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postmodernmulticoloredcloak · 5 years ago

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Time for The Witcher episode 4!!

So the last episode was Intense(TM) and also I finally realized that the show isn’t happening all at the same time but it’s following multiple timelines, which, better late than never. Now things make more sense...

Alright, bando alle ciance and let’s do this.

“Ciri! Ciri” Cirilla: yes? “Not you, I was talking to Siri. What’s the weather going to be tomorrow”

That’s such a stupid joke. Unfollow me right now, it’s okay.

Glowy Forest Intensifies... oh, there’s people now. Forest Dora Milaje aren’t happy to see her, which is understandable, I guess. But the boss arrives.

Meanwhile, except not meanwhile, a man has had a very bad day. Apparently the nickname White Wolf has stuck. Remember when we thought the MCU was going to make Bucky into a Black Panther character as the White Wolf, official media outlet even used the White Wolf as a title for Bucky, and then it ended up in nothing? Sorry for the digression but I really hoped we’d get Bucky written by Ryan Coogler and I was really disappointed when that didn’t happen but *waves around* all of that happened instead. I mean, technically it’s not too late to make it happen but Bucky is a Disney+ creature now, so, bye.

Hello Jaskier! My boy! I missed you.

Ah, the new media image campaign is working.

“You never get involved, except you actually do, all of the time” I love this XD “I don’t do emotions or attachments” character who does emotions intensely all the time and gets attached to everyone they meet paired with “sure Jan” character who calls them out is a very good dynamic.

Ah, yes, this is perfect. I’m sorry but dark brooding protagonist and bubbly comic relief sidekick is my secret weakness.

No offense, Geralt, but those clothes did need a good washing after your latest job, so don’t make that face.

Blah blah royal affairs I should probably pay attention to.

“I am not going to protect you” [*Spongebob font* five minutes later...]

But yeah, the princess is Cirilla’s mother, I suppose, and I’m sure the marriage that produces Scream Princess is super important. She is very pretty and has lovely hair. Sometimes I wish I had long hair I could braid artistically.

The princess doesn’t want to get married to some strange dude, but the queen is A Very Strong Woman(TM) and has no time for silly things like her daughter’s feelings over the most life-changing decision in her life. She’s an interesting character for sure, and the narrative doesn’t try to frame her as either definitely good or bad, which is interesting.

Oh! Rat Boy isn’t dead! That’s great. That makes sense narratively, native forest women who suffered genocide from colonizers wouldn’t kill an elf boy who went through the same thing.

Promised husband is a shitty dude. Queen Calanthe likes Geralt, which, relatable. But she and her entourage are racist assholes, and the next scene with Cirilla and Dara tell us that their anti-elf talk isn’t just talk.

By the way, now we know for sure how much time there is between Geralt’s timeline and Cirilla’s.

The queen doesn’t like feminine dresses. Lady is trying to overcompensate a lot. But her banter with Geralt is entertaining.

The first suitor is from Nilfgaard, and in hindsight it would have been a wise choice to unify the two kingdoms... C’mon, poor guy is just awkward, he doesn’t deserve the humiliation. Or is he the guy who’ll make war later? The pilot threw too much new information at me the other day.

Yennefer is bored... and apparently 30 years has passed since the last we saw of her. (I refuse to try to understand when in relation to the other plots that puts this scene. Things will click together at some point or I’ll just accept whatever happens and nod along.) And coincidentally she is paired with a woman who laments being only considered important as a baby-producing womb. Oops. Awkward.

Not relevant to the show but my parents never get inside my room as often as while I am watching something on Netflix.

Yennefer thinks life as a court mage sucks, queen Kalis thinks life as a baby-maker sucks. They envy each other for what the other has, but they’re probably both right.

Well, boredom is no longer a problem.

Oh, poor queen, her husband paid to have her killed because she’s only given him daughters. Two episodes in a row about female heirs to kings, plus queen Calanthe being female and having a daughter who’ll have a daughter. Theeemes!

You can’t be rude to the only person who is your only hope not to die horribly, girl.

Queen Calanthe is frustrated she isn’t a man, which we could guess. She also likes the simplicity of killing, which we could also guess.

Oh! It’s almost pre-decided husband’s time to claim the girl’s hand in marriage, but New Guy appears! He’s been cursed and Mr I Don’t Pick Sides Ever No Matter What, guess what, picks a side. The audience is shocked. No one could foresee this unexpected turn of events.

Noooo the baby!!! Yennefer loses a rare chance to acquire a baby. This is sad. Damn this show doesn’t shy away from killing children, such a different feel from most stories we’re used to.

These people are weird with destiny. Calanthe says fuck destiny, Geralt says lol mood but just because you’re a queen doesn’t mean you’re above sacred rules.

OOOOH Calanthe says fuck sacred rules and it does not go well. Is this happening because she tried to mess up with the order of the world and chaos said hi? Was the princess always magical or did this happen because destiny will have its way no matter what?

Ah, her grandmother had it, she never manifested it before until now, when circumstances awoke it.

Queen Calanthe acknowledges destiny, and of course they’re all dressed in green like the mages of Feminist Hogwarts aka Chaos School. I should have paid more attention to colors but green seems to be the color of magic slash chaos slash destiny.

Then bam, red. Men. Violence.

Everyone in the forest is also dressed in green... Colors aren’t really my thing, you might have noticed that I rarely analyze colors in Supernatural and I’m not particularly into what which color means and I only notice things when they’re very obvious like the purple of transformation-slash-death, so, yeah, I am not the kind of person who notices colors until they slap me in the face. I guess this is my slap in the face by this show’s color palette XD

Also consider that I watch everything with f-lux on, so I don’t even see colors the way they actually look, I guess that’s why it’s harder for me to notice colors when everything looks orange.

Alriiiiight *disables f.lux for current app*

Oh. Oh. So this is how this show looks like.

Awkward. This is so embarrassing.

I should rewatch the whole thing with real colors now... well, another time.

Anyway, Dara has drunk antidepressant juice, but it doesn’t work on Ciri, because she is Relevant(TM) to destiny so she can’t forget her past otherwise the plot destiny can’t happen.

Sleep well baby.

Aaah husband’s curse is broken! Yay.

Geralt accidentally acquires a bond with a baby. One baby dead and Yennefer’s potential bond with her lost, one baby on her way and Geralt’s future bond with her created. So this is all about parallels based on babies and births. Cool.

In the future, destiny has arrived and indeed wrought calamity on the court and the city. Someone makes something gross with Calanthe’s dead body--a spell to learn the location of Cirilla. Trouble is coming.

Oh! It’s him, he’s not dead? And taking something from Calanthe (that will be relevant later)?

Ciri drinks stronger juice and goes to the ancestral plane, er, I mean has a vision of a Very Important Tree, sorry I had Black Panther stuck in my head from before.

Well this is very interesting and things are starting to click together and yeah it’s a weird ride but I’m enjoying it! I suppose only at the end of the season you get the full picture of why and when everything has happened so I’m just sitting here metaphorically eating popcorn waiting for things to make sense on their own rhythm. There’s a theme of motherhood and babies and it seems that Geralt’s destiny is to become a metaphorical mother for Cirilla? Or am I mixing him up with a similar kind of character with a tendency to become everyone’s mom? Anyway, I’m looking forward to see what happens.

#the witcher

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embyapp · 6 years ago

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Announcing Emby Server 4.0

At long last we're pleased to announce Emby Server 4.0. This new release will begin rolling out over the next 24 hours, so please be patient. This has been our longest release period ever, and going forward we intend to get back to a more frequent release schedule. This release is packed with improved performance, updates to existing features, as well as several brand new features. Important Upgrade Information After installing the update, the server will begin a database upgrade operation. If you attempt to open the web app during this time, you'll be given a friendly message informing you about this. This operation could take a little time, so please be patient with it. After this is complete, any plugins you may have installed will require updates, so please check the status of this on your server dashboard. If any plugins are updated, remember that Emby Server will need to be restarted. After all updates have been applied, we recommend that you run a library scan. The first scan following the update could take longer than usual, so please be patient. With that out of the way, let's go over the highlights of this release. No Telemetry or Anonymous Usage Reporting If you're wondering why the anonymous usage reporting setting has been removed, it's because not only have we removed the setting, but we've removed the function altogether. We know our audience pretty well thanks to this community, and because of that we've decided we no longed need any data reporting. New Emby Live TV Guide Data As previously announced, Live TV Guide Data is Now Included with Emby Premiere, if you're in the USA, Canada, or the UK. What does this mean? This means if you're in the USA, Canada or UK, you'll no longer need to setup an account with another website nor pay someone else for this data. You'll simply enter your zip code into Emby, select your channel lineup, and we'll handle retrieving your guide data. We believe this will provide a better experience for Emby users with fewer setup steps. The new data is also quite a bit richer, and we will be looking at how we can take advantage of that to bring new Live TV features to Emby. Going forward, Live TV will require Emby Premiere in the web app, where previously this was not the case. How to Migrate From Schedules Direct If you are setting up the server fresh, then you should use our new Emby guide provider, which will be the default. If you are already using Schedules Direct, then you can continue to use it through the remainder of your Schedules Direct subscription. Schedules Direct has pledged to continue to honor your subscriptions, and we thank them for that. New Levels of Performance A database re-structuring brings your Emby Server and apps to new levels of performance that were previously not possible. Screens will load faster, videos will start quicker, and more. This will also manifest itself in other areas, such as improved library scan performance, and faster live tv guide refreshes. Please Note: The first scan after the update may take quite a while depending on your library contents and exactly what features you have enabled. Please be patient as subsequent scans will be much faster. New and Improved Hardware Acceleration This has been rebuilt from the ground up and is better than ever. We now have sophisticated hardware detection that runs on server startup to determine what your system can support. This allows us to provide you with an "easy mode" setting: And if you enable advanced control, you'll be able to see what was detected: Our hardware transcoding has been rewritten to take better advantage of each of the major GPU platforms, whether it be QuickSync, Nvidia, DXVA, VAAPI, MediaCodec, or others. This will allow hardware transcoding performance to perform better than ever. Best of all, you can now monitor this on the server dashboard. The green bar indicates the current playback position while the orange bar designates the range that has been transcoded so far. Important: Hardware acceleration has been truly a major effort for us, and because of this, it will now require Emby Premiere on all platforms except for Nvidia Shield and Western Digital. Transcoding Throttling is Back This feature has returned after a two year hiatus and is better than ever. What is transcoding throttling? Sometimes your server can transcode content much quicker than you're actually watching it. When the transcoding process gets a big enough lead on your watching position, we can slow it down on the fly in order to reduce the load on your server. Then as you're watching, if we need to speed it back up, we can do that too. And best of all, your server dashboard will show you when transcoding is being throttled: Emby Server Now Available for Android and Nvidia Shield Stay tuned for separate announcements. Improved Search Search is now faster and now supports fuzzy search! This means you don't need to type your searches perfectly in order to see the matches you're looking for. For example, if you accidentally enter "Bad Breaking", instead of "Breaking Bad", you'll still be able to see Breaking Bad in the results. Multi-Resolution TV Shows Without requiring any changes to your file names, we now support having multiple versions of episodes. This doesn't require any special setup and you'll now see the friendly version selection on the episode screen: Revamped Grouping Into Collections This has now been moved from a server setting to directly onto the Movies list screen where it can be easily toggled. Expanded Filtering You can now filter on more fields such as container, video codec, audio codec, subtitle codec, and more. This filters are also remembered ! Expanded User Library Access User library access can now be controlled for sub-folders, providing you with even greater flexibility than before. Other Improvements * Update to .NET Core 2.2 * Update to Sqlite 3.26.0 * Improve library scan performance * Improve performance of live tv guide refresh * Improve subtitle delivery performance * Support Brotli http compression * Display video size on detail screens in Media Info * Significantly reduce dlna related network traffic * Add More Like This On Live TV section * Add tabbed layouts for music videos and home videos * Add network browsing to directory picker for Linux, Android and MacOS. * Change new indicators for programs to match guide data * Rework mobile context menus * Rework tv tabs to be consistent with Emby Theater * Downloaded subtitles are now saved using the two-character language code * Improve transcoding of low bit rate hevc * Add Moviedb season image provider * Show favorite people * Support tvg-chno with m3u tuners * Support tvg-shift with m3u tuners * Allow a library to be named "backdrops", a previously reserved name * Improve server dashboard display with blue radiance theme * Improve mobile server dashboard with bottom navigation * Added live tv channels to search feature * Improve layout of live tv channels tab under live tv * Add audio books content type * Use es-MX with MovieDb when Spanish language is selected along with Mexico as the country * Improve metadata with absolute episode ordering * Cloud sync upload improvements * Support launching android server on device startup * Add container, video codec, audio codec, and subtitle codec filters * Improve multi-resolution naming recognition * Improve automatic refreshing in the web app * Improve resiliency with iptv streams * Improve Windows sleep prevention while server is being used * Improve Chromecast volume control * Improve xmltv parsing of European characters * Support multiple images with xmltv * Use transcode=none profile for HD Homerun when appropriate * Support splitting musicbrainz id's on both slashes and semi-colons * Make alpha pickers dynamic based on content * Improve identify feature * Improve manual refreshing when replacing existing images * Improve database cleanup procedures of removed content * Improve automatic refreshing of recordings * Restore user permission to change password and profile image * Prevent syncing of in-progress recordings * Improve authentication failure logging for Fail2ban support * Add API to find item by provider id * Update new user defaults to not allow deleting media * Make news notifications configurable * Reduce size of Windows and MacOS installers by 30 MB * Support user subtitle download permissions * Defer collage image generation until images are needed * Move AudioDb and Omdb to pre-installed plugins * Move fanart.tv to pre-installed plugin * Move MusicBrainz to pre-installed plugin * Move MovieDb metadata provider to pre-installed plugin * Move nfo saver to pre-installed plugin * Move tvdb to pre-installed plugin * Support per-library resume settings Bug Fixes * Fix issue of changing password in Firefox when Firefox password manager is used * Fix repeated Visual Studio C++ install prompts when VS2017 is already present * Fix favorite artists page showing empty list * Fix search by accent characters * Fix web access by ipv6 ip address * Fix More Like This for artists always showing same content * Fix xmltv programs not being marked as new when they are also a Premiere * Fix recording image file names for shows containing a period in the name * Workaround .net core crashes on network availability changes * Fix collection and playlist separation per library * Fix hardware transcoding options being reverted to defaults * Fix cloud sync upload throttle not being applied * Fix xmltv failures with SMB paths * Fix audio books getting immediately marked as watched * Fix intermittent crash associated with log file rotation * Fix windows task scheduler entries not getting cleaned up * Fix typo in Exynos spelling * Fix remote URL showing with remote access disabled * Various DLNA bug fixes http://dlvr.it/QwgNpv

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thatsastepladder · 3 months ago

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I grew up with a ton of action cartoons on the big three kids' channels and Saturday morning blocks, all solidly targeted at elementary school-preteen boys.

Kim Possible, American Dragon, various flavors of Transformers, Ben 10 and its sequels, Generator Rex, Avatar, Clone Wars (2003 and 2008), so many Marvel and DC shows, Sym-Bionic Titan (RIP), etc.

Fast-forward to now, and that genre is almost completely dead. What happened?

Well, in the move from cable TV to the streaming world, and with social media rising to prominence alongside, all of a sudden creators were able to have unprecedented levels of fan feedback before their eyes in seconds.

And most of those fans - most of the vocal, fanfic-writing, fanart-making, Twitter-commenting fans - were female. For a few years that was fine. And then Voltron: Legendary Defender happened, growing an absolutely rabid fanbase for a show that's ostensibly supposed to be a mecha cartoon. That was the tipping point - to be more specific, the moment the Voltron showrunners capitulated to the slash shippers and made Shiro gay was the moment action cartoons died.

Fast-forward to nowadays, and those same female fans and those who cater to them are the inmates running the asylum. In terms of social media engagement - which translates to $$$ in the eyes of studio execs - they're far more lucrative than males of any age have ever been.

Just look at the current crop of soft, slice-of-lifey Marvel and DC cartoons for proof. Nothing's being made for boys anymore, it's all for adult women. (with the few exceptions being the shows that are made for people like me who grew up with the aforementioned action shows, like Invincible or Creature Commandos, but it's only a matter of time before those get colonized too.)

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thekrazykeke · 7 years ago

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So we ended the last part on a dramatic note. I left all of y’all wondering, ‘what’s in the box?’, everyone was clamoring and screaming, claiming ‘its a spider or snake’, one beautifully funny comment that it was M’Baku’s idea of a prank! 😂This part, we discover what happened to the reader and what sinister forces are moving against her.

Let’s begin 😘

Continued from here.

@elaindeereads @autumn242 @punkrockwxnnabe @palmsofgranate @strawberrysoftkitten @wikiwakanda @lovemekaycee @managingmischiefdaily @gothambrat @marvel-snatched-my-wigs @youreadthatright @lovelylittlekittn @muse-of-mbaku @keya168

The plant attached to Y/N’s chest is deceptively beautiful.

Erik can almost be fooled into thinking that it’s just a bouquet of wildflowers or something, except the minute he even reached in her general direction to remove the plant, a vine-like appendage tightened itself around her middle and the thing let out this eerie screech-roar sound that chilled his blood, making him hastily back off.

“Bast protect us.” T’Challa murmured, running a weary hand down his face. “It is a Black Mercy.”

“A what?” Brows furrowing, Erik tried to communicate that he needed to expound on his words.

“Black Mercy.” Shuri piped up. “To summarize briefly, this plant is indigenous only in Wakanda. However, perhaps because of it’s...” For a second, she paused, looking for a diplomatic word. “Temperamental nature, many years ago, even before our father’s reign, whole entire Black Mercy fields were burned to ash.”

He’d called T’Challa the second Y/N had hit the ground and wouldn’t wake up. The plant, this Black Mercy, hadn’t been any bigger than a nickel then, and in less than an hour and a half, rapidly had gotten larger and that much more aggressive.

Erik hadn’t expected both his cousins to pop up for some reason.

Yea, he’d made progress with reconciling his behavior and all the shitty things he had done to people over the years, to try and be a better man going forward in his relationship with Y/N, but while he and T’Challa, for the most part, buried the hatch and were trying to act like family instead of just former enemies...

A proper conversation with Shuri hadn’t happened yet, and he ain’t stupid enough to think it’s water under the bridge.

That’s what this lunch/dinner thing was supposed to be about; he’d spend time wit his girl and get a handle on how the teenager acted like in his presence, scared, uneasy or whatever, he’d deal with it and proceed from there.

“A’ight, how we gettin’ this thing off?” Raising an eyebrow at the teenager, the former soldier gave her most of his attention, he couldn’t stop glancing down at his fiancee. “By fire?”

“Ah, it is not so simple as that, cousin...” T’Challa drawled.

Clenching his jaw, he stared at the royal with irritation, “Nigga, if you don’t cut the mysterious act an’ tell me how to fix this s--” Erik’s hands waved threw the air with agitation and the plant... Hairs standing on the nape of his neck, he turned around just in time to see that a vine-like appendage slither up around Y/N’s neck. Feet moving of his own volition, he is about to step forward and try and get it off, again, but a firm hand on his chest stopped him.

“Don’t.” Shuri stated, tone firm. Erik shook his head, about to shrug her hand off, but her next words stopped him. “You must not approach with the way you’re behaving. The Black Mercy attaches itself to a host, then traps them in a waking dream state based on their feelings. If this is not handled correctly or if it perceives you as a threat, it will kill her all the quicker and then latch itself onto another, going from person to person, feeding uncontrollably.”

Body trembling with the need to move but also realizing the depth and gravity of the situation, Erik shook his head, clenching and unclenching his fists at his sides. “...So, she sleepin’?”

Removing her hand, Shuri nodded.

“She ain’t in pain?”

“Beyond the initial ‘bite’ the Black Mercy does not tend to harm it’s host. Keeping a person compliant and docile as it drains it’s vic...” T’Challa was making a slashing motion across his throat and Shuri snapped out of her ‘SCIENCE!’ mode, lecturing tone becoming sheepish, “A-ah, no! Nope. Y/N is not in pain, not at all really.”

Erik glanced between the two, shaking his head at their antics before looking at Y/N, so still and sleep, unaware of this sentient death trap attached to her. “So, I’ma ask again: how we gettin’ that thing off?”

“What state of mind was Y/N in prior to all of this? Happy, sad, thoughtful?” T’Challa inquired. “Clear your mind and embrace that particular emotion only. Talk to her, remind her of all the reasons that she has to cast aside the dream world and return to reality, to you.”

“And after that?” Erik doesn’t want to leave anything to chance.

“Brother and I will be doing the hard part. Once Y/N is awake and free of the Black Mercy, we only have a few precious seconds to burn it to ash, because during that time it will immediately attempt to attach itself to another host.” Shuri explained. “T’Challa has the added protection of the suit, which leaves you and Y/N vulnerable.” Pressing a kimoyo bead on her wrist, Erik’s eyebrows raised to his hairline as familiar kitty gauntlets appeared on her hands.

“I will be on burning duty.”

“Sister, when did you make the, uh...” T’Challa hesitated, eyes darting to Erik then away.

Shuri shrugged, expression innocent. “Research purposes.” Becoming more serious, she looked between both men. “Enough playing around. Are we ready?”

“Clear your mind.” T’Challa reminded Erik just before the suit materialized from the necklace, covering his entire body.

‘I’d clear my mind if you’d cut it out wit this Yoda shit!’ Feeling the sting of irritation, he pushes the feeling down and away, gaze focusing on Y/N. Recalling her goofy victory dance, her playful words and her smile.

This time, when he reached for her, the Black Mercy did not react aggressively, though a leathery ‘tongue’ licks along his arm, but ultimately allows him to move Y/N so that her head is lying in his lap.

He doesn’t want to risk moving her bodily just yet.

Erik allowed himself to remember when she’d throw her head back with laughter, shoulders shaking as he hollered at the TV while watching If Loving You is Wrong reruns with her. He remembers how her nose scrunches up and she snickered, describing the childhood crushes and the awkward first kiss.

Mouth opening, the words come surprisingly easy, “You told me that there ain’t been one boyfriend you had that all of your siblings and cousin Breanna could agree was good enough for you. Whether it was the way he walked or talked, or somethin’ else, they always clowned on the dude and eventually drove him away.”

The Black Mercy chuffed and a vine unwrapped itself from Y/N/s throat. Erik figures that means it’s working.

“An’ you made excuses for why you couldn’t or shouldn’t date. It was no point in bringing the guy to meet a family member, let alone all of’em, because it just ended the same way. So you focused on yo hustle instead. You went to work an’ back to the apartment, that’s it.”

The vines are rapidly unwinding from her torso, shrinking down.

“If you wake up an’ look me in the eyes, I’ll tell you a secret. Something I ain’t tell you about the first time we met. What made me want to holla atchu asap.”

Y/N’s eyelids are fluttering and Erik’s so focused on her face that he nearly misses the warning, dodging to the side as T’Challa shouted something indistinct, then lashed out with his claws at the Black Mercy which had revealed a ‘mouth’ with rows and rows of jagged teeth, as his hit landed, an unsettling screech-roar escaped. Rolling with Y/N tucked against his chest, heart beat pounding, he glanced down to see that she’s starting to wake up. Glancing up again when that eerie screech-roar resounded through the house, increasing in higher pitch and frequency as Shuri used her gauntlets to burn the devil plant.

“Nn...” Using her fist, she rubbed at her eye.

“...T’ hell is that smell? Did you fart while I was sleeping?”

Almost against his will, Erik laughed, genuinely amused. “Yep, sho did.”

Smacking his right pec, Y/N’s mouth twisted up. “Nigga, you nasty! What I tell you ‘bout that shit?! Light an incense or somethin’!” Hand covering her nose, her head turned and she goggled as she caught sight of T’Challa and Shuri. Again, she smacked his chest.

“You let me sleep while yo family was here! Oooh, I can’t believe you!” Then she sent him the look of death.

“Ay, you was tired. I know the consequences of not letting you get yo rest. The dragon comes out.”

“N’Jadaka...” T’Challa sent him a scolding look, trying to convey with him to stop teasing and tell the truth.

“Forreal, one look at her when she heated I ain’t let her get the last chicken wing or something equally petty and I turn to stone.”

“That’s a Basilisk power.” Shuri and Y/N said at the same time.

“Jinx!” The princess crowed.

“You read Harry Potter?” Y/N raised an eyebrow, sounding impressed.

Shuri snorted. “The movies are horrible.”

Throwing her hands up and whooping, she stuck her tongue out. “Someone in yo family has taste!” Y/N declared. “He likes the movies.” She added, voice disgusted.

“But those books are a classic. A bit racist, but it was written by a colonizer, so...”

Y/N all but died.

Cupping his hands over his mouth, “Nerds~” Erik said laughingly.

Eventually, later that night, Y/N does remember that she hadn’t just ‘fallen asleep’ and has a mini freak out, only relaxing when reassured repeatedly that there aren’t many, if any, Black Mercy fields left to speak of.

“So, in the future if you ever decide to visit Wakanda, there won’t be any greenery that is harmful to you except the normal plants you should avoid, or what might cause an allergic reaction.” Shuri promised, sounding thoughtful, twirling a forkful of spaghetti. “Wait, do either of you have allergies?”

“Nah.” Erik is busy with his plate, using the homemade garlic bread to swipe up the spaghetti sauce, lifting it to his mouth and finishing it off with two big bites, chewing.

“Me either.” Y/N added, cutting another piece of garlic bread and putting it on his plate, which he accepted without a thought, mouthful, he made a ‘it’s good’ type of hand gesture. “Is y’all sure I can visit? I mean, I don’t want to cause any issue.”

“There should not be because I’m permitting you to do so.” T’Challa stated, reiterating the fact that he is king and his word is law without explicitly saying so, there’s a nonverbal assurance that if there’s an issue, to bring it him, that you picked up on. “This is delicious, by the way.” Shuri passed him the bowl which had a mix of bbq and fried chicken, using the fork, he added two pieces of each onto his plate. “Did you add lemon to the sauce?”

“Family recipe.” Y/N replied, adding some extra spaghetti to her plate. “We don’t swap those ‘round here.” Not even glancing in Erik’s direction, she swatted his fork away from her plate, twirling the spaghetti around the utensil before lifting it to her lips.

T’Challa nodded, accepting that tidbit of information for what it was, instead digging into his meal again.

After dinner is finished and Erik did the dishes with his cousins helping (hindering, really, playing in the water), it’s time for them to go. Y/N surprised Shuri by giving her a hug though the younger girl is quick to hug back, and T’Challa earned a half hug and a quip to take it easy.

The king joked that life would be boring if he did so.

Y/N retreated to the bedroom first and Shuri already walked outside, a car ready for them in the parking lot.

“One thing that’s been bothering me.” Erik spoke in a low tone. “That plant is only found in Wakanda, but it was addressed to Y/N and sent here. Who sent it? Was that even meant for her?”

T’Challa said nothing for a moment and then he sighed, seeming to be weighed down. “I only alerted the elders about Y/N’s existence after you told me that you proposed.” Erik’s features became thunderous and he held up a hand. “I know what you are going to say, but it is better that they remained in the loop. You have always been royalty, only recently, you’re an acknowledged royal, a part of the Golden Tribe like Shuri, Mama, and myself. Even if you do not bring her to Wakanda, if the two of you decide to expand your family, your child will not be denied. Also, by telling them of her, they cannot force an arranged marriage onto you.”

“So whatchu sayin’ is that one of those snooty elders from the Tribes tryna take her out so I can what? Be a free man? Ha!” Jaw tensing, Erik looked at his cousin in the eye, daring him to lie to him, to omit more truths.

T’Challa remained unruffled by his tone and attitude. “I’m saying that it is a possibility, one that I will be exploring extensively, but until I know for sure, I implore you exercise restraint.”

“If these holier than thou mufuckas tryna take the one good thing I’ve got going for me, the woman that I...” He paused, faltering. “That I love, then nah, fuck that. Restraint goes out the window and I’ma kill’em all. No second chances, no apologies. I’ma kill’em.” Even if that meant that he lost his ‘officially recognized’ title, then whatever, so be it. “Don’t play wit me, this ain’t a joke, nigga.”

“I am doing my utmost to find the culprit.” T’Challa assured him.

“Just...give me some time.”

“You can take all the time you need. Don’t mean I’ma wait before acting if you pussyfooting around and take too long.” Erik replied flatly.

That statement chilled T’Challa to the bone because he looked exactly like he had when challenging him for the throne, when he declared that he’d spent his whole life waiting to kill him.

#mcu #erik killmonger #mcu imagine #erik killmonger imagine #marvel #black reader #marvel imagine #erik killmonger x reader #black panther #erik killmonger x black reader #black panther imagine #thekrazykeke

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pinerpush · 3 years ago

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Forward slash vs backslash

#FORWARD SLASH VS BACKSLASH TV#

This illustration may help to get it straight:Īssume a person is walking the same direction we write in English and most (though certainly not all) languages, from left to right. In Windows, backslashes are used to separate directories in file paths (ex: C:Program FilesCommon Filesmicrosoft shared). What is incorrect is when it is spoken like this, as it’s often done in radio interviews: “See http colon backslash backslash They are forward slashes. Backslash: Forward Slash: / A good way to remember the difference between a backslash and a forward slash is that a backslash leans backwards ( ), while a forward slash leans forward ( / ). That is correct as written (even though in most cases you don’t need the or the www, but there are exceptions). Suppose someone wanted to link people to my different books on Heaven.

#FORWARD SLASH VS BACKSLASH TV#

For instance, people in radio and on TV habitually say “backslash” when referring to website addresses. At least 90% of the time these terms are used, it’s incorrect. That’s the backslash versus the slash, which is now often called the forward slash. But let me choose an example that may be the single most often misstated term in punctuation. Mark from Chicago, Illinois, wonders: Why do some people use the term backslash to refer to a forward slash when giving a website address Terms for that mark in other contexts are virgule, from the Latin for twig, and solidus. Having received such letters, as all writers do, I’m the last person who wants to be picky about either grammar or punctuation. I would suggest in the scripts try to use relative paths as much as possible instead of using absolute path locations. The type of slash used doesn't matter usually in MATLAB. Elsewhere I’ve written about many myths and outdated grammar that people routinely think are correct, and they’re driven crazy by authors who are “wrong.” In some cases the authors are wrong, in many cases they are right and the reader is wrong, and in many other cases, either way of saying it is fine. Make sure the path name is inside single quotes, because it may be the case that some folder name could have spaces.

#Forward slash vs backslash

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atlastrust · 3 years ago

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Venture forthe phone number

VENTURE FORTHE PHONE NUMBER CODE

VENTURE FORTHE PHONE NUMBER PLUS

Provider First Line Business Practice Location Address This data element may contain the same information as ''Provider location address telephone number''. The telephone number associated with mailing address of the provider being identified. Provider Business Mailing Address Telephone Number This data element may contain the same information as ''Provider location address country code''.

VENTURE FORTHE PHONE NUMBER CODE

The country code in the mailing address of the provider being identified. Provider Business Mailing Address Country Code This data element may contain the same information as ''Provider location address postal code''.

VENTURE FORTHE PHONE NUMBER PLUS

NOTE: ZIP code plus 4-digit extension, if available. The postal ZIP or zone code in the mailing address of the provider being identified. Provider Business Mailing Address Postal Code This data element may contain the same information as ''Provider location address State name''. The State or Province name in the mailing address of the provider being identified. Provider Business Mailing Address State Name This data element may contain the same information as ''Provider location address City name''. The City name in the mailing address of the provider being identified. Provider Business Mailing Address City Name This data element may contain the same information as ''Provider first line location address''. The first line mailing address of the provider being identified. Provider First Line Business Mailing Address A field cannot contain all special characters. The Organization Name field allows the following special characters: ampersand, apostrophe, "at" sign, colon, comma, forward slash, hyphen, left and right parentheses, period, pound sign, quotation mark, and semi-colon. Provide organization name (legal business name used to file tax returns with the IRS). Provider Organization Name (Legal Business Name) The "parent"-we don't know who the parent is in this example-must ensure that each subpart that submits its own claims to health plans has its own NPI. Each line of business represents a different Healthcare Provider Taxonomy or area of specialization that often submits its own electronic claims to health plans. Neither the pharmacy line of business nor the DME line of business represent legal entities instead, both lines of business are part of an organization (the "parent") that is a legal entity. (3) A pharmacy fills prescriptions for patients whose physicians have prescribed medications for them and may also rent or sell durable medical equipment to patients whose physicians have ordered such equipment for them. The offices are examples of subparts that could have their own NPIs if the main location determines that they should. (2) A group practice that is not a sole proprietorship has a main location and could have other offices in different locations, but each office is not a separate legal entity instead, each office is part of the corporation (the "parent") which is a legal entity. The psychiatric unit is an example of a subpart that could have its own NPI if the hospital determines that it should. (1) The psychiatric unit in a hospital is not a legal entity but is part of the hospital (the "parent"), which is a legal entity. Here are three examples of organization health care providers that may be considered subparts and may apply for NPIs if so directed by their "parents": Many organization health care providers who apply for NPIs are not legal entities themselves but are parts of other organization health care providers that are legal entities (the "parents"). The Parent Organization LBN and TIN fields can only be completed if the answer to the subpart question is Yes. If the organization is a subpart =, the Parent Organization Legal Business Name (LBN) and Parent Organization Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN) fields must be completed. The "Is the organization a subpart?" question must be answered.

2 = (Non-person): entity other than an individual human being that furnishes health care (for example, hospital, SNF, hospital subunit, pharmacy, or HMO).

1 = (Person): individual human being who furnishes health care.

Full Replica of the CMS (NPPES) NPI Record Field Nameġ0-position all-numeric identification number assigned by the NPS to uniquely identify a health care provider.Ĭode describing the type of health care provider that is being assigned an NPI.

#Venture forthe phone number

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homoeroticjunoincident · 8 months ago

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Yes i’m just saying it made sense heart shot mind and he doesn’t deserve to be discredited forever for it

also mind deserved to be shot for talking too much shit (/untrue)

i just. don’t like the womancoding. i just don’t like the way everyone including both the other xharacters in the album and the fandom seems to disregard him and either turn him into Soft Child or Volatile Force (who doesn’t even get the dignity of being ‘dangerous’ in his volatility) and either way he doesn’t get the same right to personhood and being heard out the others do. colon forward slash.

as if it’s my fault i believe heart was right about Things. as if it’s my fault. literally sorry for being correct and true

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gammaprimesmw · 4 years ago

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TRANSFORMERS FANFIC - SEPARATION Pt. 1

I started this sometime in 2019 as a sort of backstory for a pair of Transformers characters I brought into a mass-crossover roleplay server on Discord. It's loosely based on the continuity of my ill-fated Transformers Genesis fic, but it exists within its own micro-continuity. Any future fics I write will likely either be set in a micro-continuity of my own making or tentatively set in an official one.

For at least two million years, a brutal civil war had been raging on the distant planet of Cybertron. What began as a coup d'état launched by what was once a mere terrorist organization has since escalated into a planet-wide battle between the planet's new, dictatorial regime and a dwindling band of freedom fighters led by the bearer of what was once seen as the symbol of office for the planet's true leader. This small band of rebels would come to call themselves the Autobots, and the oppressive regime they sought to topple would become known as the Decepticons.

"How exactly are we gonna get off this planet, Prime?" asked a warrior in the form of a teal ground vehicle resembling a classic sports car. "Even a single space-capable scout couldn't make it past that Decepticon blockade."

"Dash's got a point, boss-bot," added a white and blue vehicle driving alongside the Autobot convoy. "That blockade's coverin' the planet like an Insecticon swarm on an Energon crystal."

"During the Age of Colonization, eons before this war began, Cybertronian engineers developed technology that would allow us to travel across the stars without need of spacecraft," replied the heavy red, silver, and blue vehicle leading the group. "The only terminal of this 'SpaceBridge' has, thus far, survived the ravages of war."

"Even if such a thing works, are you really plannin' to just flee the planet?" asked a sturdy-looking red vehicle with maize-colored accents. "This is our home, Prime! We can't just give up on it!"

"Ironhide, I have no desire to simply surrender this planet," the one called Prime replied. "Though I do intend for us to relocate, I do not intend to surrender. We will fight on, but our prospects for victory are grim should we remain here. We will establish an off-world base from which to retake Cybertron. In so doing, perhaps we will re-establish contact with the lost Cybertronian Colonies."

"With all due respect, Optimus, can we really be sure that the SpaceBridge will work as intended?" asked a white and red medical vehicle. "It hasn't been used in four million years."

"Ancient Cybertronian technology is astonishingly resilient, Ratchet. Were I uncertain of the SpaceBridge's functionality, I would not have informed Prime of its existence, nor would I have provided the coordinates of its location."

While the Autobots continued their trek to the ancient SpaceBridge Terminal, Megatron, leader of the Decepticons, watched them from his throne room in the city of Kaon, smirking as he did so. "So...the Autobots are still trying to escape the inevitable," he said to himself before turning to face a powerful dark blue and white robot who was manning the nearby computer terminal. "Has their destination been calculated, Soundwave?"

"Affirmative, Lord Megatron," the faceless technician droned.

"Excellent. Deploy the nearest Eradicon squad," the powerful Decepticon leader commanded as he rose from his throne. "I shall join them. In the meantime, Shockwave is in command of this fortress."

"Fear not, Lord Megatron," a purple, cycloptic robot replied with a salute. "Kaon shall remain as you leave it."

"I have the utmost faith that it will, Shockwave. You seldom disappoint," Megatron commented before transforming into a vehicle resembling a dual-rotor helicopter with a large cannon mounted on its underside before flying off toward the Autobots' location.

“Autobots, alert,” announced a flyer in the form of a gray and maize UAV-like vehicle. “Skybolt is detecting incoming Eradicon units.”

The word ‘Eradicon’ immediately brought about an uneasy feeling among all the Autobots. It wasn’t because they feared these Decepticon shock troopers though. It was because of what they were: former Autobots and Cybertron civilians that had been subjected to Spark extraction and, when necessary, modifications to make them more combat-capable. Each one was governed by a Teletraan-Class Artificial Intelligence that was completely subservient to Megatron. Because these drones were once friends, it was particularly hard for the Autobots to fight against them. Even the steely Optimus Prime would falter somewhat when being confronted with them.

One Eradicon in the form of a bulldozer-type vehicle transformed and fired on Dashlane and Jazz, who responded by transforming themselves and drawing their weapons. The cool-headed white and blue warrior fired a couple shots at the Eradicon, who blocked them with the half of its shovel that was attached to its right forearm. Dashlane, meanwhile, was a bit more hesitant to fire, recognizing this now mindless drone as his former mentor Landmine. He briefly flashed back to his last moments with the elder Autobot as he was being dragged away by Shockwave’s minions before shaking the memory away and firing. He, like the others, had to remember that these things were no longer their friends.

Skybolt, meanwhile, had not been sentient long enough to truly understand the emotional connections his comrades had with the Sparks that once occupied the Eradicons’ shells. He scanned the Landmine Eradicon for a weakness, eventually pinpointing one on his lower back and firing a missile into it, sending the drone falling forward as Dashlane and Jazz backed away. “You’re lucky, kid,” Dashlane commented before taking a deep breath and shooting the Landmine Eradicon in the back of the head. “Fighting these things doesn’t take the kinda toll on you that it does on us.”

“Skybolt is unfamiliar with Eradicon Units’ previous identities,” the flyer replied, his voice largely monotone.

“Like I said, you’re lucky. You have the good fortune of not knowing these guys as your friends,” the teal warrior said with a sigh before aiming in the direction of more approaching Eradicons. One of these took the form of a black and red moped that looked as though it had additional weapons and parts grafted onto it that were never originally intended to be there. This moped transformed into an equally patched-together robot, which scanned the Autobots in front of it before locking onto Skybolt. “Vulnerability detected,” it announced before being tackled by Dashlane. “Not that you’re gonna get the chance to exploit it, buddy,” the warrior growled before shooting the drone in the face. “I’m not about to let the ‘Cons turn him into another science project like you.” He fired again, aiming for the Eradicon’s chest this time and blasting a hole through the original armor that was not covered by the grafts. “Hate to do this to something that was once somebody’s friend.” he sighed before picking the drone up and hurling him at his fellow Eradicon, who simply blasted him away before aiming its weapon at Ironhide and Ratchet and charging up for another blast. Optimus, who was directly in front of them, transformed into his robot mode, performing a backflip over his companions as he did so. He then proceeded to hold his Energon Axe in front of his chest to shield himself from the brunt of the blast.

“Wheeljack! Perceptor! Proceed to the SpaceBridge and activate it. Jazz, Ironhide, Skybolt, and Dashlane will cover you.” the Prime ordered before jumping into the air and bringing his weapon down on the Eradicon, slicing it in half before returning it to his Subspace Storage Pocket and staring down at the remains of what was once an innocent civilian. “I derive no pleasure in having to desecrate your now Sparkless husk.” he remarked sadly before looking up. “This war must be ended...before other innocents are subjected to the same fate,” he continued, his optics narrowing as he heard a familiar pair of helicopter rotors. “Megatron must be stopped…”

While Optimus prepared to face his approaching nemesis, Wheeljack, Perceptor, and those assigned to cover them continued to make their way to the SpaceBridge, remaining in robot mode with weapons drawn as they did so. Soon enough, they would hear the screech of approaching jet engines as a group of Seekers swooped down and opened fire. Ironhide, having the toughest armor of the group, positioned himself to take any shots being aimed at the two scientists he had been asked to cover. “You two git to the control panel an’ try to git that SpaceBridge online! The rest o’ us’ll deal with these Decepti-Creeps!” the red warrior barked before firing on the gray and red Seeker leading the group. The other Seekers would break away from the formation to attack the other Autobots.

Dashlane backed out of the way as one of the Seekers, who was decked out in a black, red, and silver color scheme, attempted to dive-bomb him. The Seeker transformed into his robot mode before crashing into the ground and glared at the teal Autobot before drawing an Energon Sword.

"Nightshade, It's been a while. I guess your boss finally decided to hide behind bots who aren't just mindless drones."

"Heh...I see we are in agreement regarding Starscream's cowardice and seeming inability to learn from past mistakes," Nightshade responded. "Of course, this does not equate to a potential alliance, Autobot."

The Seeker charged forward, using his blade to block Dashlane's plasma blasts before leaping upward for an aerial slash attack.

Dashlane slid out of the way before the enemy's blade could make contact with its intended target, avoiding being completely bisected but still losing his right shoulder pad. He gritted his teeth, inwardly thanking Primus that his whole arm wasn't severed as he took aim and rapid-fired several plasma bursts into the junction between the Decepticon's torso and right shoulder. While not doing as much damage as a charged shot, these bursts did push Nightshade backwards as they hit, eventually pushing him into a nearby light post. Dashlane would follow this up by charging at the Seeker swordsman while charging up for another shot, which he would fire point blank while punching him in the same junction he had weakened with his previous shots.

"You're braver than Starscream. That's for sure," the Autobot smirked. "He'd turn tail-rudder and fly by now."

"Indeed, and that is precisely why I am more deserving of the position of Seeker Commander. That, and I am far more loyal to Lord GAH!"

The boastful Seeker's comment was interrupted by a sharp pain as a missile struck him from behind, blowing off his left wing upon detonation. Nightshade growled before turning to face his new assailant. "Skybolt, I presume?"

"Affirmative, Decepticon Warrior Nightshade."

"I did not anticipate such underhanded tactics from a glorified Teletraan Backup Module. You would make an excellent Decepticon. I will be sure to inform Lord Megatron of your accomplishment. He could use more competent--"

This time, Dashlane interrupted Nightshade's long-winded speech by delivering a powerful punch to the Decepticon's face.

"Mute it, motormouth! Sky's not about to become a 'Con!" Dashlane countered before delivering another punch that knocked his opponent down.

Skybolt, meanwhile, picked up Nightshade's discarded sword and studied it for a bit before activating it to block a barrage of laser fire from a cackling Seeker in navy and white with gold accents.

"Decepticon Warrior Triggerhappy, why are you still permitted to engage in combat?" Skybolt asked, making a perhaps feeble attempt to taunt the crazed Decepticon the way his mentor would.

"Uhh....'Cause I can blast you into spare parts!" Triggerhappy replied before cackling and unleashing another wild hailstorm of blasts, doing more damage to the surrounding environment than any of his targets.

"Maybe you could if you paid more attention to your targets than the sound of your weapons," Dashlane smirked before transforming into vehicle mode and driving toward a trio of incoming Seeker Drones, causing Triggerhappy to fire on them while attempting to blast him.

"Alert! Ally fire," one of the drones announced in the usual monotone before one of the stray shots hit its wing and caused it to crash. Dashlane swerved out of the way as the downed drone crashed into the road, destroying the guard rails as the impact caused it to explode.

Triggerhappy growled in annoyance. "Stupid Autobot! You made me blast one of our drones!"

While the warriors continued to battle the Seekers, both Sparked and drone, Perceptor and Wheeljack worked together to get the SpaceBridge terminal online.

"SpaceBridge control system interface successful," came the pleasant, but fairly monotonous, voice of Teletraan 1 through a speaker on the control panel. "Diagnostic commencing."

Both scientists waited patiently while their base computer AI scanned the SpaceBridge's systems, their expressions turning from excited to concerned as a maniacal cackle sounded in the distance and was followed by an approaching jet engine.

"Oh scrap....Triggerhappy," Wheeljack groaned.

"Your concern is indeed warranted, Wheeljack," Perceptor spoke in agreement. "While his targeting skills may be questionable, his propensity for collateral damage is not."

"I think I know what you mean, Percy," Dashlane replied after returning to his robot mode and firing a charged shot on Triggerhappy's left wing. Skybolt, meanwhile, watched for a bit while accessing his memories regarding Nightshade's swordplay techniques. It didn't take too long for him to settle on one that seemed like it would be effective: The Aerial Slash. All the while, though, Triggerhappy continued to spray ammunition everywhere, with one of his stray shots hitting Skybolt before he could perform the technique.

Another stray shot, meanwhile, struck the SpaceBridge control panel just as a portal was opening. This stray blast managed to strike vital control systems on impact, causing Perceptor's optics to widen with a sense of worry that bordered on a mild panic. Teletraan's words only heightened the scientist's anxiety.

"Alert! Destination control failure. Wormhole magnitude extending beyond acceptable limits."

Dashlane and Skybolt, who were closest to the terminal, soon felt themselves being pulled toward the open portal.

"Skybolt! Dashlane! You must make a concerted effort to escape the vortex before its yield increases...if possible," Perceptor instructed.

Dashlane and Skybolt both attempted to transform, figuring they'd have a better change with the increased speed of their alternate modes.

"Skybolt is...unable to...transform....Maximum speed....is limited."

"You and me both....kid."

"Perceptor, any idea where those two are gonna end up?" Wheeljack asked as he watched his friends' futile attempts to escape the increasingly powerful pull of the destabilizing wormhole.

"The SpaceBridge portal has grown dangerously unstable. In its current state, its endpoint is impossible to determine. Given the exponentially increasing level of subspace distortion, there is a probability of interdimensional transport that further complicates their current situation."

"Gah....Can't that bot explain things in a way that the less scientifically-inclined can understand?" Dashlane asked out loud before being pulled through the vortex, disappearing to parts unknown.

"Oh no! Dashlane! Perceptor, we gotta shut this thing down!"

"Agreed, Wheeljack. If it is allowed to remain open, it will further destabilize," the red-hued scientist said while trying to remain upright as the ground beneath him began to shake. "It's already adversely affecting the structural integrity of this facility."

"Critical alert! Energon conduit overload detected," Teletraan announced as Skybolt was pulled into the portal. "Detonation imminent."

"Scrap! We gotta roll," Wheeljack called out as he transformed into his white, red, and green racer mode and revved his engine. Perceptor soon followed suit, assuming the form of a halftrack scientific research vehicle. Both quickly accelerated to top speed and drove away as the building housing the terminal collapsed further.

"I don't think the other bots are gonna like this," Wheeljack said with a heavy sigh. "The SpaceBridge is scrap, and Dashlane and Skybolt are missing."

"Indeed. It will be imperative that we concentrate all efforts on their retrieval, as well as securing an alternative means of relocation. For the moment, the latter objective seems far more viable."

"If I can get that Vanguard Class Deep Space Transport we found up and running...and retrofitted for combat, we might be able to at least start looking for our future offworld base."

"Given your history of assigning simple, yet intuitive designations for your scientific endeavors, it would not be illogical to assume you have done so for this project."

Wheeljack chuckled, allowing Perceptor's words to distract him from his worries about Dashlane and Skybolt. "You know me all too well, Percy. I call it 'The Ark.'"

"Again...Simple, yet appropriate. Perhaps if...fate...is in our favor, we will locate our friends....and they will be online and well. Yes, I am well aware of how patently unscientific my previous statement was, but...I want to hope."

"Yeah. It's a good thing you didn't delete your emotions the way Shockwave did."

"If taking such an action would result in a similar abandonment of scientific ethic on my part, it is not one I'd ever be willing to take."

TO BE CONTINUED...

#Transformers #fanfic #writing #youtube

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mygoateecreation · 4 years ago

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Look For Words In A Text On Mac

Set up Dictation

How To Search For Words In A Text

Italic Words In A Text

Unknown Words In A Text

Alphabetical Index Of All The Words In A Text

Keyboard shortcuts in Word for Mac. Look up selected text on the Internet + Shift + L. For the best experience using your keyboard with the ribbon, try switching your keyboard settings to All Controls, as follows: Open System Preferences ( + Space, type system preference, and hit Enter). On the Format Text tab and Editing group, select Find. In the window that opens, enter the word or phrase you want to highlight in the Find What field. Click or tap Reading Highlight at the bottom of the window to highlight the word or phrase you selected. Manually searching for specific words or phrases on large Web pages is usually a waste of time; use the Find bar in the major Web browsers to find what you're looking for in seconds. Internet Explorer 11, Mozilla Firefox 37, Google Chrome 42 and Safari for Windows can search Web pages for words or entire phrases and highlight them for you.

Choose Apple () menu > System Preferences, click Keyboard, then click Dictation. Turn on Dictation and choose from these Dictation options:

Choose whether to use Enhanced Dictation, which lets you use dictation when you're not connected to the Internet.

Choose your language and dialect. Some languages, such as English, have multiple dialects.

Choose the keyboard shortcut you will use to start start dictating.

Choose your preferred microphone from the pop-up menu below the microphone icon.

In macOS Sierra, you can ask Siri to “turn on Dictation” for you. Siri isn't the same as Dictation, but you can ask Siri to compose short messages, such as email and text messages.

Add Text to Photos with Preview App on Mac This built-in app is rarely the first choice for Mac users who want to add text to photos, but completing this task with Preview App is remarkably easy. Open the app and import the photo you want to edit, then make sure to click on the 'Show Edit Toolbar' icon and select the 'Text Tool' feature. Photo text for mac. May 16, 2013 Adding text to images is a fairly simple process to begin with that is made even easier with Preview, the basic image viewing app that is bundled on all Macs. To convert PDF images to text on Mac, you must consider two aspects: freeware or share & security issue. As I have mentioned you should use Google Docs to obtain text from PDF image. It really is free. However you can search the document or copy text from it (and on a Mac spotlight will index the document so you can find the document with a spotlight search). This is great if you want to scan paper documents and then destroy the paper. Leawo Mac converters allow people to apply image or text watermark to output files in easy clicks. Select a media file, right click it and choose Media Edit option to enter the video editing panel. Then, click Watermark tab to do watermark settings.

Sublime Text is available for Mac, Windows and Linux. One license is all you need to use Sublime Text on every computer you own, no matter what operating system it uses. Sublime Text uses a custom UI toolkit, optimized for speed and beauty, while taking advantage of native functionality on each platform. Sublime Text 3 may be downloaded from the Sublime Text 3 page. This is the recommended version of Sublime Text to use, and is available for Windows, OS X and Linux. This is the recommended version of Sublime Text to use, and is available for Windows, OS X and Linux. Download sublime text editor. Sublime Text is a text editor for code, HTML, and prose. It features rich selection of editing commands, including indenting or un-indenting, paragraph reformatting, line joining, multiple.

Use Dictation

Go to a document or other text field and place the insertion point where you want your dictated text to appear.

Press the keyboard shortcut for starting dictation, or choose Edit > Start Dictation. The default shortcut is Fn Fn (press the Fn key twice). When your Mac is listening, it displays a microphone to the left or right of the page, aligned with the insertion point. If you turn on advanced dictation commands, the microphone appears in the lower-right corner of your screen, and you can drag it to another position. When your Mac can hear you, the input meter inside the microphone rises and falls as you speak.

Speak the words that you want your Mac to type. Dictation learns the characteristics of your voice and adapts to your accent, so the more you use it, the better it understands you. If it doesn't understand you, learn what to do.

To stop dictating, click Done below the microphone icon, press Fn once, or switch to another window.

Speak the following words to enter punctuation or other characters. These may vary by language or dialect.

apostrophe '

open bracket [

close bracket ]

open parenthesis (

close parenthesis )

open brace {

close brace }

open angle bracket <

close angle bracket >

colon :

comma ,

dash -

ellipsis …

exclamation mark !

hyphen -

period, point, dot, or full stop .

question mark ?

quote ”

end quote ”

begin single quote '

end single quote '

semicolon ;

ampersand &

asterisk *

at sign @

backslash

forward slash /

caret ^

center dot ·

large center dot •

degree sign °

hashtag or pound sign #

percent sign %

underscore _

vertical bar |

dollar sign $

cent sign ¢

pound sterling sign £

euro sign €

yen sign ¥

cross-eyed laughing face XD

frowny face :-(

smiley face :-)

winky face ;-)

registered sign ®

trademark sign ™

equals sign =

greater than sign >

less than sign <

minus sign -

multiplication sign x

plus sign +

caps on (formats next phrase in title case)

caps off (resumes default letter case)

all caps (formats next word in ALL CAPS)

all caps on (proceeds in ALL CAPS)

all caps off (resumes default letter case)

new line (adds line break)

numeral (formats next phrase as number)

roman numeral (formats next phrase as Roman numeral)

new paragraph (adds paragraph break)

no space on (formats next phrase without spaces)

no space off (resumes default spacing)

tab key (advances cursor to the next tab stop)

If you turned on Enhanced Dictation, you can also use dictation commands to bold, italicize, underline, select, copy, delete, undo, and perform other actions.

About Enhanced Dictation

Enhanced Dictation is available in OS X Mavericks v10.9 or later. With Enhanced Dictation:

You can dictate continuously.

You can dictate without being connected to the Internet.

Your words might convert to text more quickly.

You can use dictation commands to tell your Mac what to do.

Without Enhanced Dictation, your spoken words and certain other data are sent to Apple to be converted into text and help your Mac understand what you mean. As a result, your Mac must be connected to the Internet, your words might not convert to text as quickly, and you can speak for no more than 40 seconds at a time (30 seconds in OS X Yosemite or earlier).

If you're on a business or school network that uses a proxy server, Dictation might not be able to connect to the Internet. Have your network administrator refer to the list of network ports used by Apple software products.

About Dictation and privacy

To learn about Dictation and privacy, choose Apple () menu > System Preferences, click Keyboard, click Dictation, then click the About Dictation & Privacy button. At all times, information collected by Apple is treated in accordance with Apple’s Privacy Policy.

Learn more

To use dictation on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, tap the microphone on the onscreen keyboard, then speak. Consult your iPhone or iPad user guide for details.

If the Slow Keys or Sticky Keys feature is turned on in the Accessibility pane of System Preferences, the default keyboard shortcuts for dictation might not work. If you need to use those accessibility features, create a custom dictation shortcut: Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click Keyboard, click Dictation, then choose “Customize” from the Shortcut menu.

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If the text is still not distributed equally, you may want to use space bar or ‘Tab’ to push the text. The handle allows you to adjust the extent of distribution of text around the path: If you want to distribute the text equally around the circle, pull the handle to draw a full circle. How do you edit text in a pdf. The result will be as like shown here.

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Find and Replace Words or Phrases

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This chapter is from the book

How To Search For Words In A Text



Mac OS X Lion: Peachpit Learning Series

This chapter is from the book

This chapter is from the book 

Find and Replace Words or Phrases

Did you write your entire screenplay using your sweetheart’s name, Hamlet, as the hero? And now Hamlet has abandoned you and you want to replace the hero’s name with Romeo? No problem:

Italic Words In A Text

From the Edit menu, choose “Find..,” or press Command F. A search field appears below the ruler bar.

Click the “Replace” checkbox to open a Replace text field below the search field.

In the Find field, type the word you want to find, such as Hamlet.

In the Replace field, type the word or phrase that will replace the found word, such as Romeo.

Find and replace:

Replace: Replaces the currently selected occurrence of the word or phrase, then automatically finds the next occurrence.

All: Replace all occurrence of the found text. Press (don’t click) on the “All” button to see more options.

To manually find other occurrence of the text, click the Previous and Next buttons.

For more search options, click the small double-arrows next to the magnifying glass icon on the left side of the window.

Click “Done” to put the Find and Replace fields away.

Related Resources

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Unknown Words In A Text

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Alphabetical Index Of All The Words In A Text

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manikax · 2 years ago

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omenportenti:

He listened as she spoke, watching how her lips moved as she spoke, how her cheek rose and eased forward with her smile. He wondered what the texture would feel like under his hand, under the sharpness of his teeth.

And as she expanded her opinion he saw it there, something else beneath the shell of humanity. Yes, some would follow dick across a continent, he had spoken from experience. It was psychotic behviour that he would have excused, reveled in even, had it not been met with confession of eternal love. A human professing eternal love when they would live to 67, 72 at most. He was well past 72 and had an actual eternity before him. It insulted his existence and the foul scent of the emotion sickened him, ruined her very taste.

He could not understand why human life was so monotonous, given the shortness. In that he realized she was right in more than one way. He should just let the humans follow dick to their death. It’s better than dying cause your colon wad backed up.

He leads her to the next painting with a chuckle. “I do. A touch is just not enough though, a taste either. Sometimes you need to really sink your teeth in that way you can really understand. The sun god must know exactly what he wants, willing to chase. I get that.” He glanced at the painting, her hand still in his own, noting the similar feel of her skin, lacking the warmth of rushing blood. He took a deep scan of the her, noting the scent in the air, florals, soft and well blended, her perfume. Beneath it, there was nothing he had ever encountered, there was nothing.

No pulse, no scent, cold to the touch. Curious opinions and a sweet flirt.

He relaxed in his stance, eyes passing over the painting of lovers embraced, the face of one lover expressing their shared emotion. The posture was enticing, head turned to the viewer welcoming eyes to witness. “I like this one too. Would be nice over my bathtub. It’s inspiring. Even with the vivid slashes of colours, you can very well see the expression as if it was flesh locked in the canvas. Like you said,” he said looking back to Maya. “You can feel the emotion right off the canvas, understand what feelings are passing between them.”

And as he looked at her, his mind found a window upstairs within the gallery, an office. There he lifted her, pressed her to the glass and buried his head between her legs. The design of the skirt made parted well, her legs over his shoulders. He could best the expression in the painting, no need to even question it. “You’re a patron of your friend’s work”, the thought returned to him, speaking it aloud. “You must be proud as you are supporting. I’m sure they look around the room for you, thankful for the strength in your presence, and all that. Would be a shame to take you from such a position for a bite. Then again, I’m a bit greedy. What’s a bite to a meal? Especially when you’ve already wet my appetite?”

With a wondering sigh he looked back to the painting. “Right above the tub, or above the fireplace on the second landing. Could be a good sport and see the rest but, what did you say, every now and then a little madness can be fun?” His head tilted back for her answer.

“Perhaps you should buy the whole collection,” Maja says with a small giggle. “That would be one hell of a statement. I’m sure Zora would be eternally grateful. It would certainly make you very popular in the local art scene.”

His boldness astounds her in its eloquence. She’s been propositioned numerous times, but it was usually in plain or vulgar language. Even though it all amounted to the same thing in the end, there was a certain poetry to the way he strung his words together. She watches him with gleaming eyes as he returns to his musings on the speculative location of the painting.

She can't shake the feeling that she's seen him somewhere before, but then again... no. Unless they had met in the Before time, she’s certain she’d remember him.

“Kwon Su,” she states slowly, allowing the syllables to roll over her tongue. It didn't taste as good as the ginseng candy or the champagne, but it could be chewed on. Worked at. “Just came back from London Town. Exorbitantly wealthy.” She snorts, releasing her hand from his grasp to tug gently at the sleeve of his blazer. “Clearly.” Her eyes dart up and down his frame, lingering momentarily on the crotch of his trousers before bouncing up to meet his gaze. “Has big... hands. A taste for art. Is moderately empathetic, sleeps around, has a high opinion of himself and his sexual prowess. How am I doing?” With a smirk, she links her arm with his.

She could remark on the coolness of his skin, the ethereal and slightly foreboding aura that emanates from him and sets off alarm bells in her mind. They tell her that he was not what he seems. A wolf in sheep’s clothing. That is what intrigues Maja. She isn’t drawn in by the flash of wealth, the handsome face with pouty lips, or even his nuanced interest in art. It’s his unusual energy. It’s the vein in his neck that throbbed when he looked at her. It’s the promise of wickedness, of carnal desire, of hunger.

"A little madness," she says, finally responding to his proposal. "I hope you know what you're getting yourself into."

With that, she leads him across the gallery. Nobody pays them any mind. That’s the thing with art scenes: everyone thinks they’re the most important person in the room. She guides him to a side hallway and up a set of stairs. She enjoys the sensation of his gaze on her as they ascend. They turn a sharp left and enter a large studio space cluttered with canvases of various sizes, paint-splattered sheets, easels, and an elegant velvet chaise where many a model had posed.

"This is where some of those paintings you like were made," she says, gathering an assortment of pillar candles and lighting each one with a Vivienne Westwood lighter. “Think of this as a look behind the curtain.”

#i: souk #t: second act

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kissses-and-klasss-blog · 7 years ago

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System Files Part 2 - Removing system file attributes with batch file

You'Re watching system files part 2, removing system file attributes with batch file. In the last video, I showed you, this simple command, which we could use to remove the system attribute on the hidden file attributes from files individually within a folder. In the end of this video, I just want to be able to type in this one simple commands and have that acts on the entire folder at once now.

The way it works is that when you type a command like I like IP config, it will look through a list of folders, so it will find this system32 folder and then it will find that IP convict are exe and it will run nuts. So what I want to do is to add a folder to that list of folders, but it's going to look through and have it run my commands for me without me having to type in the whole path into it every time. So what I've done is I've created a folder. I conduct be 80, something just nice and short. You can call it whatever you want, so I just created that folder in there and then what we want to do is to add it to the list of the folders that I'd be configures going to look through. So, to do that, we just want to go to start sy, sdmc PL and hit enter, and it will open up this window going to advance and down to environment variables.

And then it's down you in the system variables. We want to scroll down to where it says path and you can either double click here or click at it, and this comes up with a list of folders. You can see that each folder in here is separated by a semicolon. So if I go home on this one you can see, I just writin see from colon slash, be a teammate, my folder, followed by this semicolon there. So if you can do the same for your folder and then just click, ok on that and then click OK on that and then we're ready to statue start creating our batch file and adding it into that folder batch files of ASA just txt files. You know you, you can write them with any text.

Editor, i'm just going to notepad for this one, and what I'm going to do with this one is only use the forward and fall. It just says for some kind of variable in something it's gon na. Just do something: okay and the two is just the commands that we typed in earlier. So it's going to do a trip, dash S, luck, Shh, slush s, okay, and what it's going to do it in it's just open bracket, startup, star, close bracket so basically for any file with any extension it's going to perform that commands on it. The variable doesn't matter in this one, so I'm just going to use the standard variable which is % % followed by an X, and after that I want to close the command prompt to miss club. So I can exit and we're done so we'd now save this into the folder.

We just created to go into your bat file in order to save as a batch file and not a text file. You want to come down here and change this to all files. So it doesn't depend txt to the end of it, and then you just type in remove bhc, make sure you have that bats extension on the end of it to change it into a batch file and then click Save. And now we are ready to roll with that. So what's left is just to go and test it. So I'm going to test it in my secret files. Folder up here. Ok, it's just got. You know muses absolution same as I had in my last video, but to navigate the command prompt to this fold without having to take the whole path just hold down the shift, key and right click and then opens up this open command here. Window option.

Click on that one and you can see it navigates directly to that path, and then we just I can remove but shouldn't out there you go. You see all these now and no longer system files, a ball pops up nicely and we can do whatever we want with them. In this case, I'm just going to use it to wipe the entire folder. So I'm just going to click yes on that one that should work nicely for me now: yep they've, all gone they've all disappeared and the secret for files folder has gone as well. Okay, thanks a lot for watching, and I will see you in the next video

#system #files #removing

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infolearn · 6 years ago

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Spying On Google: 5 Ways to Use Log File Analysis To Reveal Invaluable SEO Insights

Log File Analysis should be a part of every SEO pro’s tool belt, but most SEOs have never conducted one. Which means most SEOs are missing out on unique and invaluable insights that regular crawling tools just can’t produce. Let's demystify Log File Analysis so it's not so intimidating. If you’re interested in the wonderful world of log files and what they can bring to your site audits, this guide is definitely for you.

What are Log Files?

Log Files are files containing detailed logs on who and what is making requests to your website server. Every time a bot makes a request to your site, data (such as the time, date IP address, user agent, etc.) is stored in this log. This valuable data allows any SEO to find out what Googlebot and other crawlers are doing on your site. Unlike regular crawlings, such as with the Screaming Frog SEO Spider, this is real-world data — not an estimation of how your site is being crawled. It is an exact overview of how your site is being crawled. Having this accurate data can help you identify areas of crawl budget waste, easily find access errors, understand how your SEO efforts are affecting crawling and much, much more. The best part is that, in most cases, you can do this with simple spreadsheet software. In this guide, we will be focussing on Excel to perform Log File Analysis, but I’ll also discuss other tools such as Screaming Frog’s less well-known Log File Analyser which can just make the job a bit easier and faster by helping you manage larger data sets. Note: owning any software other than Excel is not a requirement to follow this guide or get your hands dirty with Log Files.

How to Open Log Files

Rename .log to .csv When you get a log file with a .log extension, it is really as easy as renaming the file extension .csv and opening the file in spreadsheet software. Remember to set your operating system to show file extensions if you want to edit these. How to open split log files Log files can come in either one big log or multiple files, depending on the server configuration of your site. Some servers will use server load balancing to distribute traffic across a pool or farm of servers, causing log files to be split up. The good news is that it's really easy to combine, and you can use one of these three methods to combine them and then open them as normal: Use the command line in Windows by Shift + right-clicking in the folder containing your log files and selecting “Run Powershell from here”

Then run the following command: copy *.log mylogfiles.csv You can now open mylogfile.csv and it will contain all your log data. Or if you are a Mac user, first use the cd command to go to the directory of your log files: cd Documents/MyLogFiles/ Then, use the cat or concatenate command to join up your files: cat *.log > mylogfiles.csv 2) Using the free tool, Log File Merge, combine all the log files and then edit the file extension to .csv and open as normal. 3) Open the log files with the Screaming Frog Log File Analyser, which is as simple as dragging and dropping the log files:

Splitting Strings (Please note: This step isn’t required if you are using Screaming Frog’s Log File Analyser) Once you have your log file open, you’re going to need to split the cumbersome text in each cell into columns for easier sorting later. Excel’s Text to Column function comes in handy here, and is as easy as selecting all the filled cells (Ctrl / Cmd + A) and going to Excel > Data > Text to Columns and selecting the “Delimited” option, and the delimiter being a Space character. Once you’ve separated this out, you may also want to sort by time and date — you can do so in the Time and Date stamp column, commonly separating the data with the “:” colon delimiter. Your file should look similar to the one below:

As mentioned before, don’t worry if your log file doesn’t look exactly the same — different log files have different formats. As long as you have the basic data there (time and date, URL, user-agent, etc.) you’re good to go!

Understanding Log Files

Now that your log files are ready for analysis, we can dive in and start to understand our data. There are many formats that log files can take with multiple different data points, but they generally include the following: Server IP Date and time Server request method (e.g. GET / POST) Requested URL HTTP status code User-agent More details on the common formats can be found below if you’re interested in the nitty gritty details: WC3 Apache and NGINX Amazon Elastic Load Balancing HA Proxy JSON

How to quickly reveal crawl budget waste

As a quick recap, Crawl Budget is the number of pages a search engine crawls upon every visit of your site. Numerous factors affect crawl budget, including link equity or domain authority, site speed, and more. With Log File Analysis, we will be able to see what sort of crawl budget your website has and where there are problems causing crawl budget to be wasted. Ideally, we want to give crawlers the most efficient crawling experience possible. Crawling shouldn’t be wasted on low-value pages and URLs, and priority pages (product pages for example) shouldn’t have slower indexation and crawl rates because a website has so many dead weight pages. The name of the game is crawl budget conservation, and with good crawl budget conversion comes better organic search performance. See crawled URLs by user agent Seeing how frequently URLs of the site are being crawled can quickly reveal where search engines are putting their time into crawling. If you’re interested in seeing the behavior of a single user agent, this is easy as filtering out the relevant column in excel. In this case, with a WC3 format log file, I’m filtering the cs(User-Agent) column by Googlebot:

And then filtering the URI column to show the number of times Googlebot crawled the home page of this example site:

This is a fast way of seeing if there are any problem areas by URI stem for a singular user-agent. You can take this a step further by looking at the filtering options for the URI stem column, which in this case is cs-uri-stem:

From this basic menu, we can see what URLs, including resource files, are being crawled to quickly identify any problem URLs (parameterized URLs that shouldn’t be being crawled for example). You can also do broader analyses with Pivot tables. To get the number of times a particular user agent has crawled a specific URL, select the whole table (Ctrl/cmd + A), go to Insert > Pivot Table and then use the following options:

All we’re doing is filtering by User Agent, with the URL stems as rows, and then counting the number of times each User-agent occurs. With my example log file, I got the following:

Then, to filter by specific User-Agent, I clicked the drop-down icon on the cell containing “(All)," and selected Googlebot:

Understanding what different bots are crawling, how mobile bots are crawling differently to desktop, and where the most crawling is occurring can help you see immediately where there is crawl budget waste and what areas of the site need improvement. Find low-value add URLs Crawl budget should not be wasted on Low value-add URLs, which are normally caused by session IDs, infinite crawl spaces, and faceted navigation. To do this, go back to your log file, and filter by URLs that contain a “?” or question mark symbols from the URL column (containing the URL stem). To do this in Excel, remember to use “~?” or tilde question mark, as shown below:

A single “?” or question mark, as stated in the auto filter window, represents any single character, so adding the tilde is like an escape character and makes sure to filter out the question mark symbol itself. Isn’t that easy? Find duplicate URLs Duplicate URLs can be a crawl budget waste and a big SEO issue, but finding them can be a pain. URLs can sometimes have slight variants (such as a trailing slash vs a non-trailing slash version of a URL). Ultimately, the best way to find duplicate URLs is also the least fun way to do so — you have to sort by site URL stem alphabetically and manually eyeball it. One way you can find trailing and non-trailing slash versions of the same URL is to use the SUBSTITUTE function in another column and use it to remove all forward slashes: =SUBSTITUTE(C2, “/”, “”) In my case, the target cell is C2 as the stem data is on the third column. Then, use conditional formatting to identify duplicate values and highlight them.

However, eyeballing is, unfortunately, the best method for now. See the crawl frequency of subdirectories Finding out which subdirectories are getting crawled the most is another quick way to reveal crawl budget waste. Although keep in mind, just because a client’s blog has never earned a single backlink and only gets three views a year from the business owner’s grandma doesn’t mean you should consider it crawl budget waste — internal linking structure should be consistently good throughout the site and there might be a strong reason for that content from the client’s perspective. To find out crawl frequency by subdirectory level, you will need to mostly eyeball it but the following formula can help: =IF(RIGHT(C2,1)="/",SUM(LEN(C2)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(C2,"/","")))/LEN("/")+SUM(LEN(C2)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(C2,"=","")))/LEN("=")-2, SUM(LEN(C2)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(C2,"/","")))/LEN("/")+SUM(LEN(C2)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(C2,"=","")))/LEN("=")-1) The above formula looks like a bit of a doozy, but all it does is check if there is a trailing slash, and depending on the answer, count the number of trailing slashes and subtract either 2 or 1 from the number. This formula could be shortened if you remove all trailing slashes from your URL list using the RIGHT formula — but who has the time. What you’re left with is subdirectory count (starting from 0 from as the first subdirectory). Replace C2 with the first URL stem / URL cell and then copy the formula down your entire list to get it working.

Make sure you replace all of the C2s with the appropriate starting cell and then sort the new subdirectory counting column by smallest to largest to get a good list of folders in a logical order, or easily filter by subdirectory level. For example, as shown in the below screenshots:

The above image is subdirectories sorted by level.

The above image is subdirectories sorted by depth. If you’re not dealing with a lot of URLs, you could simply sort the URLs by alphabetical order but then you won’t get the subdirectory count filtering which can be a lot faster for larger sites. See crawl frequency by content type Finding out what content is getting crawled, or if there are any content types that are hogging crawl budget, is a great check to spot crawl budget waste. Frequent crawling on unnecessary or low priority CSS and JS files, or how crawling is occurring on images if you are trying to optimize for image search, can easily be spotted with this tactic. In Excel, seeing crawl frequency by content type is as easy as filtering by URL or URI stem using the Ends With filtering option.

Quick Tip: You can also use the “Does Not End With” filter and use a .html extension to see how non-HTML page files are being crawled — always worth checking in case of crawl budget waste on unnecessary js or css files, or even images and image variations (looking at you Wordpress). Also, remember if you have a site with trailing and non-trailing slash URLs to take that into account with the “or” operator with filtering.

Spying on bots: Understand site crawl behavior

Log File Analysis allows us to understand how bots behave by giving us an idea of how they prioritize. How do different bots behave in different situations? With this knowledge, you can not only deepen your understanding of SEO and crawling, but also give you a huge leap in understanding the effectiveness of your site architecture. See most and least crawled URLs This strategy has been touched up previously with seeing crawled URLs by user-agent, but it’s even faster. In Excel, select a cell in your table and then click Insert > Pivot Table, make sure the selection contains the necessary columns (in this case, the URL or URI stem and the user-agent) and click OK.

Once you have your pivot table created, set the rows to the URL or URI stem, and the summed value as the user-agent.

From there, you can right-click in the user-agent column and sort the URLs from largest to smallest by crawl count:

Now you’ll have a great table to make charts from or quickly review and look for any problematic areas:

A question to ask yourself when reviewing this data is: Are the pages you or the client would want being crawled? How often? Frequent crawling doesn’t necessarily mean better results, but it can be an indication as to what Google and other content user-agents prioritize most. Crawl frequency per day, week, or month Checking the crawling activity to identify issues where there has been loss of visibility around a period of time, after a Google update or in an emergency can inform you where the problem might be. This is as simple as selecting the “date” column, making sure the column is in the “date” format type, and then using the date filtering options on the date column. If you’re looking to analyze a whole week, just select the corresponding days with the filtering options available.

Crawl frequency by directive Understanding what directives are being followed (for instance, if you are using a disallow or even a no-index directive in robots.txt) by Google is essential to any SEO audit or campaign. If a site is using disallows with faceted navigation URLs, for example, you’ll want to make sure these are being obeyed. If they aren’t, recommend a better solution such as on-page directives like meta robots tags. To see crawl frequency by directive, you’ll need to combine a crawl report with your log file analysis. (Warning: We’re going to be using VLOOKUP, but it’s really not as complicated as people make it out to be) To get the combined data, do the following: Get the crawl from your site using your favorite crawling software. I might be biased, but I’m a big fan of the Screaming Frog SEO Spider, so I’m going to use that. If you’re also using the spider, follow the steps verbatim, but otherwise, make your own call to get the same results. Export the Internal HTML report from the SEO Spider (Internal Tab > “Filter: HTML”) and open up the “internal_all.xlsx” file.

From there, you can filter the “Indexability Status” column and remove all blank cells. To do this, use the “does not contain” filter and just leave it blank. You can also add the “and” operator and filter out redirected URLs by making the filter value equal “does not contain → “Redirected” as shown below:

This will show you canonicalized, no-index by meta robots and canonicalized URLs. Copy this new table out (with just the Address and Indexability Status columns) and paste it in another sheet of your log file analysis export. Now for some VLOOKUP magic. First, we need to make sure the URI or URL column data is in the same format as the crawl data. Log Files don’t generally have the root domain or protocol in the URL, so we either need to remove the head of the URL using "Find and Replace" in our newly made sheet, or make a new column in your log file analysis sheet append the protocol and root domain to the URI stem. I prefer this method because then you can quickly copy and paste a URL that you are seeing problems with and take a look. However, if you have a massive log file, it is probably a lot less CPU intensive with the "Find and Replace" method. To get your full URLs, use the following formula but with the URL field changed to whatever site you are analyzing (and make sure the protocol is correct as well). You'll also want to change D2 to the first cell of your URL column ="https://www.example.com"&D2 Drag down the formula to the end of your Log file table and get a nice list of full URLs:

Now, create another column and call it “Indexability Status”. In the first cell, use a VLOOKUP similar to the following: =VLOOKUP(E2,CrawlSheet!A$1:B$1128,2,FALSE). Replace E2 with the first cell of you "Full URL" column, then make the lookup table into your new. crawl sheet. Remember to sue the dollar signs so that the lookup table doesn't change as you. apply the formula to further roles. Then, select the correct column (1 would be the first column of the index table, so number 2 is the one we are after). Use the FALSE range lookup mode for exact matching. Now you have a nice tidy list of URLs and their indexability status matched with crawl data:

Crawl frequency by depth and internal links This analysis allows us to see how a site’s architecture is performing in terms of crawl budget and crawlability. The main aim is to see if you have far more URLs than you do requests — and if you do then you have a problem. Bots shouldn’t be “giving up” on crawling your entire site and not discovering important content or wasting crawl budget on content that is not important. Tip: It is also worth using a crawl visualization tool alongside this analysis to see the overall architecture of the site and see where there are “off-shoots” or pages with poor internal linking. To get this all-important data, do the following: Crawl your site with your preferred crawling tool and export whichever report has both the click depth and number of internal links with each URL. In my case, I’m using the Screaming Frog SEO Spider, going exporting the Internal report:

Use a VLOOKUP to match your URL with the Crawl Depth column and the number of Inlinks, which will give you something like this:

Depending on the type of data you want to see, you might want to filter out only URLs returning a 200 response code at this point or make them filterable options in the pivot table we create later. If you’re checking an e-commerce site, you might want to focus solely on product URLs, or if you’re optimizing crawling of images you can filter out by file type by filtering the URI column of your log file using the “Content-Type” column of your crawl export and making an option to filter with a pivot table. As with all of these checks, you have plenty of options! Using a pivot table, you can now analyze crawl rate by crawl depth (filtering by the particular bot in this case) with the following options:

To get something like the following:

Better data than Search Console? Identifying crawl issues

Search Console might be a go-to for every SEO, but it certainly has flaws. Historical data is harder to get, and there are limits on the number of rows you can view (at this time of writing it is 1000). But, with Log File Analysis, the sky’s the limit. With the following checks, we’re going to be discovered crawl and response errors to give your site a full health check. Discover Crawl Errors An obvious and quick check to add to your arsenal, all you have to do is filter the status column of your log file (in my case “sc-status” with a W3C log file type) for 4xx and 5xx errors:

Find inconsistent server responses A particular URL may have varying server responses over time, which can either be normal behavior, such as when a broken link has been fixed or a sign there is a serious server issue occurring such as when heavy traffic to your site causes a lot more internal server errors and is affecting your site’s crawlability. Analyzing server responses is as easy as filtering by URL and by Date:

Alternatively, if you want to quickly see how a URL is varying in response code, you can use a pivot table with the rows set to the URL, the columns set to the response codes and counting the number of times a URL has produced that response code. To achieve this setup create a pivot table with the following settings:

This will produce the following:

As you can see in the above table, you can clearly see “/inconcistent.html” (highlighted in the red box) has varying response codes. View Errors by Subdirectory To find which subdirectories are producing the most problems, we just need to do some simple URL filtering. Filter out the URI column (in my case “cs-uri-stem”) and use the “contains” filtering option to select a particular subdirectory and any pages within that subdirectory (with the wildcard *):

For me, I checked out the blog subdirectory, and this produced the following:

View Errors by User Agent Finding which bots are struggling can be useful for numerous reasons including seeing the differences in website performance for mobile and desktop bots, or which search engines are best able to crawl more of your site. You might want to see which particular URLs are causing issues with a particular bot. The easiest way to do this is with a pivot table that allows for filtering the number of times a particular response code occurs per URI. To achieve this make a pivot table with the following settings:

From there, you can filter by your chosen bot and response code type, such as image below, where I'm filtering for Googlebot desktop to seek out 404 errors:

Alternatively, you can also use a pivot table to see how many times a specific bot produces different response codes as a whole by creating a pivot table that filters by bot, counts by URI occurrence, and uses response codes as rows. To achieve this use the settings below:

For example, in the pivot table (below), I’m looking at how many of each response code Googlebot is receiving:

Diagnose on-page problems

Websites need to be designed not just for humans, but for bots. Pages shouldn’t be slow loading or be a huge download, and with log file analysis, you can see both of these metrics per URL from a bot’s perspective. Find slow & large pages While you can sort your log file by the “time taken” or “loading time” column from largest to smallest to find the slowest loading pages, it’s better to look at the average load time per URL as there could be other factors that might have contributed to a slow request other than the web page’s actual speed. To do this, create a pivot table with the rows set to the URI stem or URL and the summed value set to the time taken to load or load time:

Then using the drop-down arrow, in this case, where it says “Sum of time-taken” and go to “Value Field Settings”:

In the new window, select “Average” and you’re all set:

Now you should have something similar to the following when you sort the URI stems by largest to smallest and average time taken:

Find large pages You can now add the download size column (in my case “sc-bytes”) using the settings shown below. Remember that the set the size to the average or sum depending on what you would like to see. For me, I’ve done the average:

And you should get something similar to the following:

Bot behavior: Verifying and analyzing bots

The best and easiest way to understand bot and crawl behavior is with log file analysis as you are again getting real-world data, and it’s a lot less hassle than other methods. Find un-crawled URLs Simply take the crawl of your website with your tool of choice, and then take your log file an compare the URLs to find unique paths. You can do this with the “Remove Duplicates” feature of Excel or conditional formatting, although the former is a lot less CPU intensive especially for larger log files. Easy! Identify spam bots Unnecessary server strain from spam and spoof bots is easily identified with log files and some basic command line operators. Most requests will also have an IP associated with it, so using your IP column (in my case, it is titled “c-ip” in a W3C format log), remove all duplicates to find each individual requesting IP. From there, you should follow the process outlined in Google’s document for verifying IPs (note: For Windows users, use the nslookup command): https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/80553?hl=en Or, if you’re verifying a bing bot, use their handy tool: https://www.bing.com/toolbox/verify-bingbot

Conclusion: Log Files Analysis — not as scary as it sounds

With some simple tools at your disposal, you can dive deep into how Googlebot behaves. When you understand how a website handles crawling, you can diagnose more problems than you can chew — but the real power of Log File Analysis lies in being able to test your theories about Googlebot and extending the above techniques to gather your own insights and revelations. What theories would you test using log file analysis? What insights could you gather from log files other than the ones listed above? Let me know in the comments below. Read the full article

#googlelogin #googleloginaccount #googlelogingmail #googlelogo #googlemaillogin #googleslideslogin

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howtoloseweightfastsafely · 6 years ago

Text

How To Clean Up Your Liver and Vital Organs

Have you ever really wondered why your cholesterol levels and liver enzymes are high?

Why your blood pressure is rising?

Why old age spots are showing up on your face?

And why you can't lose weight no matter what diet you're on?

These issues all have one thing in common: a liver that is crying out for a healthy detox.

This is one of the main "underlying causes" of fat gain and poor health, that most people don't acknowledge (and that few even know about).

You see, your liver only weighs a few pounds but it is by far one of the most important organs in your body.

It's the main filtration system for your body.

For example, imagine a brand new filter for your kitchen faucet or shower.

When you first look at the filter, it's clear and may look like some sort of mesh material, with holes you can see light through.

Now once you start running water through the filter, you begin filtering out all types of particles and microbes that shouldn't be there.

Over time, these particles and microbes collect on the filter. And if you don't ever clean the filter, what happens?

Well, the filter gets full of the toxic compounds and needs to be cleansed (very much like a filter in your air conditioner that gets clogged up with dust, dirt and other particles).

If you're following along well, you can probably guess what this is leading to.

You see, this same exact "dirty filter" scenario happens with your liver.

In normal daily living, toxins are clogging the filtration system of your liver. And although the body is self-cleaning, the amount of toxins in the environment and food supply is so great that it often exceeds the filtration ability of the liver.

This is yet another reason that cholesterol levels shoot up, since the liver is responsible for processing and synthesizing cholesterol.

This is also when liver enzyme levels rise, indicating that the filtration ability and functions of the liver have been depressed.

Blood pressure can shoot up too, and old age spots are more prevalent because the pigment lipofuscin can't be filtered in the liver.

And of course, you can't lose weight because your liver is closely tied in with processing of food and nutrients. When it's working overtime to rid your body of toxins and keep you safe, you can bet it isn't sparing a moment to deal with your pesky fat stores.

Looks like it's time for a detox!

A healthy one of course...(and not some 3 day juice fast, after which you return to eat the same junk you were in the first place!)

What 'Clogs' Your Liver

Some of the biggest "liver cloggers" are some of the most common things we come into contact within the environment on a daily basis:

Processed foods and refined foods

Hydrogenated fats (and partially hydrogenated ones - FYI these are trans fat, the deadliest type of fat)

Industrial seed oils (including vegetable oil, soybean oil, corn oil, etc.)

Harmful chemicals within laundry detergents and cleaning products, which end up being absorbed in the skin

Toxins in the air we breathe such as heavy metals and pollution

Tobacco smoke and excessive alcohol intake

Prescription drugs and recreational drugs (and even over-the-counter NSAIDs)

Caffeine, over a reasonable amount (I recommend no more than 400 mg daily)

Tap water and well water that contains drug residues, heavy metals, fluoride and chlorine, and even microbes

Skin care products filled with chemicals that need to be removed from the body asap!

How to Have A Healthy Detox

It comes down to this: you have a choice to make each day...

You can choose to live "clean" and decrease the stress and filtration demands on your liver...

Or, you can live without much concern about this, and wake up one day with high blood pressure, heart disease and other degenerative diseases.

Sadly, many people think nothing about their health and what their body needs to function at a high level.

And while others are on the right path by exercising and eating right, they never go to the next level - a level in which they take steps that increase their body's ability to detoxify wastes, especially in the colon and the liver.

Essentially, they leave it up to chance.

But, as I'm sure you've learned in this book already...it's never up to chance.

Just like the filter on your water faucet in the kitchen or in your bedroom air conditioner, your liver will begin to clog up with toxins after a period of time.

The toxins are the same ones that have contributed to the obesity epidemic and insane disease/early death rates the world is facing these days.

The good part is: there are various things you can do each day that will drastically improve the liver's ability to detoxify itself.

This is how a proper detox is done.

It's not a 3 day juice cleanse, and it's not a 14 day "miracle detox".

It's a complete change to eating and lifestyle habits that ensure you're keeping your liver and body "clean" day in and day out.

Here are some things you can do. Take these step by step if you must, but do not wait. Take action today.

1. Remove processed, refined, and gluten/wheat-based foods which all contribute to a clogged system

2. Eat enough vegetables and fruit to prove phytonutrients that help the healthy detox process

a. Try to eat veggies with every meal, and 2-3 pieces of fruit daily

3. Drink enough water, which makes it possible for the body to remove the wastes detoxified by the liver

a. Most Americans are also chronically dehydrated which can contribute to fatigue, pain, and various imbalances, leading to many health problems.

4. Eat enough fiber, which helps remove waste from the colon

a. Dark green veggies and fruit are the best sources for fiber

b. Do not use fiber supplements

c. Try not to get all your fiber from grains, since the "roughage" they create can make very small incisions in the gut lining which cause problems over time.

5. Take vitamin and mineral supplements (make sure you do your research first!)

a. This helps to remedy vitamin and mineral deficiencies in the body, which most of us have

b. 3 very important vitamins/minerals that most Americans are deficient in are Vitamin D3, Magnesium and Potassium.

c. There are also many more which are beneficial (we will these discuss later)

6. Use various herbs or herbal combinations that cleanse the liver gently.

a. The best known and researched herbs with liver cleansing abilities are Milk Thistle and Turmeric/Curcumin.

b. Milk Thistle has been used as a liver tonic for centuries in Europe and Turmeric has been used for thousands of years in India for a variety of ailments.

Now that you've seen the components of a healthy, gradual detox...did you notice that the items on this list are things that not very many people pay serious attention to on a regular basis?

Sure we may be doing some of these things already since we "know" we need them to be healthy. But unfortunately, many of us simply doing a very poor job at it.

We might eat a healthy salad for lunch, but eat processed or unsafe foods from breakfast and dinner. Or we take all our vitamins for 3 days in a row and then forget to take them the other 4 days. The list goes on and on.

The truth is many of us "half ass" our way through things.

But unfortunately, when our health and well-being is the thing we're half-assing, the results can be disastrous.

It's even worse that we often "say" we feel good, when in reality we don't -- and even if we wanted to find our health "sticking points", we wouldn't know what to look for.

This is compounded by the fact that humans inherently want to look and "sound" good to others.

So when a health researcher or even a friend says "what did you eat today" or "how's that new diet going?", we're much more likely to lie or stretch the truth, rather than be 100% honest.

The good thing is, the facts don't lie.

There are hundreds of research studies that prove that most people aren't doing too well when it comes to filtering out these toxins.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC), for example, has mentioned that people they tested in one study found dozens of carcinogenic compounds swimming around in their bloodstream.

They estimated our bodily environment to be 100 times more toxic than in our grandparent's time.

Interested in losing weight? Then click below to see the exact steps I took to lose weight and keep it off for good...

Read the previous article about "The 10-second Trick That Can Slash Your Risk Of Cardiovascular Mortality By 37% (Most Traditional Cultures Have Done This For Centuries, But The Pharmaceutical Industry Would Be Up In Arms If More Modern-day Americans Knew About It)"

Read the next article about "The Simple Detox 'Cheat Sheet': How To Easily and Properly Cleanse, Nourish, and Rid Your Body of Dangerous Toxins (and Build a Lean Well-Oiled "Machine" in the Process)"

Moving forward, there are several other articles/topics I'll share so you can lose weight even faster, and feel great doing it.

Below is a list of these topics and you can use this Table of Contents to jump to the part that interests you the most.

Topic 1: How I Lost 30 Pounds In 90 Days - And How You Can Too

Topic 2: How I Lost Weight By Not Following The Mainstream Media And Health Guru's Advice - Why The Health Industry Is Broken And How We Can Fix It

Topic 3: The #1 Ridiculous Diet Myth Pushed By 95% Of Doctors And "experts" That Is Keeping You From The Body Of Your Dreams

Topic 4: The Dangers of Low-Carb and Other "No Calorie Counting" Diets

Topic 5: Why Red Meat May Be Good For You And Eggs Won't Kill You

Topic 6: Two Critical Hormones That Are Quietly Making Americans Sicker and Heavier Than Ever Before

Topic 7: Everything Popular Is Wrong: The Real Key To Long-Term Weight Loss

Topic 8: Why That New Miracle Diet Isn't So Much of a Miracle After All (And Why You're Guaranteed To Hate Yourself On It Sooner or Later)

Topic 9: A Nutrition Crash Course To Build A Healthy Body and Happy Mind

Topic 10: How Much You Really Need To Eat For Steady Fat Loss (The Truth About Calories and Macronutrients)

Topic 11: The Easy Way To Determining Your Calorie Intake

Topic 12: Calculating A Weight Loss Deficit

Topic 13: How To Determine Your Optimal "Macros" (And How The Skinny On The 3-Phase Extreme Fat Loss Formula)

Topic 14: Two Dangerous "Invisible Thorn" Foods Masquerading as "Heart Healthy Super Nutrients"

Topic 15: The Truth About Whole Grains And Beans: What Traditional Cultures Know About These So-called "Healthy Foods" That Most Americans Don't

Topic 16: The Inflammation-Reducing, Immune-Fortifying Secret of All Long-Living Cultures (This 3-Step Process Can Reduce Chronic Pain and Heal Your Gut in Less Than 24 Hours)

Topic 17: The Foolproof Immune-enhancing Plan That Cleanses And Purifies Your Body, While "patching Up" Holes, Gaps, And Inefficiencies In Your Digestive System (And How To Do It Without Wasting $10+ Per "meal" On Ridiculous Juice Cleanses)

Topic 18: The Great Soy Myth (and The Truth About Soy in Eastern Asia)

Topic 19: How Chemicals In Food Make Us Fat (Plus 10 Banned Chemicals Still in the U.S. Food Supply)

Topic 20: 10 Banned Chemicals Still in the U.S. Food Supply

Topic 21: How To Protect Yourself Against Chronic Inflammation (What Time Magazine Calls A "Secret Killer")

Topic 22: The Truth About Buying Organic: Secrets The Health Food Industry Doesn't Want You To Know

Topic 23: Choosing High Quality Foods

Topic 24: A Recipe For Rapid Aging: The "Hidden" Compounds Stealing Your Youth, Minute by Minute

Topic 25: 7 Steps To Reduce AGEs and Slow Aging

Topic 26: The 10-second Trick That Can Slash Your Risk Of Cardiovascular Mortality By 37% (Most Traditional Cultures Have Done This For Centuries, But The Pharmaceutical Industry Would Be Up In Arms If More Modern-day Americans Knew About It)

Topic 27: How To Clean Up Your Liver and Vital Organs

Topic 28: The Simple Detox 'Cheat Sheet': How To Easily and Properly Cleanse, Nourish, and Rid Your Body of Dangerous Toxins (and Build a Lean Well-Oiled "Machine" in the Process)

Topic 29: How To Deal With the "Stress Hormone" Before It Deals With You

Topic 30: 7 Common Sense Ways to Have Uncommon Peace of Mind (or How To Stop Your "Stress Hormone" In Its Tracks)

Topic 31: How To Sleep Like A Baby (And Wake Up Feeling Like A Boss)

Topic 32: The 8-step Formula That Finally "fixes" Years Of Poor Sleep, Including Trouble Falling Asleep, Staying Asleep, And Waking Up Rested (If You Ever Find Yourself Hitting The Snooze Every Morning Or Dozing Off At Work, These Steps Will Change Your Life Forever)

Topic 33: For Even Better Leg Up And/or See Faster Results In Fixing Years Of Poor Sleep, Including Trouble Falling Asleep, Staying Asleep, And Waking Up Rested, Do The Following:

Topic 34: Solution To Overcoming Your Mental Barriers and Cultivating A Winner's Mentality

Topic 35: Part 1 of 4: Solution To Overcoming Your Mental Barriers and Cultivating A Winner's Mentality

Topic 36: Part 2 of 4: Solution To Overcoming Your Mental Barriers and Cultivating A Winner's Mentality

Topic 37: Part 3 of 4: Solution To Overcoming Your Mental Barriers and Cultivating A Winner's Mentality

Topic 38: Part 4 of 4: Solution To Overcoming Your Mental Barriers and Cultivating A Winner's Mentality

Topic 39: How To Beat Your Mental Roadblocks And Why It Can Be The Difference Between A Happy, Satisfying Life And A Sad, Fearful Existence (These Strategies Will Reduce Stress, Increase Productivity And Show You How To Fulfill All Your Dreams)

Topic 40: Maximum Fat Loss in Minimum Time: The Body Type Solution To Quick, Lasting Results

Topic 41: If You Want Maximum Results In Minimum Time You're Going To Have To Work Out (And Workout Hard, At That)

Topic 42: Food Planning For Maximum Fat Loss In Minimum Time

Topic 43: How To Lose Weight Fast If You're in Chronic Pain

Topic 44: Nutrition Basics for Fast Pain Relief (and Weight Loss)

Topic 45: How To Track Results (And Not Fall Into the Trap That Ruins 95% of Well-Thought Out Diets)

Topic 46: Advanced Fat Loss - Calorie Cycling, Carb Cycling and Intermittent Fasting

Topic 47: Advanced Fat Loss - Part I: Calorie Cycling

Topic 48: Advanced Fat Loss - Part II: Carb Cycling

Topic 49: Advanced Fat Loss - Part III: Intermittent Fasting

Topic 50: Putting It All Together

Learn more by visiting our website here: invigoratenow.com

#weightloss #diet

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harriet-spy · 8 years ago

Text

This story would have required too much heavy lifting to actually write in full. But, to indulge a friend, I wrote some of the emotional bits. An AU. Hopefully an obvious one.

Greg wasn’t sure what sort of horror movie visual he’d been expecting to see as he approached Holmes’s cell, but it wasn’t a man sitting in an armchair in a snug Victorian-looking nook, reading a book. He was very pale—well, you’d expect that, wouldn’t you—and lanky, sharp-featured, with a long nose. The overhead picked up a faint red in his hair. A little odd, but not necessarily intimidating. Though the worst person Greg’d ever met was a tiny old lady pensioner who’d poisoned half the neighborhood’s kids. The book was thick, with onionskin pages; Holmes turned the page approximately once a minute as Greg waited, apparently oblivious to Greg’s presence.

But of course he couldn’t actually be, and Greg was willing to be patient, but he didn’t have all day to stand around this place. “Mr. Holmes?” he said. No response. “Or…whatever it is you’d like to be called?”

He turned the page. “Most of the guards here call me Mike.”

“Mycroft, then,” Greg said, and that won him the ghost of a smile. “If you’re amenable, I’d like to talk to you about some murders.”

The smile diluted itself to nothing. “Whatever stories they’ve told you about me, Detective Inspector, you can’t believe I just popped out of here for a quick spot of slaughter and then popped back in.”

“Oh, you’re not a suspect. I just wanted to ask you some questions.”

Another page turn. “Detective Inspector, in the twenty-one years I have been imprisoned, I have been asked by my captors to predict terrorist attacks; to make fortunes in the markets for them; to break reputedly unbreakable codes. I have cooperated, not because I have been rehabilitated in any way, shape, or form, but simply to stave off boredom. Why do you imagine I’d be interested in something so limited as murder?”

Damn. Greg had actually been able to hear the semi-colons as he spoke. “Well, it involves your family,” he said.

Mycroft’s finger halted, mid-flick. He still didn’t look up. “My parents are dead.”

“Yeah, I read that. The others.”

Flick completed.

“Some hikers got lost and found a body on the grounds of Musgrave last week. Badly decomposed, but forensics suggest that he was tortured and killed in much the same way as four other people in the county. I have pictures, if it would help to look at them. We think it’s a serial killer and we’re trying to figure out the connection, if any”—he remembered to add—“to the estate.”

Mycroft snapped the book shut and finally looked at him. His eyes seemed a hundred miles more remote than he actually was. “Tell my sister that I appreciate her sending me such a pretty policeman, but I must decline to play.”

Greg blinked. Well, this would be the weirdness they’d told him about. “Your sister didn’t send me, Mycroft. In fact…” He decided to be bold. “I think she might be involved.”

“You interviewed her.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yes, of course.”

“Then she sent you, Detective Inspector. I’ve no idea why she’s decided I’m a threat to her at this late date, but she’s wrong.” He flung his long fingers outward. “She won a long time ago. Tell her that.”

He laid the book down and picked up a pad of paper that had been lying on the floor next to his chair, along with a pencil. Greg stared. Definitely not all there. But he hated to have come all this way for nothing.

“And what should I tell your brother?”

Mycroft looked straight ahead for quite some time, not blinking. Then he sighed. “There’s no point in telling him anything.”

Mycroft took two steps out the exit door, did an odd little stagger, and fell. He pushed himself up to his knees, but kept his hands on the pavement. Greg reached for his arm, but he jerked it violently out of Greg’s grasp. His eyes were screwed shut.

“Are you okay?”

“The ground,” Mycroft said through his teeth. “The perspective. I haven’t been under the open sky in seventeen years.”

“Oh. Damn.” He hadn’t planned for this. It hadn’t even occurred to him, though now it seemed bloody obvious. “Can you stand?”

“Not with my eyes open,” and now Mycroft was shivering.

“All right. All right. Just…hold on, mate. Hold on.” Greg cast around. It was too cold for him to take off his coat. He turned back into the building. In the reception area there were a few umbrellas by the door. Greg swiped one without a pang of conscience and came back out. He knelt down next to Mycroft and opened it over him, blocking out the sky. “Is that any better?”

His eyes blinked slowly open. For a moment, he looked remarkably young. “Yes,” he said cautiously.

“All right, then.” Greg gave him his other hand to help him up, careful to keep the umbrella close over his head. “It’s only a short walk.”

“I know that.”

The irritation in Mycroft’s voice was reassuring, but as they settled into their seats in the copter, Greg noticed that he was looking green again. “You’re probably going to want to close your eyes for this,” he said through the radio.

The copter lifted off. Mycroft darted one peek down at the swiftly churning Atlantic as they cut an arc over it and immediately sank back in the seat.

“They gave you some Xanax,” Greg said. “I think you’d better take some. If you throw up in here, it’ll be a long trip.”

An hour later, Greg helped Mycroft down from the copter. Three doses of Xanax and he was still absolutely rigid—he hated to think what it would’ve been like without the medication. Fortunately, it was another short trip to the car. Mycroft stumbled in and Greg shut the door behind him with a feeling of relief.

It was a long drive down into London. Mycroft spent most of it looking out the window. Greg could see the pulse still jumping in his neck and decided not to try talking to him. As self-contained as he had been in his cell, he had to be embarrassed now, even if he didn’t show it. He also decided not to put on the radio. God knew how he’d react to that. So most of the trip was quiet and uneventful, so much so that as Greg hit London-bound traffic on the M11, he shifted his focus to the road rather than his passenger.

Sometime after they’d reached the city proper, he glanced over and realized that that had been a mistake. Mycroft was slumped over, basically dangling in the seatbelt, eyes completely glazed over, lips slack.

“Mycroft? Are you okay? Mycroft!”

What had gone wrong? If the pills had just kicked in late, he’d be asleep, not in a trance. Greg debated whether he should pull over. Probably better to get him to the house.

“Mycroft!”

He reached out and shook his shoulder. Mycroft flinched and curled away, but the action seemed mechanical, like a plant on a nature show recoiling from an unpleasant stimulus. There was no more awareness in his eyes.

“Jesus, Mycroft, don’t do this now. We’re almost there, okay? I don’t want to have to take you to hospital, I could never explain you. Okay?”

Much against his better judgment, he tried squeezing his hand. He felt the faintest contraction of muscle in reply, and squeezed again. Mycroft made a curious interrupted gasping noise, as if he’d just emerged from deep water, and turned his head, blinking.

Greg hastily released his hand. “Hey, can you hear me?”

Mycroft didn’t answer. He seemed to be looking at the console. After a minute, his hand darted forward and seized the multitool Greg kept there. With one motion, he flicked up one of the knives and then slashed it across his palm. Bright red welled up immediately.

“What are you doing?” Greg grabbed at the tool. Much to his relief, Mycroft let it go immediately, fixating on the injury. His breathing was still irregular. Greg wrenched the wheel, pulling them off, then threw the tool into the back seat and seized his wrist. “Are you out of your mind?”

Mycroft said raspily, “I was. Or too far in it.”

He flexed his hand, and Greg could see the pain ripple over him. “What are you talking about?”

“Fugue state, Detective Inspector,” and some of the irritation was returning to his voice. “Do you have any idea what’s going on outside these windows?”

Irritation on the verge of giving way to hysteria. Greg looked around. “Yeah. It’s London. Big city. You remember.”

“The last time I was here was in 1995! Do you have any idea how much data—“

Mycroft cut himself off and sat back, shrinking into himself, trembling.

“Ohhh.” Greg didn’t think he had the best imagination, but he wasn’t slow. Yeah, London was different than it had been back in the twentieth century. Even more noise, color, lights, frenetic activity, and Mycroft might as well have been in a monastery up at Sherrinford. “Ohh, okay. I get it.”

“It’s a good thing cars don’t have cigarette lighters anymore,” he muttered, with a choked laugh that was too much like a shriek.

Greg winced and let go of his wrist. Okay. De-escalate. He knew how to do this. “So. Just listen to my voice for now, all right? There’s a first aid kit in the glove compartment,” he said gently. “I’m going to lean over and get it, okay? Can you just try to take some deep breaths while I do?”

Mycroft didn’t answer.

Greg opened it as slowly as he could and removed the kit. “In for seven counts, out for eleven, Mycroft,” he said. “It’ll get easier.”

Still no answer, though he thought he was trying to comply.

He reached over for the injured hand. As his fingers approached, Mycroft’s hand executed a sort of jerky swoop in the air, but then halted. “Okay. Okay,” Greg said, and moved again.

When Mycroft surrendered his hand to him, it felt like rescuing a wounded bird.

Mycroft swung away and stared at him. “You think I killed Victor Trevor.”

Greg just kept a stray cynical snort from escaping. He’d found Mycroft in the deepest darkest dungeon there was, what could he have possibly thought…? But Mycroft sounded astonished. And offended. His eyes were dark.

“Look,” he said placatingly, “you were barely thirteen. I’m sure you didn’t…back then the Crown actually had to overcome a presumption that someone your age couldn’t tell right from wrong enough to commit a crime—“

“Which the Crown did in my case.“

“Well, your sister said—“

“I know what my sister said. All of it. None of it was true. I never hurt Victor Trevor. In any way.”

Mycroft was actually flushed. The contempt in his voice kept cracking, falling open, leaving a strange rawness.

But Greg was used to criminals denying their crimes, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. They got angry. They got quiet. They cried. They screamed. They were guilty all the same.

“Mycroft, come on, I read your file. You killed two other children practically the minute you arrived at Aston Hall! And then when they sent you here, that doctor.”

“They were attempting to take advantage of me,” Mycroft said. “If you’ve seen my file, you must know that when I was younger I looked very much like someone who could be made a victim. The staff weren’t going to lift a finger to help me. I had to make it very clear from the outset what I would not tolerate. Those deaths saved other lives.”

Greg cocked his head and looked at him. That the inmates sometimes got up to bad things at places like Aston Hall—that was no secret. He could see the chubby Mycroft he remembered from the file being a target. Although that hardly justified killing someone…but, then, he had only been a kid…

And he had been convicted of murdering the six-year-old friend of his little brother. The little sister had not quite said he was fiddling with both of the boys, but that was the conclusion the cops had come to. And the verdict had borne out their position.

“Look, I came and got you out knowing what you’d been convicted of. Nothing’s changed. Does it really matter what I think?”

Mycroft’s eyelids suddenly drooped, as if they’d become too heavy to keep up. He turned away. “Yes. It does. Did. No, it doesn’t matter.”

Those choppy, inconsistent phrases sounded nothing like Mycroft. Greg felt as if he’d been handed a forfeit in a game he didn’t know he’d been playing.

“I’m quite tired,” Mycroft went on. “I think I’ll retire for the evening.”

“Mycroft,” Greg said, “I really didn’t think—“

He rose. “You believe my sister may be a serial killer, and yet it never occurred to you that Victor Trevor might have been her first victim. No, Detective Inspector, you didn’t think at all. Good night.”

Even after Mycroft had re-acclimated, walking the streets with him was still an adventure. He haughtily refused to adjust to the rapid pace of the London pedestrian, which meant he was in constant danger of being knocked over. Worse, several times a day he would lose himself in some information he had just taken in and slow or even stop altogether. When he saw it happening, Lestrade quickly got used to grabbing Mycroft’s elbow and manhandling him out of traffic until he deigned to come on-line again.

The sign of that abstraction was a narrowing of the eyes, a contraction of the brow. But a few days in, when Mycroft slowed on Albany Street, Lestrade glanced over to see a slackening of his features, a softness in his gaze he’d never seen before. He turned his head to see what he was looking at. MARKSON PIANOS, the sign read.

“Do you play?” he asked, then realized what a stupid question it was. No doubt they kept a baby grand at his top-security prison for him…

“I,” Mycroft stopped and cleared his throat, “I did.”

“Do you want—“ Greg began and then stopped, because Mycroft was already plunging across the street and into the store. Greg had to follow.

Mycroft had seated himself on the bench in front of one of the instruments just before the window. He was staring at the keys as if he didn’t dare touch them. A shop assistant came up to him and Greg said hastily, “We’re looking for now, thanks.”

Mycroft stretched out his left hand, and settled it on the keys. He tentatively struck one key, then another, dissonant. He made a little face, struck another, then played a chord. He carefully worked his way up a scale, still with the one hand, then brought the other to join it.

He started out very slowly: a single tentative little tune, which he repeated, against a slowly changing background. Then it itself moved gently up and down, Mycroft speeding up and sounding more fluent as he went. Greg liked the piece. It was contemplative, it sounded like taking a fact from an investigation and turning it over and over, considering it in several different contexts. It ended all too soon.

Mycroft had gone completely still. Greg ventured, “Liked that. What was it?”

“Student piece,” Mycroft said without turning his head. “Bach prelude.”

He bit his lip, then launched into something else, not totally different in style. Quietly melancholy, but with a courtliness, repeating once with a darker ending. Then abruptly the same tune jumped up high and went piercing and wintry. Mycroft played it through almost to the end, then broke off and pushed himself away. He looked like he was having trouble getting his breath.

The shop assistant was looking at them again. Greg waved him off.

“Are you all right?”

Mycroft nodded.

“That was pretty. Why did you stop?”

“I can’t play it properly,” Mycroft said, toneless. “I can remember the score perfectly and all the recordings I heard as a boy, but to play it well myself I would need years to develop the muscle memory and my own style. I’ll never be able to play it properly.”

“It sounded fine to me…”

Mycroft shook his head, his lips thinning. He rose. “It wasn’t.”

#fic fragments #sherlock #mycroft holmes #greg lestrade

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