaf is known as a rather vengeful and jealous cat that knows pretty well how to hold a grudge. quick to jump to conclusion, he does hardly ever fail on their guesses. He is pretty bad with kits and apprentices who consider him a scary and shady. Extremely perceptive of his surroundings, Asterleaf always has all of their senses fixated on looking for omens to read or signs to interpret.

-Has a rather strong rivalry with Tansyfur, who was mentored seer at the same time as them. Tansyfur, with her pretty face and good mannerism, has won over the hearts of apprentices, queens and their mentor making Asterleaf completely jealous. They detest her with a burning passion even if the molly just wants to be friends.

-Their mentor, Yewheart, gets pretty fed up with Asterleaf’s narcissism. Both cats are extremely opinionated and will defend their ideas with fangs and claws making them clash continuously. Even if their interactions could be better, Asterleaf looks up to their mentor and hopes to, one day, make them proud.

-Doesn’t have the best relationship with their mother who they consider lazy and not worth their time, they prefer spending time with their father or Mudflower even if the latest would prefer them staying away from the nursery.

-Has a good relationship with Minnowcloud who they consider discreet and joyful to spend time with.

-Got his nose scar after telling Mudflower that one of her kits would grow up to be a poorly skilled warrior. She did not like it at all. He has been prohibited the entrance in the nursery since then.

àGarlicface is the current deputy. A complete narcissist, intelligent, sly, ambitious, serious and extremely responsible Garlicface meets all of his clan beauty standards. A competent father and warrior, Garlicface will make a great leader one day. He is a really good speaker and knows how to pacify rival clans with his soft and melodious voice. Charming and self-confident Garlicface made his way upwards by working hard and sticking to important figures since a very young age. Garlicface excels at running and would have been named –foot hadn’t he chosen –face. Always over-working himself, Garlicface has become quite neurotic and believes to see treachery everywhere. Rather loving and prone to romanticism, Garlicface is quick to fall in love and quick to change his mind about others. His constant love affairs leave him sad for a couple of days until he is ready to search for love again. He loves the warrior code like a mother loves his kittens and would absolutely never break a rule of it.

-He firmly believes that Lichenstream hides a secret but prefers not to think about it as he believes that it is the side of him that misses Bluenose who talks and not his brain.

-Had a relationship with Bluenose (siring Minnowcloud, Volefur and Fallowfang), Mothclaw (siring Blackpaw, Sootpaw and Acornpaw) and a loner called Misty (siring two kits, one of which joined the clans as Fogpaw).

-Feels extremely proud of his small family, he raised his kits on his own with Mudflower’s help. He spends as much time as possible with them and, as a result, is really close to them.

-Had a crush on Mudflower but the molly knew better than to mingle with him.

-Has had two mentors: Campionfoot who died before he could finish his apprenticeship and Plumpelt.

-Feels confused about Bluenose, some days he misses her some days he detests her as much as she does him. He considers her lazy, untrustworthy, neglectful and not a real warrior but misses the days they were on good terms. Back when they were mates, he expected her to become more collected as her constants goings and comings where affecting his popularity within the clan. Bluenose did not like this, of course, and after many arguments they broke up to never speak to each other again.

àMinnowcloud is a daydreamer. Often lost in thought she is quite the mysterious cat; she gets the weirdest ideas and her clanmates have a hard time understanding her. Adding to this idea, she likes to talk in riddles making her understanding even more difficult. Always calm and collected she tends to make everyone feel at peace and is often found calming anxious cats. An extremely motherly cat she tends to spend most of her time around kits helping new queens with their litters. Is known as one of the best mentors in the clan, she knows how to raise collected and polite warriors even if her apprentices have a hard time at the beginning getting used to her constants riddles. Much like her father, she is a romantic cat that enjoys spending quality time with her mate. She is a great story-teller and loves inventing new ones to teach life lessons to the clan’s kits.

-Has an obsession with white fur which she considers pure and pretty. Her obsession goes as far as, for moons, searching for a white cat outside of her clan that could sire her offspring. She finally found him looking through the outskirts of the territory. She birthed her beloved bundles of joy: Laurelpaw, Hollypaw, Lilypaw and Hemlockpaw. Her mate, Antwhisker, loves them as if they were his own.

-Showed interest in the seer rank but decided against since the clan already had one seer and two seer apprentices and she really wanted to become mother at some point.

-Constantly helps her father feel better when he overstresses himself soothing him and helping him sleep while she washes over him. Has a good relationship with Bluenose tough doesn’t really consider her her mother rather considering Mudflower.

-Treats Volefur like a kit and protects him constantly making him feel better and helping him with his trauma.

-Has a really close relationship with Asterleaf and often talk about legends, spirits and gods being Minnowcloud the first cat Asterleaf goes to talk to when they find out about a sign.

àVolefur used to be happy-go-lucky cat that loved to go out in adventure with Fallowfang. Optimistic, cheerful, a jokester and gullible cat that changed suddenly when he got hit by a car that badly damaged his leg and tail. Since then he has stopped going out being extremely scared of the outdoors he spends most of his time by his sister, mate (Snailcloud) or father’s side. Has problems with sleep since then; he dreams about cars that follow him to the camp and hit everyone there. One of the only things that help him cheer up is looking through his collection of pretty pebbles and feathers; since he no longer feels like he can go out, his brother is helping him bringing him new ones. Even tough traumatized, he is confident that he will be able of keeping up with his warrior’s duties in no time.

-Has been thinking about changing his name to Brokenleg.

-His mother tries to spend as much time as she can with him tough, with Garlicface always around, she has it difficult.

-His family and mate have been taking them to small trips around camp and surroundings.

-Has had two apprentices: Magpiepaw who received the name Magpiestream and Ivypaw. Magpiestream shows a great respect for her mentor and visits him daily while Ivypaw, who he was mentoring at the time of the accident, feels terrified at the thought of losing his mentor.

-Yewheart predicted that he will live on without problem even though Asterleaf was quick to contradict their mentor. Volefur is still confident in his recovery.

àFallowfang is a fierce, brave, rather anxious and quick-witted cat that loves venturing into the forest as much as he can to avoid the very crowded clan camp. Both a skilled fighter and hunter, Fallowfang feels overly confident in his skills, enough to venture into loner territory and come out as victorious from any battle. Since young, when his anxiety was at his highest, he has dreamt about becoming a loner so he wouldn’t have to worry about interaction all that much. He is extremely sensitive about what his family has to say about him. Sometimes he can be quite childish and is known for his tantrums. When faced with too many tasks or too many social interactions he becomes cranky and sad and his anxiety makes him completely shut down, when this happens, only his sister and a good walk can help him recover. He has the closest relationship with Volefur often taking him out with him and being one of the only cats whose presence he can tolerate for a long time.

-Sired Toadpelt’s offspring: Redkit, Gingerkit, Foxkit, Buzzardkit and Commakit.

-Admires his mother and has gone out with her in adventures more than once.

-Thinks that he is making his father worry about him since he keeps wishing to become a loner.

-Is attracted to a kittypet that lives nearby one of his favorite hunting territories.

-Has proven to be a great climber chasing birds and squirrels into their territory tough prefers to fish and hunt mice over any other prey.

-Is a great fighter tough fighting makes him feel uncomfortable.

-has never attended a gathering.

-has one apprentice, Leechpaw, who is very silent and absent making both of them feel comfortable around each other.

-Has multiple scars due to various battles.

-At the moment he has postponed his warrior’s duties to care for his brother 24h the day until he feels confident and recovered enough as to return to his duties.

Hope you guys enjoyed my family fun! next will be Lightingnose’s again!

[temple-maiden]

             On the last day of July, our class started its season of demo teaching.  This is a wise way to enhance our capabilities in speaking in front of people and also our training ground.  Of course, every beginning starts with the basics.  As we start this semester, Ms. Claire already handed us the outline and gave everyone in our class the lessons to be discussed.  

             So on the 31st, we had our 1st batch of demo teaching which, as what I’ve said before, started with one of the basics of the English language… NOUNS.  

             To properly start off, let’s begin with the common lesson under nouns. 

             Giving the meaning of Proper Nouns, it simply specifies the names of people, places, and things.  

People’s names

·       Tyler Knott Gregson

·       Alexander

·       Sally

·       Mr. Burnand

·       Aunt Georgina

·       Mrs. Heussaff

·       Uncle Erwan

The names of countries and their capital cities

·       China | Beijing

·       Japan | Tokyo

·       Great Britain | London

·       Italy | Rome

| I am longing to go to Norway to see the northern lights.

| Skylark just discovered a new café called Barkin’ Blends, wherein you can also play with dogs.

             As to the Common Nouns, it specifies the names of people, places, or things in GENERAL.

Persons | children teacher, scientist, mailman, woman, parent, doctor, girl

Animals | lion, ants, tigers, cheetah, sheep, elephants, birds, mice

Places | street, hills, beach, metropolis, city, mountain, river, province

Things | trains, battleship, tree, lichen, music, radio, plant, milk

Ideas | love, ideology, loyalty, fulfillment, patriotism, religion, peace

             From my classmate’s discussion, every proper noun has an equivalent common noun, but it doesn’t mean that every common noun has a proper noun.  Also, Common Nouns only begin with a capital letter if it is placed at the beginning of a sentence while in Proper Nouns, obviously, always start with a capital letter.  

Take note peeps:

             There are times when a word can either be used as a common noun or proper noun and you might get confused as to when you should use the capitalized form.  For example, let’s say, father.  This can either be a common and proper noun.  To get this straight, if common nouns are used as a title or name, that’s the time to make it capitalized, as it takes the place of actual names.

             Now that we’ve already defined what are the proper and common uses of specifying nouns, let’s move on to classifying its purpose. You may question a ‘word’ like, “What is its role?”  “Does it have a purpose?” “Is this word used in a singular or plural form?” “What can be an alternative to make it singular/plural?”  These questions will be answered if you keep on scrolling down (lol).  

In this section, you will learn if a word deserves to be counted or not.  

Let me introduce to you, Countable and Uncountable Nouns! (*applause)

             Countable Nouns are said to be referring to the things that can be counted and with the use of a/an, the, numbers, some/many (if the word is in plural form), many, few/a few, and how many?  They can either be singular or plural. 

a/an | a pen

the | the page

numbers | three babies

some/any (if the word is in plural form) | There are some pastel shirts in the cabinet.

many | There are many YouTubers at the event.

few/a few | There are few seats.

how many? | How many babies do you want?

             Uncountable Nouns are said to be referring to immaterial concepts like love, life, etc.  Also, these nouns are referring to stuff or liquid that cannot be counted like water, sugar, and salt (etc.).  These words are always in singular form.  It can be used with some/any, much, little/a little, and how much.

some/any | There is some blood in the tube.  | There isn’t any chocolates on the tray.  Note: a/an or numbers can’t be used before these words.

much | There isn’t much salt in my fries.

little/a little | They know a little French.

how much | How much do you need?

             Let’s give way to an important part of Uncountable words, the Partitives. Uncountable nouns can be quantified by using partitives, as to refer to a part of a whole. Here are some examples:

o   A glass of water

o   A piece of cheese

o   A loaf of bread

o   A cup of coffee

o   An item of news

o   A bar of soap

             To the nouns that are perceived by the senses and name it as something you can see, hear, touch, smell or taste, it falls under Concrete Noun.  These include people, animals, places, and objects.

People | speech pathologist, lady, Tiarra

Animals | puppy, fish, tiger

Places | Notre Dame, beach

Objects | cupcake, keys, fruit, tea

             To the nouns that we cannot hear, smell, touch, or taste, or should I say intangible things, it falls under Abstract Noun.  They are usually actions, events, ideas, states of mind, feelings.

Actions and events | childhood, October, Friday, war

Ideas | energy, freedom, luck

Conditions | cancer, flu, cold

Feelings | anger, doubt

             Let’s proceed to classify what a ‘word/noun’ is. Knowing its stand in a given sentence.  This was further discussed in Material Noun.  It is the name given to the material substance or things made up of an alloy.  Nouns in this class are almost materials like cloth, air, metal, gold, salt, iron, silver, etc.

Sample sentences:

Cotton dresses are very cheap and comfortable.    

I bought a gold ring for my mother’s birthday.

Calcium is a good mineral for health.

Plastic is made up of many molecules of ethylene.

Material Noun has 4 categories namely, Material nouns from nature, from animals, from plants, and man-made.

Material nouns from nature | water, silver, iron, sand, rock, rain, salt, air, gold, copper, coal, sunlight, earth, etc.

Material nouns from animals | egg, honey, silk, wool, meat, milk, leather, etc.

Material nouns from plants | cotton, oil, jute, medicine, rubber, food, wood, coffee, tea, perfume, etc.

Man-made material nouns | acid, asphalt, cement, chalk, cheese, ebony, felt, paraffin, alcohol, etc.

Of course, we still have rules in using these nouns.  In general, articles such as a, an or the, are not used with material nouns if those are uncountable like:

·      Honey is wholesome food and beneficial to health.

·      Water boils only at 100°C temperature.

On the other hand, articles may be used with material nouns if those are countable such as:

·         I would like to eat a Dutch cheese.

·         It is a very healthy wine.

Use of ‘the’ and ‘some’ can also be done in the following way:

·         The honey in the bottle is mine.

·         I saw there is some milk in the glass.

             After knowing the stand of a noun in a sentence, giving importance to its gender is truly appreciated.  Gender-specific Nouns got your back.  It refers specifically to a male or a female.  When a noun’s meaning makes its gender masculine or feminine, it is considered to be a gender-specific noun.  Gender-specific nouns will give you four types: Masculine Gender, Feminine Gender, Common Gender and Neuter Gender.

Masculine Gender denotes a MALE SEX. These are words for men, boys and male animals. Dad | bull | drake | ram | boar

Feminine Gender denotes a FEMALE SEX.  These are words for women, girls and female animals. actress | waitress | vixen | bitch | sow

Common Gender denotes either a male or a female. soldier | student | cat | whale

Neuter Gender denotes a lifeless thing. It denotes a thing that is neither male nor female. book | pen | room | tree

Note these words, peeps.

Masculine                           Feminine   Father                                      Mother Son                                          Daughter Man                                          Woman Emperor                                   Empress Bachelor                                   Spinster

Animal       Masculine        Feminine Goose          Gander               Goose Fox               Fox                     Vixen Pig                Boar                   Sow Horse           Stallion                Mare Donkey         Jack                    Jenny

Masculine                            Feminine Boy                                           Girl Dog                                           Bitch King                                          Queen Monk                                         Nun Drake                                        Duck

These fingers of mine are tired of typing already and so do you in reading. 

Have a break. Have a 

There’s more to go.  Don’t procrastinate. Read these all NOW!

By adding a syllable (-ess, -ine, -trix, -a, etc.) Author | Authoress Heir | Heiress Shepherd | Shepherdess Poet | Poetess Lion | Lioness Executor | Executrix Testator | Testatrix

By adding –ess after dropping the vowel of the masculine ending Actor | Actress Duke | Duchess Waiter | Waitress Negro | Negress Abbot | Abbess

By a suffix or prefix Man-servant | Maid-servant Grand-father | Grand-mother Land-lord | Land-lady Bull-calf | Cow-calf Pea-cok | Pea-hen

Note: Objects without life are often personified that is spoken of as if they were living beings.  We then regard them as males or females.

·      Masculine gender is applied to object remarkable for strength and violence.

The Sun | Summer | Winter | Death| The sun sheds his beams in rich and poor alike.

·      Feminine gender is sometimes applied to objects remarkable for beauty, gentleness, and gracefulness.

The Moon | The Earth | Spring | Nature | The moon has hidden her face behind a cloud.

             Now, we’re down to identifying a noun’s singular and plural form. This is to note that not all nouns are to be made in plural form just by adding –s.  We’re almost done so please keep on reading.

Regular Nouns and their Plurality

These nouns’ plurality are usually formed just by adding –s and –es at the end of the word. student | students successor | successors pass | passes 

A.     Nouns ending in ch, s, sh, x, or z match | matches miss | misses marsh | marshes fox | foxes buzz | buzzes 

B. Nouns ending in ce, ge, se, or ze lace | laces cage | cages house | houses glaze | glazes 

C. Nouns ending in y (preceded by a consonant) story | stories city | cities

(preceded by a vowel) toy | toys key | keys 

D. Nouns ending in o (preceded by a consonant) potato | potatoes veto | vetoes photo | photos memo | memos

(preceded by a vowel) folio | folios video | videos

There are nouns ending in –o which are either added by –s or –es

avocado | avocados/avocadoes

motto | mottos/mottoes 

Most other nouns ending in o, particularly those Spanish and Italian origin, can form the plural by simply adding –s.

soprano |sopranos

sombrero | sombreros

Nouns ending in –oo

zoo | zoos          

tattoo | tattoos

 E. Nouns ending in f, fe, or ff ‘f’  to ‘v’ transition sheaf | sheaves self | selves

‘fe’ to ‘ves’ transition life | lives wife | wives

‘f’, just by adding –s surf | surfs

 There are nouns ending in –f which are either added by –s or –es

dwarf | dwarfs/dwarves

staff | staffs/staves

 Irregular Nouns and their Plurality

Add or change to –en child | children ox | oxen

-oo- to –ee-  transition foot | feet goose | geese 

-ouse to –ice transition mouse | mice louse | lice

-us to –i transition cactus | cacti focus | foci/focuses fungus | fungi/funguses stimulus | stimuli 

-is to –es transition analysis | analyses crisis | crises thesis | theses oasis | oases ellipsis | ellipses

-ix/-ex to –ces transition appendix | appendices index | indexes/indeces matrix | matrixes/matrices 

-eau to –eaux/-eaus transition               beau | beaux bureau | bureaux/bureaus tableau | tableaux/tableaus

-um, -ium, -us, -on to –a transition stratum | strata               bacterium | bacteria genus | genera phenomenon | phenomena 

-a to –ae transition antenna | antennae/antennas formula | formulae/formulas vertebra | vertebrae vita | vitae

 There are nouns that forms their plurality without changing or adding any affix to them.

Plurality form of hyphenated nouns fathers-in-law runners-up

Numbers and Letters’ Plurality form

3’s b’s %’s

 THERE YOU HAVE IT! Thank you for giving me the patience that I deserve as you continue reading this post.  Lemme have a break and see you on my next blog. Ciao!

[bestpowerbanksinindiaunder1000]

How to Choose a Domain Name that ROCKS!!!

Okay, so after many painstaking hours of researching keywords and niches, you’ve finally narrowed your search down to a niche that you’re sure will be a real bread-winner.  The next step is to choose a domain name.

This shouldn’t be just any domain name.  This is the first impression most people will see when they visit your website, not to mention referral links from other websites.  It can also play a great big factor in your site’s SEO (or Search Engine Optimization if you just landed on Earth).  That’s right.  Search engines tend to favor sites with the main keywords included in the domain.

The process to choose a domain name is fairly simple, but you have to put some considerable thought into it.  Why?  Because once your site is pretty well established, you’re stuck with it for the long haul…  That is unless you want to start all over again.

Begin by deciding what type of site you are going to build.  Are you trying to build up a brand, promote a product or build a keyword rich authority site?

What’s the difference?

A site designed to build up a brand name usually uses a company’s brand name or similar for the domain.  An example of this would be, if you’re name were Greg and you are starting a blog about gardening, you might choose a domain name like gardeningwithgreg.com.  This domain is designed to promote the brand “Gardening with Greg”.  This site, www.majormoneytips.com uses a “brand building” domain name as well.

If you were building a website for a local business with a physical storefront, usually you will want to use a “brand building” domain name because a lot of people will use the internet to search for the actual name of the business (or brand) in addition to the products and services that business offers.

A keyword rich authority site on the other hand will have a domain name that exactly matches the main keyword targeted for that site (or close to it).  If you want people to find your site for the key phrase:  “garden fresh salsa recipes” then you would want the domain of your authority site to be “gardenfreshsalsarecipes.com” or “bestgardensalsarecipes.com” etc.  You would then keep adding more and more “high quality” content to the site using a variation of your main key phrase with each new piece of content added.

There is a lot of potential with authority sites.  If they are built correctly and use the proper SEO techniques, they can make a lot of passive income simply by adding Adsense or Amazon affiliate links to the content.

CLICK HERE to learn how to make over $100k per year building authority sites

Another thing to consider is the potential growth of your website over time.  For example, hippieweddingdresses.com may have worked for a micro niche site prior to the Google zoo updates (Panda & Penguin), but if you’re building large authority site, then a domain such as uniqueweddingdresses.com may allow for more possibilities to expand the content offered.

An authority site usually has a bare minimum of 20 articles, but the more the better.  Do you think you could write 20 unique articles about hippie wedding dresses?  Maybe you could but I know I would have a very difficult time.

On the other hand, the keyword “unique wedding dresses” offers a much more broad range of micro niche keywords within itself.  You could write articles targeting keywords such as hippie wedding dresses, camouflage wedding dresses, wedding dresses for the beach, duct tape wedding dresses, etc., because each of these keywords fall under the “unique wedding dresses” topic.  More of these types of  keywords can easily be discovered using Google Suggest or the Google Keyword Tool as shown in the above video.

What if my site will be used for promoting a popular affiliate product or brand?

Promote away but be careful when choosing your domain name.  Unless you have written permission from the source, stay away from using product names or brand names that you don’t own the rights to.

Wouldn’t it suck to be making $100 per day from your “DiscountAmazonKindle.com” site when you receive a Cease and Desist letter from Amazon and are forced to delete the domain name?

Spencer Haws over at Niche Pursuits wrote an excellent article explaining why he no longer takes the risk with buying branded domain names.  He also gives some great alternatives.  You can read his article here:

http://www.nichepursuits.com/should-you-buy-branded-domains/

Does the top-level domain extension really matter?

Short answer: Yes!

When people think about a website or the internet in general, one of the first things to pop in their minds is “.com”.  This is because the “.com” extension is and always has been the most popular website extension.

You may find that a lot of your visitors may arrive at your site by directly typing your domain name into the address bar of their web browser as opposed to search engines or referrals from another site.  If these visitors type the wrong web extension, you could be missing out on paying customers who cannot find your site or worse yet, arrive at a competitor’s site with their wallets wide open.

If the .com domain name you want is not available try contacting the owner and see if they would be willing to sell it.  Be prepared to pay a premium price though.

Another thing you can do is add a prefix or suffix to the domain you are after.  If examplesite.com is not available then maybe consider bestexamplesite.com, examplesiteblog.com or examplesitestore.com.

If you’ve exhausted all ends and absolutely cannot find a .com domain for your site, your next choice should be .net and .org in that order.  Obviously if you are trying to build a brand, you may seriously want to consider buying all three and setting up the .net and .org to redirect to the .com extension.  This will eliminate the possibility of someone setting up a site on one of these other domains in effort to try to get a portion of your visitors.

Unless you are designing a website for a government agency (.gov) or an educational institution (.edu), stay away from the cheaper, lesser known domain names such as .biz or .info.  These may cost you as little as $2 – $3 to register but people know they are cheap and will therefore make you and your brand appear cheap as well.

Country specific top-level domains such as .ca (Canada) or .uk (United Kingdom) may be used if your site will only be targeting visitors within those countries, otherwise stick with a .com.

A Super Cool Tool

A while back Keith Everett of askthetipster.com did a great video tutorial about how to use “Bust a Name” to discover domain names that most people would overlook.  Check out his video below and give him a big ole’ “like” if he helped you out.

Can I choose a domain name with a hyphen?

I’ve heard somewhere that the general rule of thumb is to use no more than two hyphens in a domain name.  I tend to agree with that but if possible, lose them completely.  The idea is to make the domain name as easy to remember as possible.  This is especially true if you plan to do a lot of offline promotion with classifieds or yellow page ads, business cards or especially radio where you expect your visitors to type your domain into a web browser.

In some cases however, a hyphen will break up multiple words of a domain making it actually easier to read and remember.  Just use discretion and always be thinking of ways to make it easier for the end user.

Speaking of making it easier, try to keep your domain name to no longer than 25 characters although shorter would even be better.  Also avoid abbreviations and using numbers in place of words.  For example: methods2success.com or thegr8estworkouts.com.  Remember, make it easy for people to find and remember your site.

ALERT! Cost savings ahead

Before you go out and spend your hard earned money for a full priced domain name, check to see if there are any coupons out there that you can use to discount your order.  I buy my domains from GoDaddy.com and I can’t speak for some of the other domain registrars but GoDaddy offers coupons and discount codes on a regular basis.  I’ve seen discounts of up to 30% off your order with no minimum purchase.

Just do a Google search for “GoDaddy coupon codes” (or Namecheap, etc) and see what you can find.  I’ve never paid full price for my domain names and you shouldn’t either.

In Conclusion…

Definitely invest some thought and research when you choose a domain name for your website.  Otherwise you may regret it later down the road.  Decide early on if you will be building a brand name or go the route of the authority site.  Try to find a .com over all other top-level-domains and always be thinking about ways to make the domain name easy to type and remember for the end user.  Oh yeah, and don’t forget to take advantage of coupons and discounts whenever possible.

Leave me a comment below to let me know what you think, also check this references too.

https://www.codecademy.com/profiles/board5629144935 https://www.kaskus.co.id/post/5e99906efacb95112a152a33/1#post5e99906efacb95112a152a33 https://issuu.com/joshuawilliams22 https://hackerone.com/harshverma2030 http://www.authorstream.com/harshverma2030/ https://github.com/JoshuaWilliams22 https://ecastats.uneca.org/acsweb/cr/UserProfile/tabid/866/userId/821850/language/en-US/Default.aspx https://www.wantedly.com/users/135272877 https://ello.co/harshverma2030 https://www.producthunt.com/@leonardallen1

[beimanorthrun-blog]

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Most students who struggle with nonfiction lack the strategies needed to comprehend complex, grade-appropriate text. Research shows that comprehension increases when students receive direct reading strategy instruction as they read compelling content.

Traditionally, students are inundated with fictional text at early grades and cannot always use strategies to comprehend nonfiction effectively. Nonfiction is particularly challenging because of its unfamiliar vocabulary and new concepts. Kids don’t have the background knowledge to make the connections they need to read with understanding. Since they are not getting meaning from text, they might complain that the text is “boring,” or they might say something like, “I read it but I don’t get it.”

Comprehension increases when students learn and practice proficient reading strategies. They need to learn how to “get into the author’s head” to see why information was organized and presented in a particular way.

“The right technology can be very useful in helping students learn the strategies they need to comprehend nonfiction text.”

When choosing software for your students, look for programs that teach specific nonfiction strategic thinking. These programs must also provide students with ample practice.

Students need to be taught strategies such as:

How nonfiction text is organized and how to use nonfiction features to sharpen thinking and to navigate text. This would include:

How title pages, tables of contents, chapter headings, titles and subheadings, indexes, and glossaries can help students understand information.

How to read charts and graphs.

How to use print and text features to understand text.

How to think strategically through text. This would include lessons such as:

How to infer the meaning of new concepts from context. This includes rereading sentences before and after the confusing text, as well as reviewing text and print features, and graphics.

How to figure out new vocabulary meaning from context, as well as how to use prefixes, word roots, and suffixes to understand new words.

How to make text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world connections.

How to determine importance and discern supporting details.

Students need to be taught reading strategies in context. In other words, choose software that requires students to use strategic thinking to answer questions. After a strategy is explained and modeled, check to see that students are given questions that require that type of strategic thinking.

It is also easy to create simple Google Doc templates that help students practice strategic thinking as they read. Here are a few suggestions.

Creating Sensory Images: Have you ever experienced a time when you were so “into” a book you could almost taste, smell, and feel the physical sensations you would have if you were in the situation? To teach students how to visualize when they read, ask them to identify text that helps them form a picture in their minds. Then encourage students to stop and take the time to draw simple pictures of new concepts, terms, or ideas as they read. You may even have them draw a cartoon or graphic version of the assigned nonfiction text. This will also help them summarize the important points of the text. At the conclusion of the lesson, have students share their ideas with each other and with the class. A vocabulary graphic organizer may look like this:

Questioning Text: We may ask question because we wonder about something or because we are confused. Students should be encouraged to ask questions before, while and after they read nonfiction text. One way to get students to think about their questions is to have them complete a Google Doc template such as the one pictured below.

Before reading, have students preview the topic by glancing at the title page, table of contents, headings, pictures and captions. Then have them jot down some information and use it to ask a few predictive questions they think the author might answer.

During reading, have students explain what they learned so far, which of their previous questions were answered, and what new questions they still have.

After reading, have students write the most important things they learned, as well as what questions they still have, and how they might find the answers to these questions. Then have students discuss how the nature of their questions changed over the course of their reading and talk about why some questions weren’t answered.

Another useful activity is to have students create 3-5 evidence based questions for a specific text. Have them make up questions and answer keys, and ask each other questions.

PART 2

Top Mistake # 2: Provide Nonfiction Text Without a Specific Reading Focus

We know that students come to us with very different needs and abilities. Continually giving students text they cannot comprehend only increases their frustration and makes them feel that reading is boring or useless. If students are always given text that is too difficult, they begin to associate school, and/or the subject in which they are given this frustrating reading, as pointless. They may either give up reading altogether or just do “fake reading” so they don’t get in trouble. Often students, who have not read or understood the text, get away with it in class, because they wait for another student to make a comment and then they piggyback off of what that student says. Sometimes they even piggyback off of what the teacher says.

Effective software programs help students at different skill levels. There are some important things to keep in mind when selecting suitable comprehension software. Make sure that the text provided is well written, accurate, clear and interesting to students. If it is has new concepts and/or vocabulary that is unfamiliar to the students, make sure that the program provides clear definitions and vocabulary instruction. The text should be relevant, and well-written so that it will inspire students to delve deeply into the topic.

Here is what to look for:

1. Topic: What will students learn by using this software? What are the instructional goals?

2. How well-written is the text? How relevant and topical is it? Will students be able to relate to it? Will it keep the students engaged?

3. How accurate is it?

4. Is the text clearly written? Are new terms defined? Are there graphics that help depict meaning?

It is also important for software programs to teach students strategies that will help them make sense of confusing text. If you are choosing software for students to use that will help them learn information, check to see if the program does the following:

Provide a focus for reading by verbally explaining what students should look for as they read.

Determine which strategies are most useful in constructing meaning of a specific text and present those strategies. It is best if this type of strategic thinking is demonstrated to the students.

Include vocabulary activities that students can do in advance of the reading andwhile they read.

Have clear directions about what students will do with the information they learn. Will they answer questions or take notes? Will they be required to teach others what they have learned?

Note-making

Teaching students how to take notes is important. Once you set the focus for reading you can teach students how to take notes that will promote comprehension. Some software has note taking built in. If not, the teacher can design simple graphic organizers, using Google Docs, for students to take notes. Review all directions with students.

Sample Note Taking Graphic Organizers

Let’s say your goal is to have your students read text, take a stand, and make a cogent argument for their stand. You may have them take notes on a T-chart that you can put into a Google Doc. Students can write the pros of the argument on one side and the cons on another. After that they can group the pros and cons in categories for making their arguments.

If your goal is to have students understand the main points of a piece of nonfiction text, the software you choose needs to teach them what to look for. Students should always review the titles, headings, subheadings, topic sentences and first and last paragraphs. You can then ask students to find the three most important things they have learned and present their reasoning. The class can then discuss/debate what is most important and why.

PART 3

Top Mistake # 3: Water Down Information for Struggling Readers

Students of today face many challenges. They are entering a world that is changing at an unprecedented pace. Students face an uncertain future where they will undoubtedly need to be able to acquire new skills, and solve new problems, that are unknowable at the present moment.

Teachers need to prepare students for these immense challenges. Educators need more effective and efficient ways of meeting the needs of diverse groups of students.

Students at all skill levels need to be taught rigorous, thought provoking, grade-appropriate information. If we continually water down information for students who struggle with reading, we will only widen the gap between those who can achieve and those who cannot.

Effective Technology and Reading

One of the great advantages of technology is that students can read the same information at different readability levels, and have access to the individual support systems needed.

Effective technology can determine how much, and what types of support, a student needs to answer questions correctly, and then adjust both the text and the supports to target their individual needs. Students should be able to read 96%-100% of a text, with ease, for it to be on their independent level and 90-95% of a text, with ease, for it to be at their instructional level. Text that they read with less than 90% accuracy is at the frustration level.

Think about it this way.

If you stumbled over more than 1 out of every 10 words when you read, how likely would you be to continue to read and try to make sense of the text?

The challenge is to find software that is written on many different levels with the same information, text organization, pictures, and captions. And there is never a one size fits all solution.

In fact, the same student will read about a familiar topic of special interest at a higher level than an unfamiliar one. The text should look the same at all levels, with the same paragraph structure, so that no student feels embarrassed.

Students should also be required to answer the same high-level thinking questions. If we continually water down questions for struggling readers, they never learn how to think strategically and construct deep meaning from text.

Support systems must be scaffolded. Students who need additional support should receive that support automatically from a well-constructed program. That assistance should be respectful and leave room for students to think as independently as possible.

Students, who do not need any special support, should be able to work more independently. If students receive too much unnecessary assistance, they learn to lean on this assistance like a crutch.

Online Programs

One way to find leveled text for students is to use online programs where all students have access to the same rich information, but where the readability levels of the text, and the support systems provided, adjust to the individual user.

Be careful to choose programs that automatically adjust to students’ individual needs. If not, you either have to disrupt your teaching to make the necessary adjustments yourself, which can be daunting, or run the risk of turning students off to reading altogether.

When students are continually assigned texts that are too challenging, they become frustrated and more often than not, decide that it’s not worth their time and effort. The best software programs teach students the strategies and skills they need to construct text meaning, and then give them lots of practice using these skills to understand grade-appropriate, interesting and relevant information.

Concept density can also be a serious problem for students who struggle with new information. Content should be broken into manageable segments for these students, and as they read, they should be asked many questions to ensure that they understand each new concept as they read. This prevents frustration and allows students to build up a repertoire of information that they can use to make good connections.

Printable Materials

If you are looking for free strategy graphic organizers that will help your students understand text, or lesson plans that support strategic thinking, there are many websites that you may find useful, here are a couple to get you started:

A useful Website for free Graphic Organizers and Nonfiction Teaching Ideas go tolearning resources (on the top menu bar) at caboces.org

A useful website for Strategic Lesson Plans: http://www.readworks.org/lessons/grades

Harriet Isecke is an award-winning author and educator and is the CEO/Founder of Mtelegence dba Readorium, an automatically adaptive science reading comprehension program that is recommended by the National Science Teachers Association. Readorium was a Cool Tool finalist in The EdTech Awards for 2016. The comprehension program also won the 2018 International Reimagine Award for K-12 Education, and the 2016 CODiE Award for Best Reading Solution. Readorium uses the strategies described above. Write to: harriet.isecke@readorium.com or call 201.836,8403.

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Week of September 25

9-11 Class Learning Highlights

Language Arts:  

4th Grade: This week fourth graders discussed not just what characters do, but how they do it.  We developed defensible ideas about characters.  We used the story arc to notice important details about characters and found meaning in repeated details.  

5th Grade: This week we discussed analytical thinking as readers, specifically how you might select a part of your book, then rank or compare story elements. We also studied other students’ writing about reading and revised writing entries based on what constitutes powerful writing about reading.

Math:

Blue & Green: Students in these groups represented mixed numbers with units of tens, ones and tenths with place value disks on the number line and in expanded form, used meters to model the decomposition of one whole into hundredths and represented and counted hundredths and modeled the equivalence of tenths and hundredths using the area model and place value disks.

Purple: This week students developed an intuitive understand of equivalent ratios by using tape diagrams to explore possible quantities of each part when given the part-to-part ratio.  Given a ratio, students identified equivalent ratios and used tape diagrams and the description of equivalent ratios to determine if two ratios were equivalent.  Finally, students used tape diagrams to find an equivalent ratio when given the part-to-part ratio and the total of those two quantities and made the connection between the constant, c, in the definition of equivalent ratios and the value of the unit in the tape diagram used to solve ratio problems.  

Red & Orange: Comparing numbers based on meanings of the digits, using >, <, or = to record the comparison, and finding 1, 10, and 100 thousand more and less than a given number.

Yellow: Using the area model and number line to represent mixed numbers with units of ones, tenths, and hundredths in fraction and decimal forms, and building mixed numbers with units of hundreds, tens, ones, tenths, and hundredths in expanded form and on the place value chart.

History:

4th Grade:  4th Graders have been sent home with a very brief research assignment about their family’s history, more specifically regarding how and when their families came to America.  We will be using this as a jumping off point for our unit on the Age of Exploration.  The information will be due back after Simchat Torah but students will be doing some check-ins with Tani in the upcoming week.

5th Grade: Students continued their independent research on George Washington vs. King George III, comparing British and colonial governments, and learning about the Stamp Act, Sugar Act, and Tea Act.

Yahadut:

Students spend the week learning about Yom Kippur, focusing on the process of doing Teshuva (repentance) to our fellow humans and to God.  Students learned the specific verses from the book of Vayikra (Leviticus) where the holiday is first mentioned in the Torah and discussed what is clear and what could be further explained.  

5th Graders also learned the first two mishnayot in the 8th chapter of Mishnah Yoma and discussed what the Mishnah has added to our understanding of Yom Kippur and its practices.

Ivrit:

Be’er Sheva, Tel Aviv  and Yerushalayim: We read the book “לא רוצה לקום” (I don’t want to get up) and discussed how we get up in the morning and what we drink in the morning. The children spoke about what’s happening in the book, and used new and old vocabulary to answer and ask questions.

Rehovot: We read the book “Kova Ksamin” and spoke about what we would want from a magical hat. We learned how to play Hebrew letter remicube and used it as a tool to practice spelling.

Haifa: In continuation of reading “Kova Ksamin” last week, we wrote about a place we would want to travel to. We learned the correct conjugation in future tense, and refreshed ourselves on present and past. We spoke using the correct conjugation, and going back to edit our work.

Chumash:

Rashi and Ramban: We learned Psukim 1-7 in chapter 24, talking about Avraham sending his servant to find a wife for Yitzchak. We spoke about Hashem’s promise to Avraham, and the journey he is asking his servant to make.

Eben Ezra: We learned psukim 12-20 in chapter 37, and spoke about the brother’s actions and motives. The students practiced answering questions about the text in full  sentences in Hebrew, and asking their own questions about the text.

Sforno: The students learned Psukim 12-17 in chapter 37, and found prefixes suffixes and roots in the text. We spoke about why Ya’akov may have sent Yosef to find the brothers, and what was Yosef thinking on his journey.

Questions

Language Arts:  

4th Grade: How do we grow ideas about characters?

5th Grade: What revising did you do this week to deepen your thinking about your reading?

Math:

Blue & Green: What is 12 9/10 in decimal form and expanded form, and how much to get to the next one?  

Purple: The Overlook Ski Resort has started to keep track of the number of skiers and snowboarders who bought season passes.  The ratio of the number of skiers who bought season passes to the number of snowboarders who bought season passes is 1:2.  If 1, 250 more snowboarders bought season passes than skiers, how many snowboarders and how many skiers bought season passes?

Red & Orange: Find 10 thousand  more than 546,720. Find 1 thousand less than 458,316

Yellow: What is the decimal and mixed number form of (3x100)+(2x10)+(5x0.01)?

History:

4th Grade: Please discuss with your family when and from where your family came to America.

5th Grade: Discuss something you learned from your history research this week.

Science: What is your astronomy in the marketplace item? Can you find any examples at home?

Yahadut: What is one big difference that you learned about between Yom Kippur in the Torah and Yom Kippur today?

Ivrit:

Be’er Sheva, Tel Aviv and Yerushalayim: מה את\ה שותה בבוקר? את\ה אוהב לקום בבוקר או לישון?

Rehovot: אם היה לך כובע קסמים, מה היית רוצה?

Haifa: לאן בעולם היית רוצה לטייל?

Chumash:

Rashi and Ramban: What kind of wife did Avraham want for Yitzchak? What kind of wife didn’t he want? What did Hashem bless Avraham with? What did he promise him?

Eben Ezra: What was one of your questions? What do you think the brothers’ plan says about them?

Sforno: Why do you think Ya’akov sent Yosef to the brothers? Do you think it was a good idea? Why? Why not?