#which all together is probably like 300 hours of video games on or off stream

[doedipus]

the list of jrpgs I would like to play on stream keeps expanding but it's not exactly a genre that lends itself to the medium

[signalmmorg]

Cnet laptops for graphic design

CNET LAPTOPS FOR GRAPHIC DESIGN HOW TO

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CNET LAPTOPS FOR GRAPHIC DESIGN PRO

CNET LAPTOPS FOR GRAPHIC DESIGN SOFTWARE

CNET LAPTOPS FOR GRAPHIC DESIGN PRO

If you need the best display, the Galaxy Book Pro is what you want. And if you have a Galaxy Tab S7 or later, you can use that as a wireless second display. You can do things like send files between your Galaxy phone and the laptop, sync photos and notes and quickly switch your Galaxy Buds connection from your phone to the laptop.

CNET LAPTOPS FOR GRAPHIC DESIGN SOFTWARE

Plus, it has all the same Galaxy Book Experience software that you get with the Pro models so that all your Galaxy devices can easily work together. The Galaxy Book is otherwise a good midrange 15.6-inch touchscreen laptop, particularly if you value ports over things like a fingerprint reader. The Galaxy Book has more ports than the Pro. The touchpad is also plastic instead of glass. For the Galaxy Book, it means there's no fingerprint sensor built into the power button, the keycaps have more of a rough plastic texture than the soft-touch feel of the Pro's keyboard and, probably the worst part, it's not backlit. The keyboard and touchpad usually take a hit, too. It's pretty typical for laptop makers to use a lower-end display to balance out the cost of higher build quality and better internal components. And overall performance is strong, and battery life actually ran nearly an hour longer than Samsung's eight-hour rating, getting 8 hours, 53 minutes on our video streaming test. At least it does have an HDMI output so it's easy enough to connect an external monitor for those times you do need a better display for work or entertainment. Especially if you're considering the Galaxy Book mainly for productivity more than for watching movies or editing photos and video. If you're looking directly at it and you have the angle just right, the display is OK. The keys aren't backlit on the Galaxy Book.

CNET LAPTOPS FOR GRAPHIC DESIGN FULL

It is a matte touchscreen and full HD, though, so those specs are correct. The brightness on my display was 241 nits at 100%. For color gamut coverage, it tested at 58% sRGB, 41% NTSC, 43% AdobeRGB and 43% P3. In reality, it has poor color and contrast and only gets worse when you look at it off-angle.

CNET LAPTOPS FOR GRAPHIC DESIGN 1080P

On paper, the display sounds like a bargain for the price, too: 15.6-inch 1080p matte touchscreen LCD with 300-nit brightness. It's one of the corners that's been cut to get the price down. But this isn't the Pro and, as a Samsung representative pointed out to me, the display in the $1,000 configuration is the same as in the cheaper $750 model. Samsung is known for its high-quality displays, and the one on the Galaxy Book Pro is fantastic. Part of the issue is my own expectations, which are likely those of other Galaxy device owners. The Galaxy Book has a simple, characterless design.ĭespite the extra graphics performance, the Galaxy Book's display is a big disappointment. With demanding games, you may get playable frame rates at low settings, but set on high you'll be lucky to break 30 frames per second. In other words, it's not going to help with gaming. It's not designed for really demanding graphics tasks, but can speed up things like video encoding and raw photo editing. The Iris Xe Max GPU is a step up from the integrated graphics you'd typically find in a thin-and-light laptop like the Galaxy Book and competes with Nvidia's entry-level discrete graphics options, like the GeForce MX350. USB-C (x2), USB-A (x2), audio/mic jack, HDMI out, microSD card slot But it also has one big knock against it compared to the Pro models, and it's one that some will find too difficult to ignore.ġ5.6-inch 1,920x1,080-pixel touch display Samsung also includes better-than-integrated Intel Iris Xe Max discrete graphics in the Galaxy Book, even at its $750 starting price. It has an all-metal chassis for a higher-end look and feel, and the same 11th-gen Core i5 and i7 processors as the Pro models. The non-Pro version of the Galaxy Book is the more middle-of-the-road option. The Galaxy Book Pro and Pro 360 models have all the bells and whistles like AMOLED displays, Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports and premium keyboards and touchpads. This balance between premium features and affordability carries over to the company's current laptop lineup, too.

CNET LAPTOPS FOR GRAPHIC DESIGN HOW TO

Samsung also knows how to make good budget phones and tablets, like its Galaxy A-series devices, using the right combo of materials and components to cover the essentials at a fair price. Just take a look at the Galaxy S22 phones or Galaxy Tab S8 tablets: Elegant designs matched with the best tech. Samsung knows how to make a premium device.

[sakurology]

queen, how about a kenma nsfw alphabet if you haven’t 👀

Haha- hah- yeah 😌 yeah let’s do that....

NSFW Alphabet: Kozume Kenma

Gn!Reader like always

Nsfw below the cut, you should know this drill by now... 😘

𝕬 - 𝕬𝖋𝖙𝖊𝖗𝖈𝖆𝖗𝖊

He needs it just as much as you do. He has a tendency to drop afterwards, so he finds it comforting to spend time coming down from it all with you. Lots of cuddling and definitely food and knocking out together, both making sure to constantly reassure each other.

𝕭 - 𝕭𝖔𝖉𝖞 𝕻𝖆𝖗𝖙

Does- does hair count as a body part? You know what fuck it its my blog I make the rules. He’s into hair pulling, both doing the pulling and having his pulled. He’ll give it a rough tug when he's behind you, but also expects you to take hold of his hair from time to time as well- with a very tight grip.

𝕮 - 𝕮𝖚𝖒

Facials. That’s really it. It’s facials. He isn’t a fan of super messy, but he always makes an exception when it comes to painting your pretty face. It;s a reminder that you belong to him so intimately in this sense.

𝕯 - 𝕯𝖎𝖗𝖙𝖞 𝕾𝖊𝖈𝖗𝖊𝖙

Kenma doesn’t only spend his money on video games. He actually has spent a significant amount of money on a very lavish collection of lingerie and little costumes for you to wear around the house. He’s always buying new pieces and adding them to your playroom- oh yeah... you have a playroom.

𝕰 - 𝕰𝖝𝖕𝖊𝖗𝖎𝖊𝖓𝖈𝖊

I feel like Kenma’s experience comes solely from porn and stories Kuroo has told him that he never wanted to hear in the first place. But- that is a good enough teacher. He knows enough of what he’s doing to get you there, and prefers the challenge of trying various things on you until he realizes what really works to get you there fastest- like a game.

𝕱 - 𝕱𝖆𝖛𝖔𝖗𝖎𝖙𝖊 𝕻𝖔𝖘𝖎𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓

8/10 times he’s going to want you on top. It doesn’t matter how. He likes you on top because of the pressure your weight provides. Since he’s so little he likes to feel surrounded.

He also loves to fuck your face. The sight of your face getting lost in his pubes while you gag and get all teary-eyed as you struggle to meet his gaze drives him insane.

𝕲 - 𝕲𝖔𝖔𝖋𝖞

He’s not really the type to make jokes or anything in the moment. He’s focused on making sure you feel good and nothing else.

𝕳 - 𝕳𝖆𝖎𝖗

I’m so sorry- but like…. no lol. It’s almost a jungle. It’s not that he doesn’t care but he can’t be bothered. If you ask him he’ll definitely clean up, but you have to ask him or it’s just gonna stay that way.

𝕴 - 𝕴𝖓𝖙𝖎𝖒𝖆𝖈𝖞

Likes cockwarming for the closeness. You two can be laying in bed or chilling on the couch and he’ll just slip in, rutting into you every once in a while but mostly staying still and enjoying your warmth and tightness. You both enjoy it when you’re to tired to have sex, but still want to feel something

𝕵 - 𝕵𝖆𝖈𝖐 𝕺𝖋𝖋

He doesn’t like to do it himself, but instead opts for you to do so sometimes while he streams. You mostly do so because you want to though, he’s pretty indifferent. It’s just not really his thing. When he feels like he just has to- he’s 100% a pillow humper.

𝕶 - 𝕶𝖎𝖓𝖐

Roleplay: Anything that’s an escape from his normal he enjoys, and that also comes with your sex life too.

Breath Play: Kenma is 300% into breath play, and no I will not explain it he just is and I won’t take criticism. He holds his breath when he feels you start to get close- he doesn’t allow himself to breathe until you cum all over him- he’d rather let his lungs completely burn out before he leaves you unsatisfied. He holds his breath when he cums too, it intensifies his high.

Edging: that being said, you also have to work for it. If he's in a more domming mood, he’ll bring you to the brink and rip it away for hours… sometimes even days. If he’s being really mean, he’ll fuck you until you’re practically sobbing, but he won’t let you cum. He’ll cum and just leave you there, and don’t you dare touch yourself or you’ll just add to your punishment later

Voyeurism: you love letting him listen to/ watch you shower. He thinks you don’t know he’s there, but you can faintly hear the way his breath shudders over the water hitting the tiled walls. You can only imagine what he’s thinking of doing to you, and it turns you both on.

𝕷 - 𝕷𝖔𝖈𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓

If you think he’s going to do it anywhere but a space with a bed/something to sleep on after- you’re wrong. Sadly this limits you to the confines of your home or the occasional hotel. The baby just exhausts himself too easily and needs to recharge after you’re done.

𝕸 - 𝕸𝖔𝖙𝖎𝖛𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓

He’s encouraged by you begging for him. Every time you moan out his name- every time you plead for him to let you cum- it makes him feel powerful. He’s not just a subby baby! He gets off on the power dynamic between you. He knows how apathetic he comes off at times and he uses that to his advantage- loving nothing more than for you to beg for him to touch you. He likes to ignore you on purpose to build up the tension.

𝕹 - 𝕹𝖔!

Ken loves to watch, but that’s it. That being said, he doesn’t like being watched. So he’s not much of an exhibitionist. You’re the only real exception to the rule.

𝕺 - 𝕺𝖗𝖆𝖑

He never lasts long when you do go down on him, so he prefers to wait it out until he’s close, or he’ll let you suck him off when he really needs to cum. He loves it but he can’t control himself, so he doesn’t ask super often, but he does like an occasional morning surprise bj- it’s made him a morning person

𝕻 - 𝕻𝖆𝖈𝖊

If he’s fucking you- its so slow its painful at first. Since he wants you to beg, he’ll coax it out of you slowly, building you up until you’re a hot mess, but he never goes faster until the last second. If he’s the one getting fucked, he’s all about you being even and setting a good pace for him. He prefers it when you start slow and gradually get faster, slowing down again once he gets close, and milking it out of him.

𝕼 - 𝕼𝖚𝖎𝖈𝖐𝖎𝖊

Absolutely not. He wants to be able to take his time. Like any gamer, he’s not going to be satisfied until he gets a perfect score. So that means he needs time. Its the same thing when you take control. He wants you to take your time exploring him, he wants you to take the time and care to make him fall apart slowly and meticulously. If you’re particularly needy, he’ll give in to hold you over- but expect it to be lazy and sloppy, and a bit unsatisfying. He’s going to leave you wanting more.

𝕽 - 𝕽𝖎𝖘𝖐

Again, not much to see here. He’s not vanilla in the slightest, but he knows what he likes, and he knows what works. Instead of trying a bunch of new things, he prefers to try different combinations of his tried-and-trues, with a sprinkle of something else here or there- that’s how he keeps you on your toes.

𝕾 - 𝕾𝖙𝖆𝖒𝖎𝖓𝖆

Prefers quality over quantity, so most of the time his rounds are one and done. But that one and done can last hours- he has a lot of control over himself and will hold off until he’s sure you’re spent. He’ll give in to a few more rounds of you ask him nicely- he can’t resist when you bat your pretty eyes his way… but he’ll probably get you off with toys or his hands instead.

𝕿 - 𝕿𝖔𝖞

Likes to use toys on you, especially when he’s tired or feeling particularly lazy that day. He likes the fact that you can still get off by his hand without him having to do much. He will use it to his advantage though, which means you need to be prepared to be edged for awhile most days...

𝖀 - 𝖀𝖓𝖋𝖆𝖎𝖗

He’s VERY easy to tease. Gets flustered by the smallest actions, no matter how innocent they are. Can’t really control his boners so you have to be careful with him. He hates being teased but lives to tease you.

𝖁 - 𝖁𝖔𝖑𝖚𝖒𝖊

Very breathy, very shaky. He’s not necessarily super quiet, but there’s a lot of deep breathing and exhaling as opposed to outright moans. When he does actually moan it’s so delicate and pretty. He does talk to you as well, he tells you how pretty you look in your lace, and how much he likes pretty things like you.

𝖂 - 𝖂𝖎𝖑𝖉𝖈𝖆𝖗𝖉

His favorite post fuck meal is mac n cheese. Kuroo fed it to him in celebration when Kenma lost his virginity and he has now been essentially pavloved to associate sex with the Kraft blue box.

𝖃 - 𝖃-𝕽𝖆𝖞

It's not like, pretty- it's cute- Under the mess of hair anyway. Very uwu cute. He’s not a shower but he has maybe 5-6 when he’s ready to go. It's pink all around and chubby. Honestly it looks like those adorable little smiling mushroom plushies- you know the ones.

𝖄 - 𝖄𝖊𝖆𝖗𝖓𝖎𝖓𝖌

His sex drive isn’t low, but instead its moderate. You’re a lot more needy than he is, so you tend to always be the one initiating- but he’ll also never be shy about asking you when he wants you.

𝖅 - 𝖅𝖟𝖟

He’s out before he even hits the pillow most times. He loves to fall asleep in your arms, resting his head on your chest to time his own breaths with your heartbeat. The only drawback of how cute this sight is is that kenma snores like a 70-year old man in dangerous need of a cpap.

Taglist Starseeds (link in nav to join):  @honey-makki @acciobrooms @sen-brainrot @the-3d-sky-sister @minato-hoe @strawberrymakki @prettyforpapiiwa @dxddykeiji @arixtsukki @freyafolkvangr @ukaisgratefulwhore @tetsurolls @milanapolitana​ @notjasmin​ @velvesagi​ @keishinsuke @amanda0121gg @bluntkingkuroo @ellapurineko

If ur url is in bold- shoot me a dm ✨

[whatimconsuming]

The story of Discord is the story of platform shifts. Jason Citron started his career in game development studios creating some of titles for Xbox and Play Station 2 (that’s how old he is 😂) that you probably never heard of 😬. Platform Shift: Mobile In the 2008, the “app store” was just announced and Jason thought this would be the perfect time to take the entrepreneurial plunge. His thesis was that with the launch of mobile gaming on the iPhone he would get “free distribution” if he manages to become a “launch title” (ie develop his game before the app store is live). After all, whenever a new console comes out, there is always new set of games that offer a new kind of experiences that are “native” to that console and new gaming behaviors are born….this was a once in a life opportunity. Jason raised some seed capital from the uncle of one of his roommates and was off to the races building Aurora feint. He pulled off being a launch title and Aurora feint was one of only 50 games that were available on the app store on the blessed day.

The Good News: it got rave reviews…partly because of the limited competition at the time, but also because Jason was just an extremely talented game developer. The Bad News: the business model didn’t really work. Aurora feint’s Business Model The Business model for the game was very similar to other stuff that Jason had worked on in the past. He gave the game away for free and build a premium version that had multiplayer dynamics (such as competing with friends on leaderboards...competing in ghost matches....etc)….this was a very common behaviour for PC….but what he didn’t realize at the time was that with new platforms…comes new expectations and subsequently new consumer behaviors. The $8 price tag (probably out of thin air) to access those social features didn’t really work. As time went by, and more games were build around the iPhone, and the price tag was anchored at $0.99 - $4.99. Jason and his 5 person company made a meager $30k in revenue from this game….a far cry from a “hit” game.

The pivot to OpenFeint One day, while discussing with the another founder, Citron realized that the iPhone did not have Xbox live in it, but their Aurora Feint 2 did have a similar feature. From my very shallow understanding Xbox live is just a platform that allows gamers to play multiplayer games, communicate with each and discover new games. In an act of desperation, Jason decided to spin out those social features and sell them to other developers, in an attempt to become equivalent the Xbox live for iPhone….the only problem was he didn’t really have any money to pay his engineers let alone hire new ones to build this in time…or anyone for that matter….to get Jason put up a landing page...photoshopped a couple of fake screenshots ...the message was "xbox live for mobile." He convinced Techcrunch to cover “the launch” and took that mailing list to investors…sprinkled some “vision” on it and raised a bridge round. He used the money from that round to hire 10 new developers to actually build the product The $104m payout

Over the next two years Openfeint took over Jason’s life. As someone whose life revolved around gaming, I can’t even imagine how it must have felt like to build the entire infrastructure for social gaming on the iPhone. By 2010, Openfeint had more than 10 million users and was powering 30 of the top 100 games on the App Store. Next year the company was acquired by a Japanese company (named GREE…but thats not really important) for a whopping $104 million (for reference the company ever raised $3m). When Jason signed on the dotted line, it was under the expectation that he will now have the resources to build the Xbox live for mobile. But as with many acquisitions…the story took a sour turn after the deal closed… Rinse and repeat (for iPad) Jason took a 7 months hiatus after being booted out of his own company. Jason took the time-off playing video games….A LOT of video games. Around that time, in 2013 the iPad was in its first years of inception and slowly making it to the main stream. While everyone saw iPad as a tablet, Jason saw it as a new platform shift for gaming…specifically for playing team-based games. He hypothesized that the iPad would make these kind of multi-player games more accessible and that the only problem was that there wasn’t enough high quality games being produced. Ready for round 2…Jason started another company…this time named Hammer and Chisel. Hammer and Chisel was a game development house that focused exclusively on creating high-quality iPad games. The vision for Hammer and Chisel was to replicate the Openfeint model for iPad. Fates Forever

After a few hit-and-miss with launching different games (3 to be specific), Jason had Another ONE(idea) up his sleeve…this time for a game called Fates forever. In a true Sell-Build-Ship manner that we can come to expect from Jason, instead of putting in the hours to build a game and see it crumble in-front of his eyes, he, instead, chunked up the art ....and started posting it on reddit along with explaining how the “game worked”(there was no game at the time…just some art). He took feedback from and incorporated it into into the art and ultimately the game mechanics. Six months later, Fates Forever shipped to the app store, and yet again didn’t really live up to the expectations of Jason or the team. The pivot to Discord

Jason was going around in circles trying to figure out how he can “fix” Fates Forever. In a conversation with Stanislav (Stan) Vishnevskiy (a developer at Hammer and Chisel then and cofounder of Discord later) Jason was complaining to Stan that the chat experience on Faints Forever sucked. He then went on a rant explaining how the ideal communication platform SHOULD work for developers. And so the OG idea of Discord was born. The idea was building Teamspeak meet skype. To take a step back Teamspeak was one of the more popular tools at the time used by gamers who played team vs team games. The problem with Teamspeak, at least from Stan’s prespective, was that to start a conversation on Teamspeak users had to download the app, pay for it and share their IP address (IP address is kind of like your mailing address) with other team members. Cutting through the noise Jason and Stan started building the first version of Discord as a side project within the company. First 20 customers The first 20 customers for Discord were friends, friends and friends. For the first 5 months, Jason and Stan were building Discord and hammering their gamer friends to use it. Their friends signed up but weren’t actually really using the product. Everytime they asked them why, they highlighted that they needed this feauture or that feature. Stan and Jason would go build it and come back to them…they got excited for a minute and then demanded more features. This loop kept going on and on and at some point the team had spent 3 weeks not shipping anything, they figured that maybe Discord just wasn’t as important as they had previously thought. First 200-300 customers Those 3 weeks where yet another reminder to Jason of how important distribution was. He figured that gaming communities were far and wide on the internet and that the product was at a point where it could be stress tested by more than just his unappreciative friends. So Jason and Stan got one of the friends to post in the Final Fantasy 14(a popular game at the name) subreddit. They reason they narrowed down to this one specific game was that there was a new expansion (i.e new features, content..etc) coming out which meant that was a lot of anticipation, speculation and excitement about the new release on reddit.

Their friend posted a simple link saying “"Hey...did anyone try this new voiceover IP app called discord [link to a voice chat].“ Jason and Stan immediately jumped onto the voice chat and started talking to anyone who showed up. The Redditors would go back, say "I just talked to the developers there, they're pretty cool," and send even more people to Discord. That kind of kicked the snowball off the top of the mountain.

Fun fact: Discord now claims this day (May 13, 2015) as their “launch day” First 1000 customers For the next 1000 customers, Jason and Stan focused all their product work on just 3 games, all of which had upcoming expansions (i.e new releases) in an attempt to make integrations with these games as seamless as possible. They then did the same Reddit routine, got a friend to post on the game’s subreddit asking if member had tried using Discord and accompanying that message a link to a voice chat where Jason and Stan were waiting to meet and greet and answer any questions anyone had. To double down on that strategy, Jason and Stand started doing some 1:1 promotion with “guilds” of these games. Guilds are “an organized group of video game players that regularly play together in one or more multiplayer games. Many guilds take part in gaming competitions, but some guilds are just small gaming squads consisting of friends. “

[fulltimepancreas]

J’s Diagnosis Story

February 16, 2020.

Diagnosis day.

Diabetes day.

D-day.

The day all of our lives changed forever.

I spend a lot of time thinking about this day. Will this memory ever fade? A year later and yet it’s still so fresh. How long until I can drive past the ER again without a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach and my eyes all welled up with tears? I have to look away because it still hurts too much.

It’s Sunday. My son J wakes up again with a stomach ache. It’s become a regular thing, so I don’t give it a second thought. Usually, once he’s fully awake and starts to play, he’ll get distracted pretty quickly, and forget. So when he tells me that he isn’t feeling well, I brush it off. In hindsight, it should have been one of many red flags. I missed it. I missed all of them.

We get a phone call from my sister-in-law who wants to throw an impromptu birthday party for our niece later in the afternoon. So I ask my older daughter, K, to babysit J while my husband and I rush to the store first thing to buy a birthday gift. I’m not at the store very long when I get a text from my daughter telling me that J has thrown up. Historically, whenever J is coming down with a cold or a stomach bug, the first sign that something is wrong is always a low fever and vomiting. So at this point, I’m thinking it is probably one of those two things, and so I finish up at the store and rush back home to take care of him. There’s no fever, but it's obvious he's coming down with something. He doesn’t have much energy or an appetite at all. I encourage him to hydrate and rest, and he does so for several hours. I decide to send my husband and daughter to the party without us. While they are gone, I offer him a popsicle (it’s blue and that’s important later) but not long after, he throws up again. The only thing he can keep down is water. After getting him all cleaned up, I leave the room for just a moment to carry some soiled towels to the l laundry. When I left him, he had been sitting up, propped up on pillows on my bed and he was watching tv. I’m gone for maybe 30 seconds, but when I return he has fallen asleep. Red flag number two. I text my husband to let him know what’s going on but tell him not to rush home. Since J is sick, sleep is good for him. I tuck him in, snuggle up next to him, and watch some tv while he sleeps. It doesn’t seem like too much time passes before I notice that he’s breathing differently. Is he breathing louder? Is it faster? I recall something about babies and fevers and breathing heavily so of course, I start to google. I don’t find any information that satisfies me, but I am prone to anxiety and I manage to convince myself that I am overreacting. Some time passes. He sleeps and his “different“ breathing continues but finally my husband and daughter return home. I’m starting to worry, and I express these concerns to my husband. And although we both think I’m probably overreacting for just a stomach bug, we decide to have him see a doctor. It’s late afternoon on a Sunday, so his doctor’s office is closed. My husband suggests urgent care. Now, my kids are healthy. Seriously, they hardly ever get sick. And for a cold or a stomach bug, I almost always just handle that at home. So when we get to the urgent care that’s closest to our house they tell us that they don’t take our insurance and they send us somewhere else. I carry my 70+ lb son back to the car because he is weak and tired and can hardly stand and we drive across town while my husband calls a different urgent care that requires us to make an appointment first. By some kind of crazy miracle, they fit us in for an appointment right about the time that we get there. We aren’t in the waiting room for too long. Maybe half an hour. He watches his iPad, alternating between my arms and my husband’s. This is very strange behavior for him because he’s almost too big to be held anymore but he insists. He also requests water to drink several times and dozes off a few times while we wait. The doctor finally comes in. He’s an older gentleman, friendly enough. He examines J pretty thoroughly, while I’m holding him in my arms and decides on a diagnosis of a stomach virus. He prescribes some anti-nausea meds and sends us on our way. He walks us to the checkout and I’m struggling again to carry J and he’s awake so I set him down for a moment to rest my arms. This moment probably saved his life. J kind of stumbles and it’s clear he is too weak to walk. The doctor sees this and asks us to wait a minute. He asks us to come back into the exam room and says he wants to check one more thing. He asks the nurse to get a glucose reading on my son. The nurse leaves the room to go and get supplies. At this moment, I have one of those literal light bulb epiphany moments like they show in cartoons. Suddenly and overwhelmingly everything clicks in to place and I just... know. His blood sugar is 300+. “Is that bad?”, we ask, and they only tell us that it’s high. The doctor says he’s sending us to the ER but he leaves the room to call ahead and tell them we’re coming. Diabetes, I say to my husband as the three of us are left alone in the exam room. Oh. My. God. He drinks so much water all the time. I have been calling him my “little fish out of water” for months. He wakes up all hours of the night to ask for more water. He pees constantly. He even wets the bed sometimes ‘cause he drinks so much. He’s lost weight recently but, hey... he was a little chubby to start with so that wasn’t really a bad thing. His stomach always hurts. Diabetes. I should have known. I should have figured this out. Oh. My. God. The nurse brings a wheelchair for J since I’m struggling to carry him. My husband brings the car around while I check out and we finally head to the ER. By some other kind of crazy miracle, the ER is in an adjacent building sharing a parking lot with the urgent care we are at. A few minutes later, we walk into the ER and sign in and sit down in the waiting room. Almost immediately we are called back. I’m carrying him the whole way and finally get to set him down on the hospital bed. Several hospital staff rush in and out of the room. Everything is a blur. He’s getting an IV in both of his arms and blood drawn and all sorts of things are being done but he seems pretty indifferent to everything and just keeps dosing off. And then at some point, there’s a bit of a fuss... because J’s lips are kind of blue (because of that popsicle I fed him earlier when I was trying to get him to hold something down). This becomes a bit of a running joke with the doctors later on. Blue lips generally signify a lack of oxygen so they were kind of baffled before I remembered to tell them about the popsicle. At some point, I look down at him and I start to cry. I’m freaking out. I’m scared and I’m sad and I know “diabetes” but that’s the only thing I know and there are so many unanswered questions and I can’t hold it in anymore. A nurse is putting in an IV (god, does he really need another one?) or something... I honestly have no idea because all the moments are blurring together but J sees me. And he asks that nurse, “Why is my mommy crying?” He tells my son, “It’s ok. Your mommy is just worried about you.” And I realize at this moment that he needs me to be strong for him right now more than anything. And when I tell you that I didn’t cry again (in front of him at least) the entire week we spent in the hospital, it is the truth. That’s significant for me because I’m usually an emotional wreck about every little thing. My husband gets on the phone to make arrangements for our older daughter to stay with family since they’re telling us we will be admitted to the hospital. She also suffers from anxiety so when we speak to her, I tell her as little as possible and I downplay the severity because I need her to stay calm and not lose it. I tell her everything is ok. I’m lying to her but I don’t know what else to do. I can’t think about that right now. We are at one of the smaller ERs, so after getting him all hooked up and stable and everything, they tell us that we’ll be taking an ambulance to the big hospital across town. Neither of us has ever been in an ambulance before and the EMTs are very friendly and cool so J is at ease. He’s awake for most of the ride and we talk about J’s favorite video games and the EMT shows him cool stuff in the ambulance. Later, he tells me it’s pretty much the only thing he remembers from the whole day. At the hospital, we go straight to the PICU (Pediatric Intensive Care Unit) where we will spend the next week. So much new information is thrown at us. So many words and numbers we won’t yet understand. (What is bolus? What even is a normal blood sugar number?) At some point, I hear that his blood sugar is in the 600s. I somewhat understand that he’s receiving both insulin to bring down his blood sugar and also glucose in his IVs at the same time because they have to bring it down slowly to prevent his brain from swelling. I don’t get any sleep, but luckily J is still exhausted and he spends most of the first few days asleep. Because once every hour, the nurses come in and they finger prick him to test his blood sugar. By the time we get home, there isn’t a single spot on any of his little fingertips that aren’t covered in bruises. The next morning, my husband brings K up to visit, and that cheers J up a little. But mostly he sleeps. He cannot walk to the bathroom or even stand up. And it’s like 48 hours before he’s even allowed to try and eat anything. While he sleeps, I read and then reread this book they’ve given me which is basically a starter guide to diabetes. When I’m done with that, I google and study everything I can find about diabetes. Looking back on it, before this, I really didn’t know anything at all about diabetes. And everything

I thought I knew about it was just misconceptions or flat out wrong. A constant stream of doctors and hospital staff are coming in and out of his room. We meet his endocrinologist, and the first thing he says is, “Yes, he has type one diabetes. Yes, I’m sure. No, you didn’t do anything to cause it. And no, there isn’t anything you could have done to prevent it.” Type 1 diabetes. Diabetic ketoacidosis. Kidney failure. F$#k. Eventually, he gets to have his first meal. A nurse comes in to teach us how to calculate an insulin dose. He struggles to find his appetite. After the first shot, and for several more shots afterward, the nurse brings him a toy that he gets really excited about and makes things a little easier. We watch a lot of movies. Toy Story and Lion King and their sequels over and over. The nurses are so kind and just incredible and probably the only reason why I’m able to hold it all together. Once or twice while he sleeps, I sneak into the bathroom to have a quick cry where I know he can’t hear me. My husband gets to leave the hospital for a few hours at a time to pick up our daughter or run errands and I can see how emotional he gets about everything but he can let it all out while he is away. I made a promise to J that no matter what, I would not ever leave his side so sneaking to the bathroom to cry is the only way I can keep it together for him. More days pass, and he is getting his strength and his appetite back slowly. On the fifth day, they ask us if we feel confident that we can handle everything by ourselves at home, and we are sure that we can. We have no idea. No f$#king clue. We stand in his hospital room, with his brand new meter and we ask the nurse for help to make sure we know how to work it before we leave the hospital and she isn’t much help and in the end, we have to figure it out ourselves. And that kind of sets the precedent for this whole disease, to be honest. We are given bare-bones, one size fits all sort of instructions on “how to diabetes” but we will learn pretty quickly that we have a lot to figure out on our own. I could tell you that it gets easier. And that would be sort of true. After a while, taking care of a child with diabetes becomes routine and things that seemed scary at first are like second nature. I know my way around a BG meter no matter the brand or type. I can check ketones and confidently give injections without a second thought.  I can safely calculate an insulin dose and find the carbohydrate count for anything, and even accurately guess the carbs (without looking it up or weighing) for probably every food in our house. I know what normal blood glucose range is for diabetics and non-diabetics. I know what bolus and basal are, and I know about all of the different types of insulin. I know how to apply, use, and remove a continuous glucose monitor. If you ask me a question about diabetes, I either know the answer or I know where to find it. I f$#ing KNOW diabetes. But every single day is different than the one before. What works today to keep my son in range may not give the same results tomorrow. Everything affects his numbers: food, activity level, stress, even the weather. And I guess that’s why it’s never gonna be easy. That, and the fact that giving him insulin is the only thing that can keep J alive while simultaneously being lethal if he gets too much... it’s like this huge, heavy weight that I have to carry every day. And when he gets older, he’ll have to carry it, too. And all I can do is to love him fiercely and to raise him to be strong enough to endure and until that day comes, to take as much off of his shoulders as I possibly can.

[kevinbreed131-blog]

Youtube SEO

Videos have grown dramatically in their popularity with audiences - in 2017, an envisioned 74 percentage of all online traffic might be for motion pictures. YouTube itself is the second-biggest search engine, at the back of most effective Google. YouTube search engine optimization is important to help you succeed in your advertising and marketing efforts in this video platform.

According to SEO Brisk records, 78% of human beings watch at least one video a week.

Promoting a video in an e-mail concern heading increases open rates by using 19% and click on-thru quotes with the aid of 65%, videos help customers feel confident of their purchases and they even have the strength to inspire greater ability customers to go to a store online or in person. Marketers ought to develop video content material and video search engine optimization strategies to take benefit from the hobby.

Understanding the position of YouTube search engine marketing

People typically go to YouTube because they want to be entertained or research something new from the videos they watch - this explains the brilliant reputation of all those Super Bowl motion pictures you notice exceeded round your Facebook feed in the days and weeks after the game. Aside from all of the animal movies which appear to dominate the platform, however, there are masses of space for manufacturers and video search engine optimization techniques.

YouTube has a really large audience - over a thousand million users or 1/7th of the arena's populace. This method films at the site are an opportunity to introduce new humans to a brand, growing brand focus, and building an audience of fascinated capacity customers. Accomplishing that requires a great strategy for YouTube search engine optimization.

YouTube motion pictures also can be embedded right on other social media websites by using the usage of the embedded participant code. This makes it smooth for visitors to observe your videos right on their feeds without having to click on off and visit the YouTube website. 

By embedding the movies, you can boom engagement to your different social media pages. This allows you to improve your interactions with clients during your virtual presence to build your recognition.

What has to be published for YouTube SEO

It is essential to notice that not each video your logo produces ought to be posted on YouTube. The movies on this web page need to be designed for a huge target market. Remember that the majority discovering your channel isn't coming back from a branded internet site. They are watching a video for enjoyment or to analyze, no longer to make a buy.

Your video ought to normally be able to stand on its own: it needs to be comprehensible and upload cost for viewers who are not acquainted along with your logo or the speaker. The business enterprise needs to attend to presenting excessive-cost films that users can respect on their personal. Videos that assist users to apprehend complicated subjects related to your enterprise, breakdown information activities so they're understandable, or placed forth new theories or thoughts related to your subject can be very popular.

Use different forms of useful motion pictures with academic options, consisting of a way-to’s - movies that help visitors recognize how to finish sure duties or succeed within your enterprise. You may even create successful video channels based on enticing storytelling surrounding your logo through the use of YouTube search engine marketing. Think approximately the example put forth via the employer Old Spice. Learn the first-class practices for youtube SEO - brightedgeThese motion pictures inform a story about the logo and how their product works for clients in a humorous and pleasing style.

All of these varieties of videos paintings for YouTube SEO because they provide price even for users who're simply surfing at the video platform, regardless of whether or not they have a connection or information of the emblem.

The position of YouTube search engine marketing for your advertising efforts

In addition to boosting logo popularity and attention, YouTube SEO can also play a more direct role in your marketing efforts. To start, manufacturers can pressure visitors towards their YouTube channels via paid YouTube advertising. There are three forms of commercials to be had via Google TrueView video advertising and marketing:

You can select to create an advert this is performed at the beginning, middle, or end of a partner YouTube video. This is referred to as an in-stream ad.

You can create advertisements that are displayed within the seek consequences for unique queries. This is known as an in-search advert.

You can create an ad that looks on the YouTube watch page. This is an in-show advert.

The video advanced must now not be too long and it should be enticing from the first few seconds. This is particularly real for the in-stream commercials, which customers are regularly given the choice to skip after just a few seconds. The video needs to be oriented to the platform as nicely.

Remember that humans are not normally on YouTube to buy, they want to research or be entertained. That equal mantra applies to ads. Educational advertisements that apply to the keywords and the commercial enterprise in addition to commercials that contain the human connection via testimonials tend to be a hit.

There also are other forms of advertising available on YouTube. For instance, you could create interactive movies via CTA overlays. The overlay can contain hyperlinks returned to your website, making it easy for fascinated parties to have interaction extra immediately together with your brand. Adding rich snippets for your video can assist with indexing and ranking.

Finally, YouTube search engine marketing can affect your scores in seek if case you do video search engine optimization well. Google owns YouTube and often presentations motion pictures in applicable seek outcomes. Although video SEO-rich snippets have largely been removed from logo platforms, for applicable queries, they do appear with YouTube effects.

A properly-ranked video and well-completed YouTube SEO can assist in growth exposure even in trendy SERPs. A popular video that evokes many humans to click on over to the brand internet site can also not directly help to elevate the ratings of your website online itself. The extra site visitors, especially from those engaged customers who've already expressed a hobby for your enterprise, can assist improve your website metrics for the hunt set of rules. YouTube search engine marketing additionally lets you encompass hyperlinks inside the remark section of films, so taking the benefit of this possibility could make it even less complicated for involved viewers to click on over on your website.

Making your YouTube channel a success

strategize for Youtube search engine optimization with these recommendations - brightedgeCreating a hit YouTube channel calls for a strategy to get the films noticed, inclusive of YouTube SEO. Like another thing about online advertising, before you get started, you want to have a concept of which you want to head.

Know what you want your channel to rank for and the sorts of movies that are maximumly probable to be liked by the supposed audience. Keep in thoughts that YouTube achievement isn't constructed upon one-hit-wonders. Video channels that appeal to big followings and convert to revenue for manufacturers are those that keep producing excellent video after high-quality video.

Digital marketing as an entire has been transferring strongly in the direction of the price of best over amount. With the extreme competition that marketers face - a predicted 300 hours of video are uploaded each minute - negative great motion pictures best do no longer appeal to the preferred high-quality attention, but they also can hurt the brand perception as a whole.

Your intention ought to be to constantly produce exceptional, engaging videos and hold video search engine marketing. When someone finishes one video and clicks through on your channel web page, they ought to be met with several options for more, equally helpful and precious motion pictures. This is a useful YouTube SEO tip to build channel fans. Creating these hit videos calls for creativity and an eager understanding of what site visitors need to see.

Get started with the period of the video. The perfect period of a YouTube video is predicted to be 2 minutes and 54 seconds. This lets in you enough time to interact and enlighten your visitors without stretching on see you later that you lose their attention.

Make certain your motion pictures start strong. You may have about 10 seconds to seize a viewer’s attention. You will then lose 33 percent of site visitors by way of 30 seconds, forty-five percent via 1 minute, and 60 percentage using 2 mins. You want to maximize it slowly to maximize your impact with YouTube search engine marketing.

Select the right thumbnail. The thumbnail, at the side of the name, is usually one of the deciding elements for viewers when deciding on a video and a part of YouTube search engine marketing. To find the right frame, you want to cognizance on conveying the content material and emotions inside the video. Eye touch can be a powerful motivator, so selecting a thumbnail that includes the difficulty of searching on the viewer can be a great desire.

Make certain your video is inside the quality layout. Using the wrong format can bring about the video not performing as crisp and clean, and for that reason, much less attractive that could harm video SEO. The first-rate video layout for YouTube SEO is normally MPEG-four and you want to keep your decision around 1280 x 720 (16:nine HD) and 640 x 480 (4:3 SD) while possible.

Optimize the video to rank nicely. Like any other form of online content, you want to create material around consumer hobbies. This approach uncovering meaningful topics and key phrases and developing movies that answer these desires. Use the keywords inside the name and outline of the video to implement video search engine marketing procedures.

You additionally want to use tags to your videos to properly use YouTube search engine marketing. These tags ought to encompass your keywords in addition to the video classes, information about the content material, and any large perception about the creation of the video or the humans in it. To execute video search engine marketing for exposure, make sure to target your call by way of constructing the following property with searchable key phrases, subjects, and context:

The Video Title

The Video Description

A legitimate link to related statistics for your internet site

The video tags

Use playlists to get serialized hints among your motion pictures

Drive-up watch time, that is a YouTube SEO ranking component

How to realize if your efforts are a hit

As you put into effect your video SEO strategy, you do need to ensure which you are tracking your development to peer how nicely your efforts on YouTube are succeeding and what's having the most important high-quality effect. There are several distinct ways you can gauge your YouTube search engine marketing success.

Branded Traffic and Share of Voice

One of the primary goals for plenty for a YouTube SEO method is to grow brand focus. Monitoring a part of video SEO is calling at your branded site visitors and your proportion of voice is a super manner to see growth in this place.

Referral Traffic from YouTube SEO

find out youtube SEO analytics - brightedgeKeep in thoughts that the number of customers who click on from a YouTube video via to a brand internet site or YouTube channel web page may be very small in comparison to the total quantity of folks that watch and revel in your video. At the identical time, tracking video search engine marketing boom in this region could be an awesome indicator in case your videos are locating the proper audience and if they appreciate what you have to say.

Leverage Robust YouTube search engine optimization Analytics

Here is an index of the analytics supplied for playlists and each video. One instance is insights into watch time, which is a crucial degree of YouTube SEO engagement for ranking. Below are the daily watch time and views stats observed by way of audience demographic records.

Currently, the substantial majority of video thumbnails displaying up in Google SERPs are from YouTube search engine marketing, so manufacturers want to increase their video SEO efforts to YouTube and master YouTube SEO to seize greater organic visitors. 

[graysdiabla]

Ways To Access Into Enjoying Video Games

Possibly you used to play all of the latest video games, however, dropped from it. Probably you have never become games, but some one close to you thinks you enjoy them in the event that you gave them a try. You're practicing social bookmarking. Wonderful! It truly is certainly one of the greatest ways of slowing the spread of covid-19. People folks who play with blockbuster video games most likely have a huge backlog to tackle. However, imagine if that you really don't play with them but certainly are you believing that now might be a excellent moment? At worldofcheat website, you may get cheat fortnite.

There is definitely a learning curve to taking part in modern video games which doesn't exist together, state, cell phone games. But it will not have to be a second endeavor.

Take a controller for the phone.

That you don't need to buy a gaming console to expand your gaming horizons. You most likely already have a machine that can run terrific games. This supercomputer in your pocket could execute a whole lot much more than loading up a rage- or even social networking feed. In addition, it can play some of the optimal/optimally games round.

Download Steam in your own PC.

If you think your computer can't run games, think again. Just about any laptop now may run and download Steam for most computer games. That doesn't of necessity signify you can run each and every game provided on the service. It truly is up to a machine's specs to choose whether you could actually run the video games that you want to purchase. Will your PC find a way to run an extremely video game? Probably not. However, you have access to significantly more than 30,000 video games of most stripes and colors. It's true, it's still true that you have to pay for dollars for the majority of these, although Steam earnings will lower the price of major video games significantly, so you're only investing in a couple dollars for hours of entertainment.

You can check your specs onto a Mac personal computer simply by clicking on the small Apple icon onto the top-left corner of your screen and hitting"about it Mac." On Windows-10, it has a touch harder. Hit start off, sort"get a grip on," and then click the Control Panel program when it pops upward. From that point, click System, and you also will observe a rundown.

To observe a video game's specs on the Steam storefront, simply scroll down until you accomplish the device Prerequisites section. As long as your machine reaches exactly the conditions, you're going to be OK.

Decide to try a services out.

You don't require a play station, or a computerto play with the hottest play-station 4 video gamesconsole. If you own a PC and have a superior web connection, you may use Sony's"play station Now" support to engage in many of its most significant games via streaming. Having a 10-per-month PS Currently subscription and also a DualShock 4 controller, you are able to flow a listing of 800 play station video games right on your computer. And you can do this using a caked PCthat you will need is 300 MB of hard drive space 2 GB of RAM, and Windows. It is going to utilize a 2.0 GHz i-3 chip, but Sony recommends 3.5 GHz or even higher. Probably the issue will be a fast web connection.

Willing to dab some cash out? Get an X Box One to yourself.

Let us imagine you have got cash to burn up off and also know you want to get yourself a high-end computer game console, but aren't certain what sorts of games you'd want to play with. In this scenario, we would recommend having an Xbox One. Why an Xbox Certainly, rather than a PlayStation 4? Partly as a result of ceremony named Xbox game Pass. It has much like PS the Sony agency people said earlier in the day. For $10 per month, you will gain access to a gigantic library of games.

[augeeks]

Chris Hemsworth on ‘Extraction’: It’s the most exhausting ride I’ve ever been on

When the exhilarating action film “Extraction” begins streaming on Netflix on Friday, you’ll see a side of Chris Hemsworth you don’t often see.

But there’s no need to take our word for it because “Extraction” director Sam Hargrave swears by it. In our recent video chat with the debuting filmmaker and his dashing lead star, Sam extolled this “side of Chris that people haven’t seen—at least, not on this level.”

Make no mistake, this may be Sam’s directorial debut, but he’s really no newcomer on the filmmaking block.

Before this directing gig landed on his lap, Sam was one of Hollywood’s most accomplished stunt coordinators, having cut his teeth into projects like “The Hunger Games,” “Atomic Blonde” and those crowd-pleasing superhero films from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where he served as Chris’ stunt double and “Endgame’s” stunt coordinator.

Justifying Sam’s hiring, screenwriter Joe Russo (“Avengers: Endgame”) explained, “The best action films are those where the action is used to illuminate character and their choices. A character’s emotional life is told through action—and Sam does that brilliantly.”

As it turns out, Sam wasn’t just paying lip service after breathing palpable cinematic life into Joe’s original script, inspired by his graphic novel “Ciudad.”

Even Chris’ reaction to the aforementioned flattering statement is in seeming synchronicity with his director’s.

“Doing ‘Extraction’ was the most exhausting ride I’ve ever been on,” the actor admitted. “The shoot was very challenging. But there was such a sense of accomplishment after every sequence at the end of each day.”

Having found Chris fun, open and accessible in our previous interview with him, we weren’t really surprised by Sam’s “testimony” because, in our experience as a theater director, we’ve always known that the most “open” actors are the type whose portrayals end up resonating instantly and deeply with audiences.

“They’ve seen Chris as Thor swinging a hammer and punching people in the face, but [his participation in this project] drives the action genre to the next level,” Sam explained. “Truthfully, we are just scratching the surface of this guy. Where his potential and work ethic are concerned, the sky’s the limit with Chris. So, all I wanted to do was to keep pushing that limitless potential.”

To film enthusiasts familiar with Chris’ body of work, he’s certainly no stranger to characters tasked with a do-or-die mission. He may have been mostly seen in actioners where characterization over spectacle is the norm, notably in high-profile projects where performances are often made to take the backseat.

But the 36-year-old actor has always managed to show how high the stakes are for any role he essays onscreen—from the splashy “dramedic” antics of Thor in the blockbuster “Avengers” flicks and the sleek true-to-life car-racing drama “Rush,” to the horror-comedy “Cabin in the Woods” and the twisted fairy tale “Snow White and the Huntsman.”

He even knows how to poke fun at himself, most memorably for his winkingly naughty turn in Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley’s “Vacation” and as the affable eye-candy in the estrogen-fueled reboot of “Ghosbusters” four years ago.

“Extraction” delivers the heady mix of hard action and compelling drama when grief-stricken Australian mercenary Tyler Rake (Chris) gets his “death wish” answered.

Tyler and his team are called in for a financially lucrative mission to rescue Ovi Mahajan Jr. (Rudhraksh Jaiswal), the 14-year-old son of an imprisoned Indian drug lord (Pankaj Tripathi), who has been kidnapped by Ovi Sr.’s fierce Bangladeshi rival in Dhaka, Amir Asif (Priyanshu Painyuli).

Tyler is tasked to turn Ovi over to Saju (Randeep Hooda), Ovi Sr.’s right-hand man, after he “extracts” Ovi from Amir’s lair. But just as he’s about to wrap up his mission, Tyler learns that he’s been tricked into it with not enough funds for his deadly feat! This is when Tyler must make a Solomonic choice. What to do?

The urgently paced film follows the cat-and-mouse chase that ensues from India to Bangladesh, using exotic, “nonmainstream” locations handpicked by Sam and his creative teams in India and Thailand.

In fact, for “Extraction’s” crucial and final action sequence, which culminates with an epic gun battle on a bridge, the production had to sift through so many bridges—all 72 of them—just to capture the claustrophobic feel needed for the movie’s bullet-ridden penultimate set piece, which required more than 300 security men during the difficult shoot!

Read also: 'Capone': Tom Hardy as Al Capone in a first trailer

Our Q&A with Chris (C) and Sam (S):

Chris, you have a created a character that isn’t hard to root for. Did you research on a particular mercenary to understand Tyler Rake? And how did you relate to his grief and recklessness?

C: We had a beautiful building block, which is the script that Sam and I responded to. [It’s also the reason why we] jumped on board. With this character, there’s something I can immediately relate to, having children myself.

The idea that any of that being jeopardized or threatened adds an extra layer of truth in your performance that you can use. In my early discussions with Sam about Tyler, it was important to not have this guy be one-dimensional—that [overused] idea that the hero of a film is simply indestructible or “Terminator-esque.” It was about having someone flawed and vulnerable … and someone who has demons. The guy has to be emotionally complicated.

It is this complexity that then dictates his fighting style, and the way he was kamikaze-like suicidal, that would push his movement and the way he would approach a mission, with very little regard for his own safety.

So, I was constantly tracking that and his emotional arc as he meets this young boy and how his interaction with Ovi changes him.

Sam, how has the transition been, from stunt director to film director, so far?

S: It’s a dream come true! I always knew that I was destined for it. But I worked so hard to get here—a path similar to a few former stunt coordinators who have come before me, like Chad Stahelski (“John Wick”) and David Leitch (“Atomic Blonde”).

Much of my path has informed my style and approach to filmmaking. Every time I was designing my action sequences, I was already practicing directing because it was always telling the story through action—it was never just action for the sake of action. It was never meant to make someone look cool. It always had to move the story forward and reveal something about character. So, those wonderful opportunities I’ve had through the years were the building blocks for becoming a director. Then, getting the opportunity, which I will forever be grateful for, was Joe Russo trusting me with a script that both Chris and I connected with.

What’s the most important part of the film that you want the audience to see?

C: In particular, there’s what we call a “oner,” a 12-minute action sequence where there’s a series of single shots that are then seamlessly pieced and cut together to look like it’s one continuous take. It took about two weeks to shoot!

That was incredibly challenging (laughs) because with the wide shots, we couldn’t have stunt guys come in and switch. If we made a mistake, we couldn’t cut to another angle. So, it had to be all-in and I had to be me right in the thick of it—with Sam right there moving with the camera in front of the car, diving across buildings and during the fight sequences.

But once we pulled it off, it felt like we’ve really done something special and pretty unique. I’m excited for people to see it.

S: Yes. That’ll probably be what most people will talk about and gravitate toward. But for me, what I found most challenging and satisfying was building the relationship between Tyler and Ovi. And I hope people end up relating to that relationship.

The action in the movie is pretty intense, but it’s motivated by what Tyler is going through.

What did you find fulfilling about the shoot?

C: Doing something unique or something that hasn’t been seen before is the biggest challenge. And I’m very proud of what we’ve done here, especially if you know how Sam shoots and how he’s there behind the camera right throughout all of these sequences. It instantly gives the scenes an energy and more buzz that you can’t fake.

S: I would have to turn the love right back on Chris because I can design this with all the crazy action sequences that you want, but if you don’t have the talent to get it done and perform it to the level that you need, all that would just be bad theater.

We rehearsed a lot, and Chris put in many hours and hard work into the rehearsal process

How did you keep the elements of action and drama from overwhelming each other?

S: It’s all about balance. In action scenes, the action has to help tell a story and reveal things about character. With emotional scenes, you try to show motivations that will lead to these actions being performed. It’s all about all weaving the threads through.

If you lay the foundation early enough about what this character is going through, then you can put obstacles his way that become satisfying for him to overcome. So, part of the fun was weaving these elements in and trying to highlight our incredible set pieces in the places we shot—from India and Thailand.

The exotic locations and those confined spaces during chase scenes set “Extraction” apart from other action films. What kind of preparation was required, logistically, for a film that looks this big and busy?

S: Oh, it required a lot of preparation! It was big and busy—and was written that way. Joe did a very smart thing by setting the story in that side of the world. You know, there’s a rich history of cinema over in India, but western audiences haven’t really seen a lot of that side of the world. So, that made the shoot there pretty cool.

We found a great space in India to call our home base, which allowed us to get the kind of look we wanted and have as much control as we could have. There were certain days that we would be doing part of those “oner” sequences where we’re racing cars down the street and we’d have over 300 security personal, just to make sure that everyone was safe, because there’s so much vibrant life and energy in that city.

Another challenge presented itself when we got to Thailand: We went through 72 different bridges until we found one that we ended up using [for the finale]. Hopefully, “Extraction” is worth all the effort and thought we put into it.

[judithghernandez87]

How to Write a Book: The Secret to a Super-Fast First Draft

Hey, everyone! This post is a trial run of a new blog post format, and we’re using a video guide I created in 2015 on how to write the first draft of your book to test it out. Basically, I want to make it as easy as possible for you to digest, enjoy, and benefit from the content I produce—and my videos in particular!

I’d love to hear if you find this new format useful. Please let me know your thoughts and feedback in the comments!

If you’d prefer to watch the video version of this blog post on YouTube instead, click here.

Book writing is something that used to be a constant struggle for me. Read on to learn about the process I used to write over 36,000 words in the first two weeks of 2015—and that I’ve been using ever since with great success. I’m also going to give you one tool that is saving me so much time and helping me achieve up to 180 words per minute.

A book is such a huge undertaking. It’s really funny, because I can write a blog post—3,000 or 4,000 words—in just a few hours, but when it comes to writing a book, I struggle a lot. That’s why I have a couple unwritten books just sitting on my computer, in Scrivener, which is the tool I use to help write books. It’s a great tool—the reason those books weren’t finished was because I just couldn’t do it.

I remember sitting for hours. I would block out four or five hours of time during the day, just sit in front of my computer and finish my book or work on it at least, and come out of that with an extra 300 words for four hours of work. It was completely defeating—and I know a lot of you can relate to this. I know a lot of you also, like me, feel you have a book in you—maybe even many books in you. So I’m going to show you a book-writing technique that has changed my life in terms of productivity. I used it to write my book Will It Fly?, and within the first couple of weeks of 2015, I was able to crank out 36,000 words.

Using Post-it Notes to “Brain-Dump” Your Book’s Topics

I’ve adopted this technique from a lot of other people’s strategies and tips for writing books, and it’s involving something that a lot of other people have used before: Post-it Notes. I love Post-it Notes, because you can write on them and move them around. They’re small, but not so small that you have to squint to see them. So they’re perfect. I’m going to show you how to mind-map your next book using Post-it Notes, and how you can achieve incredible words per minute in terms of the rate at which you write your book.

I’ll also show you some tools I’ve been using along with my Post-it Notes, as well as some special things you can do in terms of where your Post-it Notes are that’ll help you crank out books like none other.

The first step is to get some Post-it Notes. Make sure to get a bunch of different colors. I like the smaller ones, because you’re just going to write one or two words on them. Then you want to pick a color—I’ll start with neon green—and just start writing. Just start with anything that comes to mind involving the book that you’re going to write, put it down, and stick it to the surface that you’re working on, whether it’s a desk or a whiteboard or some other surface.

To demonstrate this, I’m going to pick a topic. Something I always talk about on the blog is fly fishing, and it’s something I know a little bit about. Using the example of fly fishing, I’ll show you how I can start to put together my hypothetical book. You’ll see that once you start to put all your ideas onto this board that you’re working on with these Post-it Notes, you can move things around. Then the chapters and subchapters start to form, which will help create what becomes your outline. The next step is to take bits and pieces of that outline and move them to a place where you can then focus on those little bits and pieces. That’s why I love Post-it Notes, because you can move them around into different places.

So, fly fishing. I’m first going to pick a color and place it in the middle to label my central idea. I’m going to pick a pink note and write “fly fishing” on it. With this process, you write anything that comes to mind; there are no rules here. You can always throw things out, but you don’t want to stop yourself. This is the creative process. You don’t want to edit in your head. You just want to put things out there, and later on you can edit.

I’ve got “fly fishing.” Next, what is involved with fly fishing? There’s obviously “fish,” “flies,” and “rods.” There’s “casting techniques” and “reels.”

Again, write down anything that comes to mind. You want to put the stuff that’s in your brain down on paper, because then you won’t have to think about it anymore. You can focus on organizing it later, but we’re not at that part yet. What else? “Lake fishing” or “lake fly fishing.” There’s “rivers and streams,” and there’s “oceans.” Let’s see, what else? There’s “tying flies” and “tournaments.”

What else comes to mind? “How to dry things off after you’re done” . . . which is “equipment!” Good! I like that. Maybe “clothing,” too, because we’ve talked about “rods” and “reels” already. Also, different types of fish I know are popular, so “trout fishing” and “bass fishing.” I know a little about fly fishing, but I’m not a fly fisherman. You’ll obviously know a little bit more about the topic you’re working on, so you should be able to fill up your work surface pretty easily. When I was writing my last book, the table was completely filled with notes.

“Fly fishing”: what else?

Let’s see, “fly fishing for kids,” and maybe “destination areas.” You also need “boots.” You need “safety.” You need a “license,” typically, too. You need a “net,” of course, and need to know how to “catch and release.” By the way, I’m using a different color—green—now.

There’s also “etiquette.” What else is there? “Snacks” that you should bring. Obviously, there’s “where” in the lake—i.e., where in the water should you go?

I probably shouldn’t be doing this on fly fishing, and I’m not going to be publishing a book on fly fishing any time soon, but you’ll get what I’m doing here shortly.

What else? “Fish finders,” “wading boots,” maybe “boats.” “Boats,” “floats”—I feel like I’m doing a word game right now with my son or something. What rhymes with “floats”? “Coats,” “jackets.” Again, anything that comes to mind.

Starting to Create Some Order

At this point, you should have a whole board or desk full of Post-it Notes. Next, you want to start looking at all of them so you can start to tie them together. Pull them off and start moving them to different places, organizing them in groups that make sense to you. You’ll see that your brain will just start to organize them. Again, it’s nice that it’s all here for you because then it’s much easier to move things around.

For example, I can put “jackets” and “wading boots” together. Let’s see, “equipment” and “clothing.” That’s the top-level one here. Then I have “reels” and “rods” and “flies” over here. Then I have behavioral stuff like “etiquette” and “time flies” and maybe “casting techniques” over here. I have “oceans,” “lakes,” and “streams” over here. “Snacks,” which is something to bring, so maybe that’s over here in the equipment area. “License”—that’s another thing that you’ll need before you go out.

“Safety”—I can put that in the behavior area. “Tournaments”—I don’t know what goes with that right now, but that’s okay. Here’s some more “equipment:” “boats” and “floats.” “Destinations”—that could go with “oceans,” “lakes,” and “streams.” “Where in the water,” “what to do with kids,” and “fish finders”—that’s another piece of equipment. “Casting techniques”—that’s its own thing. There’s probably a whole array of different kinds of casting techniques.

“Kids.” You can take them with you on these destinations, so maybe we’ll have one for “kid-friendly.” Now I have four different sections here I can see, maybe five, because of “casting techniques.” Then what I can do is I can start to create a hierarchy, so I can see that this is “equipment,” and “clothing” is here, and then stuff to “bring with you” when you go and then more “fishing-related equipment” here that you’ll need before you go out. Already, I can see a chapter here, and then subchapters happening in this section.

Again, I’m starting to organize; I’m starting to form my book here. “Fish”—that’s a top level thing, obviously. “Fish.” What kind of fish? “Trout,” “bass,” and there’s a whole bunch of other fish. How about “fishing equipment” like “rods” and “reels” and “flies”? That can be separated out from here, so that becomes a nice little chapter. Then what you can do is start to pull out another color and begin to create second or third levels within these.

If I knew a little bit more about fly fishing, I would probably know that there were different flies that I could tie. I don’t know all the names of the flies, but I think there’s a “nymph” fly, so I’ll put that down. What are some other flies? People who actually fly fish are probably going to be mad at me for this, but there’s a . . . “housefly.” There’s “nets.”

Again, you begin to create your chapter on “flies” here, and then maybe under “nymph,” there are two different “nymph” ones. I also know that there are two different kinds of flies, so I’m going to create one for “dry”—those are flies that float—and then “wet.” “Wet” flies—those are the ones that sink. Then within that, I’m going to use a different color to create another level, and put “when to use.” So you can just go deeper and deeper. Then maybe “what to use” based on the type of fish or season.

Then maybe “casting techniques.” I know there’s something called the “roll cast,” so I’ll just create a new level here: the “roll cast.” Then I could create a sub-level under that: “how to use it” and “when to use it.”

Starting the Writing Process

You can see how I begin to structure everything; I start very top-level. I bunch things up, and then I start to break things out a little bit. That will help me decide what my chapters are, what order everything should be in, what my subchapters are, and my subsections. Then, what I typically do when I start to create this order of events here and start to organize them in a sequential pattern, is start from the top. I pull out those Post-it Notes and move them onto my other desk.

That’s when I start writing about that specific topic. Everything else that’s here on the first desk is still here, but I’m not focusing on it, because I’m just writing that little portion. That’s something I struggled with when I was writing books. I was envisioning the whole thing, and thinking about every other part of the book and how it was going to relate. Instead, you’ve got to focus only on that next little section. When you do that, it becomes so much easier, because as you complete them and move things aside, then move on to the next section, and the next section—little by little, you’re chipping away at it. You’re adding more words every single day, and by the end of it, you will have gotten rid of all these Post-it Notes. You start to make progress, and it’s completely motivating.

There’s one more little secret I want to share with you that goes along with this technique, and I’ll show it to you next.

The Technique That Will Dramatically Upgrade Your WPM

You’ve created your Post-it Notes, and you’ve started to see what’s happening in your book in terms of the outline and the chapters, the subchapters, and the little sections within each of those parts. Now it’s time to start writing. Like I said earlier, you’re going to pull out little sections. I might, for example, pull out the sections on how to get involved with “fishing tournaments,” and there’s probably some more hierarchy involved within this one as well. I think there are different types of tournaments, so those would go in here as well. Now that you know this is what you’re focusing on—tournaments—you can start writing about it, and your mind is just focused on this topic. Everything else is still there on the table, but you’re only focused on this one.

Now, for me, writing and actually typing all that out would still be a struggle at this point. I’m a little bit more focused than I was, but my mind still gets into editing mode whenever I get in front of a computer. It works for blog posts, but when I am writing a book it just becomes much harder for me mentally. Even though I can try and treat each of these things as a single blog post, I still want to edit along the way, as if I’m crafting it like a blog post that’s going to be published tomorrow.

Now, the very best strategy I know of if you want to upgrade your writing efficiency is to “puke” what’s in your head onto the screen. Basically, you just want to put everything in your brain about your topic onto the page. I know some people who actually take the “delete” button off their keyboard, because they don’t want to let themselves even accidentally edit. They are just in creative mode. Later, you can come in and edit and move things around, and you’re probably not going to be using a lot of what you write down, but what comes out when your brain is in creative mode is going to be extremely good for your book.

When I was in editing mode, I just wouldn’t let myself think creatively. I would just stop myself, because I had to edit this thing and move things around. It’s not what you want to do. Now, the big trick I use, and the app that I use to help me achieve extremely high words per minute, is called Rev. With Rev, I’m actually not writing, and I’m not typing; I’m dictating my book.

Rev is an app for iPhone and Android. It’s basically an audio recorder, but the cool thing about it is you can take that audio recording and send it to the people over at Rev, and they will transcribe it for you at $1 per minute. You can even just transcribe it yourself or have somebody else on your team transcribe it for you, but Rev does a really great job. The quality is really good, and when it comes back to you a few hours later, it’s all the words you dictated related to that specific item.

So that’s the trick I use to get up to 180 words per minute. It’s how I’ve been able to complete the first brain dump of each of my books over the past two years. You can’t even really call them drafts, because they’re just everything in my brain about these particular topics, on these Post-it Notes, all dictated. Actually, they’re 95 percent dictated, because I start writing on the computer, but then I go to Rev, which has been game changing. Then I go through the book a second time with a little bit of editing mode in mind, and I can then shape and move things around and craft these stories in a way that makes sense for a book. It’s not going to make sense for a book when it comes from your voice, but you can get so many amazing stories and pieces of your book out through your voice.

So, record it on Rev, transcribe it, and you’ll see you have a lot of stuff to work with. And your book’s going to be finished sooner than you know.

To recap:

Brain dump all of your ideas about your book onto Post-it Notes.

Move them around, organize them, shape them, and sequence them to a point where they come to look like a book in terms of chapters, subchapters, parts within those subchapters, and so on.

Pull out individual pieces and talk about those things, then record them.

If you don’t want to do that, that’s fine; you can write them, too. But just having that Post-it note there that you’re focusing on is going to help quite a bit.

That’s my process!

Good luck, and I hope it’s helpful for those of you out there working on your first (or next) book! Give it a try, and let me know how it goes in the comments.

How to Write a Book: The Secret to a Super-Fast First Draft originally posted at Dave’s Blog

[andrewmrudd79]

How to Write a Book: The Secret to a Super-Fast First Draft

Hey, everyone! This post is a trial run of a new blog post format, and we’re using a video guide I created in 2015 on how to write the first draft of your book to test it out. Basically, I want to make it as easy as possible for you to digest, enjoy, and benefit from the content I produce—and my videos in particular!

I’d love to hear if you find this new format useful. Please let me know your thoughts and feedback in the comments!

If you’d prefer to watch the video version of this blog post on YouTube instead, click here.

Book writing is something that used to be a constant struggle for me. Read on to learn about the process I used to write over 36,000 words in the first two weeks of 2015—and that I’ve been using ever since with great success. I’m also going to give you one tool that is saving me so much time and helping me achieve up to 180 words per minute.

A book is such a huge undertaking. It’s really funny, because I can write a blog post—3,000 or 4,000 words—in just a few hours, but when it comes to writing a book, I struggle a lot. That’s why I have a couple unwritten books just sitting on my computer, in Scrivener, which is the tool I use to help write books. It’s a great tool—the reason those books weren’t finished was because I just couldn’t do it.

I remember sitting for hours. I would block out four or five hours of time during the day, just sit in front of my computer and finish my book or work on it at least, and come out of that with an extra 300 words for four hours of work. It was completely defeating—and I know a lot of you can relate to this. I know a lot of you also, like me, feel you have a book in you—maybe even many books in you. So I’m going to show you a book-writing technique that has changed my life in terms of productivity. I used it to write my book Will It Fly?, and within the first couple of weeks of 2015, I was able to crank out 36,000 words.

Using Post-it Notes to “Brain-Dump” Your Book’s Topics

I’ve adopted this technique from a lot of other people’s strategies and tips for writing books, and it’s involving something that a lot of other people have used before: Post-it Notes. I love Post-it Notes, because you can write on them and move them around. They’re small, but not so small that you have to squint to see them. So they’re perfect. I’m going to show you how to mind-map your next book using Post-it Notes, and how you can achieve incredible words per minute in terms of the rate at which you write your book.

I’ll also show you some tools I’ve been using along with my Post-it Notes, as well as some special things you can do in terms of where your Post-it Notes are that’ll help you crank out books like none other.

The first step is to get some Post-it Notes. Make sure to get a bunch of different colors. I like the smaller ones, because you’re just going to write one or two words on them. Then you want to pick a color—I’ll start with neon green—and just start writing. Just start with anything that comes to mind involving the book that you’re going to write, put it down, and stick it to the surface that you’re working on, whether it’s a desk or a whiteboard or some other surface.

To demonstrate this, I’m going to pick a topic. Something I always talk about on the blog is fly fishing, and it’s something I know a little bit about. Using the example of fly fishing, I’ll show you how I can start to put together my hypothetical book. You’ll see that once you start to put all your ideas onto this board that you’re working on with these Post-it Notes, you can move things around. Then the chapters and subchapters start to form, which will help create what becomes your outline. The next step is to take bits and pieces of that outline and move them to a place where you can then focus on those little bits and pieces. That’s why I love Post-it Notes, because you can move them around into different places.

So, fly fishing. I’m first going to pick a color and place it in the middle to label my central idea. I’m going to pick a pink note and write “fly fishing” on it. With this process, you write anything that comes to mind; there are no rules here. You can always throw things out, but you don’t want to stop yourself. This is the creative process. You don’t want to edit in your head. You just want to put things out there, and later on you can edit.

I’ve got “fly fishing.” Next, what is involved with fly fishing? There’s obviously “fish,” “flies,” and “rods.” There’s “casting techniques” and “reels.”

Again, write down anything that comes to mind. You want to put the stuff that’s in your brain down on paper, because then you won’t have to think about it anymore. You can focus on organizing it later, but we’re not at that part yet. What else? “Lake fishing” or “lake fly fishing.” There’s “rivers and streams,” and there’s “oceans.” Let’s see, what else? There’s “tying flies” and “tournaments.”

What else comes to mind? “How to dry things off after you’re done” . . . which is “equipment!” Good! I like that. Maybe “clothing,” too, because we’ve talked about “rods” and “reels” already. Also, different types of fish I know are popular, so “trout fishing” and “bass fishing.” I know a little about fly fishing, but I’m not a fly fisherman. You’ll obviously know a little bit more about the topic you’re working on, so you should be able to fill up your work surface pretty easily. When I was writing my last book, the table was completely filled with notes.

“Fly fishing”: what else?

Let’s see, “fly fishing for kids,” and maybe “destination areas.” You also need “boots.” You need “safety.” You need a “license,” typically, too. You need a “net,” of course, and need to know how to “catch and release.” By the way, I’m using a different color—green—now.

There’s also “etiquette.” What else is there? “Snacks” that you should bring. Obviously, there’s “where” in the lake—i.e., where in the water should you go?

I probably shouldn’t be doing this on fly fishing, and I’m not going to be publishing a book on fly fishing any time soon, but you’ll get what I’m doing here shortly.

What else? “Fish finders,” “wading boots,” maybe “boats.” “Boats,” “floats”—I feel like I’m doing a word game right now with my son or something. What rhymes with “floats”? “Coats,” “jackets.” Again, anything that comes to mind.

Starting to Create Some Order

At this point, you should have a whole board or desk full of Post-it Notes. Next, you want to start looking at all of them so you can start to tie them together. Pull them off and start moving them to different places, organizing them in groups that make sense to you. You’ll see that your brain will just start to organize them. Again, it’s nice that it’s all here for you because then it’s much easier to move things around.

For example, I can put “jackets” and “wading boots” together. Let’s see, “equipment” and “clothing.” That’s the top-level one here. Then I have “reels” and “rods” and “flies” over here. Then I have behavioral stuff like “etiquette” and “time flies” and maybe “casting techniques” over here. I have “oceans,” “lakes,” and “streams” over here. “Snacks,” which is something to bring, so maybe that’s over here in the equipment area. “License”—that’s another thing that you’ll need before you go out.

“Safety”—I can put that in the behavior area. “Tournaments”—I don’t know what goes with that right now, but that’s okay. Here’s some more “equipment:” “boats” and “floats.” “Destinations”—that could go with “oceans,” “lakes,” and “streams.” “Where in the water,” “what to do with kids,” and “fish finders”—that’s another piece of equipment. “Casting techniques”—that’s its own thing. There’s probably a whole array of different kinds of casting techniques.

“Kids.” You can take them with you on these destinations, so maybe we’ll have one for “kid-friendly.” Now I have four different sections here I can see, maybe five, because of “casting techniques.” Then what I can do is I can start to create a hierarchy, so I can see that this is “equipment,” and “clothing” is here, and then stuff to “bring with you” when you go and then more “fishing-related equipment” here that you’ll need before you go out. Already, I can see a chapter here, and then subchapters happening in this section.

Again, I’m starting to organize; I’m starting to form my book here. “Fish”—that’s a top level thing, obviously. “Fish.” What kind of fish? “Trout,” “bass,” and there’s a whole bunch of other fish. How about “fishing equipment” like “rods” and “reels” and “flies”? That can be separated out from here, so that becomes a nice little chapter. Then what you can do is start to pull out another color and begin to create second or third levels within these.

If I knew a little bit more about fly fishing, I would probably know that there were different flies that I could tie. I don’t know all the names of the flies, but I think there’s a “nymph” fly, so I’ll put that down. What are some other flies? People who actually fly fish are probably going to be mad at me for this, but there’s a . . . “housefly.” There’s “nets.”

Again, you begin to create your chapter on “flies” here, and then maybe under “nymph,” there are two different “nymph” ones. I also know that there are two different kinds of flies, so I’m going to create one for “dry”—those are flies that float—and then “wet.” “Wet” flies—those are the ones that sink. Then within that, I’m going to use a different color to create another level, and put “when to use.” So you can just go deeper and deeper. Then maybe “what to use” based on the type of fish or season.

Then maybe “casting techniques.” I know there’s something called the “roll cast,” so I’ll just create a new level here: the “roll cast.” Then I could create a sub-level under that: “how to use it” and “when to use it.”

Starting the Writing Process

You can see how I begin to structure everything; I start very top-level. I bunch things up, and then I start to break things out a little bit. That will help me decide what my chapters are, what order everything should be in, what my subchapters are, and my subsections. Then, what I typically do when I start to create this order of events here and start to organize them in a sequential pattern, is start from the top. I pull out those Post-it Notes and move them onto my other desk.

That’s when I start writing about that specific topic. Everything else that’s here on the first desk is still here, but I’m not focusing on it, because I’m just writing that little portion. That’s something I struggled with when I was writing books. I was envisioning the whole thing, and thinking about every other part of the book and how it was going to relate. Instead, you’ve got to focus only on that next little section. When you do that, it becomes so much easier, because as you complete them and move things aside, then move on to the next section, and the next section—little by little, you’re chipping away at it. You’re adding more words every single day, and by the end of it, you will have gotten rid of all these Post-it Notes. You start to make progress, and it’s completely motivating.

There’s one more little secret I want to share with you that goes along with this technique, and I’ll show it to you next.

The Technique That Will Dramatically Upgrade Your WPM

You’ve created your Post-it Notes, and you’ve started to see what’s happening in your book in terms of the outline and the chapters, the subchapters, and the little sections within each of those parts. Now it’s time to start writing. Like I said earlier, you’re going to pull out little sections. I might, for example, pull out the sections on how to get involved with “fishing tournaments,” and there’s probably some more hierarchy involved within this one as well. I think there are different types of tournaments, so those would go in here as well. Now that you know this is what you’re focusing on—tournaments—you can start writing about it, and your mind is just focused on this topic. Everything else is still there on the table, but you’re only focused on this one.

Now, for me, writing and actually typing all that out would still be a struggle at this point. I’m a little bit more focused than I was, but my mind still gets into editing mode whenever I get in front of a computer. It works for blog posts, but when I am writing a book it just becomes much harder for me mentally. Even though I can try and treat each of these things as a single blog post, I still want to edit along the way, as if I’m crafting it like a blog post that’s going to be published tomorrow.

Now, the very best strategy I know of if you want to upgrade your writing efficiency is to “puke” what’s in your head onto the screen. Basically, you just want to put everything in your brain about your topic onto the page. I know some people who actually take the “delete” button off their keyboard, because they don’t want to let themselves even accidentally edit. They are just in creative mode. Later, you can come in and edit and move things around, and you’re probably not going to be using a lot of what you write down, but what comes out when your brain is in creative mode is going to be extremely good for your book.

When I was in editing mode, I just wouldn’t let myself think creatively. I would just stop myself, because I had to edit this thing and move things around. It’s not what you want to do. Now, the big trick I use, and the app that I use to help me achieve extremely high words per minute, is called Rev. With Rev, I’m actually not writing, and I’m not typing; I’m dictating my book.

Rev is an app for iPhone and Android. It’s basically an audio recorder, but the cool thing about it is you can take that audio recording and send it to the people over at Rev, and they will transcribe it for you at $1 per minute. You can even just transcribe it yourself or have somebody else on your team transcribe it for you, but Rev does a really great job. The quality is really good, and when it comes back to you a few hours later, it’s all the words you dictated related to that specific item.

So that’s the trick I use to get up to 180 words per minute. It’s how I’ve been able to complete the first brain dump of each of my books over the past two years. You can’t even really call them drafts, because they’re just everything in my brain about these particular topics, on these Post-it Notes, all dictated. Actually, they’re 95 percent dictated, because I start writing on the computer, but then I go to Rev, which has been game changing. Then I go through the book a second time with a little bit of editing mode in mind, and I can then shape and move things around and craft these stories in a way that makes sense for a book. It’s not going to make sense for a book when it comes from your voice, but you can get so many amazing stories and pieces of your book out through your voice.

So, record it on Rev, transcribe it, and you’ll see you have a lot of stuff to work with. And your book’s going to be finished sooner than you know.

To recap:

Brain dump all of your ideas about your book onto Post-it Notes.

Move them around, organize them, shape them, and sequence them to a point where they come to look like a book in terms of chapters, subchapters, parts within those subchapters, and so on.

Pull out individual pieces and talk about those things, then record them.

If you don’t want to do that, that’s fine; you can write them, too. But just having that Post-it note there that you’re focusing on is going to help quite a bit.

That’s my process!

Good luck, and I hope it’s helpful for those of you out there working on your first (or next) book! Give it a try, and let me know how it goes in the comments.

How to Write a Book: The Secret to a Super-Fast First Draft originally posted at Homer’s Blog

[davidmhomerjr]

How to Write a Book: The Secret to a Super-Fast First Draft

Hey, everyone! This post is a trial run of a new blog post format, and we’re using a video guide I created in 2015 on how to write the first draft of your book to test it out. Basically, I want to make it as easy as possible for you to digest, enjoy, and benefit from the content I produce—and my videos in particular!

I’d love to hear if you find this new format useful. Please let me know your thoughts and feedback in the comments!

If you’d prefer to watch the video version of this blog post on YouTube instead, click here.

Book writing is something that used to be a constant struggle for me. Read on to learn about the process I used to write over 36,000 words in the first two weeks of 2015—and that I’ve been using ever since with great success. I’m also going to give you one tool that is saving me so much time and helping me achieve up to 180 words per minute.

A book is such a huge undertaking. It’s really funny, because I can write a blog post—3,000 or 4,000 words—in just a few hours, but when it comes to writing a book, I struggle a lot. That’s why I have a couple unwritten books just sitting on my computer, in Scrivener, which is the tool I use to help write books. It’s a great tool—the reason those books weren’t finished was because I just couldn’t do it.

I remember sitting for hours. I would block out four or five hours of time during the day, just sit in front of my computer and finish my book or work on it at least, and come out of that with an extra 300 words for four hours of work. It was completely defeating—and I know a lot of you can relate to this. I know a lot of you also, like me, feel you have a book in you—maybe even many books in you. So I’m going to show you a book-writing technique that has changed my life in terms of productivity. I used it to write my book Will It Fly?, and within the first couple of weeks of 2015, I was able to crank out 36,000 words.

Using Post-it Notes to “Brain-Dump” Your Book’s Topics

I’ve adopted this technique from a lot of other people’s strategies and tips for writing books, and it’s involving something that a lot of other people have used before: Post-it Notes. I love Post-it Notes, because you can write on them and move them around. They’re small, but not so small that you have to squint to see them. So they’re perfect. I’m going to show you how to mind-map your next book using Post-it Notes, and how you can achieve incredible words per minute in terms of the rate at which you write your book.

I’ll also show you some tools I’ve been using along with my Post-it Notes, as well as some special things you can do in terms of where your Post-it Notes are that’ll help you crank out books like none other.

The first step is to get some Post-it Notes. Make sure to get a bunch of different colors. I like the smaller ones, because you’re just going to write one or two words on them. Then you want to pick a color—I’ll start with neon green—and just start writing. Just start with anything that comes to mind involving the book that you’re going to write, put it down, and stick it to the surface that you’re working on, whether it’s a desk or a whiteboard or some other surface.

To demonstrate this, I’m going to pick a topic. Something I always talk about on the blog is fly fishing, and it’s something I know a little bit about. Using the example of fly fishing, I’ll show you how I can start to put together my hypothetical book. You’ll see that once you start to put all your ideas onto this board that you’re working on with these Post-it Notes, you can move things around. Then the chapters and subchapters start to form, which will help create what becomes your outline. The next step is to take bits and pieces of that outline and move them to a place where you can then focus on those little bits and pieces. That’s why I love Post-it Notes, because you can move them around into different places.

So, fly fishing. I’m first going to pick a color and place it in the middle to label my central idea. I’m going to pick a pink note and write “fly fishing” on it. With this process, you write anything that comes to mind; there are no rules here. You can always throw things out, but you don’t want to stop yourself. This is the creative process. You don’t want to edit in your head. You just want to put things out there, and later on you can edit.

I’ve got “fly fishing.” Next, what is involved with fly fishing? There’s obviously “fish,” “flies,” and “rods.” There’s “casting techniques” and “reels.”

Again, write down anything that comes to mind. You want to put the stuff that’s in your brain down on paper, because then you won’t have to think about it anymore. You can focus on organizing it later, but we’re not at that part yet. What else? “Lake fishing” or “lake fly fishing.” There’s “rivers and streams,” and there’s “oceans.” Let’s see, what else? There’s “tying flies” and “tournaments.”

What else comes to mind? “How to dry things off after you’re done” . . . which is “equipment!” Good! I like that. Maybe “clothing,” too, because we’ve talked about “rods” and “reels” already. Also, different types of fish I know are popular, so “trout fishing” and “bass fishing.” I know a little about fly fishing, but I’m not a fly fisherman. You’ll obviously know a little bit more about the topic you’re working on, so you should be able to fill up your work surface pretty easily. When I was writing my last book, the table was completely filled with notes.

“Fly fishing”: what else?

Let’s see, “fly fishing for kids,” and maybe “destination areas.” You also need “boots.” You need “safety.” You need a “license,” typically, too. You need a “net,” of course, and need to know how to “catch and release.” By the way, I’m using a different color—green—now.

There’s also “etiquette.” What else is there? “Snacks” that you should bring. Obviously, there’s “where” in the lake—i.e., where in the water should you go?

I probably shouldn’t be doing this on fly fishing, and I’m not going to be publishing a book on fly fishing any time soon, but you’ll get what I’m doing here shortly.

What else? “Fish finders,” “wading boots,” maybe “boats.” “Boats,” “floats”—I feel like I’m doing a word game right now with my son or something. What rhymes with “floats”? “Coats,” “jackets.” Again, anything that comes to mind.

Starting to Create Some Order

At this point, you should have a whole board or desk full of Post-it Notes. Next, you want to start looking at all of them so you can start to tie them together. Pull them off and start moving them to different places, organizing them in groups that make sense to you. You’ll see that your brain will just start to organize them. Again, it’s nice that it’s all here for you because then it’s much easier to move things around.

For example, I can put “jackets” and “wading boots” together. Let’s see, “equipment” and “clothing.” That’s the top-level one here. Then I have “reels” and “rods” and “flies” over here. Then I have behavioral stuff like “etiquette” and “time flies” and maybe “casting techniques” over here. I have “oceans,” “lakes,” and “streams” over here. “Snacks,” which is something to bring, so maybe that’s over here in the equipment area. “License”—that’s another thing that you’ll need before you go out.

“Safety”—I can put that in the behavior area. “Tournaments”—I don’t know what goes with that right now, but that’s okay. Here’s some more “equipment:” “boats” and “floats.” “Destinations”—that could go with “oceans,” “lakes,” and “streams.” “Where in the water,” “what to do with kids,” and “fish finders”—that’s another piece of equipment. “Casting techniques”—that’s its own thing. There’s probably a whole array of different kinds of casting techniques.

“Kids.” You can take them with you on these destinations, so maybe we’ll have one for “kid-friendly.” Now I have four different sections here I can see, maybe five, because of “casting techniques.” Then what I can do is I can start to create a hierarchy, so I can see that this is “equipment,” and “clothing” is here, and then stuff to “bring with you” when you go and then more “fishing-related equipment” here that you’ll need before you go out. Already, I can see a chapter here, and then subchapters happening in this section.

Again, I’m starting to organize; I’m starting to form my book here. “Fish”—that’s a top level thing, obviously. “Fish.” What kind of fish? “Trout,” “bass,” and there’s a whole bunch of other fish. How about “fishing equipment” like “rods” and “reels” and “flies”? That can be separated out from here, so that becomes a nice little chapter. Then what you can do is start to pull out another color and begin to create second or third levels within these.

If I knew a little bit more about fly fishing, I would probably know that there were different flies that I could tie. I don’t know all the names of the flies, but I think there’s a “nymph” fly, so I’ll put that down. What are some other flies? People who actually fly fish are probably going to be mad at me for this, but there’s a . . . “housefly.” There’s “nets.”

Again, you begin to create your chapter on “flies” here, and then maybe under “nymph,” there are two different “nymph” ones. I also know that there are two different kinds of flies, so I’m going to create one for “dry”—those are flies that float—and then “wet.” “Wet” flies—those are the ones that sink. Then within that, I’m going to use a different color to create another level, and put “when to use.” So you can just go deeper and deeper. Then maybe “what to use” based on the type of fish or season.

Then maybe “casting techniques.” I know there’s something called the “roll cast,” so I’ll just create a new level here: the “roll cast.” Then I could create a sub-level under that: “how to use it” and “when to use it.”

Starting the Writing Process

You can see how I begin to structure everything; I start very top-level. I bunch things up, and then I start to break things out a little bit. That will help me decide what my chapters are, what order everything should be in, what my subchapters are, and my subsections. Then, what I typically do when I start to create this order of events here and start to organize them in a sequential pattern, is start from the top. I pull out those Post-it Notes and move them onto my other desk.

That’s when I start writing about that specific topic. Everything else that’s here on the first desk is still here, but I’m not focusing on it, because I’m just writing that little portion. That’s something I struggled with when I was writing books. I was envisioning the whole thing, and thinking about every other part of the book and how it was going to relate. Instead, you’ve got to focus only on that next little section. When you do that, it becomes so much easier, because as you complete them and move things aside, then move on to the next section, and the next section—little by little, you’re chipping away at it. You’re adding more words every single day, and by the end of it, you will have gotten rid of all these Post-it Notes. You start to make progress, and it’s completely motivating.

There’s one more little secret I want to share with you that goes along with this technique, and I’ll show it to you next.

The Technique That Will Dramatically Upgrade Your WPM

You’ve created your Post-it Notes, and you’ve started to see what’s happening in your book in terms of the outline and the chapters, the subchapters, and the little sections within each of those parts. Now it’s time to start writing. Like I said earlier, you’re going to pull out little sections. I might, for example, pull out the sections on how to get involved with “fishing tournaments,” and there’s probably some more hierarchy involved within this one as well. I think there are different types of tournaments, so those would go in here as well. Now that you know this is what you’re focusing on—tournaments—you can start writing about it, and your mind is just focused on this topic. Everything else is still there on the table, but you’re only focused on this one.

Now, for me, writing and actually typing all that out would still be a struggle at this point. I’m a little bit more focused than I was, but my mind still gets into editing mode whenever I get in front of a computer. It works for blog posts, but when I am writing a book it just becomes much harder for me mentally. Even though I can try and treat each of these things as a single blog post, I still want to edit along the way, as if I’m crafting it like a blog post that’s going to be published tomorrow.

Now, the very best strategy I know of if you want to upgrade your writing efficiency is to “puke” what’s in your head onto the screen. Basically, you just want to put everything in your brain about your topic onto the page. I know some people who actually take the “delete” button off their keyboard, because they don’t want to let themselves even accidentally edit. They are just in creative mode. Later, you can come in and edit and move things around, and you’re probably not going to be using a lot of what you write down, but what comes out when your brain is in creative mode is going to be extremely good for your book.

When I was in editing mode, I just wouldn’t let myself think creatively. I would just stop myself, because I had to edit this thing and move things around. It’s not what you want to do. Now, the big trick I use, and the app that I use to help me achieve extremely high words per minute, is called Rev. With Rev, I’m actually not writing, and I’m not typing; I’m dictating my book.

Rev is an app for iPhone and Android. It’s basically an audio recorder, but the cool thing about it is you can take that audio recording and send it to the people over at Rev, and they will transcribe it for you at $1 per minute. You can even just transcribe it yourself or have somebody else on your team transcribe it for you, but Rev does a really great job. The quality is really good, and when it comes back to you a few hours later, it’s all the words you dictated related to that specific item.

So that’s the trick I use to get up to 180 words per minute. It’s how I’ve been able to complete the first brain dump of each of my books over the past two years. You can’t even really call them drafts, because they’re just everything in my brain about these particular topics, on these Post-it Notes, all dictated. Actually, they’re 95 percent dictated, because I start writing on the computer, but then I go to Rev, which has been game changing. Then I go through the book a second time with a little bit of editing mode in mind, and I can then shape and move things around and craft these stories in a way that makes sense for a book. It’s not going to make sense for a book when it comes from your voice, but you can get so many amazing stories and pieces of your book out through your voice.

So, record it on Rev, transcribe it, and you’ll see you have a lot of stuff to work with. And your book’s going to be finished sooner than you know.

To recap:

Brain dump all of your ideas about your book onto Post-it Notes.

Move them around, organize them, shape them, and sequence them to a point where they come to look like a book in terms of chapters, subchapters, parts within those subchapters, and so on.

Pull out individual pieces and talk about those things, then record them.

If you don’t want to do that, that’s fine; you can write them, too. But just having that Post-it note there that you’re focusing on is going to help quite a bit.

That’s my process!

Good luck, and I hope it’s helpful for those of you out there working on your first (or next) book! Give it a try, and let me know how it goes in the comments.

[defiantscribe]

The Achilles Heel of my Mindset

So, this is the third blog I have yet to post, however after watching about a good hour and a half of videos, felt the compelling need to write something about what I was watching.

I've been watching a lot of videos about Overwatch lately.  I got the game not that long ago, however I haven't gotten really good with any single player (or a Main). I do sorta well with some, but others I don't and there are some that I just don't feel like playing because even though I might be good with them, if I am, then everyone will expect me to play that class and I don't like getting pigeon held into being a support class (like a medic). Suffice it to say, I'm not super great.  Reason for this?  Well, first I'm getting older.  I'm a lot older than the majority of these players. I have a full time job, kids, responsibilities and finding time to just sit and binge game is a very rare event for me.  Not really, but it plays well into my second reason.  My broke ass internet.  I try to stay on top of my finances and in doing so, one of the things I do is pay for DSL.  That's right, I said DSL.   I get my internet over a telephone line.  Not cable, no...... t-e-l-e-p-h-o-n-e.  Now, when I don't have anything else in my household using up that connection (I have a smart tv, cell phones, a laptop and a Xbox One that all connect to my wireless), I get an OK connection. But if my son is playing Overwatch on Xbox, my daughter on Roblox and my wife watching Netflix?  I'm probably looking at like a 300+ ping on any game I play.  So, what do I do?  I just don't play and usually take a nap, which screws up my sleeping schedule, hence why my dirty ass is up at 1:39 a.m. writing about video games and shitty internet. Now, by and large, it's not terrible internet, it's not.  It's never given me a slew of problems, it's pretty reliable and for the most part I can watch movies off xbox live, stream shows on Netflix and Hulu, it gets the job done.  But to be top notch while gaming?  Nah.... it's definitely something that hasn't mattered to me in some time.  And to be perfectly frank, it still doesn't.  Doesn't mean I still don't want a better ping to show some of these fools that think I'm trash that it's simply a matter of latency that separates our skill set more than anything else, but it's not something so dire that I need to re-work my finances to make happen. But, that being said, I still envy all these little shitbags out there that make a living off playing a game.  I was a wiz back in the day when it came to QWTF (QuakeWorld Team Fortress).  I used to own college kids on T1 connections in California on my dinky 36.6 modem in Montana.  I would wipe them all over the floor.  Now this was back before voice chatting was even a thing in the world of FPS gaming.  We had to type everything.  So I would type, kill, type some more and be effective as a player.   Then I fell of the face of the gaming world.  I got a girlfriend, moved across the country and had more important things in my life take up my finances than buying a new rig and keeping up with the rest of my "friends".  I honestly think that was the nail in the coffin. For one, I hate voice chat.  I really do.  I don't like talking to strangers.  It's fucking weird.  I don't know you, I don't want to talk to you through voice, even if it's easier, and I don’t want to key my mic just to say something.  I had about a 10 year span where I didn't game or have a PC that could handle gaming.  Then the announcement for TF2 came out.  The sequel to the FPS I was godlike at.  I worked it out with my wife that we could purchase a computer through her employer at the time (they were Dell partners) and they would stipend it out of her check.  I put like a $1,700 dollar rig together, making sure it met the recommend (not minimum) requirements for TF2. I got the computer, I had fast internet (at the time) and they released the game.  And you know what I found out?  I fucking suck at FPS games. I'm just not on the same level as these guys anymore.   That decade of time off did not help matters, nor did the next thing that happened.  The same year I got the rig, same year I got the game was also the same year my son was born.  I'm a dad first.  I wanted to game, so bad, but my son was priority one and that usually meant being up late, losing sleep and doing what I needed to do. I don't hold it against him and never will, but I came to slowly realize I'm just not who I was back when I was 17. And it stinks.  I want to be good again, but still.... kids, responsibilities and shit internet. The wife is thinking of working with me to maybe get good internet (at least so we can all use the internet at the same time without there being such a huge bottleneck in our internal setup), but that's still a ways off.   I have a plan starting next year if we can't make it happen sooner, but I can only tell you, I watch some of these players and I just think, "Shit, I could do that, that fool looks like he's standing still."  And I can only think that's how I must look to a lot of players because on my end, it's a frenzy.  On their end, it's like watching well timed choreography. I guess the point of all this was to simply whine because I have to go to my job in about 6 hours and I could honestly care less about going.  I would much rather put on my music, put on my noise cancelling headset, log into a game and hyperfocus for like 3 hours. No distractions from kids, work, any of that. But that's not the way the world works anymore. And it bums me out.  I play the lottery and never knew why I always have this soul burning desire to win it big, but it finally dawned on me this weekend: I don't want to be responsible anymore.  Not saying I want to drop the ball on things that need to be done, but I don't want to be in charge of all that bullshit that comes with life.  I want someone to cook shit for me, I want someone to do my laundry, I want someone to clean up my house, take my kids/wife places they need/want to go and just let me be a teenager again.  No worries, no real responsibilities, do something because I want to, not because I have to. And that's ultimately what I want.   Yeah, big house, fancy cars, blah blah blah.  Nah, if I had just that one wish, it would be to shuck responsibility for the opportunity to get some individuality back.  To be who I used to be, to try and re-spark my imagination without the nagging fear of "how are we going to pay this?" or "Will we have time to do this?" or "how much will that cost?" I want the freedom to make choices in matters that won't blow back on me and cause a great bit of heartache because we can't afford it or we will lose our way of life because of my choices.  That is why I want to win big money.  I could very easily live in my house the rest of my days, I like my house. I'd fix all the broken shit, but I'd pay it off and not owe anyone anymore so if I wanted to take a trip to a con or go to a concert overseas, I could and wouldn't have to worry about scheduling time off, finding someone to watch my kids, worry about how we'd cover the costs. That's what I want. I want options, I want choices.  I want to experience life because I only get the one and I don't want to suffer through 40 years of labor to MAYBE get to a place where I can retire and, even then, I have to money manage hard because I'm not going to get social security and the like, so my ass only has what I've saved (which is damn near jack shit). I don't want to go to Europe when I'm 65+, I'd like to go now when I can still enjoy it and remember it, cement it in my memory before the ravages of time and old age attempt to rob it from me. It's 2:00 a.m. now, still don't want to go to work. I don't hate work, I just don't want to have to obligate my life to that responsibility because I don't have the means to say "No". To all those who may be teenagers, reading this, (though I doubt there are any): Being a grownup is fun, but it sucks a fat one on a daily basis. Sure, there are things that'll make you happy, but unless you're lucky enough to be financially set enough to do all those extra things in life, you're bound to be a slave to the system much like myself.