#those activity graphs are absolutely useless

[callsignbaphomet]

Augmentation and Why You Should Give a Fff About It:

Edit: SoOoOoOo I completely forgot to actually post this and it was just sitting in my drafts and then instead of pressing post I pressed delete so here we are again.

So Iceborne is now 2 days away! YAY! Ah, Master Rank where we’ll all feel like absolute noobs as all these familiar monster we grew to love and appreciate will murder us to death in less hits. Fun!

So by now a lot of us have basically every armor piece and weapon we own augmented but there’s still a lot of new and newish players out there who still need to reach level 50 and do a lot of things and one of those very important things is augmenting your armor. What is it?

On armors augmentation allows you to unlock more upgrading which means you can make a jump from 74 to 92 in armor rating for each independent piece and since there are 5 pieces you can wear it’ll bring the total amount to 460 (if my math is correct). You’ll need to upgrade your armor completely before you can augment. So what do you need in order to do this?

Step 1: Beat the base game’s main storyline. Murder baby alien or as my boyfriend calls it glowstick. Step 2: Gather tempered monster clues to unlock investigations. Step 3: Fight some tempered monsters. Step 4: Leave an offering to RNGesus and pray. Pray like you’ve never prayed before in your life!

Wait, what???

...yeah...ya see, tempered monsters will have a strictly RNG based chance of dropping streamstones or gleaming streamstone for armors and warrior’s streamstone or hero’s streamstone for weapons. These are heavily coveted by everyone and that’s what you’ll mostly be doing in endgame. Farming the ever loving fuck out of tempered monsters in investigations.

Now the type of stone you get is based on what level the tempered monster falls under so here is a neat little graph that someone that was not me made to make this a lot easier.

As you can see we have three tiers (1, 2 and 3) and the exception list at the bottom. Yes, there is an Arch Tempered Xeno’jiiva and Arch Tempered Zorah Magdaros but they skipped tempered and went straight into AT so that’s why they’re an exception.

So which tier should you go for? Threat level 2 and 3. Here’s why: the rarity of your armor.

Rarity 1-4 requires 1x Streamstone Shard, 3x Fucium Ore, 3,000z

Rarity 5 requires 1x Streamstone Shard, 1x Dragonbone Relic, 5,000z

Rarity 6 requires 1x Streamstone, 1x Bird Wyvern Gem, 10,000z

Rarity 7 requires 1x Streamstone, 1x Wyvern Gem, 20,000z

Rarity 8 requires 1x Gleaming Streamstone, 2x Elder Dragon Bones, 30,000z

Honestly speaking you’ll be using rarities 6-8, maybe a rarity 5 may sneak in because of a hard to find skill and you haven’t found the decoration for it so you’re forced to use an armor piece for it. You definitely will not be using 1-4 so that’s a waste of time.

Another thing I wanna add is that augmenting armor is extremely expensive, however, it is worth every single penny!

Now moving on to the weapon items which just like the armors is divided in their rarity. Again, make sure your weapon is fully upgraded because you won’t be able to until you do so.

Rarity 6 requires 1x Warrior Streamstone

Rarity 7 requires 2x Warrior Streamstones

Rarity 8 requires 1 Hero Streamstone

Now weapons are handled differently than armors starting with the fact that there are different variations of the Hero and Warrior streamingstones.

Sword are for Great Swords and Long Swords

Blade are for Sword & Shield and Dual Blades

Hammer are for Hammers and Hunting Horns

Lance are for Lances and Gunlances

Axe are for Switch Axes and Charge Blades

Shaft are for Insect Glaives and Bows

Ranged are for Light Bowguns and Heavy Bowguns

With armors you just upgraded their defenses but with weapons you add things to them depending on how many slots there are. Rarity 6 has three slots, rarity 7 has two slots and rarity 8 has one slot.

You have a total of 5 improvements you can do to your weapons:

Attack Increase: raises base Attack Power by 5 with each application.

Affinity Increase: raises base Affinity by 10% the first time you augment and then 5% the second or third time you augment it.

Defense Increase: raises Defense by 10 with each application and applies a passive buff that randomly reduces damage taken. Chance to reduce damage increases with each application, and the buff activates independently from Divine Blessing.

Slot Upgrade: adds a Decoration Slot to the Weapon. Slot level increases with each application. 

Health Regen: restores Health with each attack. How much you get back depends on the weapon type and how much damage was dealt. This stacks beautifully with Recovery Up!

So many choices, so many weapons, so much confusion! That’s ok. Listen, I ain’t gonna sit here and yell at you about following the meta or else you’ll die, you know how you play and what your needs are so I suggest you think it over and plan your strategy out and then augment how you believe it’ll best benefit you. However, I’ll gladly give my two cents on the matter.

I never touch defense, slot or attack because I just do not believe it is worth it. Defense is kind of useless unless you max it out and by then you’ll have broken any chance at a good build. Slot upgrade is also a waste because you can easily manage your decorations in the armor and charm sets. Attack can be raised through the use of items you take with you on hunts and through meals as well as through other skills so that’s a waste of resources and time.

Another guide you’ll see a lot is that melee weapons should only be augmented with Health Regen and all ranged weapons should be augmented with Affinity. This isn’t exactly true, I myself use a build with the Anja Arch III bow that has 2 Health Regen and 1 Affinity which is mixed in with the Recovery Up skill just to tackled AT Vaal Hazak and it works perfectly. However, there has been only one HBG I’ve put HR into but it was because it was an experiment and thankfully it worked out in my favor. Again, you do you and what you feel is best for you but also be warned that once you augment a weapon you cannot take it off. You’d need to make the weapon all over again.

So yeah, that’s all there is to augmentation. Not that hard aside from the stinking RNG. Expensive af but like I said it’s worth every cent.

“Um, I don’t have any augmentation options when I speak to the smithy at the workshop.”

That’s where step 4 comes in. You won’t have that option unlocked until you get your very first Streamstone or Gleaming Streamstone. A lot of people suggest hunting threat level 2 tempered monsters but again this is based on false rumors that those drop the items more frequently and again that’s wrong. So get out there and farm those tempered monsters and remember they are VERY, VERY STRICTLY BASED ON RNG!

[jooliargh]

How I made a habit stick and lost 3kg

Content warning: weight loss; calorie counting.

If you find this article interesting and decide to use a similar method to lose weight, please get proper advice from a doctor or dietitian. I can talk about habit forming, but I'm not qualified to say what is safe or healthy for you to eat.

This isn’t really a weight loss blog, because what could be more boring or unnecessary than a weight loss blog from someone only a few kilos overweight? It’s a blog about how I built some better habits, and found a system for sticking to them that worked for me. But in the first couple of months of lockdown I was moving about less than usual and probably eating a bit more, and the effect of those things was gaining weight (specifically, my jeans were getting tight). So the habits I needed to build were to move about more and eat less.

(For what it’s worth, I find it helpful to think about weight gain and loss as effects of different eating habits rather than problems or goals in themselves since I read Gillian Riley’s excellent book about food addiction Eating Less.)

The Problem

In my job, sometimes when we start a piece of work we use a set of questions something like this:

What problem are we solving, for whom?

How do we know it’s a problem?

How will we know if we’ve solved it?

My answers were:

I’m eating too much and moving about too little, which is bad for my health, which is a problem for me. Also, I want my clothes to still fit.

My jeans are getting tight (even my ‘comfy’ jeans which I wear on days when the others are too tight)

When I’ve adopted better habits that lead to me comfortably being able to fit into my favourite jeans

At this point I needed some science, which meant thinking about calories and weight for a while. I reckoned my jeans used to fit pretty well when I was about 3kg lighter so to achieve that, the energy I used (from moving about) needed to exceed the energy I consumed (from food) by about 22,500 calories in total. Whether it took me a few weeks or a year to create that difference didn’t matter.

The Science Bit

Caveat: I got a D at GCSE Science.

When I talk about calorie deficit, I’m not talking about someone else’s idea of what I should or shouldn’t be eating or how much I should be moving. I’m talking about physics: what goes in needs to be less than what comes out.

Side note: Did you know that when we lose weight, it leaves our body via our lungs? Yes, there’s wee and poo and sweat and stuff, but fundamentally when we ‘burn’ energy we turn oxygen into carbon dioxide. The air we breathe out is very slightly heavier than the air we breathe in, and that’s where the weight goes. I only found that out a few years ago and it’s still one of my favourite facts.

So for me, a 47-year-old woman, 5′3″ tall, weighing 69kg and working at a desk all day, on average*, I’d be burning about 1600 calories a day. (That number is different for everyone. And it makes me wonder where the 2000 calorie target for women on food packaging comes from, because I’m fairly average size for a woman.)

If I go for a 2 mile leisurely stroll, I’ll burn about 150 calories. (Click the link to work out your numbers because they’re probably different to mine.) So if that same day I get 1400 calories from food and drink, I’ll create about a 350 calorie deficit.

The System

I made up a card with 75 empty circles on it. Each circle represented a 300 calorie deficit. (75 x 300 = 22,500, my target from earlier.) When I’d filled in all the circles, I should be 3kg lighter.

To add some accountability, I decided to use different colours for different days of the week. That way I’d want to fill in circles most days, and it might help me spot patterns. You can see from the key at the top of the card, Monday is red, Tuesday is orange, and so on. So if on Monday I ate 1600 calories and used 1900, I could colour in one red circle. If on Tuesday I ate 1200 calories and used 1800, I’d colour in two orange circles. As you can see here, I started with a 600 calorie deficit on a Thursday. (I actually started this experiment on a Wednesday, but ended up eating about the same amount of energy as I used, so didn’t get to colour in any circles that day.)

If I ate 300 calories more than I used on any given day, I’d have to add an empty circle to the bottom of the card. (If you zoom in you might be able to see some very feint circles I printed out for this purpose.)

I've tried numerous ways to be better in control of my eating or exercise over the years and I’ve learnt a few things about what works for me and what doesn’t. This felt like it had a good chance of succeeding because:

I like having data, and I like data to be visible. Graphs, charts, etc. are all good.

I like to see progress. The bathroom scales are a bad measure day-to-day for me because on a traditional diet, what I gain or lose in hormonal and other random fluctuations can be more than I’d target to lose in a week. Colouring in circles should be a good measure because, even though my goal is better habits and not weight loss per se, as long as I don’t cheat, regardless of what the scales say on any specific day, every 300 calories of energy I use that I don’t replace with food will result in me being one step closer to my jeans fitting.

Things which rely on all-or-nothing thinking don’t motivate me very much. e.g. the Seinfeld Method where you have to avoid ‘breaking the chain’. I need to be able to have off-days and to be able to get back on track the next day. If I feel like I’ve failed at the whole task because of one slip-up, I’ll inevitably slip up and won’t continue.

I like stationery and have a lot of Sharpies.

If I had to draw in extra circles because I’d eaten more than I’d used in a given day, it would be a rough, hand-drawn circle and would stick out like a sore thumb from the neat printed circles. I like neatness, so I probably wouldn’t want to do that. (Please don’t look too closely at my colouring in.)

Measuring

Most fitness trackers will try give you some sort of estimate of how many calories you’re burning each day. I have a Garmin Vivosmart 4 which measures heart rate, so it should be fairly accurate. But most Fitbits and similar devices will do it, and if you don’t have one of those, MyFitnessPal and various other apps will give you an estimate which should be close enough to get you started. I’ve also included links to my own estimates from Wolfram Alpha in The Science Bit above, which are very close to what I get from my tracker.

Without a tracker, background activity level (walking around, physical effort involved in housework or childcare or whatever) you’d have to estimate based on whether you’ve had a ‘sedentary’ day, light activity, etc. Being anything other than as honest as you can gains you nothing. As for specific activities (going for a walk), there are tons of places online you can get estimates for walking, running, swimming etc. Any estimate which doesn’t take account of your approximate weight is close to useless, so bear that in mind. There’s no real need to weigh yourself frequently or accurately, but you do need a rough idea of what you weigh to know how many calories you’d burn by, say, walking two miles.

As for energy coming in, I kept a food diary using MyFitnessPal. The free plan does everything I needed for this exercise. Pre-packaged food comes with a calorie count, but especially in lockdown, where I was making more stuff from cupboard ingredients, I was using the meal and recipe functions and having to weigh things. It’s a hassle, but only a minor one.

What Happened? Did It Work?

Yes! Here I am, eight weeks later, sitting comfortably in jeans that haven’t fit me for a few years. I realise 3kg in eight weeks is hardly headline-grabbing stuff, but the point is it worked for me, where all the headline-grabbing weight loss plans just don’t.

Confession: for all I try not to think in terms of weight loss, I do weigh myself most days and I do collect data. Above is the chart from my Wifi bathroom scales, because of course I have Wifi bathroom scales.)

But more importantly, I’ve changed my habits:

I’m being more mindful in my food choices. Do I want a snack after lunch, or do I want to colour in another circle? If I’m genuinely hungry I haven’t been depriving myself, but a couple of times I’ve planned to eat something and then... just decided I wasn’t bothered.

In the first weeks of lockdown I’d developed a bit of a biscuit habit. But within the first few days of this experiment, I’d find myself in the kitchen, thinking about taking a chocolate chip cookie, and deciding not to because I didn’t want to sacrifice a circle for the day.

I’ve been walking absolutely loads. A long walk on a Sunday means I can have croissants and jam and an oat mocha for breakfast and still eat a decent sized dinner. And now a walk has become part of my weekend routine, I miss it if it doesn’t happen.

I’ve been getting up at 7am to walk 4km before I start work each day. I listen to podcasts when I walk so if I skip days then I feel like I’m missing out on my podcast time.

Chocolate raisins are my weakness. There have been a couple of times I’ve gone for a 40 minute walk just so I could ‘earn’ some chocolate raisins. This probably isn’t entirely healthy in terms of my eating addiction, but still healthier than just eating the raisins and not going for the walk.

I think what I’m saying is it’s taught me to make better choices. This is also a big theme in Eating Less - that putting all our focus on weight is unhelpful because anything I do today takes a long time to pay back in terms of a noticeable improvement in my weight. But hour by hour I can make better choices about what food I eat and how much I move about. This system lets me see the effects of those choices the same day. The circles don’t lie - if I create a 300 calorie deficit 75 times I will be about 3kg lighter, however long that takes. I’m holding myself much more accountable for those choices than I would be if I didn’t see the outcome for a few weeks.

Not Just For Calorie Counting

I’m telling you about my calorie deficit journey because that’s the change I needed to make and that’s why I built the system. But you could easily use the same system for any consistent change you want to create. These are the things that I think would apply to building any new habit:

It gave me near-instant feedback on the results of my choices.

It provided visible evidence of progress toward a goal, where progress might not otherwise be discernible immediately.

It doesn’t fix a timescale. It didn’t matter to me how many weeks I took to fill in the circles. Of course I wanted to get there sooner rather than later, but if I had a bad day or a bad week, there was no reason for it to derail me.

I wasn’t showing the card to anyone else, so I was accountable only to myself. There was no point in cheating or lying to myself because it wouldn’t gain me anything.

I found colouring in the circles surprisingly motivating. I’ve always been sceptical of ‘star chart’ type trackers because of the public element. But even though nobody else saw it, I was still disappointed on the days I couldn’t colour in a circle.

Other uses I can think of, off the top of my head:

Being more active: one circle for every two miles walked - if you change nothing else in your life this will make a difference

Decluttering: one circle for every shelf, cupboard or drawer cleared out

Study schedule: one circle for every half hour of study

Guitar practice: one circle for 20 minutes practice

You get the idea. If you try this, let me know how it works out for you.

[firecakes-art]

Marker Man Misadventures 1

This is the start of a journey that is most definitely not worth doing. I'm going to not only attempt to beat one of the most obscure DS games of all time, but I am also going to map out the levels and be the first person to provide a complete walkthrough of this game. The game is called Marker Man Adventures.

Expect all of the following: - bad game - bad drawings of bad game (not like you're missing out on anything anyway) - pro tips and strategies - game analysis - general displeasure

Welcome to... Marker Man Misadventures

In case you needed some incentive to actually finish this game, Marker Man has you covered. A riveting story between a stick figure and his dog begins when you start a new game. Some may call it captivating, inspiring, and even spontaneous. I prefer "confusing". The stick figure person plays fetch with its dog and throws a ball to the right. The dog chases the ball. The dog doesn't come back. The stick figure goes to find the dog. That's the story. If the player has to go through over a hundred levels before probably finding the dog, that stick figure has a throwing arm that puts the best baseball pitchers to shame. Anyways, I hope that story was enough to make you want to sit through all of this, because here we goooooooooo!

None of these levels have names, so I'll take the liberty of naming the level and labeling certain features of the map. Every level has these weird gloves that act as toll booths, where they will refuse to let you continue until you pick up a certain number of coins, indicated by the orange blobs on the map. The slanted orange lines indicate markers, which are essential to survival in this purgatory of a world. There are two colored platforms shown in this map. The pink platforms come in pairs but there's only one platform in the game. The reason why there's two is they indicate the position ranges that platform is allowed to move. They can only move up and down or left and right. The blue platforms also come in pairs but there are actually two of them in the game, and they act like a balance, where weight on one platform pushes that one down and the opposing one up.

It's a very simple level. You may learn some of the following during your first impression of the game: * rabbits bite * fall damage exists * platforming is extraordinarily glitchy * the game will draw a different shape than the one you wanted * buying this game is a mistake

In addition, there's this spike pit but with a platform over it so you can't actually kill yourself with the spikes. There is a Useless Button above the platform which you can draw a shape over to push it which forces the colored platform to move up, but there's literally no reason to do this. No extra items or platforms are available to you by doing this and you expose yourself to the spike trap so instead just walk past everything. Pay the hand the one coin you collected earlier and you beat level 1. I'm using a standardized syntax for describing what the hands do. The number on the left is how many coins they need before they let you pass the level. The number on the right is the level that the hand will take you. In this case, it's one coin to go to level 2.

This is our first enemy!

Rabbit

I swear I'm not exaggerating the drawing here; that's what it look like. Anyway, it's a rabbit and it is the weakest enemy in the game. Your Marker Man person has a life bar of 100, and this critter takes out 1 hit point every time you touch it. If even losing 1 HP is too much for you, there's a hilarious approach to neutralize this threat. In case you didn't realize by now, this game is all about drawing your way through each level. If you draw a circle around this rabbit, you put it into this bubble where it cannot do anything except be pushed around mercilessly. Doing this also doesn't spend your drawing power, so it is the only way to draw a shape for free.

Oh yeah, your drawing ability is tied to your health. This means that if your HP is low enough, whether from previous drawings or from taking damage, you won't be able to draw anymore shapes. That's where the marker pick up items come into play. They are useful for many reasons, but one of them is for replenishing your HP. The other way to restore your HP is to die and lose a life, but obviously that's not recommended.

I died to fall damage here because I forgot how brutal falling is. You only need to fall a few times your character's height before you take like 40 damage. This game uses a lot of vertical space so get used to learning how to cushion your fall.

In case you're actually playing this game and want to know the controls so far, it's A to jump and Y to use a marker to restore your health. You can use the stylus to draw lines to reach platforms, and other shapes with varying degrees of success.

There's actually two exits! This game loves branching paths. Each exit takes you to a different level, often skipping other levels. Cool, I guess. Not for me, since I NEED to play every level.

Shoe Boy

Basically the rabbit, only it kicks instead of bites. How rude. Bubble it and push it off a cliff or something so you don't have to worry about it.

Man Eating House

Of all the things I thought I would have to worry about in this game, I didn't think the background would be one of them. If you continue to the right exit that requires two coins, one of the houses in the background will come to life and eat you, killing you instantly. I don't think I've ever been so betrayed in my gaming career. There is NO indication or sprite difference between that particular house and all the other ones. However, no need to worry, because I have a solution. First of all, it's only the yellow houses that have a chance of eating you. Secondly, if you see a yellow house and want to check if it will eat you, draw a horizontal line over it. The houses that eat you have a hitbox on the left that collides with your shapes, so the line will hit some invisible block and end up slanted. You should be able to jump on the line and climb over the house this way. There is no way to kill the house.

The psychological damage this enemy has inflicted on me is astounding. Is there another background element that's going to kill me instantly too? Should I avoid that cloud with the smiley face over there? So many things have smiley faces in this game.

I understand that these level maps are not detailed and painful to look at, but if I put more effort into drawing them, they're going to start to look better than the actual game, and this game does not deserve that.

Also, it's only level 3 and the level already feels similar to the previous levels. There's hardly intent or theme behind so many of these levels; it just feels like the level creators haphazardly placed a bunch of platforms and enemies everywhere and called it good.

Oh yeah, also the exit I went to took me to level 5, so I had to start a new file so I could take the other exit to see level 4. I didn't realize that I may not be able to play every single level in a playthrough. Do you understand how frustrating that is for someone who's trying to play every level? I have to potentially play through the entire game multiple times before I find all the exits.

Dynamite

These things look so sad. Probably because they know that their pathetic lives will inevitably end in a violent explosion upon contact with anything. I touched one and it only did 5 damage, so I guess it wasn't that violent of an explosion. I touched another one and it did 10 damage. I guess the damage is randomized.

This level is so dangerous. I cannot believe this is level 4. There are spiky enemies everywhere, very deep chasms with spike pits, and bouncy blocks that prevent any structure from landing on it without being bounced off as well. In addition, bouncy blocks are an absolute pain in this game. There is no way to gain vertical height quickly with this. You just have to sit there while your maximum height increases by like 2 pixels on every bounce. But hey, at least you get a coin by going down there.

This is the level I learned that you can wall climb. It is probably a bug and not a feature but that's not important. If your character's head is over the top of a block you can just run into that block and mash the jump button to """""climb""""" up it. If you don't like that limitation you can draw a line parallel to the wall and place it right next to the wall. That line is climbable everywhere!

As if this level wasn't insulting enough, I took the ridiculous journey to get the second coin so that I can figure out what's in the two coin exit.... AND IT TAKES ME BACK TO LEVEL 3. WHY. There is no other thought process that makes sense as to why the developers did this except for: "The player sees a 2 coin exit with two very hard-to-obtain coins! They'll think this is a worthwhile journey, so we'll betray the player's trust in level exits just like we betrayed the player's trust with the background houses!"

However, I may have to take back the thought that it's impossible to get through every level in the game because previous levels can be revisited now. Imagine graphing out all those level connections...

Spiky Shoe Boy

These things are so much more dangerous than regular shoe boy. Touching them will deal a giant amount of damage (10 per frame?) by continuing to touch them. You can lose 100 HP in less than a second because of spiky shoe boy. And they are not bubbleable. And you can find them in areas with low ceilings. Fantastic.

Spiky Wall

An invincible moving block that will gladly pass through any terrain to pulverize your character. It's basically instant kill. Just find another path around if you can.

There's a little path to the south that leads to a dead end and has an extra marker after activating a platform through a switch. Don't go there. There's a chance the shape pressing the button will despawn and you'll just be stuck up there. There's also a totally fun platforming segment where all the platforms are moving and the momentum makes it frustrating to land on the higher platforms. After that are those paired platforms that move together. Dropping there is guaranteed death, and staying on the first seesaw platform will put you in a spot where you will most likely not be able to get out of.

If you are like me you probably have died enough times to get a game over at this point. This means you have to start from Level 1 again. There is a trick you can do to sort of prevent that from happening. If you have exactly one life left and you die, you can shut off your console (In my case with the 3DS, press the Home button and close the software). This will save your last life if you do it immediately after you die. Strangely, it does not work if you have more than one life left. You can do this same trick for quickly seeing what level you'll be transported to when you give the hand the coins to beat the level!

Raccoon

One of the few enemies in this game that looks cute to me. They are just like the rabbits: 1 HP damage and bubbleable. What a waste of potential. There have been like 6 enemies so far and half of them are functionally the same. I thought my disappointment in this game could not have gotten any higher, but well here we are.

There's lots of houses that will eat you here, so tread carefully; one jump in particular, if missed, could land you right on top of a man-eating house. There's also these rainbow-outlined blocks that disappear once you touch them. They are indicated by the yellow squares. There's no reason to go to that area, but a cool trick is to draw a line on top of the block and then step on that line so the block doesn't go away. One exit takes you back to level 5, and the other to.... level 151? Well this is a sweet shortcut. Because the level takes you to candy land. You can't see it's candy land by looking at my maps, so I guess this joke doesn't work. Anyways, it's advertised as a bonus level, so I will break the level order here to explain this level soon.

Chomper

Finally, an interesting enemy. These guys are bubbleable, but they can deal out 1 damage every frame instead of the rabbit-like enemies where they do 1 damage every couple seconds. They're hardly more dangerous since you can bubble them, however.

This place is just sad. It's decorated as a candy land level, but everything with a face is frowning. Also, the end of the level just takes you back to level 5, which means that the entirety of level 6 is a trap because every exit just sends you back to level 5. Great. This place is also really dangerous because there are no markers here. This means if you have 0 markers when you come here then you have to be extremely careful with how you use your life, because it will drain fast from all of the climbing.

On the plus side, the soundtrack has finally changed. I was starting to hate the background music because of how often it repeats. I even timed it to see how long the song takes before it loops, and it's about 16 seconds. It can drive anyone mad in a day. Too bad the soundtrack here is also extremely short (about 12 seconds).

There's also one spot in the level where it is almost impossible to get through. It looks like the end of the level, but you cannot actually reach this spot from the end of the level because it is way too high up to build. This is the spot underneath the coin. There is only one way to get to this spot that I know of. You must draw a really long line from the position of the coin underneath the character, and then support it with a rectangle to the right so the line doesn't tip over when you drop down. There is a cave entrance where the rectangle can be placed to lock the whole structure into place so you know it won't topple. Oh yeah, super pro tip: you can delete shapes by holding the left trigger and then clicking on them! You even get back some of your life when you do this.

Aaaaand there's nothing here. There's a gingerbread house and a pinata in the background and that's it. So much for an easter egg. I guess the fact that there's actually a detailed background in this area constitutes as something rare enough to be an easter egg, so I'll take it. Fortunately you can drop straight down from the ledge and hit the exit back to level 5.

I forgot to mention that light blue platforms are bouncy platforms. Anyways, here's the super secret fun area

Sad Cake

Basically the spikes. They deal a lot of damage on contact. Climb over them using the line shapes.

I think that's enough ridiculousness for now. I need a break.

[andrewdburton]

The biggest truth in personal finance

For the past six weeks, I've been hard at work writing my “introduction to financial independence and early retirement” project for Audible and The Great Courses. It's been challenging — and fun — to rework my past material for a new audience in a new format.

Naturally, I'm emphasizing two important points in this project: profit and purpose.

I believe strongly that you need a clear personal mission statement in order to find success with money (and life).

I also believe that the most important number on your path to financial freedom is your personal profit, the difference between your income and your spending. (Most people refer to this number as saving rate. I prefer the term “personal profit” because it's, well, sexier.)

That last point is important.

Too many people want magic bullets. They want quick and easy ways to get out of debt and build wealth. They believe (or hope) that there's some sort of secret they can uncover, that somehow they've missed. Well, there aren't any secrets. Money mastery is a combination of psychology and math. And the math part is so simple a third-grader could understand it. Wealth is the accumulation of what you earn minus what you spend.

There are only two sides to this wealth equation — earning and spending — but a disproportionate amount of financial advice focuses on the one factor, on spending, and that's too bad. Sure, frugality is an important part of personal finance. And if you're in a tight spot and/or have a high income and still struggle, then cutting expenses is an excellent choice. But the reality is, you won't get rich — slowly or otherwise — by pinching pennies alone.

The Biggest Lie in Personal Finance

Recently at his excellent blog, Of Dollars and Data, Nick Maggiulli wrote about the biggest lie in personal finance. What is that lie? He writes:

While there are lots of people who are in financial trouble because of their own actions, there are also lots of people with good financial habits who just don’t have sufficient income to improve their finances.

That’s why the biggest lie in personal finance is that you can be rich if you just cut your spending. And the financial media feeds this lie by telling you to stop spending $5 a day on coffee so that you can become a millionaire.

With charts and graphs and data, Maggiuli demonstrates that the problem facing people with low incomes isn't their spending ��� it's their earning. If you're living at the poverty line — currently $26,200 per year for an American family of four — you're not going to escape through thrift. Thrift is an emergency measure, a stopgap. It's a bandage on a major wound.

Here's the bottom line:

If you're poor and hope to be not poor, your attention should be focused on increasing income, not on cutting costs. Your expenses are likely already very low.

If you have an average household income — currently $63,179 according to the U.S. Census Bureau — your path to building wealth will probably include both frugality and income enhancement.

If you have a high income but still struggle to make ends meet, your attention should absolutely turn to cutting costs. You need to rein in your lifestyle. But you won't accomplish this with frugality; you'll do this by optimizing the big stuff.

Maggiuli is fed up with the Biggest Lie. It “triggers” him.

“This is the same financial media who write stories about how people save money by living in a trailer, making their own dish soap, or reusing their dental floss,” he writes. “Yes, it’s that ridiculous. But what really gets me is how these examples are provided as ‘proof' of how cutting spending can make you rich.”

From my experience, this sort of stuff is perennially popular because it's easy. It's easy to write and it's easy to read, even if it doesn't offer any real solutions. It's more difficult to write about boosting your income. And, it's more difficult to act on that information because it takes time, effort, and actual sacrifice.

Real-Life Examples of the Biggest Lie in Action

Just this morning, Trent at The Simple Dollar published an article about optimizing dishwashing for money and time. Trent writes:

If I can invest some time and thought and effort into optimizing a routine I do three times a week, and that optimization trims off five minutes of effort and $0.50 in cost, I’m literally saving 13 hours per year and $78 per year for the rest of my life.

Trent isn't wrong. If his math is correct (and his discipline too), he will literally save 13 hours and $78 each year by optimizing how he does dishes. This isn't a lie. In this case, the lie comes from what is implied: Do this and you'll grow rich. You'll reach financial freedom by becoming a smarter dishwasher.

Here's the truth:

You don't reap the thirteen hours and $78 annual benefit as a one-time win. You're saving five minutes and fifty cents per day. This may seem like a niggling point, but it's important. If you gain thirteen hours or $78 at once, that's something real and tangible, something you can work with. But an extra five minutes and fifty cents per day? Not so much.

Trent loves to calculate the dollars per hour he saves through various actions. He didn't do that in this case, and it's easy to see why. If he's saving $78 in 13 hours, that's the equivalent of $6 per hour. I don't know about you, but it's easy for me to brainstorm ways to earn more than $6 per hour with my time.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't optimize your dishwashing routine. Do it! But don't expect it to make you rich. Because it won't.

Here's a bigger example of the lie in action.

Elizabeth Willard Thames writes at Frugalwoods, which is one of my favorite money blogs. Recently, especially, Liz has been publishing lots of amazing stuff. I look forward to each new article. (Those of you who make use of the Spare Change list of links on the GRS front page have probably noticed that I bookmark Frugalwoods frequently.)

As you might guess from the name of her blog, Liz focuses (almost?) exclusively on thrift. She and her husband practice extreme frugality. She wrote a book, Meet the Frugalwoods [my review], that documented their journey from poor college students to achieving financial independence on a 66-acre farm in central Vermont.

Now, there's no doubt that Liz and Nate are thrifty. They practice what they preach. But their frugality is not the reason for their wealth, the reason they were able to retire early. You can't buy a 66-acre farm in Vermont simply by optimizing your dishwashing routine. Or clipping coupons. Or hosting potlucks. To to this, you also need a high income. And that's a part of the story that Liz doesn't share with her readers. She and her husband made a lot of money, and that's how they got rich — not through frugality.

I'm sure Liz doesn't mean to obfuscate the truth, but that's the net effect. She's complicit in “the biggest lie in personal finance”.

To her credit, Liz seems to be incorporating more of the truth in her writing. Today, for instance, the About page at Frugalwoods acknowledges their high incomes. This didn't used to be the case.

Now, I don't mean to dog on Liz and Trent. They're both good people and fine writers. But I think they do their readers a huge disservice by covering just one aspect of the wealth equation, by rarely (if ever) mentioning income. They're active participants in Maggiuli's “biggest lie”.

And I'll confess: For a long time, I was guilty of the same thing. Sometimes, I still am. Hell, I've spilled a lot of words lately about my quest to optimize my food spending, haven't I? I'm not claiming to be any better than Liz or Trent. But I want to at least acknowledge the lie — and the reciprocal truth.

The Biggest Truth in Personal Finance

If frugality isn't the path to riches, what is? The answer is simple: Big Wins. Big Wins are the quickest way to wealth.

You can scrape your dishes and rinse them in cold water every day for the rest of your life, and you still wouldn't match the benefits you'd obtain by purchasing a cheaper home. Or choosing a more fuel-efficient car. Or negotiating your salary.

The best way to spend less is to cut back on the big stuff.

If the average American family were to trim their housing costs by 10%, they'd save roughly $150 per housing payment — more than twenty times the benefit of optimizing your dishwashing routine. Transportation offers similar opportunities. According to the American Automobile Association, the average driver spends just over $9000 per year on her vehicle. Reduce this spending by less than one percent and you've accomplished the same thing as a year of diligent dishwashing.

But, as Maggiuli notes in his article, income is the elephant in the room, the subject that too many writers ignore.

You can only cut costs so far. There's no way to reduce your spending below zero, and most of us can't come close to that. As I mentioned earlier, the U.S. poverty line for a family of four is currently $26,200. (For two people, it's $17,240.) Not counting his business, Mr. Money Mustache (a famously frugal fellow) spent $13,068 in 2019.

If you're living like this and want to escape, your shouldn't look for ways to cut costs. That stuff is useless to you. If somebody tells you otherwise, they're lying. In these circumstances, you should be trying to increase your income. And even if you have a standard middle-class salary, boosting income is usually the best way to meet your goals.

There are three primary ways to earn more money.

First, become better educated. Despite the dire details in the gloomy mass media, this is undeniable: The more you learn, the more you earn. In the U.S., education has a greater impact on lifetime earnings than any other demographic factor. It's more important than your race, your religion, your gender, your location. (In fact, the Census Bureau says education has five times the impact of gender on annual earnings.) That's great news because while you can't control your age or race, you have total control over your education.

Second, become a better employee. I read a lot on Reddit (and other places) where people piss on their employers, complaining about how their boss (or company) is out to screw them. This stuff is counter-productive. Sure, there are some shitty employers out there, but most are happy to promote and reward their best workers. If you want to earn more, work longer and harder than others will. If you're in a situation where hard work goes unrewarded, switch jobs.

Finally — and most importantly — learn to negotiate your salary. Study after study shows the same thing: Failing to negotiate your salary can cost you over half a million dollars during the course of a typical career. Half a million dollars! For over a decade, I've been pushing Jack Chapman's book, Negotiating Your Salary: How to Make $1000 a Minute. Let me do so again.

“You can't frugalize income you don't earn,” Liz writes in Meet the Frugalwoods. She speaks the truth! The biggest truth.

I'm no enemy of thrift. Yes, absolutely, pinch your pennies, if that makes you happy. Frugality is an excellent way to build good habits. Over the long run, many frugal habits combined can make a big difference to your financial situation.

But if you have a low income, do not focus on thrift. It's a red herring. Instead, turn your attention to Big Wins. And, especially, to increasing your income. Because this is the biggest truth in personal finance: You can't get rich through frugality alone.

The post The biggest truth in personal finance appeared first on Get Rich Slowly.

from Finance https://www.getrichslowly.org/the-biggest-truth-in-personal-finance/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[witchingjackal]

Spirit Working Cycles

[Disclaimer: This is my personal upg of your body’s natural cycle. Some people have reported either not having a hyperactivity period or having them so subdued that it isn’t an issue, so just use my post as a guideline for discovering your own needs. And natural fallow periods aren’t the cause for every downtime out there, some will be caused by blocks such as past trauma, energetic blockages, spirit influence, sickness and more. Some of those do require some sort of intervention and are good to get rid of!]

One of the biggest things I’ve seen you guys distressed over are the times where you are not working with your spirits! You’re not communicating (if you can communicate at all during this time), you aren’t really aware of their presence, you go ages without wearing their vessels, you just don’t have the strength to keep up with the work you want to do!

And then you grow frantic and anxious over what the spirits are thinking about you. You’re afraid of them hating you and leaving for how long you’ve been ignoring them. Or maybe they could be depressed by your sudden lack of interest, like you’re their best friend who suddenly cut contact and is ignoring their texts and calls. You may be worried about all this during your period of inactivity and can’t fix things despite being aware of them. Maybe the stress is even making it worse than before and now you can’t feel them no matter how hard you try!

So when you start to get in a better spirit working state, you’re afraid of speaking to them now, afraid of what they’ll say and if they hate you and if they’ll ever accept you back as a friend…

Guys, this is totally normal. This is a natural body cycle (well, psychic body cycle!) just like menstruation! I haven’t heard nearly as many people talking about it as I would expect, so let me break down your spiritual fallow periods!

(yes, it’s a lazily drawn graph)

The graph is divided into three horizontal sections: Hyperactivity, Normal State, and Fallow Period. The colored vertical sections are parts I want to pay particular attention to. And finally the curving black line represents your spiritual state.

Area 1: Here, you’re in a state of growth. This is fantastic! You’re learning and improving!

Area 2: You are neither growing nor declining, but there is nothing wrong with this. Many people spend the majority of their time in stasis, their growth periods coming in sudden, sharp increases. Others will almost constantly be in a state of growth too gradual to see. Any way is okay as long as it is your way!

Area 3: This is your decline stage. It isn’t quite a fallow period, but you may notice that you are not quite as sharp as usual or have trouble concentrating on spirit activity. This is fine, it is your body preparing itself for a state of growth, recovering from large energy use, or just focusing on other things. You can also enter a period of stasis before your new growth period as your body recharges. If you feel you are in a stasis period after declining, take some time for both spiritual and mundane self care!

Area 4: Here you have peaked into a time of hyperactivity.. Your senses are better than ever before and your spirit working skills are on fire. This is not necessarily a good thing! Many people don’t know how to manage themselves during this time and end up burning out into area 5. When I was in high school and attended band camp (which wasn’t really camp as much as it was all day summer practices), most parents gave their kids twenty dollars for the entire week’s lunch. As one might expect, the kid spent the entire twenty dollars on day one and spent every other day either hungry or bringing whatever scraps they could find at home. This lack of saving is similar to what you might do during your hyperactivity stage! I’ll speak more later on how to manage this stage.

Area 5: This is a sharp decline after the hyperactivity stage due to burning out. It is possible to exit the hyperactivity stage without going into such a decline, but it cannot be avoided every time. This type of decline typically happens in a very short period of time, even overnight.

Area 6: Here is the moment you’ve been waiting for: your fallow period! This is not a bad thing! Essentially this is your body’s way of resting and recharging so that it can stabilize itself to go back into spiritual matters. Your senses may be distant or nonexistent, your communication may be difficult even with the use of tools, and you may feel a disconnect from spirit work in general. Do not panic and push yourself to do spirit work; you will only damage yourself and spend more time in this state! Strive for self care right and grounding right now. It is perfectly fine to separate from spirit work right now and even recommended for some people. Dive back into the mundane world!

Area 7: Finally, you’ve exited your fallow period! Many people go through growth after their fallow periods because their bodies are so fresh from recharging. Don’t burn yourself out, but feel free to have some celebratory communication with your spirit friends!

So you’re saying my fallow periods aren’t abnormal? They’re good?

ABSOLUTELY! Not only are they good, but they are necessary for you to maintain your abilities! Going without fallow periods would be like going without sleeping. You would eventually crash and burn from the lack of rest, and then your fallow period would be more akin to being knocked unconscious than a good night’s sleep. Don’t try to push them away.

And my spirits really don’t care?

Your spirits are more attuned to spiritual needs than humans. Not only are they going to be aware of this cycle, but they may go through it too. Almost everything goes through it. If you’ve been with a spirit for a long time, you may have noticed times where they don’t communicate much or fade into the background. They also go through periods where they have difficulty communicating with physical creatures. Some will hide this very well, while others will be very upfront on the subject.

How often should I be getting these? How long should they be?

This depends entirely on yourself. Everyone has a different natural cycle. Some people will have cycles of sharp increases and decreases, with every stage lasting in bursts. Others will have almost constant growth, but it is so gradual that they feel as if they are in permanent stasis. Your fallow periods are going to be whatever your body needs. If you need longer periods to recharge then it will be longer, and perhaps lessened in intensity. Others will have shorter periods, but they are more intense because your body has to dip so far down to recharge so quickly. It is not always even, either! Most people have fairly even patterns within their cycles, but it is possible to be everchanging. As for your hyperactivity, this is usually a sharp, albeit short-lived, spike.

Now onto how to manage your cycle!

Signs of entering a hyperactivity period:

Pressure, vibrations, buzzing, or other unusual sensations in your third eye and other energy centers

Psychic senses are suddenly intensified, possibly to the point of discomfort

Feeling as if you are not grounded

Difficulty grounding

Floating sensation

Headaches

Disconnection from reality; disassociation

More attuned to the astral and physical planes than your physical body

Others notice that your energy is bold and even chaotic, much louder than usual

You attract spirits more than in your normal energy state

Seemingly endless energy for spirit work and other related activities

Sudden motivation for spirit work, you may feel an exaggeration of your skill level

A disregard for discernment

How to manage a hyperactivity period:

Ground frequently! While it may feel useless, it will help to stabilize you in the long run

Discharge your energy into crystals and other storage units. It will give an outlet for excess energy and give you boosts when in need

Attempt meditations focused around peace, calm, and stability

Spend time in a garden or otherwise surrounded by nature, and ground by extending your energy like roots into the earth. Doing this will help to connect yourself to the energy system around you, the plants aiding in keeping you stable

This is a good time to look at the big pictures of vast energy systems. Try looking at the energetic connections within a forest, or between houses in a neighborhood.

Do not go overboard with spirit work, energy work, magic, etc! You will not start to feel the effects of burning out until it has happened. Work on grounding and stabilizing and try to not overwork yourself.

Consistency is the key! Instead of spending your energy all at once, try to use this time to be consistent with your spirit senses and communication. Consistency takes much more energy than you may realize!

Although you shouldn’t do everything all at once, that doesn’t mean you can’t get things done right now! Feel free to work on that big project, just pay extra attention to your spiritual health and go easy.

Don’t get arrogant or stupid! While confidence is good and important, don’t let your abundance of energy convince you to summon a nuclear doom spirit of death without protection. You will regret power trips.

Practice discernment! You may feel concrete in your senses right now but it is just as important as ever

PROTECTION!! Some people become larger beacons for spirits during this time, so up your protection and be wary of strange spirits. Even if you do not become more attractive than normal, energy siphoning spirits will still be drawn to the excess of food in you

Be extra polite to local spirits. Perhaps put up a ward to quiet your energy to others or if possible avoid going into particularly active locations. Even if they have no wish to snack on you, the loud energy can be obnoxious.

Signs of entering a fallow period:

Disinterest and lack of motivation for spirit work, energy work, and magic

Psychic senses are distant or nonexistent

Tools seem to fail or are difficult to understand

You do not naturally notice telepathic speech from spirits

Discernment is difficult, or you may feel that nothing is real

Attempting spirit work, energy work, or magic exhausts you

You are constantly distracted when attempting to meditate or astral travel

You think less of your spirits throughout the day

You are more drawn to mundane activities, such as watching tv, and feel the need to skip or pay less attention to daily exercises

If you feel guilt over ignoring your spirits, you are still unable to communicate well

Sudden frustration with your lack of ability and progress, feeling as if you have retrograded

Sadness or other negative emotions at the sudden sense of disconnect from your spirits, as if your bonds have disappeared

How to manage a fallow period:

Focus on the mundane world! Your body is not meant to be overworking itself on the nonphysical right now

Work on gentle physical self care

As you breathe in, visualize energy in your body like liquid streams of light collecting and brightening in your third eye and any other places you use as psychic energy organs. As you breathe out, it gently diffuses outwards back throughout your body, dimming as it is once again returned to its regular density. This helps to keep your psychic energy points in shape.

Visualize your energy like before, but when you breathe in it flows in a steady, circular cycle upwards from the tip of your toes through your chest. Let it pass through your third eye, and as you breathe out it completes the second half of the cycle by curving downwards, flowing through and cleansing that side’s energy centers as it does so. Rather than being in a single ball, the energy is in a constant, equal flow like the blood in your veins. This helps to keep your energy clean and flowing and cuts down the risk of stagnation during your fallow period.

If you must do any sort of spirit or energy work, make sure it is very slow and gentle like the two exercises above. It must not conflict with your body’s rest. If you wish to practice meditation, don’t do anything requiring long periods of focus or that demands energy. Try doing meditations for sleep or calm which do not involve any spirit contact, but only focus on relaxing your body.

Spiritual protection based in the physical plane is very good to have for when your fallow periods occur! These are things such as witch jars and large scale crystal grids. It is easier to keep these clean and working, since you may not be able to sense purely nonphysical protection like wards at all.

If you wish to remind your spirits that you have them in your thoughts, include them in a daily meal by offering its energy as you eat. Simply thinking this will most likely be enough for them to hear, but if you want to be certain, say it aloud or whisper it if with company!

Before you go to bed, invite your spirits to sit with you as you tell them about your day, no matter how mundane. Even if you can’t sense them around you, this will show them that you are still keeping them in your thoughts and taking the time to include them in your day!

However, it’s also okay to simply push spirit work to the back of your mind and focus on pressing mundane matters. They will understand.

Above all, remember that your spiritual self is resting and recharging. Do what your own body needs to encourage this rest. Don’t try to rush past it or forcibly stuff energy into yourself, most likely you’ll end up hurt and elongating this period.

So hopefully this guide will help on the stress everyone seems to get during their fallow periods! It’s always important for us to understand the natural workings of our bodies, whether physical or nonphysical. Start including your daily thoughts on your current location in your body’s cycle to start recognizing your patterns, and maybe to even predict when your natural downtimes will occur!

[webvision247-blog]

16 Free Alternative WordPress plugins for P3 (Plugin Efficiency Profiler).

P3(Plugin Performance Profiler)ended up being everyone's preferred plugin for a while. All most everybody in WordPress recommended it, in reality individuals (basic newbie users) relied so much to measure WordPress plugin performance, it became the go to plugin for discovering heavy resource hungry plugins/themes. For several years users as well as developers suggested it to people. P3 Efficiency profiler has just recently ended up being buggy since it hasn't been upgraded for more than 2 years. In truth, numerous users are leaving 1 Star negative review on the wordpress.org evaluation page. Here's a little compilation of last one month's unfavorable evaluations-- Abandoned, Unsafe to

utilize, and No Longer Practical-- "This plugin has not been upgraded in practically 2 years. It is plainly abandoned.The code is incredibly out of date, and attempting to use it on a modern WP site is a no-go. Was far better when it started out, and now we suggest you avoid it in order to protect your website."-- Evaluation Link

Great concept, not useful in 4.7.2-- "I don't understand if this plugin requires an upgrade, or if I missed a vital setup step ... however in WP 4.7.2 it simply reports that 99.9% of page-load time was from ... "P3 Plugin Profiler" (itself). The 60 other plugins are a thin sliver in the pie chart. Failure to exclude itself from the computation makes the outcomes useless." Evaluation Link Does Not Work-- Trashes Website-- "Installed and activated without any problems. Nevertheless running the first scan led to heaps of fatal mistakes. Terminating the scan just result in the website being broken with fatal errors. Deleted plugin files and don't intend on looking back."-- Evaluation Link

Do not get me wrong, I'm not selecting bad reviews only. If you take a look at the review list (both 5 star evaluations and 1 star reviews) last one month the plugin got six to 7 1 star evaluates compare to one to two 5 star evaluations which is worrying. On top of that, the plugin hasn't been upgraded for more than 2 years. The plugin does not support PHP 7 as stated by the style author in-- GitHub Issue, WordPress support thread. And this is where this post can be found in. Today we are going to find alternative to P3 plugin(Plugin Efficiency Profiler)that has practically similar performances. Prior to diving into these alternative plugins first we need to list out the performances P3 (Plugin Efficiency Profiler) has. P3 plugin does-- Alternative to p3 plugin ought to have these functionalities or at least some of it.

1. UsageDD This plugin permits you to keep track of the resource usage of your WordPress installation. It doesn't have any setting page and essentially uses no resources and extremely light-weight. UsageDD screens-- These information will be displayed at the bottom of your page. And you'll see something similar-- UsageDD

details

Variety of questions the page is carrying out, time to fill the page and total memory being used to render the page. The variety of queries will give you an idea of whether you are having MySQL problems. The number should preferably be under 50. You will begin to see problems if the number is above 75. If it is above 100, you might have a concern with your theme and/or plugins.

2. Plugins Garbage Collector Plugins Garbage man scans your WordPress database and shows the tables beyond of core WordPress setup. Some WordPress plugins produce and utilize its own database tables. Those tables are left in your database after plugin deactivation and deletion frequently. If your blog site is more than 1 day old you have some plugins garbage in your WordPress database probably. With the aid of this plugin you can check your database and discover if it is tidy or not. Extra columns added to the core WordPress tables might be revealed likewise.

3. Medical examination This plugin will perform a variety of checks on your WordPress install to identify typical setup mistakes and

known problems. WordPress assistance handbook has a guide utilizing this plugin to repair WordPress website, You can have a look at the handbook here-- troubleshooting utilizing health examination.

Health Examine plugin has "Troubleshoot Mode" and this mode is necessary when trying to recognize the cause of a concern, as in many cases, any problem you have will be introduced by your theme or one of your plugins (or perhaps even several plugins interacting poorly with each other), Overall an excellent alternative to p3 plugin. Continue with care when you are debugging with this plugin, it can break your site.

4. WP Health Examination When installed, there will be a new WP Health page added to the Tools menu and heart icon to your admin bar if the results of these checks require attention. The plugin presently checks -- The plugin tests your site on WordPress Inspector, Examine your WordPress for speed, seo, security and performance and find damaged plugins and themes that impact your WordPress efficiency. Another valuable plugin you get a lot of info in both back end and front end. After installing you'll get a "Items" button at the top. And after clicking you get page load time, memory used and a lot more choices. Full list of choices are-- As you can see enormous amount of information are being displayed for you to utilize. You can quickly discover out which plugins and their scripts/styles are taking exactly the quantity of time, along with execution time, memory utilized, I discover all this extremely helpful. If wish to actually dig deep into the hooks, WordPress functions and desire to discover which functions doing precisely what, this is plugin would be your best choice, an excellent option to p3 plugin.

7. Inquiry Monitor Inquiry Display has some sophisticated functions not readily available in other debugging plugins, including debugging of AJAX calls, REST API requests, reroutes, and the ability to narrow down its output by plugin or theme. Question makes it far more simpler to discover out which plugins are using hooks that take more time to load.

Database questions complete with filter controls

Other noteworthy functions are-- Database Queries

Filtering inquiries by element or calling function makes it simple to see which plugins, themes, or functions are making the most (or the slowest) database inquiries.

Hooks

Scripts & & Styles REST API

The response from a validated WordPress REST API (v2 or later) demand will consist of numerous debugging details in its headers, as long as the authenticated user has authorization to view Query Monitor's output.

Currently this includes PHP errors and some summary information such as memory use, but this will be constructed upon in future versions.

Admin Screen

Environment Info

8. WP HealthCheck It discovers some beneficial info concerning your site health, like the number of active transients and autoload alternatives, and after that shows them easily via the WordPress Dashboard. WP Healthcheck also verifies the software versions in usage by your server and keep info about software minimum requirements up to date in our systems. This permits the plugin to recover this info from our external API and compare versus the ones installed in your server.

WP HealthCheck an extremely beneficial tool for handling the short-term variables that makes my database and site slow, and likewise examine the mess that plugins might do to your blog site(s) when they become old and with a great deal of information, WP HealthCheck shines because area.

9. DP Debug Menu Very little an P3 plugin alternative however this plugin can show you inquiries taking location in current page and time to pack the page. Could be useful in scenarios like-- You set up social sharing plugin for your posts and can utilize this plugin to measure how lots of queries just recently installed plugin(s) are taking.

A great deal of WordPress plugins designers forget efficiency when developing plugins. This implies that a great deal of them load self scripts/styles on every single post and or page of your site. This is bad, because it slows your site down. With WP Asset manager, you can pick which scripts and styles ought to be loaded on the page, and which ones do not. For instance-- With Contact Type 7 plugin, With two clicks you can disable it all over except for on your contact page.

This plugin took helpful functions of other out-of-date plugins like-- Possession Queue Supervisor, WP Asset Clean-up (Page Speed Optimizer), Clearfy-- disable unused features, wp disable, Disabler, Admin Tweaks and integrated them into one.

Plugin advantages-- Utilizing this plugin indicates you have possession supervisor on steroid. Absolutely, a strong tool to debug problems and prevent future risks. Not a strong P3 plugin option but the benefits might come handy for some cases.

Does all sorts of PHP and MySQL CPU performance test with showing graph charts. Some users have discovered helpful work cases with this plugin, such as-- why website is so slow, comparing servers, CPU and responstime of the PHP and MySQL server on the current setup, carry out a small benchmark to php/ mysql, pin pointing database issue. If your plugin(s) is triggering MySQL issue, this is the plugin to utilize.

Not needed a p3 profiler alternative however more a service to issues. You'll get 50+ beneficial functions for your WordPress website optimization, blended and packed into the only one Clearfy plugin. Like-- Also utilized helpful functions from other popular plugins-- We used some beneficial functions from plugins WP Property Clean-up (Gonzales), bicycles by falbar, wp disable, simple updates manager, Disabler, Admin Bar Disabler, Cerber Security & & Antispam, Admin Tweaks, Autoptimize, Quick Velocity Minify, Minify HTML, Hummingbird Page Speed Optimization, WP Super Minify.

13. Black Bar It shows an inconspicuous Debug Bar for WordPress designers that attaches itself to the bottom of the browser window, and assist webmasters' with-- 14.

Disk Usage Sunburst

Reveals all files in your WordPress in a SunBurst pie chart. You can discover the chart in Tools->> Disk Use, It shows all files (core/themes/plugins/ database) of your WordPress installation at once. Each arc of the chart is either a directory or a file. Move your mouse over an arc to see the size of the file or directory. The larger the arc is the larger is the file/directory. Really helpful to determine the biggest files in your WordPress setup. Click an arc to focus, and click in the circle to zoom out once again.

15. Plugin Investigator-- Troubleshooting We've all existed-- something's broken on your website. You've taken a look around the web for advice about what to do and have actually stumbled across the normal wisdom-- deactivate all your plugins and after that re-activate them one-by-one, inspecting your site for the issue after each reactivation. Sure, it works. Who has time for that? Plugin Detective helps you troubleshoot concerns on your site quickly and easily to discover the cause of a problem. When the perpetrator is found, the issue plugin can be rapidly deactivated. You can even fix your site when it has the white screen of death (fatal mistake). You'll desire to have actually Plugin Investigator installed, so if your site crashes from a conflict or bad plugin upgrade, you can get it back up and running quickly!

16.

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[digitalmark18-blog]

Google Correlate: The Best SEO Research Tool You Aren’t Using by @MyNameIsTylor

New Post has been published on https://britishdigitalmarketingnews.com/google-correlate-the-best-seo-research-tool-you-arent-using-by-mynameistylor/

Google Correlate: The Best SEO Research Tool You Aren’t Using by @MyNameIsTylor

I get it. We say we like learning about tools, but very few of us mean it.

Either you’re just getting started in SEO and overwhelmed by the tsunami of web-based programs, Chrome extensions and local apps flooding your brain, or you’re a seasoned vet comfortably content with the tools that have earned their place in your routine.

But…

It’s free. And it may not be here forever. And your competitors probably aren’t using it. And you’ve already read this much. And FOMO.

Still with me? Let’s dive in. Here’s a comprehensive guide to Google Correlate.

What is Google Correlate?

How to Use Google Correlate

Google Correlate Use Cases

Why Don’t We Use Google Correlate More Often?

So Now What? Further Reading

What Is Google Correlate?

Google Correlate uncovers keywords with similar time-based or regional search patterns to the data series or search query you provide.

It’s been described as the Google Trends antonym, where instead of keywords producing patterns, patterns point to keywords.

Marketers, anthropologists, economists, and many others leverage Google Correlate to study and predict human behavior.

The History of Google Correlate

Knowing when and where influenza is spreading is critical. It helps us identify virus subtypes, learn when vaccines aren’t working, and when we ought to be more risk-averse to go out in public.

However, the CDC’s reporting was on a two-week delay, which can seem like an eternity when it comes to viruses.

Then came Google Flu Trends in 2008.

Researchers at Google hypothesized that using real-time, flu-related Google search activity would allow them to nowcast flu prevalence.

At first, it was incredibly accurate and received a lot of acclaim as a result.

It didn’t take long for folks at Google to realize this concept – correlating search trends with real-world data to build predictive models – could have unlimited uses beyond just the flu.

In 2011, Google Correlate was born.

How Google Correlate Works

I’ll keep this section brief because it’s admittedly over my head.

Google Correlate has trending data for all phrase-match search terms that exceed a certain threshold of search volume and endurance, and aren’t pornographic or misspelled.

It uses an Asymmetric Hashing algorithm and Approximate Nearest Neighbor (ANN) retrieval to strike a balance between speed and accuracy, because no one wants to wait 10 minutes for their results.

Finally, Google Correlate uses the Pearson correlation to compare normalized query data to surface the highest correlative terms.

If you’re more like Will from “Good Will Hunting”, you can read more about the retrieval and calculative methods here.

If you’re more like Charlie from “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” (and me), read this instead.

How to Use Google Correlate

On the Google Correlate homepage, you’re faced with a few decisions.

Do you want a time-based or U.S. state-based correlation?

Are you typing in a query, uploading your own data or drawing a trend line freehand?

Let’s explore each of these routes.

Inputs

Keywords

Using Google Correlate via a keyword search is incredibly easy.

Type in a keyword, press “Search correlations” and you’ll immediately get a list of highly correlative terms according to these default settings: including your terms, weekly time series with no series shift, and United States (this may vary by IP).

The list includes 10 words sorted by correlation with 1.0 representing a perfect correlation and -1.0 a true negative correlation.

However, Google Correlate won’t show anything below a 0.6.

Select “Show more” at the bottom of the keyword list to see the next 10 most correlative terms.

You may continue doing this until 100 words are displayed, all of which can be exported into a CSV.

You can also choose to “Exclude terms containing [your phrase]” to get less redundant (but usually less correlative) results.

Spreadsheet

While using Google Correlate through keyword entries is simple, the spreadsheet method can be a little frustrating.

However, I’ve worked out the kinks to make it as painless as possible.

When setting up your spreadsheet, make sure it only has two columns and no header row. Any more than exactly what is required will trigger an error.

Next, save it in one of these formats: CSV (MS-DOS) or CSV UTF-8.

Each time you re-open those files, instead of just saving them, select Save-As and choose one of those CSV formats again.

When uploading a spreadsheet, select “Enter your own data” next to the search button. The window defaults to the Weekly Time Series tab, but you can switch to Monthly or U.S. States.

State-based

Finding correlations by states can be a great way to identify regional search patterns.

In the first column, list out the states with their full spelling. Not all states must be listed for this to work.

In the second column, list the values. The values can be anything you can imagine: sales, customers, leads, returns, tweets, etc.

You can also use 1’s and 0’s for absolute characteristics.

For instance, here are the highest correlative keywords with all coastal states assigned a value of one and the rest with zero.

Time-series

The time-series has two frequency options: weekly or monthly.

The first column is for the dates and the second column is for the values.

The date column must be in yyyy-mm-dd format, which requires you to format those cells as text since Excel will otherwise change it to mm/dd/yyyy.

Each time you re-open the spreadsheet, that column will automatically switch to the mm/dd/yyyy format.

I’m sure there’s a more permanent fix in the settings, but here is the best workaround I could find.

Add a column between columns A and B, where column A has the dates, B is blank and C has the values.

In cell B1, insert this formula =TEXT(A1, “yyyy-mm-dd”) and copy it down until it matches every populated row in column A. (Thanks for the tip, deadcode!)

Copy column B, then Paste Special-Values back into B.

Delete column A.

Save-As CSV (MS-DOS) or CSV UTF-8

After selecting “Enter your own data” and the frequency you want, upload your file, choose the country in which the search data will originate, and name your time series.

While your searches by keyword are not saved, all uploaded files and drawings are, so give it a name that will make sense to you later.

For the monthly time series, the day of the month does not matter, and it doesn’t need to be consistent.

For instance, you could put these varying end-of-the-month values and it will work just fine:

The weekly time-series is a bit pickier. Each week must be represented by a Sunday.

Drawings

Using Google Correlate by drawing may be the least useful input, but it’s arguably the most fun.

Search by Drawing can be selected on the left side of the page. It uses the weekly time-series dataset with the y-axis measuring search activity, the x-axis representing 2004 to the most recent day, and the graph as your blank canvas.

Here I tried to draw the outline of a Donald Trump picture. Maybe it isn’t so useless with words around credit issues, shady foreclosure companies, casinos, and cute… well, maybe not.

Outputs

Time Series

For all time-series outputs, the default display is a line graph where your input and the highest correlative term are charted.

You can select another correlated keyword to have it graphed against your input instead.

There is an option to toggle between a line graph and scatter plot when viewing the data. Also, you can choose to view search activity from 50 countries.

The only real difference between the two frequencies, weekly and monthly, is the Search by Drawing inputs can only be graphed weekly.

Input Weekly Display Monthly Display Keyword YES YES Spreadsheet YES YES Drawing YES NO

Before we jump to the U.S. map output, there are two less obvious features within the time-series display:

Drag to Zoom: You can click-and-drag over a portion of the line graph to zoom in on a specific period. From there, you can “Click to search on this section only.” to find the highest correlations within just that time frame. This can be especially useful when you’re less interested about seasonal trends and more about specific happenings.

Shift Series: On the left side of the page, you can shift the time series ahead or behind your input. Obviously, correlation doesn’t equal causation, and this doesn’t even mean the terms were searched by the same people. However, it can be interesting to string together queries and hypothesize around a typical search journey.

Let’s use the query “custom landscaping” as an example. With no time-series shift, the search patterns all make sense as nearly all relate to landscaping.

However, when we move the time-series three weeks before, the queries have nothing to do with landscaping at all, but it also doesn’t seem random either.

Nearly all of them are related to baseball and softball.

It’s fairly safe to say there’s a decent overlap between landscaping prospects and baseball equipment consumers.

If you were a landscaping company, how could knowing this influence your media targeting and content marketing strategy?

Since reading Ian Laurie’s article on Random Affinities nearly six years ago, I’ve been fascinated with the subject.

Using the Google Correlate Shift Series feature could be another way to uncover new random affinities to explore.

U.S. Map

The U.S. map output is much less dynamic, but it can still be useful.

Instead of a line graph, the default display is a map of the United States where darker shades indicate higher state-based correlations to your input.

Like the time-series display, this also has a scatter plot view as an option.

The scatter plot option is even more useful here because it appears to fix a glitch within the map display.

At first, only the input is graphed on the map. After toggling to the scatter plot and back, however, a new map of the highest correlative term (or whatever you select) appears just below.

In any output, the data can also be exported into a CSV for further analysis.

Google Correlate Use Cases

With many tools, learning what they can do and how to use them are relatively easy. It’s understanding when best to apply this knowledge that can get us stuck.

Below are possible use cases for Google Correlate.

By no means is this a comprehensive list, but hopefully it gives you some helpful thought starters on which to expand.

1. Targeting Customers Before They’re Ready

We can use tools like Google Trends, web analytics and sales data to know when to target customers just before they’re seasonally ready to engage with your brand.

However, Google Correlate can generate ideas on how to talk to them at that time (remember the baseball example?).

Additionally, some businesses experience seasonality in layers.

Take weight loss for example. There are the obvious New Year’s resolutions in January, but major life events that tend to happen during certain times of the year can also trigger the motivation to lose weight.

Planning a wedding, finding a new place to live and shopping for a car may spark the desire for a complete fresh start, which includes weight loss.

I’ll say it again; correlation does not equal causation. But when this kind of data leads to a hypothesis, it’s supported by other research, and it intuitively makes sense, isn’t it at least worth testing out?

2. Finding Your Seasonal Antithesis

Knowing when your audience is most likely to receive your message can help you market more efficiently.

Similarly, knowing when and how they’re least likely to listen can be equally helpful.

With Google Correlate, we can find the search terms that have the most opposed trendlines.

Export the weekly or monthly trending for a search term in either Google Correlate or Google Trends.

Multiply the values by negative one.

Follow the same spreadsheet directions as described earlier in this article and you’re good to go.

Here is a list of the most negatively correlated search terms to “weight loss”:

While I’m still scratching my head when it comes to the environment and wildlife terms, the rest make sense.

When I’m lighting holiday candles and eating an entire tarte tartin by myself, don’t talk to me about my weight.

3. Understanding the Present & Predicting What’s Next

This is the aspect of Google Correlate where cultural anthropologists, economists and statistical-minded marketers have found most value.

It’s also the catalyst to Google Correlate’s existence (Google Flu Trends).

Conceptually, it’s simple: find a correlation, develop a hypothesis, build a model, validate it and refine it over time.

However, as we get more granular, the complexity grows.

I’ve managed to avoid learning Python, R and really anything else in the data science field up to now. So, I’ll just scratch the surface on a few themes and provide some further reading.

Find a Correlation

Google Correlate does all the work for you here, but keep a few things in mind.

Make sure the dataset you leverage to create a predictive model is accurate and reliable. The shakier your input is, the more doomed your output will be.

You’ll want to strike a balance between quality and quantity when choosing your correlative terms. By choosing only the highest correlative term to build your model, all your predictive eggs will be in one basket. At the same time, if you open the door to too many, less correlative terms, the data can get too normalized and inaccurate.

Develop a Hypothesis 

Once you find a correlation, try to make sense of it by forming it into a hypothesis.

In his book, “Everybody Lies”, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz described his experience in using Google Correlate to try to help predict unemployment rate. After uploading monthly unemployment rates from 2004 to 2011, he found a pornographic site had the highest correlation.

His hypothesis? Folks who are unemployed are often alone, bored, and have a lot of time on their hands…

Build a Model 

Here’s where my expertise leaves a lot to be desired, unfortunately.

I recommend reading the first part of Stephens-Davidowtiz and Hal Varian’s paper called A Hands-on Guide to Google Data. They cover how to clean up the data by removing spurious correlations and keywords likely to have a short shelf-life. Then they dive into regression techniques that specialize in time-series data with a sizeable number of predictors, like spike-and-slab regression.

Validate It 

There are generally two ways to know if your model works:

Wait and see.

Leverage hold-out periods.

The second option has zero risk and is much faster.

Hold-out periods, also called out-of-sample tests, are when values are intentionally removed from your dataset for a certain amount of time. The purpose is to test your model by “holding out” the most recent historical data and seeing how closely it predicts what actually happened during that time.

This article from SAS Institute Inc. explains this concept in layman’s terms.

To upload hold-out periods in a Google Correlate, just delete the values (not the dates) in your spreadsheet.

Refine It over Time 

Remember when I said Google Flu Trends was highly accurate at the start? Well, it didn’t last.

As you might imagine, with this space evolving so rapidly, few predictive models using search data can take a set-it-and-forget-it approach. That’s exactly what Google Flu Trends did.

News articles provided temporary spikes in search behavior. Google Suggest began influencing how people searched. People’s search patterns changed over time.

Each of these factors led to Google Flu Trends becoming increasingly inaccurate, with it missing the peak of the 2013 flu season by 140 percent.

For most of the media coverage, the story ended here.

However, some smart folks at the Warwick Business School concluded that the best approach was to use Google Flu Trends and the CDC’s delayed numbers to recalibrate each other for the most accurate estimates.

So, whether it’s simply refining the keyword list used for your model or finding ways to marry offline data with search behavior, you’ll want to periodically adjust the model for sustained accuracy.

4. Discovering Regional Distinctions

As I mentioned earlier, you can assign values to states based on any number of factors.

Real-world numbers – e.g., purchases, revenue, customers, returns, share of voice

Definitive characteristics – e.g., states without income tax, states with legalized marijuana

Rankings – e.g., by cost of living, by population density

In 2016, 24/7 Wall St. published an article ranking states by gender inequality.

I used that ranking to create two Google Correlate spreadsheets.

The first one (ole boys club) had the fairest state with a value of 50 and the state with the most rampant inequality at one:

The second spreadsheet (glass sheiling) had the values reversed:

5. Buying Low, Selling High

Looking for an industry, topic or term on the rise so you can piggy back on its momentum? Or maybe you’d rather find something dropping quickly to jump in at a lower cost?

Either way, go to Search by Drawing and create the trend you’re seeking.

Make sure you read The Finicky Data section before getting too excited about this idea.

6. Have Fun!

Did you know:

While spurious correlations can be a real issue when building models, they can often provide a good laugh at face value.

So, if you don’t feel like going down Wikipedia rabbit holes or binge-watching something on Netflix, get lost in Google Correlate for a few hours.

Oh, is that just me?

I was bored and found a few other funny Google Correlate examples for your entertainment.

Why Don’t We Use Google Correlate More Often?

The title of this article not so subtly suggests most of us rarely use this tool.

I’ll admit most of this assertion is anecdotal, but I do have some numbers to lean on as well.

Search Volume: Moz Keyword Explorer estimates between 501-850 searches for Google Correlate occur each month. This pales in comparison to Google Trends, which has an estimated monthly search volume of at least 118,000.

SEJ Coverage: How many Search Engine Journal articles are centered on Google Correlate until now? None (also true for Moz, Stone Temple and other SEO publications). How many even mention it? Three. To put it in perspective, Tom Cruise is mentioned in 10 articles. Yes, Tom Cruise.

Show of Hands: In two recent digital marketing conferences, I asked the audience to raise their hand if they had used Google Correlate. Out of approximately 300 people, just one person said they had.

What’s keeping Google Correlate from being in our regular research rotation?

The Inevitability of Dimensionality

In the context of big data, high dimensionality refers to the challenges massive sample sizes with tons of variables can produce.

When faced with a substantial dataset, spurious correlations are bound to occur.

You know what has a substantial dataset? Google Correlate.

As I mentioned earlier, Google Flu Trends became increasingly inaccurate, and its high dimensionality was a big reason for it. Additionally, some tried to use the tool to forecast the stock market, which many claim is impossible to predict.

While this dimensionality has likely turned some away, I would argue in many cases it isn’t the tool or the data causing the issue; it’s the methodology or interpretation.

The Van Wilder of Betas

If you’ve followed Google over the years, you’ll know it’s not uncommon for its products to remain beta for a while.

Some of it is certainly semantics, but it has rubbed more than a few people the wrong way.

Google Correlate has been in beta for seven years.

The question is whether this is just semantics (like with Gmail), or if it’s truly still in early stages of development.

The Problematic User Interface

I’ve covered the UI issues in the How to Use Google Correlate section, so I won’t belabor the point here.

As you can see in Google’s suggestions, I’m not the only one who has experienced difficulties.

Between this and the shaky data (more on that in a second), Google Correlate can sometimes seem like more trouble than it’s worth.

The Finicky Data

A problematic UI is one thing, but limited data is another.

Here are three ways Google Correlate’s data leaves more to be desired:

In 2011, several countries were added to Google Correlate. As a result, the U.S. sample size was reduced to the same level of countries that were added. This meant larger variances for lower-volume queries, as well as the elimination of some low volume queries altogether.

Although the FAQ page claims the data begins in January of 2003, none of the graphs start until January 2004.

Frustratingly, Google Correlate stopped updating on March 12, 2017. There was no announcement from Google that I’m aware of. I’ve reached out to folks at Google via Twitter, submitted feedback and have even emailed some of the original creators of the tool. No response yet.

This third data issue towers over the other two. The longer we go without fresh data, the less valuable Google Correlate is. Eventually, it’ll be a deal breaker, rendering the tool useless. If you’re so inclined, please submit your own feedback and request for Google Correlate to resume reporting on fresh data. If enough of us ask, perhaps it will rise on the priority list, or at least get an answer.

So Now What?

At this point you may be inspired to give this tool a(nother) go, or you could just as likely be deflated by its drawbacks.

If I’m being honest, I’ve ping-ponged to each extreme while writing this.

Google Correlate can be polarizing for some, but if you’re a search marketer, it’s worth it to have first-hand experience to decide for yourself.

Oh, and don’t forget to bug Google about turning the fresh data back on!

Further Reading:

Image Credits

Google Trends vs. Google Correlate: Google Correlate Donald Trump: naukrinama.com All other images, screenshots, and video taken by author, July-August 2018

Source: http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/13962/10188198

[hishem25]

Making The Best Wedding Planning Binder

By Mark Clark

Your wedding will only happen once in your life. Therefore, treasure it as much as you can. Make it perfect. Of course, that is impossible. Along the way, for sure, you would meet a lot of troubles, problems, and unexpected changes. Despite these, though, learn to overcome the issue. It is not just ideal to create a perfect plan. Aside from that, as the host of this event, remember to take advantage of your resources. You could still host a grand wedding event, especially, without spending a fortune. You have resources, connections, and manpower. Therefore, use those qualities of yours, particularly, in making decisions. For your guide, have the wedding planning binder. You are obliged to create one. These reports would greatly serve as a blueprint for your project. Through this, you can monitor your progress. It would even help you future issues that might happen in the future. Being organized would really save you from various problems. Before writing your planner, think of making some drafts. Every owner has their own preferences, particularly, when it comes to their wedding plan. Of course, buying some templates from commercial companies would also help too. However, as the writer of this planner, you need to remember that your situations might be quite different from the others. Knowing how much the binder would matter to you, try to show your girly sides and prepare this binder. Do not just focus on the designs, though. It would be quite fun if you can organize things properly. That is the very purpose of this planner. It would serve as your guide. That is why be concrete when writing its content. There are various things that you got to reconsider and analyze, specifically, when writing these planners. As for now, take note of the budget. Be realistic. Regardless how good your plans can be, it is still useless, particularly, if those plans are not sustainable. You cannot just start a grand wedding celebration, especially, if you are financially unprepared. You got to be resourceful. This kind of event would surely affect your savings account. Therefore, be careful. Aside from your budget, prepare a checklist too. It matters, especially, to give you a summary of your actions. Instead of flipping the entire pages back and forth, this content would absolutely make your life easier. Do not check it, especially, if you failed to perform even one action from your plans. Speaking of plans, make sure to put them in a chronological order. Make a realistic time chart, if possible. Consider how long you are willing enough to spend for this event. You should be considerate of your schedule. Be considerate in checking your wedding location and reception. If you do not want to spend another more money on your transportation needs, you better perform them in one place. Before the big day, it is important to sort out your attire and dress. Remember to hire the best photographers too. On top of this, there are miscellaneous fees too. That is why consider of paying of them. For your guide, always remember to create a sustainable time chart for each activity. Create a graph. You can find some samples online for these charts. Aside from having a checklist, having a time chart would greatly help too.

About the Author:

When you are looking for information about a wedding planning binder, come to our web pages today. More details are available at http://ift.tt/2BWdHaL now.

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[digital-strategy]

http://ift.tt/2Gw24dD

Sometimes when you do a search, you’ll find that there’s a descriptive box at the top of Google’s results. We call this a “featured snippet.” In this post—the first in a new series going behind-the-scenes on how Google Search works—we’ll explore when, where and why we provide featured snippets.

What is a featured snippet?

Let’s start with a look at a featured snippet, in this case, one that appears for a search on “Why is the sky blue?”

We call these featured snippets because unlike our regular web listings, the page’s description—what we call a “snippet”—comes first. With featured snippets, we reverse the usual format. We’re featuring the snippet, hence the “featured snippet” name. We also generate featured snippets in a different way from our regular snippets, so that they’re easier to read.

We display featured snippets in search when we believe this format will help people more easily discover what they’re seeking, both from the description and when they click on the link to read the page itself. It’s especially helpful for those on mobile or searching by voice.

Here are a few examples where featured snippets enhance the search experience by making it easier to access information from good sources, big and small:

FeaturedSnippet1.png

“can a bad spark plug damage my engine”

FeaturedSnippet2.png

"when did jimi hendrix burn his guitar"

featured snippets how did mesopotamians write

"how did mesopotamians write"

FeaturedSnippet5.png

"Cats that look like wildcats"

Featured snippets aren’t just for written content. Our recently launched video featured snippets jump you directly to the right place in a video, such as for how to braid your own hair:

Featured snippets help with mobile and voice search

Mobile search traffic has surpassed desktop traffic worldwide. And with the growth in voice-activated digital assistants, more people are doing voice queries. In these cases, the traditional "10 blue links" format doesn't work as well, making featured snippets an especially useful format.

Of course, we continue to show regular listings in response to searches along with featured snippets. That’s because featured snippets aren’t meant as a sole source of information. They’re part of an overall set of results we provide, giving people information from a wide range of sources.

People click on featured snippets to learn more

When we introduced featured snippets in January 2014, there were some concerns that they might cause publishers to lose traffic. What if someone learns all they need to know from the snippet and doesn’t visit the source site?

It quickly became clear that featured snippets do indeed drive traffic. That’s why publishers share tips on how to increase the chances of becoming one, because they recognize being featured in this way is a traffic driver.

When it comes to spoken featured snippets, we cite the source page in the spoken result and provide a link to the page within the Google Home app, so people can click and learn more:

We recognize that featured snippets have to work in a way that helps support the sources that ultimately makes them possible. That’s why we always take publishers into account when we make updates to this feature.

Working to improve featured snippets

The vast majority of featured snippets work well, as we can tell from usage stats and from what our search quality raters report to us, people paid to evaluate the quality of our results. A third-party test last year by Stone Temple found a 97.4 percent accuracy rate for featured snippets and related formats like Knowledge Graph information.

Because featured snippets are so useful, especially with mobile and voice-only searches, we’re working hard to smooth out bumps with them as they continue to grow and evolve.

Last year, we took deserved criticism for featured snippets that said things like “women are evil” or that former U.S. President Barack Obama was planning a coup. We failed in these cases because we didn’t weigh the authoritativeness of results strongly enough for such rare and fringe queries.

To improve, we launched an effort that included updates to our Search Quality Rater Guidelines to provide more detailed examples of low-quality webpages for raters to appropriately flag, which can include misleading information, unexpected offensive results, hoaxes and unsupported conspiracy theories. This work has helped our systems better identify when results are prone to low-quality content. If detected, we may opt not to show a featured snippet.

Even when a featured snippet has good content, we occasionally appear to goof because it might not seem the best response to a query. On the face of it, it might not appear to respond to a query at all.

For example, a search for “How did the Romans tell time at night” until recently suggested sundials, which would be useless in the dark:

Left: Until recently, a search for “How did the Romans tell time at night” resulted in a featured snippet suggesting sundials. Right:We now provide a better response: water clocks.

While the example above might give you a chuckle, we take issues like this seriously, as we do with any problems reported to us or that we spot internally. We study them and use those learnings to make improvements for featured snippets overall. In this case, it led to us providing a better response: water clocks.

When near-matches can be helpful

Another improvement we’re considering is to better communicate when we give you a featured snippet that’s not exactly what you searched for but close enough that it helps you get to the information you seek.

For example, the original “sundial” featured snippet above was actually a response for “How did Romans tell time.” We displayed this near-match then because we didn’t have enough confidence to show a featured snippet specifically about how Romans told time at night. We knew sundials were used by Romans to tell time generally, because so many pages discussed this. How they told time at night was less discussed, so we had less data to make a firm connection.

Showing a near-match may seem odd at first glance, but we know in such cases that people often explore the source of a featured snippet and discover what they’re looking for. In this case, the page that the featured snippet originally came from did explain that Romans used water clocks to tell time at night. We just didn't then have enough confidence then to display that information as a featured snippet.

We’re considering increasing the use of a format we currently employ only in some limited situations, to make it clearer when we serve a near-match. For example, we might display "How did Romans tell time?" above the featured snippet, as illustrated in the mockup below:

Our testing and experiments will guide what we ultimately do here. We might not expand use of the format, if our testing finds people often inherently understand a near-match is being presented without the need for an explicit label.

Improving results by showing more than one featured snippet

Sometimes, a single featured snippet isn’t right for every question. For example, “how to setup call forwarding” varies by carrier. That’s where a recent feature we launched lets you interactively select a featured snippet specific to your situation. In the example below, you can see how it allows people to quickly locate solutions from various providers:

Another format coming soon is designed to help people better locate information by showing more than one featured snippet that’s related to what they originally searched for:

Showing more than one featured snippet may also eventually help in cases where you can get contradictory information when asking about the same thing but in different ways.

For instance, people who search for “are reptiles good pets” should get the same featured snippet as “are reptiles bad pets” since they are seeking the same information: how do reptiles rate as pets? However, the featured snippets we serve contradict each other.

This happens because sometimes our systems favor content that’s strongly aligned with what was asked. A page arguing that reptiles are good pets seems the best match for people who search about them being good. Similarly, a page arguing that reptiles are bad pets seems the best match for people who search about them being bad. We’re exploring solutions to this challenge, including showing multiple responses.

"There are often legitimate diverse perspectives offered by publishers, and we want to provide users visibility and access into those perspectives from multiple sources,” Matthew Gray, the software engineer who leads the featured snippets team, told me.

Your feedback wanted

Featured snippets will never be absolutely perfect, just as search results overall will never be absolutely perfect. On a typical day, 15 percent of the queries we process have never been asked before. That’s just one of the challenges along with sifting through trillions of pages of information across the web to try and help people make sense of the world.

Last year, we made it easier to send us feedback in cases where a featured snippet warrants review. Just use the “feedback” link at the bottom of a featured snippet box. Your feedback, along with our own internal testing and review, helps us keep improving the quality of featured snippets.

We'll explore more about how Google Search works in future posts in this series. In the meantime, you can learn more on our Inside Google Search and How Search Works sites and follow @searchliaison on Twitter for ongoing updates.

via Inside Search

[premierdetroit]

Sometimes when you do a search, you’ll find that there’s a descriptive box at the top of Google’s results. We call this a “featured snippet.” In this post—the first in a new series going behind-the-scenes on how Google Search works—we’ll explore when, where and why we provide featured snippets.What is a featured snippet?Let’s start with a look at a featured snippet, in this case, one that appears for a search on “Why is the sky blue?”We call these featured snippets because unlike our regular web listings, the page’s description—what we call a “snippet”—comes first. With featured snippets, we reverse the usual format. We’re featuring the snippet, hence the “featured snippet” name. We also generate featured snippets in a different way from our regular snippets, so that they’re easier to read.We display featured snippets in search when we believe this format will help people more easily discover what they’re seeking, both from the description and when they click on the link to read the page itself. It’s especially helpful for those on mobile or searching by voice.Here are a few examples where featured snippets enhance the search experience by making it easier to access information from good sources, big and small:FeaturedSnippet1.png“can a bad spark plug damage my engine”FeaturedSnippet2.png"when did jimi hendrix burn his guitar"featured snippets how did mesopotamians write"how did mesopotamians write"FeaturedSnippet5.png"Cats that look like wildcats"Featured snippets aren’t just for written content. Our recently launched video featured snippets jump you directly to the right place in a video, such as for how to braid your own hair:Featured snippets help with mobile and voice searchMobile search traffic has surpassed desktop traffic worldwide. And with the growth in voice-activated digital assistants, more people are doing voice queries. In these cases, the traditional "10 blue links" format doesn't work as well, making featured snippets an especially useful format.Of course, we continue to show regular listings in response to searches along with featured snippets. That’s because featured snippets aren’t meant as a sole source of information. They’re part of an overall set of results we provide, giving people information from a wide range of sources.People click on featured snippets to learn moreWhen we introduced featured snippets in January 2014, there were some concerns that they might cause publishers to lose traffic. What if someone learns all they need to know from the snippet and doesn’t visit the source site?It quickly became clear that featured snippets do indeed drive traffic. That’s why publishers share tips on how to increase the chances of becoming one, because they recognize being featured in this way is a traffic driver.When it comes to spoken featured snippets, we cite the source page in the spoken result and provide a link to the page within the Google Home app, so people can click and learn more:We recognize that featured snippets have to work in a way that helps support the sources that ultimately makes them possible. That’s why we always take publishers into account when we make updates to this feature.Working to improve featured snippetsThe vast majority of featured snippets work well, as we can tell from usage stats and from what our search quality raters report to us, people paid to evaluate the quality of our results. A third-party test last year by Stone Temple found a 97.4 percent accuracy rate for featured snippets and related formats like Knowledge Graph information.Because featured snippets are so useful, especially with mobile and voice-only searches, we’re working hard to smooth out bumps with them as they continue to grow and evolve.Last year, we took deserved criticism for featured snippets that said things like “women are evil” or that former U.S. President Barack Obama was planning a coup. We failed in these cases because we didn’t weigh the authoritativeness of results strongly enough for such rare and fringe queries.To improve, we launched an effort that included updates to our Search Quality Rater Guidelines to provide more detailed examples of low-quality webpages for raters to appropriately flag, which can include misleading information, unexpected offensive results, hoaxes and unsupported conspiracy theories. This work has helped our systems better identify when results are prone to low-quality content. If detected, we may opt not to show a featured snippet.Even when a featured snippet has good content, we occasionally appear to goof because it might not seem the best response to a query. On the face of it, it might not appear to answer a query at all.For example, a search for “How did the Romans tell time at night” until recently suggested sundials, which would be useless in the dark:Left: Until recently, a search for “How did the Romans tell time at night” resulted in a featured snippet suggesting sundials. Right:We now provide a better response: water clocks.While the example above might give you a chuckle, we take issues like this seriously, as we do with any problems reported to us or that we spot internally. We study them and use those learnings to make improvements for featured snippets overall. In this case, it led to us providing a better response: water clocks.When near-matches can be helpfulAnother improvement we’re considering is to better communicate when we give you a featured snippet that’s not exactly what you searched for but close enough that it helps you get to the information you seek.For example, the original “sundial” featured snippet above was actually a response for “How did Romans tell time.” We displayed this near-match then because we didn’t have enough confidence to show a featured snippet specifically about how Romans told time at night. We knew sundials were used by Romans to tell time generally, because so many pages discussed this. How they told time at night was less discussed, so we had less data to make a firm connection.Showing a near-match may seem odd at first glance, but we know in such cases that people often explore the source of a featured snippet and discover what they’re looking for. In this case, the page that the featured snippet originally came from did explain that Romans used water clocks to tell time at night. We just didn't then have enough confidence then to display that information as a featured snippet.We’re considering increasing the use of a format we currently employ only in some limited situations, to make it clearer when we serve a near-match. For example, we might display "How did Romans tell time?" above the featured snippet, as illustrated in the mockup below:Our testing and experiments will guide what we ultimately do here. We might not expand use of the format, if our testing finds people often inherently understand a near-match is being presented without the need for an explicit label.Improving results by showing more than one featured snippetSometimes, a single featured snippet isn’t right for every question. For example, “how to setup call forwarding” varies by carrier. That’s where a recent feature we launched lets you interactively select a featured snippet specific to your situation. In the example below, you can see how it allows people to quickly locate solutions from various providers:Another format coming soon is designed to help people better locate information by showing more than one featured snippet that’s related to what they originally searched for:Showing more than one featured snippet may also eventually help in cases where you can get contradictory information when asking about the same thing but in different ways.For instance, people who search for “are reptiles good pets” should get the same featured snippet as “are reptiles bad pets” since they are seeking the same information: how do reptiles rate as pets? However, the featured snippets we serve contradict each other. This happens because sometimes our systems favor content that’s strongly aligned with what was asked. A page arguing that reptiles are good pets seems the best match for people who search about them being good. Similarly, a page arguing that reptiles are bad pets seems the best match for people who search about them being bad. We’re exploring solutions to this challenge, including showing multiple responses."There are often legitimate diverse perspectives offered by publishers, and we want to provide users visibility and access into those perspectives from multiple sources,” Matthew Gray, the software engineer who leads the featured snippets team, told me.Your feedback wantedFeatured snippets will never be absolutely perfect, just as search results overall will never be absolutely perfect. On a typical day, 15 percent of the queries we process have never been asked before. That’s just one of the challenges along with sifting through trillions of pages of information across the web to try and help people make sense of the world.Last year, we made it easier to send us feedback in cases where a featured snippet warrants review. Just use the “feedback” link at the bottom of a featured snippet box. Your feedback, along with our own internal testing and review, helps us keep improving the quality of featured snippets.We'll explore more about how Google Search works in future posts in this series. In the meantime, you can learn more on our Inside Google Search and How Search Works sites and follow @searchliaison on Twitter for ongoing updates.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/InsideSearch/~3/HYVhBQbklvU/

[asherdvirdjerassi]

France Needs to Know the Numbers

The French contest for Président de la République is well underway. Central to debates on the stage and in the street is employment and, more generally, what the French economic model should be. Central to all of this is a number - 10.5 percent. A number which turns out to not even be true.

The French imaginary about their country, their place in the world, and their future is tied up with their unemployment rate. “What is the unemployment rate in the US?” I have been asked so many times. “About 5.5 percent.” “In France it is double that.” The graph below is burned into the French political imaginary as it is into every French university student who is convinced it is impossible to find a job. And, I know a number of instances where it has been used by employers like a bully club in thinking they have quite a bit of power.

But these figures are wrong. The simple truth, that I have stressed so often on this blog, is that the unemployment rate is absolutely useless and not informative today. 

The technical definition of unemployment is someone without a job but looking for one. In France, where to be eligible for generous government benefits one must be looking for a job, many more report that they are looking for a job even if they gave up long ago than the US. In contrast, American unemployment insurance only lasts 6 months and there are few additional government transfers for jobseekers. Those who haven’t been employed for a long period and don’t receive any benefits that condition them to be looking for work, are more apt to say they have not been looking for work. 

This is not simply armchair postulating. It can be seen in the employment rate - the figure (or figures) that should be considered. Below I have broken down the employment rate (i.e. the share of the population that is actively employed) down by age cohorts.

The first figure shows the employment rate for 25 to 54 year olds for an assortment of countries, with the respective figure for the US and France highlighted. As you can see, the French employment rate for the main working age cohort is actually higher than the US. 

Where France does differ from the US most dramatically is in regards to youth and the old. 

A mere 27.9 percent of 15 to 24 year olds worked in 2016, while that figure for the US was nearly double at 49.4 percent. But this should not be read as a sign of the sky-falling, but as evidence that European youth are living in the characteristically European way. They travel and take gap years and they are incentivized to study longer than their American counterparts and, with ample funding they are able to not work throughout their studies. If the French have any interest in raising employment on this front, all they likely have to do is charge for tuition.

The last front are those between the ages of 55 and 64. In the US, like other countries with retirement ages begins at 65, most of this cohort continues to work . In France, like other countries where retirement can begin at 60, the number of people working between 55 and 64 is markedly lower. But again, this is not a marker of the French economy going down the tubes. This is an outcome of a concerted policy choice that defends early retirement. 

[nightvaleinternlily]

FINALLY hit 1,700 :D

Plus my notes graph seems to be showing constant improvement. Aw yiss