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wildermindfic · 7 years ago

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Wilder Mind: One

I had just gotten back from lunch in the break room to discover a stack of papers larger than the ones I left. I sighed and sat down in my chair ready to tackle the rest of the work I would have to do.

I had been working in the same design firm since I graduated from college as a computer science major. Luckily I had found a job fresh out of school, seeing as most of my friends were not so lucky, but I was slowly making my name here.

I watched as my boss, Elliot Rhodes, strolled out of his office on the way to the break room going through the maze of cubicles.

"Horan, Styles, we've got a meeting in a half hour, I expect you both to make it this time yeah?" Mr. Rhodes said.

"Yes sir you'll see us if we can get cracking on these papers." I commented.

"Alright looking forward to it boys." he said and continued on.

I looked up from the stack to see my mate Harry sighing as he looked at his pile.

"God that guy is really starting to get on my nerves, just because he's the boss doesn't mean he doesn't have any work to do, he shouldn't just be strolling around the office with his fly down watching us all work our asses off." Harry ranted.

"Well it is quite enjoyable watching him make an ass of himself everyday, it at least gives everyone something to talk about." I laughed at him.

"Where'd these stacks come from?" he groaned.

"Well you're supposed to be proofreading them so that I can code them in." I commented. "Just more work for me to do."

Harry was a good guy, we got hired at the same time five years ago and took a great liking to each other from sitting in cubes across from each other. Now he was one of my best mates and I'm glad we got stuck in this company together.

I looked down at the first sheet and logged back into my computer. I was mainly involved in writing code to send off to our clients to use for their websites which is a long and tedious process. I had to relearn how to code in HTML and CSS once I got the job. Luckily most in the stack were just fixing a few fonts here and there but I had two complete template changes to work on as well due in by the end of the night.

"Wanna get a drink after work? Today has been completely taxing." Harry asked.

"Yeah I'm in, as long as this gets done." I sighed.

The two of us kept typing away and passing each other papers up until our meeting. The whole office started standing up and rolling their chairs off to the conference room while I was finishing up some code.

"Come on Ni, don't want to walk in late." Harry said while standing and pushing back his hair.

"Alright give me one more second I don't want this to crash." I commented.

I put the closing brace on the code and saved it to look it over after the meeting. I stood and straightened my tie and followed Harry into the room, sneaking in the back so we could make a quick escape when the time came. Rhodes gave us a glance as I shut the door behind me. We were always the last ones in the room and attempted to be the first ones out.

"Alright ladies and gentlemen, just a brief meeting today." Rhodes said clearing his throat. "We've had new employees training over the last couple weeks and they'll be joining us all tomorrow so welcome them and help them out."

"Just what we need, more employees whose work we'll just have to redo." Harry muttered to me under his breath.

"I'll be calling many of you into my office throughout the rest of the day to talk a few things through with you but don't worry there's no layoffs this quarter." Rhodes continued.

You could hear the entire room exhale, myself included, at this comment. Apparently we were doing alright business, this is the first quarter since I got here they haven't fired or laid anyone off. We've been pretty lucky.

"This Friday is bar night at McKinley's, I won't be there I'll be out of town but it all still goes on our tab. You're welcome." he joked gaining a laugh from the room.

He took another ten minutes of our time talking about the new clients who we will be working on and showing us some finalized long term projects. It was refreshing to see some of my collaborative work up on the screen. I have been in this company long enough and it was exciting to finally get recognized for all that I do. Nobody seems to understand how hard it is to do what I do.

"Alright everybody, you can go on back to work. I'll meet with some of you later." Rhodes said closing his binder.

As promised Harry and I were the first two out the door making a quick escape. We rolled back to our desks and sat back down to our work.

"The last thing I want to do is sit down with that man alone, I have so much shit I have to get done." I sighed.

"He acts like he's all high and mighty over us but he's just facilitating, I doubt he can even start his computer." Harry chuckled.

"I just don't know what he even has to talk to anyone about in private." I said while typing along.

Rhodes continued to call people in and out of his office throughout the afternoon. Most of the people walking out looked incredibly distressed with a stack full of papers. Maybe it was a good thing we were getting some new employees in. One of our mates Nate walked out and rolled his eyes as he carried a large binder.

"Harry, do you have any extra time to look over this for me? It just got vetoed by him for a third time. I don't know what I'm missing in it." Nate asked while leaning on our cube.

He was a proofreader, like Harry, who got hired last year sometime. He was a young guy fresh out of college but fit in with us immediately. Rhodes liked to give him a hell constantly.

"Yeah, I'll look at it. What did he say about it this time?" Harry asked.

"A direct quote would be 'Nathan these margins look like shit and the font size is obviously very far off. This is some of the worst workmanship I've seen from you yet.' But he's not gonna discipline Eliza who was the designer on it who made it look like shit because he's been fucking her. This is fucking bullshit." Nate groaned.

"He's been fucking her? Of all people?" I whispered to them. "I mean neither of them are dime pieces by far but she could do a hell of a lot better."

"How do you even know all of this?" Harry asked flipping through the binder.

"Josie knows absolutely everything in this office, talk to her sometime." he said. "I better go back to my desk, he'll come out and snap on me otherwise."

I leaned back in my chair and looked over the other sheets of paper in my stack. I was halfway through the other template change when Rhodes walked out of the office to get his next subject.

"Styles, Horan, both of you in here please." he said looking in our direction.

I groaned and cracked my back before standing up. Harry closed the binder and we walked across the sea of cubes to his office.

"Why do you think he wants both of us?" Harry asked me.

"Maybe because he knows we can't stand him when we're left alone with him." I shrugged.

We walked through the door into the glass walls and I shut the door behind me. Harry took a seat closer to the wall leaving me to be directly in front of Rhodes.

"Boys, I'm sorry I've been dumping all this extra work on you lately, you guys are really the only two I can rely on to get it done." he explained. "I'd actually like to promote both of you and give you raises, how does that sound?"

Harry's eyebrows went up and my mouth opened slightly. We looked over at each other and he scooted his chair closer to Rhodes's desk. He was being awfully nice to us. This was completely unlike him.

"That sounds more than alright." I answered for both of us.

"I thought you might say that. But you're going to get a few more responsibilities around here. I'm gonna have you supervise a few of the new hires and the freelancers who we'll have coming in over the next few months." he continued on.

"How many people will we have to manage?" Harry asked.

"Well I've decided to put you two and a couple of the new hires on a team together. One is a print designer and the other is a web designer. You'll teach them the ropes a little more and they'll slowly become more independent. They have great promise. Niall, you'll work more closely with the web designer and hopefully teach him a little code yeah?"

"That is very manageable." I replied.

"And we plan on using that long bar on the windowsill to be for the freelancers who will be in and out. Throw some computers along the edge and it can be a very modern place for them to work. I have a few that are coming in starting tomorrow, but they'll work in the old room. There's four other new employees that Josie and Nathan are going to look after, and then I hired another secretary named Kaine because poor Helen has been swamped for the past month out there. So I told Kaine to report to you guys too." he continued on. "I think that's about all, any questions boys?"

"I don't think so." Harry said looking at me with inquisitive eyes.

"You think Nate can handle people working under him already?" I questioned.

"You know, I like to give him a really hard time just because he's still new here but he's a hard worker and does some good stuff. I think he can do it." Rhodes said. "Anything else?"

"Nope, was just interested." I answered.

"Alright, so thanks for your hard work, you deserve the raise. Don't make me regret giving them to you. There's plenty of other people who deserve it, so don't screw up." he said.

Ah yes, there was the old Rhodes we knew and hated. Harry and I got on our feet and shook his hand before walking out the door.

"What the hell was that?" Harry laughed as we knocked shoulders in celebration.

"I think we have to go get drinks now, on me." I smiled.

We walked back to out desks and sat down to finish our work for the day. As soon as the clock hit five we shut down the computers and grabbed our belongings. I put a couple of files in the leather knapsack I brought with me everyday to look over at home and grabbed my keys off my desk.

"Meet you at the Pony?" I asked.

"Yeah sounds good, I was hoping you'd suggest that." Harry nodded as we walked out of the building. "Hey Nate, come with us for a drink?"

"Yeah where are you headed?" Nate said catching up with us.

"The Pony, it's on 10th." I said.

We got to the pub and sat at the bar with the rest of the people just getting out of work.

"Hey how's things going with Kira?" Nate asked me.

"Eh they're alright. You'd think we've been together long enough that she wouldn't constantly try to pick fights with me, but you never know. Especially when she comes to mine after work she gets pretty testy." I admitted.

"You still have the ring?" Harry questioned.

"Yeah but lately I haven't wanted to marry her with how she's been, if things get better I might propose, but it's not looking too good right now." I sighed.

"I mean, you're 27, you've been looking to settle down by now haven't you?" Nate asked taking swig of his beer.

"Yeah, I'm just gonna feel it out. I don't wanna force it you know?" I explained myself.

"Don't ask her if you don't want, you're still young Ni, all the ladies will swarm you." Harry joked.

"Thanks buddy." I smiled.

We finished up and paid for our drinks. I said goodbye to the lads and drove off to my flat.

I still had some work to finish off. I grabbed the leftovers out of the fridge then went to sit down by the TV and pulled out my papers. After I finished my last papers up I stood up to go into the kitchen.

I cleaned some dishes and took my pills before I headed off to my room and laid in bed.

Tomorrow was another new start.

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lolitain · 6 years ago

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Chapter Two – Some Competition

“So, that’s differentiation and integration for you.” Mr. Rogers announced to his surprisingly compliant class. After the excitement of having a new student in their class had passed, his students had settled well into the class and for the first time in a long time, he had a hitch-free lecture.

Even Asher had been surprisingly well behaved, and Rogers almost found himself wishing a new student would show up again the next day if he’d get this same amount of peace.

“Assignment time.”

At this, the students groaned, and even the new girl rolled her eyes.

Assignments are a terrible thing, at least, most of the students can agree on this. But, to get assignments on a Friday has to be one of the most terrible things that can happen to a regular high school student.

“Do we really have to get an assignment?” Jemina whined, looking genuinely upset. But, before the teacher could say anything, Jane, a geeky girl who wasn’t scared of the cheerleaders snickered.

“Why do you look upset, Jemina? We all know assignments are below your station.” The sarcasm stinking to high heavens, her comment caused the whole class to burst into loud gales of laughter, and Jemina to turn an unattractive shade of red while she sent murderous looks at Jane.

While the whole exchange was going on, Aurora watched all of them with a very vigilant expression on her face.

“Your assignments will be sent to you on your student portal. I want all of you to attempt all the questions and submit it on your portal before 9 pm on Sunday. Anything later than that and the portal will not register your submission. Have a nice day!” the teacher announced, and at that exact moment, the bell went off, cutting off their grumbles and cries of protest.

Immediately the teacher went out of the class, Aurora gathered her things and stepped outside immediately, completely ignoring the looks her new classmates were giving her.

It is not in the nature of Aurora James to walk without grace. Even when she seems to be walking fast, there was still a certain grace to her steps that set her apart in any crowd, and the hallways of Bedford High School was no exception.

It was full of students leaving a class and going into another. But, despite the general clumsy atmosphere in the hallway, the other students still took notice of her and cleared a path for her to walk through.

Earlier on in her training, she had thought her face would be enough to get her whatever she wants. After all, her mother had told her as much. But somewhere along the line, she discovered that she was going to have to do more if she wanted certain things done. The natural thing to do, of course, was to redefine how she dressed, and it had worked for her since then.

The outfit always works like magic.

Aurora walked as far away from the students as she could, while still maintaining an elegant stride until she found an empty room which turned out to be the drama club auditorium.

“This will have to do,” she said to the empty room, while she fished out her phone from her bag. She took another quick glance around the room to make sure it was indeed empty before she switched her phone to hologram transmission mode.

“Hello, Aurora.” came a voice from a floating head just above her cellphone.

“Good morning, director. I promised to call with reports.”

“Well? Do you have any prospects yet?” the holographic form of the director asked, a tad bit impatient.

“Yes, director. I have only been in one class…”

“That’s hardly enough information to pick prospects with,” the director said, cutting her off. Aurora had known that this might pose a problem, but she knew her onions and she was very certain that they had some of what they needed in her calculus class. Besides, she has a dossier on all of her classmates. Hacking into the school database had been too much like a walk in the park, on a sunny day.

“With due respect, sir, I was given this assignment because the agency knows I’m great at what I do. So, yes, my first class gave me more than enough information to pull from. Sir.”

The director was quiet for a while, obviously displeased at being spoken to that way, but he knew she was right about her potentials and ability. Grudgingly, he gave her the go ahead with a curt nod.

“Thank you, sir. I’ll forward their information to you so that we can have the proper detailing on them.”

She was about to click the ‘off’ button when he said, “Agent Aurora. If this goes wrong, it’s all on you. You know how it is.”

She nodded her assent and turned the hologram off.

“Well, it’s time to make new friends.”

The Monday after the weekend, calculus class usually came first, much to the student’s disdain. In the defense of the school authority, they made it first period because of its relative difficulty level, so that the student’s brains are still ‘fresh’ to meet up with the demands of calculus.

“Well, I took the liberty of printing out your assignments. I will hand out the graded scripts now.” Mr. Rogers announced, after three minutes in the class, grinning from ear to ear.

“Why’s he being so weird today?” Sandra, one of Jemina’s squad whispered to Asher.

“You mean weirder than usual?” Jemina answered instead, having overheard her friend’s question.

“Hey, Mr. Rogers, the new girl is not here yet. Maybe she can’t handle Calculus after all.” Asher said smugly. The thought of having a competition seriously offended his ego.

But, before Rogers could respond, a breathless Aurora rushed in.

“Oh, I’m so sorry I’m late, Mr. Rogers, I was called to the registration department. I had to fill more forms.”

“It’s fine, take a seat. I was just about to share the assignments script.”

“Nice outfit,” Jemina said as Aurora walked past her desk to get to her own.

“Thanks,” she responded, drinking in the look of admiration on the other girl’s face.

She had deliberately toned down on her outfit this morning, to go from anime character to elite, British fashionista. She had opted for a loose, white, chiffon top, over an elegant pink pleated skirt that has antique chairs printed at the edges. To complete the outfit, she chose an elegant, pink kitten heels shoes decorated with bows.

“Alright, settle down class. Time to see your results.” Mr. Rogers announced, returning the class’s attention back to him.

Chapter Summary

Aurora is on a mission in her new school, that much is evident from her conversation with a holographic projection she called ‘Director’. But, we are still held in suspense as to what the mission is. The chapter gives us hints that it involves some of her classmates. With bated breaths, we proceed to the next chapter, with the hope that all our questions are answered.

Let’s admire the clothes together:

This blouse is so beautiful! – https://www.lolitain.com/bear-ears-series-chiffon-classic-lolita-long-sleeve-shirt-p-7564.html

You should shop for this skirt- https://www.lolitain.com/antique-chair-series-elegant-pink-and-green-classic-lolita-skirt-p-7429.html!

These shoes- https://www.lolitain.com/pink-concise-bowknot-sweet-lolita-high-heel-sandals-p-7372.html are so classy!

#lolita skirt #lolita shirt #lolita shoes #pink lolita #sweet lolita

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thehopefulraincoat · 8 years ago

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Artist Problem #1

Keeping track of and managing time.

Okay, maybe that’s not the number 1 issue for every artist, but it’s certainly one that’s up there for me. And honestly, who doesn’t struggle with this in some way? But there’s no magic solution to it, so where do we start?

Let’s start here: you’ve got to find something that works for you. I’ve tried so many things that I quit after a short time because it just didn’t fit into my flow of work. Now, I don’t mean that if it doesn’t immediately click, then just give up. It’s said 30 days to form a habit. But I’ve also realized the importance of finding something that fits me.

For this topic, I’m going to go through the things I use and tell you what they are, how they work, and how I use them.

Scheduling:

Firstly, I use Google Calendar. Obviously, it’s a calendar and in this instance, I probably don’t need to explain how you use it, but a few reasons I like to use this calendar particularly is that it syncs between my phone and my computer (and sends reminder to both), and because it makes it easy to get the overarching view of the month as well as a close up look at the day.

Now, I use it to keep track of birthdays, things that fall outside of my normal schedule, and recurring stuff like my Bible study (or to keep track of when I don’t have it, more so, or when it’s not at the usual time). It’s not just for art, but by keep track of the other areas of my life, I can better keep track of my time doing art. For example, if I know I’m busy all weekend, I probably shouldn’t plan anything additional Monday-Friday because if I don’t have enough time to finish things, I know I certainly won’t over the weekend. Other things I do to make it work for me is coloring coding events. Church stuff is purple, art stuff is blue, birthdays are green, appointments are red, etc. Since I’m a visual thinker, my stuff has to be visually organized and colors allow me to look at things and at a glance know what’s what.

Trello is the other tool I use for scheduling. It’s designed to let you keep track of tasks for a variety of big/complicated projects. You can create “boards,” in each board you can create “cards” (essentially lists), and each item can be modified via comments you can leave on them, color labels you can add, and checklists.

I probably don’t use Trello quite the way it’s actually designed to be used. Mainly I use one board (though I have a second one where I dump notes about art ideas) where I have 1 card for each day, 1 card to serve as a misc to-do-list for things that just need to be done eventually, 1 card for things that have to happen this week but not necessarily on a particular day, and 1 card for overarching tasks (each item on this card has a checklist, so long term goals can be checked off one task at a time, completed over weeks or months as necessary).

Why I really love Trello is that I can color code, create sublists for items, and easily drag items from one list to another as needed. As I go through a day, I’ll complete, say, my daily art practice/sketching. I’ll have written it as “ART: Practice” and when I finish it, added a blue label, signaling that it’s done. Misc tasks are labeled pink when finished, orange is for chores when finished, and green for self-care, etc. This allows me to see at a glance how my day is getting used and by adding the color labels, I can see my items being “checked off.” The To Do list cards (as opposed to the Monday through Sunday ones) also allow me to sort things and keep a running list of stuff without having everything I ever need to get done on one big To Do list for the day.

Because I’m very visual, long chaotic lists can leave me overwhelmed, but if I don’t write everything down, I forget things. Having my lists broken up makes them seem more manageable, and checklists and color labels allow me to see that I’m getting things done.

(And yellow is reserved for “God time,” aka my personal Bible study, as opposed to my group Bible study, for those who might wonder.) If I’m having a particularly bad day, I can add in tasks to encourage me to feel like I’m getting things done (which helps me actually start getting things done). Like maybe I’m having a hard time focusings, but I did finally message that one friend back and I also finally got dressed. I’ll add those to my list and color label them. Feeling like you’re getting something done is really important when you’re overwhelmed or struggling with motivation. The trick is to move into actually getting things done.

Another trick, which I haven’t stuck to using, but might work for you, is rating your tasks. You can actually see it on the item “To promote my art.” You add plus signs to rate how important a task is (+ meaning unimportant & +++++ being VERY important) and you add divider symbols for how hard a task is (| is easy and ||||| is hard). This way you can

A good alternative to how I use Trello+Google Calendar is something called bullet journaling. You can look up how to do it with a simple Google search and all you need is a pen and a journal. I highly recommend it if something like what I do might work for you, but you’d rather have it all in one place and do it analog-style (though maybe an online equivalent exists?).

Goals:

Obviously, I use Trello a bit for goals, as I have that “Overarching Tasks” list where vaguer things like “Promote my art” are divided into more practical (but still too big to be considered a single step) sub-headings, like “complete my new website.”

This is where MS Word comes in (or really anything you can write out lists of goals on). I’m pretty sure you all know how Word works so I won’t explain, but I will give you a screenshot of some of my goals.

(Sorry, I’m too lazy to resize them)

This is just a sample of the whole list, but keeping track of big goals and then making do-able or “bite size” tasks for each goal is really important. It makes what is overwhelming seem possible and gives you a way to know what step to take next. If you know what you need to do next without having to try to remember what you’ve done and what you’ve yet to do, then you’re gonna save yourself a lot of time.

Time Tracking:

Everyone’s favorite section! Literal keeping track of time! (Or am I the only one excited here?) Anywho, Snaptimer is a simple free downloadable count-down timer. I use it for when I want to take breaks, which usually are on the computer. I’ll set it for however long I want and it goes off when I’m done. Plus it can be set to remain “on top” so you can see it counting down or it can be set to have a pop-up when it reaches zero, so it can alert you that your time is up both audibly and visually. Some nice little bonuses are that you can change the color, size, and font of the numbers and that you can customize the timer sound too (mine was a teapot whistle for a while).

RescueTime is a tracking timer. By that, I mean that it tracks how long I spend on what sites and in what programs (because I’ve downloaded it to my browser, phone, and to my desktop). Then if it can figure out what type of site it is (such as it knows that Facebook is social media and social media is distracting, generally), it categorizes it from Very Productive to Very Distracting (with Neutral in the middle for things it can’t categorize or that can’t be considered to be mostly productive or mostly unproductive). With this, I can get a snapshot of how productive my online time has been. It also lets you change the status of a site (like I’ve used Craigslist for job hunting in the past, but at first Rescuetime listed it as Distracting because it thought it was a shopping website and thus that I was shopping, so I changed it to Very Productive), it lets you delete time (for things like if you left Facebook open while you were away from your technology doing something productive), and finally it lets you set goals, like spending less than 4 hours a day on “Unproductive” things.

This is what the main part of the RescueTime dashboard looks like. I’ve only logged 2 hours and 23 minutes, but of that, only 40% has been productive (Note that the 40% ignores what is neutral - In this case, most of the neutral section is Youtube, which normally I use to listen to music, so it’s not a distraction but something that helps me work. Some days though, it’s just a distraction, like today.).

Lastly, for this section is possibly my favorite tool: Toggl. It’s a count-up timer that is just set up so nicely. You can use the online page, the desktop app, or the phone app and they all sync up to each other. Mostly, I use the desktop app, as I spend a lot of time on or near my computer. Toggl allows you to time a task, assign that task a project (which can be color coded - seeing a theme yet?), and add tags to the task. The tags and the projects allow you to go on the website and look at charts of how you’re time is divided up and they’ll email you weekly a breakdown of your time.

Here’s a glimpse at the Toggle Dashboard (Ugh, this last week has not been the best week for me, due to a few things that came up. This also doesn’t include the time I was at my job.). It’s really good for someone who needs visual aids and flexible structure. Here’s a quick breakdown of how I track things for art: admin work (this I use purple for and it includes tasks like working on making my website, designing and buying business cards, learning about HTML to do some edits to my site, etc.), practice work (This is a light blue and includes Sketch dailies, figure drawing, etc), misc small projects (these arecurrently a radder purple and can be anything that’s just a one-off image that will be more work than a sketch, but less than a multi-image or large project that takes a lot of planning; a task in this category might be labeled by what I think I’ll name the piece or simply a short description), and big projects (these will vary in label color depending on the project and can be anything like my Fairyland project which took months and was multiple images; a task in this group might be named by the title of the chapter I’m illustrating, for example).

Accountability:

Finally, the last thing I’m going to list is Discord.

Discord is a chat/messaging system designed largely to be used by gamers, but I use it, along with a group of friends, as the home to a critique group. Because Discord allows you to not only message people individually or in small groups, but also to set up servers that can permanently house large groups and then allows you to break those servers down into channels, it makes a nice set up for a crit group. We have a channel for us to post goals and make reminders, a channel for serious critique, a channel for sketches and things we may only want some light crit on or that we don’t care for crit at all, a channel for sharing art that inspires us, and a general channel for anything else. These people can pester me if I haven’t posted in a while and give me advice and encouragement to keep going.

Really, this can be done on numerous other platforms or with in-person meetings, but because many of my friends aren’t super close, transporting art can be a pain, and Discord has a nice multi-channel set up, I recommend it if you want to try something like I’ve discussed.

Don’t discount being held accountable by friends and family that aren’t artists too, though. Sometimes those people will be the best at holding you to things you need to get done!

Final Notes:

Find what works for you! Experiment. When something doesn’t to seem to pan out, take note of what worked and what didn’t. It’ll help you move towards something that works best for you.

Tough it out! You need to remember why you love art. You need to think about what you’re trying to achieve. Something I read once that helped me was, “The next time you feel like giving up on a project, do this instead: close your eyes, take a deep breath, and imagine how great you’ll feel when you finish the project. Because our subconscious minds are often unable to tell the difference between real and imagined, visualizing the final result can help us stay focused on completing it.”

Have accountability! Be that your best friend who loves your art, your mom who doesn’t get it, your art teacher you’re really close to, or your classmate in art college, there’s someone who can help you. Better yet, have that person find something you can hold them to so that it’s mutually beneficial.

ALL OF THESE PROGRAMS ARE FREE! (Well, except for Word, I suppose, but that or an equivalent comes with pretty much every computer) Some of them have paid premium options, but honestly, I think that they work fine without the premium stuff.

So good luck and I hope maybe something I’ve discussed will be of help to you~

#productivity #artist problems #time mangement #art help #sketchblog blogging #artist problem 1 #artist problem number 1 #the hopeful update

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ld-pandamao · 4 years ago

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Monday, May 25th, 2020—Reorientation

Funny. I announced that I returned and then got too caught up with tasks that I did not make the second post of the day. Oops.

Thinking through all of this, I honestly do not know what I plan to do. I would like to stay relatively on schedule, to not shift everything dramatically, but to do so, I need to go back and count through my posts.

On the third day of the development month, April 19th, I switched over to the subject of a Bonus Month, and surprisingly, I continued to write posts—though they became sparse and deviated from the schedule—until March 3rd, totaling to two weeks and one day. I then took a break of about three weeks.

...Actually, this is complicated, and more trouble than it is worth.

I am just going to call this Friday the end of the week—which makes so much more sense than when I kept ending the week during Wednesday or Thursday and start a new month. I guess I will call this the beginning of the third month, even though by my previously established logic/ ground rules, this should be halfway through the third month.

This checks out pretty well too, since I got about two or three posts in the Development month before I switched themes, so combined together, I should still get around 28 posts in this first developmental month. Cool.

Anyway, after this month, I will probably try to take another Bonus Month, not to take a break from the blog again, but to try and explore some different aspects of it. There is a project that I have been planning for a while now, though I am not sure how well I can execute it. Worst comes to worst, I will switch to spending that entire month trying to learn HTML and making a fancy Tumblr.

...it probably would not show up on the app though. I think Tumblr themes are only effective for the website.

I guess that kind of wraps up a brief outline of my plans for this blog in the next two months.

On the other hand, I am still trying to get a hold of the other goals I have planned, such as with Foreign Language learning and exercise. Speaking of which, due to coronavirus, many people are quarantined inside their house, which makes getting exercise all the more imperative.

I am not sure what to write now. I really have fallen out of practice.

Well, after this developmental month, I'll have a bonus month, and after that, maybe a foundational month? I think the four subjects would involve something personal or some personal project, some type of math or science, literature/English--I've been thinking about it for a while, and for some reason, I really want to go that route—, and...

I am going to change the Respect/Recommendations category, or at least my personal definition of it, so that I may more easily write for it.

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ddrkirbyisq · 6 years ago

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This month is definitely a bit of a rush...after coming back from the Asia trip, I had but a short time to catch my breath and then it was onto the celebration of my 30th. I had better write about that now I guess? This was quite definitely the best birthday I've ever had. Of course, it also tends to sometimes fall around the time of the spring Ludum Dare event, so sometimes the timing is weird, but even without taking that into consideration, this was by far the best it's ever been. I wrote in 2012 that "birthdays are a reminder of how little attention people put into me and how often I can be taken for granted, as well as a reminder of the imbalances in my relationships with other people." and that sentiment was definitely an honest one at the time. Whether these perceived imbalances were ignorantly self-inflicted or through no fault of my own is up for debate, but I definitely had not found the types of social connections that I had truly desired, and would not until the coming years (though I had at the least gotten a lot closer than before). It was because of this (along with my own knee-jerk reactions to oppose social trends) that I originally started to deactivate my Facebook account every time my birthday rolled around -- it left me with a disgusting feeling really, that horde of people who now suddenly bothered enough to type a meaningless message to me, but only because of an automated Facebook reminder. Realizing that that automated birthday reminder had spurred them onto more action than anything else of our relationship during the 364 other days of the year was a terrible thought. Of course, the family celebrations didn't really help, as usually they feel like little more than rituals for their benefit and not mine (still working on that one -- but at least I have gotten them to start picking from my wishlist so I don't also leave with wholly impractical gifts). Yet somehow after 30 years I managed to get together a great group of people whom I not only cared about but who also cared about me. It was pretty astounding when I thought about it, I really was struck by the group that surrounded me that day and I think that day may ought to really serve as a sort of marker for myself in my life. I planned some great activities, we had a lot of fun, and I had great help as well. From one friend helping with tea, another helping with food preparation, another helping with miscellaneous logistics, it was truly amazing to finally have gotten together such dependable people. Just read that post from 2012 that I linked -- what a difference! Of course, we also totally rocked the Roosevelt Escape Room -- great success, and I felt quite proud of the team. I think we had a great mix of both people who tried to think very quickly on their feet (me) and people who tried to be more methodic and careful (i.e. catching everyone else's mistakes). And with that, all those people sending me short messages, somehow didn't really feel so bad anymore. Of course, that being over, it's right into the next thing...Ludum Dare 44 is coming up this weekend! I've been doing a bunch of prep, including updating to Unity 2019, testing some things to make sure they still work, and also setting up and testing some things for itch.io! itch.io is sort of like the "Bandcamp of game distribution" and I've always been a fan of them and the developers that gather on their platform despite not having used them. I do plan on trying to copy over all of our existing games over to itch, but it looks like that might (???) have to wait until after the dust from LD44 settles, as most of our recent games are actually domain-locked to avoid nasty people coming and stealing them onto their own sites. I've added a rule to allow for itch.io hosting and tested that all to make sure it works, but I still have to go about recompiling all of the old games (probably also updating them to Unity 2019, hopefully not breaking anything in the process?), and setting up each of the project pages, etc etc etc. and that is something I just don't have the time for right now. But I am at least set up to upload our LD44 entry onto itch. Part of the reason I wanted to set up itch.io in the first place is because I think it does great discoverability for LD games, especially since the LD site itself has never been great at that. (Not to mention, I might want to use itch to distribute Rhythm Quest as well!) Anyways, Unity 2019 seems to be working well (the itch.io tests also gave me some chances to verify that older games are working fine after the upgrade, which is important since there were some bugs that I had been working around and the workaround are deprecated, so good to know that the root issues were also fixed), and I've updated my unity template project as well as forked it over and made the repo. Other things I still need to do before LD44: - Draw some 100x100 pixel art for this month's "Monthlies" album. I knew this would sneak up on me even before I left for Asia...I was going to try starting this today, but then I got sidetracked by some more of the itch.io stuff and now this blog post...ugh. Will have to try again tomorrow. Need to get it done before LD since the end of the month is really soon after LD ends. - Laundry! - Do a big grocery run on Friday and get lots of food and snacks :D - If I have time, there's a boatload of letters I could probably catch up on...but not sure if that will happen =X maybe will try to at least get to one or two... - Keep recovering physically and don't get sick... Things that will NOT get done before LD44: - I have a famitracker song that I "sort of finished" on the trip to Asia but might try to flesh out (or just call it done and master it). - Have a music commission on deck (due mid-july) - Also a remix to do for an arrange album (due august) - All the itch.io stuff - Potentially hosting a GCC dance on the 18th, but leaving that up in the air based on what I feel like doing. - There won't be another full-on JaSmix event for this quarter, but I will host the usual Summer event. I've already done an initial reachout, now I just need to pick a good date. Well, on the plus side, I'm somehow still cruising along and handling everything despite having a full-time job. I do feel like I'm taking care of a lot of things...just keeping on chugging along like I do best.

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thedeadshotnetwork · 7 years ago

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10 things you need to know today: November 27, 2017 1. Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) stepped down as the ranking Democrat on the House Judicial Committee on Sunday as pressure mounted over sexual harassment allegations against him. As an ethics investigation opened, Conyers, 88, said he would fight to reclaim his leadership on the committee and would not resign from Congress. "I very much look forward to vindicating myself and my family before the House Committee on Ethics," Conyers said in a letter to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). Pelosi had called Conyers "an icon" and said he deserved due process, but his status as a civil rights "icon" was "not a license for harassment." 2. The battle for control of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau escalated late Sunday. Leandra English, the deputy director promoted Friday by her outgoing boss, filed suit to block White House budget director Mick Mulvaney, named as interim CFPB director by President Trump, from taking over. English said Trump's appointment of Mulvaney was unlawful, because the Dodd-Frank financial reform law gave the outgoing director authority to name an acting director until the Senate confirms a permanent replacement. The Justice Department said the fact that Dodd-Frank says the deputy director can serve as acting director does not override the president's authority under the 1998 Vacancies Reform Act. Trump has expressed eagerness to rein in the bureau, which Republicans complain has been too aggressive toward banks. 3. Islamic fundamentalist protesters in Pakistan began dispersing Monday after striking a deal with the government. The government said law minister Zahid Hamid would step down in return for an end to the demonstrations, which had brought the country's capital, Islamabad, to a halt for weeks. Two people were killed in clashes over the weekend after armed security forces tried to remove protesters blocking a road between Islamabad and the neighboring city of Rawalpindi. Protesters accused Hamid of blasphemy because they said changes in the wording of the oath of office for public officials weakened a requirement to refer to the Prophet Mohammed. 4. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) said Sunday in his first interview since two women accused him of groping them that he was embarrassed and ashamed but did not plan to resign. Franken told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that he hoped an ethics investigation would make "a positive contribution to the conversation, so I can be a better public servant and a better man." Franken has apologized to radio host Leeann Tweeden, who said he forcibly kissed and fondled her during a USO tour. A photo shows Franken smiling and holding his hands suggestively over Tweeden's chest while she sleeps. He also apologized to a woman who said he put his hand on her buttocks at the Minnesota State Fair, but said he did not remember the incident. 5. President Trump continued to urge voters to reject Democrat Doug Jones, who is running against beleaguered former state Supreme Court chief justice Roy Moore in a special election for one of Alabama's Senate seats. "The last thing we need in Alabama and the U.S. Senate is a Schumer/Pelosi puppet who is WEAK on Crime, WEAK on the Border, Bad for our Military," Trump tweeted on Sunday. "Jones would be a disaster." Trump's efforts to boost Moore, the Republican candidate who beat incumbent appointee Luther Strange in the primary, put him at odds with leading GOP lawmakers, who have called for Moore to step aside since several women have accused Moore of making improper sexual advances toward them when they were teenagers as young as 14 and he was a prosecutor in his 30s. 6. The Congressional Budget Office on Sunday released its analysis of Senate Republicans' proposed tax overhaul, estimating that it would increase the federal deficit by about $1.4 trillion over 10 years. The CBO said the bill would be worse for Americans earning less than $75,000 than an earlier analysis by the Joint Committee on Taxation projected, factoring in the changes to Medicaid and Medicare, and zeroing out the Affordable Care Act individual mandate. Under the CBO analysis, Americans earning up to $30,000 a year would be worse off by 2019, and Americans earning $75,000 or less would be worse off by 2027. Americans earning $100,000 to $500,000 a year would generally fare the best until 2027, when millionaires would reap the most benefits. 7. Authorities on the Indonesian resort island of Bali canceled flights and moved to evacuate 100,000 people from a danger zone after volcanic eruptions from Mount Agung sent a thick ash cloud thousands of feet into the air. Hundreds of international and domestic flights have been canceled, affecting tens of thousands of passengers. Disaster response officials have urged people to avoid an area within 4.5 miles of the volcano's peak. It is the volcano's first eruption in 50 years, and experts say lava is welling up in its crater. "The rays of fire are increasingly observed at night," the National Board for Disaster Management said in a statement. "This indicates the potential for a larger eruption is imminent." 8. The Meredith Corp. agreed Sunday to buy Time Inc. in an all-cash deal valued close to $3 billion. Meredith is backed by $650 million in financing from the conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch, who are known for supporting conservative political causes. Meredith, however, said the Kochs' private equity fund would not have a seat on its board and would "have no influence on Meredith's editorial or managerial operations." The acquisition would allow Meredith, which publishes Better Homes Gardens and Family Circle , to add such high-profile magazines as Sports illustrated , Time , and Fortune to its publishing and broadcasting empire. Meredith held unsuccessful talks to buy Time earlier this year, and in 2013. 9. Prince Harry and his girlfriend, American actress Meghan Markle, are engaged, and will marry next spring , the British royal family announced Monday. Clarence House said Prince Charles, Harry's father, was "delighted" to make the news official. Prince Harry, fifth in line to the British throne, and Markle started dating just over a year ago, and quietly got engaged earlier this month. Markle, a co-star in the USA Network legal drama Suits , will be the first American, the first actress, and the first biracial person welcomed into the British royal family, probably as a royal duchess. 10. Pixar's Coco hauled in an estimated $71.2 million in its debut, earning the top spot at the box office in the fourth best five-day Thanksgiving weekend ever. Coco made $49 million from Friday to Sunday. The film, which is centered around the Mexican Dia de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead) holiday, has already brought in $53.4 million over three weeks in Mexico. "This is once again Pixar doing what they do best," said Dave Hollis, distribution chief for the Walt Disney Co. Coco easily beat DC Comics superhero film Justice League , which dropped into second place with $40.7 million over three days and $60 million over the extended holiday weekend. November 27, 2017 at 01:26PM

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trendingnewsb · 7 years ago

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Why You Can't Pay off a Sleep Debt You've Accumulated Over the Week

We’ve all been there: you’ve woken up promptly at 6 or 7 in the morning Monday through Friday, dragging and exhausted as you got ready for work. Then when Saturday rolls around, you wake up and check your phone to discover it’s already noon.

While this is something we can relate to, it’s not actually “normal.” When you don’t sleep enough during the week yet wake up early every day, you may try to compensate for that sleep-deprivation you feel by sleeping in on the weekend. However, you may have noticed that even when you sleep until late in the day on a weekend, you still feel like you aren’t caught up in your rest. So you make the typical promises to yourself; you’ll get to bed sooner tonight, you won’t stay out so late next week, but those promises typically go unfulfilled and you typically go restless.

Sleeping can never be compensated

Sleep and your health isn’t like the bank; you can’t sleep off a debt you’ve accumulated during the week in an attempt to pay off the sleep debt. As you’ve probably noticed, no matter how hard you try, you can’t gain back that lost energy over the week, no matter how late you try to sleep on the weekends.

Let’s assume you were only able to catch six hours of shut eye Monday through Friday. You decide that if you can sleep an extra ten hours on the weekend, you’ll be able to catch up and essentially start over. While it’s a nice idea, it’s not a realistic one. In fact, your reacting times and ability to focus will tend to be worse than if you had pulled an all-nighter.

If you slept poorly last night, or just not enough, you may have a chance to make up for it, but only if you make up for it tonight. If you try to catch on lost sleep over a long period of time, you won’t succeed.[1]

While some of you may have just read that and thought, ‘hmm, that means I can go to bed late tonight to finish up my project and I’ll just make up for it later,’ don’t be tempted. Sleeping late on the weekend to try to make up for the lost time will only result in further disrupting your sleeping pattern. You’ll only feel worse.[2]

One such study, done by Northwestern University, has shown that when animals are sleep deprived – even partially – over consecutive days, they actually make no attempt to make up for that lost sleep.[3] This study is the first to prove repeated (although partial) sleep loss negatively affects an animal’s ability to compensate for that lost rest. And as animals ourselves, we can learn from this fact.

Catching up a sleep debt later makes your brain suffer

No matter what you’re doing late at night, sleep should be a priority. The more tired you are, the harder it is to accomplish even the smallest task. Even menial tasks like participating in a conversation with someone can seem particularly challenging because focus requires an intensity that you can only achieve through rest. The distraction you experience due to sleep loss is serious. Not to mention how dangerous that can make something like driving.[4]

Lack of sleep also impacts short-term memory. Research has shown that sleep deprivation has a big impact on verbal learning and cognitive understanding. The findings show that,[5]

“there are dynamic, compensatory changes in cerebral activation during verbal learning after sleep deprivation and implicate the PFC and parietal lobes in this compensation”

Essentially, we overcompensate in our sleepy state and hyper-focus on what someone is saying to us-but only in the moment. We quickly forget the information and that can lead to embarrassing forgotten events.

An extra hour of sleep a night for a rested feeling

Go to bed when you are tired; don’t try to fight it. Set reminders to get you to sleep earlier. You may start with setting an alarm to remind you to sleep half an hour earlier at night, and then reset it to an hour earlier a week later. Gradually you’ll get used to sleeping earlier.

If you have to be on your phone or computer before bed, dim the screen brightness to aid you in the transition to darkness.

If at all possible, allow your body to wake you up naturally in the morning (this means no alarms). As your body resets itself over time, you may feel a bit worse before you feel better, but be patient.[6]

“As you erase sleep debt, your body will come to rest at a sleep pattern that is specifically right for you. Sleep researchers believe that genes—although the precise ones have yet to be discovered—determine our individual sleeping patterns. That more than likely means you can’t train yourself to be a “short sleeper”—and you’re fooling yourself if you think you’ve done it.

More than anything, make sure you listen to your body. If you feel you would sleep later than the alarm you have set in the morning, or like you need coffee in the morning to focus on anything, there’s a good chance you aren’t getting the amount of sleep you need. Don’t get caught up in aiming for 7 hours, 8 or even 9 hours of sleep. Instead, focus on what your body is telling you and how you feel when you personally sleep for 6,7, 8, etc. hours.

Owe no sleep debt

Whether you’re a student, a professional, or a stay-at-home parent, remember that one of your most important and essential jobs is to sleep. While there are so many articles out there telling you how many hours you should get based on gender and age, none of those articles know your body like you do; so listen to it.

Whenever possible, skip the morning alarm. Enjoy coffee if it’s something you love, but if you realize you feel like you can’t function without it, determine how you could have slept better or longer the night before.

Featured photo credit: Pixabay via pixabay.com

Reference

[1]^HuffPost: 6 Sleep Myths To Finally Put To Bed[2]^Tuck: Myth of Catch-Up Sleep[3]^Science Daily: Chronically Sleep Deprived? You Can’t Make Up For Lost Sleep[4]^Business Insider: 23 Incredible Benefits Of Getting More Sleep[5]^Nature: Altered brain response to verbal learning following sleep deprivation[6]^Scientific American: Can You Catch Up on Lost Sleep?

The post Why You Can’t Pay off a Sleep Debt You’ve Accumulated Over the Week appeared first on Lifehack.

from Viral News HQ http://ift.tt/2yivjiC via Viral News HQ

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viralhottopics · 8 years ago

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Inside Chrome: The Secret Project to Crush IE and Remake the Web

Chrome development team from left, Mark Larson, Brian Rakowski, Darin Fisher, and Ben Goodger Photo:Joe Pugliese

Brian Rakowski walks to the whiteboard in a small conference room in Building 41 on Google’s Mountain View campus. A lanky, gregarious man in his twenties, Rakowski is the product manager of a top-secret project that’s been under way for more than two years. The weekly Monday meeting of managers or “leads,” as Google puts it in its nonhierarchical way will be one of the last before the upcoming launch. Rakowski writes 12 items on the board with a black dry-erase marker. The first is “State of the Release.” It’s late August, and the release in question is called Chrome, Google’s first Web browser. Since a browser is the linchpin of Web activity the framework for our searching, reading, buying, banking, Facebooking, chatting, video watching, music appreciation, and porn consumption this is huge for Google, a step that needed to wait until the company had, essentially, come of age. It is an explicit attempt to accelerate the movement of computing off the desktop and into the cloud where Google holds advantage. And it’s an aggressive move destined to put the company even more squarely in the crosshairs of its rival Microsoft, which long ago crushed the most fabled browser of all, Netscape Navigator. A Google browser has been rumored for so long that most people have stopped talking about it. But the folks in this room know that the talking will soon begin again. Chrome is due to rock the Web just 16 days from this meeting. It turns out the state of the release is … not so bad. At Release Build Minus One ideally, the last version before the public beta hits the streets there are only five “blocking” bugs, all of which Rakowski and team deem fixable. “Things are looking good,” says Mark Larson, one of the tech leads. “What are we missing?” asks Sundar Pichai, Google’s vice president of product management. “What’s keeping you up at night?” “It’s not Chrome,” says Darin Fisher, an engineer who coauthored the first prototype. That gets a laugh because everyone knows he’s got a 10-week-old at home. Rakowski takes a red marker and puts an X next to the State of the Release item. The Google browser is one step closer to reality. Why is Google building a browser? A better question is, why did it take so long for Google to build a browser? After all, as Pichai says, “our entire business is people using a browser to access us and the Web.” “The browser matters,” CEO Eric Schmidt says. He should know, because he was CTO of Sun Microsystems during the great browser wars of the 1990s. Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin know it, too. “When I joined Google in 2001, Larry and Sergey immediately said, ‘We should build our own browser,’” Schmidt says. “And I said no.” It wasn’t the right time, Schmidt told them. “I did not believe that the company was strong enough to withstand a browser war,” he says. “It was important that our strategic aspirations be relatively under the radar.” Nonetheless, the idea persisted and rumors percolated. After a 2004 New York Times article quoted “a person who has detailed knowledge of the company’s business” saying a browser was in the works, Schmidt had to publicly deny it. But behind the scenes, the subject remained a running argument between Schmidt and the founders. As a kind of compromise, Google assembled a team to work on improvements for the open source browser Firefox, spearheaded by browser wizards Ben Goodger and Fisher. (Both had worked with Mozilla, the nonprofit organization behind Firefox.) Another hiring coup came when Linus Upson, a 37-year-old engineer whose pedigree includes a stint at NeXT, signed up as a director of engineering. “This was very clever on Larry and Sergey’s part,” Schmidt says, “because, of course, these people doing Firefox extensions are perfectly capable of doing a great browser.” Sure enough, in the spring of 2006, the Firefox group began talking among themselves about designing a new app. They loved Firefox but they recognized a flaw in all current browsers. When Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and the codebase at the heart of Firefox were originally conceived, browsing was less complex. Now, however, functions that previously could be performed only on the desktop email, spreadsheets, database management are increasingly handled online. In the coming era of cloud computing, the Web will be much more than just a means of delivering content it will be a platform in its own right. The problem with revamping existing browsers to accommodate this concept is that they have developed an ecology of add-on extensions (toolbars, RSS readers, etc.) that would be hopelessly disrupted by a radical upgrade. “As a Firefox developer, you love to innovate, but you’re always worried that it means in the next version all the extensions will be broken,” Fisher says. “And indeed, that’s what happens.” The conclusion was obvious: Only by building its own software could Google bring the browser into the cloud age and potentially trigger a spiral of innovation not seen since Microsoft and Netscape one-upped each other almost monthly.

Chrome: Here’s What Shines

Google wanted a browser optimized for cloud computing, with a design emphasis on simplicity and speed. Key features:

Speed Blazing fast JavaScript engine opens the door to more advanced Web applications.

Navigation The “omnibox” combines the search and address boxes, and pop-up thumbnails show your most-visited destinations.

Availability The open source software was launched in over 40 languages, but Windows only; Mac and Linux versions are in the works.

Reliability Tabs run in isolation, so if one crashes, no others are affected. Also, you can drag tabs to create new windows.

Privacy Browsing history is now searchable and editable; incognito mode offers private surfing.

One key change they had in mind was something called a multiprocess architecture, the system that helps the computer keep going when an application crashes or freezes. Why not extend that idea to browsers, so if something crashes in a tab, the other tabs are unperturbed? Also, for that matter, why not set things up so that you can drag an existing tab to create a new window? Starting from scratch had other advantages. You could design it to look cleaner and run faster, the twin dogmas of the Google corporate religion. Around June 2006, Goodger, Fisher, and another former Mozillan named Brian Ryner cooked up a small prototype. Their first big decision involved the choice of a rendering engine, the software that processes the HTML code of a Web page into the stuff that appears on your screen. The two major open source options were Gecko, used by Firefox, and WebKit, which powers Apple’s Safari browser. The word was that WebKit (which had already been adopted by the group developing Google’s Android mobile operating system) could be nasty fast three times as fast as Gecko, in one example. In a few weeks, they had a simple application running WebKit on Windows that kept going even when a Web page crashed a tab. Early on, Goodger recalls, “our prototypes had a picture of a little tab that was unhappy, and if a tab died you’d see that. It was the first piece of personality in the product.” Not long after that, Brin and Page came by to check in on the furtive beginnings of their browser. “I remember sitting at my desk, which at the time had a stuffed snake running along the back of it,” says Pam Greene, an engineer on the team. “Sergey was bouncing on one of those exercise balls, watching Darin give a demo, and petting the snake.” No one will say exactly when the browser project got the official green light. Pichai recalls an executive meeting when Schmidt no longer seemed as opposed as he had been. If Google did go for it, the CEO said, the team had to produce something very different from Explorer and Firefox. In addition, a Google browser would have to be fast, and it would have to be open source. Which, of course, was exactly what the team already had in mind. In any case, by the autumn of 2006 the line between unofficial concept and formal project had been crossed. “One Friday, there was a meeting called with like an hour’s notice,” engineer Brett Wilson says. “We were told, ‘The management is thinking about doing our own browser what do you think about that?’ Everybody was a combination of excited and freaked out.” Part of the freak-out was they knew full well that building a competitive browser was a massive undertaking. There were also mixed feelings because of the group’s attachment to Firefox, an icon of open source development and a hedge against Microsoft’s dominance. “The fear was that people were going to read this as sabotaging Firefox,” says Erik Kay, an engineer who joined the team in October 2006. The Googlers were mollified by the fact that their browser would be 100 percent open source: Google’s innovations could potentially find their way into the Mozilla codebase. “We really want to make Firefox successful, as well as other open source browsers,” Upson says. As part of Google’s Firefox effort, Pichai had been meeting with Mozilla head Mitchell Baker, and at some point he told her about Google’s project. Baker now says a Google browser is a mixed bag for Mozilla and Firefox. She sees the effort as a vindication of Mozilla’s belief that browser choice is essential. “If Google comes up with some good new ideas, that’s really great for users,” she says. “Competition spurs the best in us.” But she also understands that many of her users will download Google’s app. “We expect people will try it and come back,” she says. “Mozilla exists because independence is important.”

The Illustrated History: To introduce Chrome and its development team, Google asked noted artist Scott McCloud to create a 32-page comic (available online) that depicts the browser’s two-year gestation and special features.

A less weighty issue was what to dub the product. After considering some ridiculous codenames (Upson says they were so awful that he took the un-Googly step of a top-down veto), the project borrowed its moniker from the term used to describe the frame, toolbars, and menus bordering a browser window: chrome. One more hire was key. Because Chrome was supposed to be optimized to run Web applications, a crucial element would be the JavaScript engine, a “virtual machine” that runs Web application code. The ideal person to construct this was a Danish computer scientist named Lars Bak. In September 2006, after more than 20 years of nonstop labor designing virtual machines, Bak had been planning to take some time off to work on his farm outside rhus. Then Google called. Bak set up a small team that originally worked from the farm, then moved to some offices at the local university. He understood that his mission was to provide a faster engine than in any previous browser. He called his team’s part of the project “V8.” “We decided we wanted to speed up JavaScript by a factor of 10, and we gave ourselves four months to do it,” he says. A typical day for the Denmark team began between 7 and 8 am; they programmed constantly until 6 or 7 at night. The only break was for lunch, when they would wolf down food in five minutes and spend 20 minutes at the game console. “We are pretty damn good at Wii Tennis,” Bak says. They were also pretty good at writing a JavaScript engine. “We just did some benchmark runs today,” Bak says a couple of weeks before the launch. Indeed, V8 processes JavaScript 10 times faster than Firefox or Safari. And how does it compare in those same benchmarks to the market-share leader, Microsoft’s IE 7? Fifty-six times faster. “We sort of underestimated what we could do,” Bak says. Speed may be Chrome’s most significant advance. When you improve things by an order of magnitude, you haven’t made something better you’ve made something new. “As soon as developers get the taste for this kind of speed, they’ll start doing more amazing new Web applications and be more creative in doing them,” Bak says. Google hopes to kick-start a new generation of Web-based applications that will truly make Microsoft’s worst nightmare a reality: The browser will become the equivalent of an operating system. Google also brought in reinforcements to implement the multiprocess architecture that allowed each open tab to run like a separate, self-contained program. In May 2007, it acquired GreenBorder Technologies, a software security firm whose technology was designed to isolate IE and Firefox activities into virtual sessions, or “sandboxes,” where malware intrusions couldn’t mess with other activities or data on your computer. When the deal was announced publicly, tech pundits wondered whether it meant that Google was going into the antivirus business. Only after the acquisition did GreenBorder’s engineers learn that their job was to construct sandboxes for the tabs of a new browser. “It was confusing,” says Carlos Pizano, one of the GreenBorder hires. “They would not say what they wanted to sandbox.” The team was growing, but the process never got bogged down in bureaucracy. In the project’s early stages, Chromers would all have lunch together at a table in one of the Google cafs. Soon even the largest table couldn’t accommodate them all. Working in an open source spirit, every engineer was free to check out any piece of code and tweak or improve it. Rakowski always tried to keep things light, one day awarding tins of chrome polish to the best bug catchers. As the plumbing aspects of the product fell into place, activity focused on user interface. From the beginning, the Chrome team hoped that its visual presentation would be so understated that people wouldn’t even think they were using a browser. The mantra became “Content, not chrome,” which is sort of weird given the name of the browser. (“We’ve learned to live with the irony,” Mark Larson says.) The clearest expression of this comes when you drag a tab containing a Web application like Gmail to its own separate window and specify that you want an “app shortcut.” At that point, the tabs, buttons, and address bars fall away and the Web app looks pretty much like a desktop app. Welcome to the cloud era.

Any tab in Chrome can be dragged out to start a new window.

When deciding what buttons and features to include, the team began with the mental exercise of eliminating everything, then figuring out what to restore. The back button? No-brainer. The forward button? Less essential, but it survived. But if you’re a big fan of the browser status bar that meter that tells you what percent of a page has loaded you’re out of luck with Chrome. And then there was the bookmarks bar. At first, engineers thought they could kill it. Chrome introduces several new navigation methods, including one where the browser figures out where you want to go next with no typing required. And when you do type something in, you use the “omnibox,” a combination of address bar and search box: Just tell it what you’re thinking and it delivers a Web address, search results, or popular destinations that fit your query, all in non-intrusive text underneath the box. It’s a bulked-up version of “I’m Feeling Lucky.” Still, user tests showed that some people just love to navigate by clicking on the bookmark bar. The compromise: If the user has previously configured the bar in IE or Firefox, Chrome will import the setup. Otherwise, users won’t have a bookmark bar unless they choose to. It’s incredible that something as potentially game-changing as a Google browser has stayed under wraps for two years. It wasn’t until mid-2007, about a year into the project, that the team let employees outside the group even see what they were doing. At the first of a series of Tech Talks featuring the current prototype (events designed, in part, as a way of recruiting internally for the ever-growing team) the reaction was volcanic. Googlers broke into spontaneous applause when various features, like dragging a tab into a new window, were demo’d. As the number of people who knew about Chrome increased, the inevitable occurred word did leak out to a blog or two, yet nothing came of those stray items. No reporter put it all together. “I think it was because rumors about Google browsers have been around so long it’s like sightings of Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster,” Upson says. On the eve of the launch, Pichai shares some of his ambitions for Chrome. How many people will use it? “Many millions,” he says. “I want my mom to use it. I want my dad to use it.” The Google imprimatur doesn’t assure success, but Pichai believes that even if Chrome doesn’t snare huge market share, its innovations will improve the landscape. “We benefit directly if the Web gets better,” he says. As launch approaches, the team has just moved into new space in a freshly renovated building on the Google campus, and there’s another all-hands gathering in the biggest conference room available. It’s standing room only. Milk and cookies are provided. After some initial business, Rakowski hands the floor over to Goodger. The rumpled engineer talks about the benefits of making Chrome an open source product the code will be publicly released and a community will emerge to determine the browser’s evolution. “We’ll be able to scale our testing efforts,” he says. “It’ll enable people to do things we haven’t thought of. And it’ll generate trust that we’re not doing something evil.” As the meeting breaks up, the energy level is over the top, and not just because of the sugar rush. The Chrome team is close to unleashing the product that Google was destined to create. First, though, there are five bugs to swat. Senior writer Steven Levy ([email protected]) also writes about Jay Walker’s in the October issue of Wired.

Infographic: Chrome Enters the Battleground of Browser Development

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