#see in you two years for the new and improved version ig

[theredtrails]

HERE IT IS

What if we were two hot women with incredible biotic powers but low sense of self 🤌🤌

[anglaoshi]

Algger choreography glow up: Legend of the Demon Cat v2

The new year brings new Algger gifts. I was just lamenting in the last installment how Legend of the Demon Cat, the Algger + Kyoka collab on SDC, was disappointing. Fortunately, there is now an updated version with the same music and theme, and it’s much more successful. You can watch it on Weibo:

or on IG:

I won’t waste a ton of time belaboring the numerous faults of the SDC version: If you’ve seen it, you know what I’m talking about, and if you haven’t seen it, don’t go looking, it’s very uncomfortable. In brief, it was awkwardly designed and sluggishly executed. But now, redemption! 

The new version is a class dance, so it’s minimally produced. But it’s very successful with regards to some of the challenging concepts attempted in version one. In particular, the strange, angular shapes in this version read with much clearer intention, to the point where they kind of retroactively reverberate onto the previous piece. Where before I saw awkwardness, I can now see prototyping of otherworldly, demonic designs. In this new version, those designs are perfected. 

Let’s start with the narrative heart of the piece: 

This is the moment that really clarified everything for me. Even though it’s a solo performance, you can see here the expression of conflict, encroachment, and transformation. Waves of motion reverberate against each other, bursting where they intersect. The imbrication of limpness and tone creates tension. This dynamic is most heightened by the circular arm swings, which include the both elements within the same movement. In this grounded or intentional gracelessness, you can feel the edge of defeat, the power struggle. This moment has such an understated intensity as it combines wide arcs with tiny, shattering details. Conceptually dense and visually fascinating, this is the strongest moment of the work. 

The second best image, for me, is this languid set of vectors. There’s such an entrancing and fluid movement here. Algger’s isolation, strength, and body control has really improved a lot lately. He’s also developing a larger range of motion and better texture as he pushes through big moves, which have previously been relative weak spots for him. It’s so different from his previous style and comfort zone. I’m excited to see how these new and improved technical skills lead to further creativity and innovation. 

The floor work in this piece is also exceptional, powerful, and light. There seem to be some elements of stiletto/heels dance included in the floor moves, especially with regards to leg position and attitude. And that slide! It was very Yanis Marshall. Certainly, heels dance is another excellent outlet for feline inspiration. I’d love to see Algger choreograph for heels dance. I bet it would be weird. 

The ending combines two Algger ending technique favorites, the drop and the fake out. There are two low cat poses in a row. Meant to evoke two cats, maybe? Or the theme of secondness? Or something related to the film, Legend of the Demon Cat, which I don’t know much about? Regardless, unlike the last version of the work, this dance looks and feels quintessentially like Algger. 

Watching the new piece, I feel such a compression of energy, of powers roiling beneath the surface. This choreography has much more clarity of vision and purpose. I really enjoyed seeing these ideas rise to their potential in the updated version.

[diamondcitydarlin]

For those of you that may have missed it, some highlights from the Harvey and Kayvan insta stream/video chat yesterday (in which they answered one of my questions!!). Bear in mind I had to miss about 30 mins of it to go to the store, so if anyone saw the whole thing in completion feel free to add to this. WARNING THERE ARE SOME -LIGHT- SPOILERS FOR SEASON 2 HERE:

- To my question of, “How did Guillermo and Nandor meet?” (keep in mind, Harvey and Kayvan are actors, they do not write the show and have little control over the direction the writing takes, this was just their collective theory and is subject to change within canon...but it’s still funny, also this is paraphrased from memory): They both posit that Guillermo knew of Nandor and suspected he was vampire for awhile (personally I like to think there was a Twilight esque montage involved of Guillermo googling ‘vampire-familiar relationship’ stuff). Determined to become a vampire himself via familiar-vampire exchange, Guillermo was on Nandor like white on rice, constantly asking him to strike the familiar deal, loitering outside his house, etc. Kayvan improvised Nandor yelling at him; “Leave me alone or I will SUCK YOU...OFF” (legit) to which Harvey started laughing and Kayvan said to the effect of, “Hey, vampires are pansexual ok”, and, of course, we can assume Guillermo’s ‘annoyance’ campaign eventually worked. This then transitioned into them talking about Guillermo’s unflinching loyalty for the past 10 years, how it’s much like when you’ve hungered for someone so long and finally enter into a relationship with them, there’s a tendency to do anything they ask and never take your position for granted. At least to a point.

- There was an improv puppet show with the Guillermo and Nandor plushies made for them. I do not know/remember the name of the artist that crafted these for them, so I hope you were there and got to see them loving on your creations!! If you see this post please tag yourself! Anyway, the improv puppet show went something like: 

Nandor: Guillermo, are you at the top or the bottom of the instagrams

Guillermo:....I don’t uh-...I don’t talk about that.

Nandor: ...you do quite often in the green room. 

They then both broke character, laughing. So CUTE. 

- SPOILERS FOR SEASON 2: Harvey revealed that we will be meeting Guillermo’s mom in this season and getting a glimpse into his home life growing up. Kayvan then expressed the wish that Nandor could meet Guillermo’s mom/family, much like how one introduces their boyfriend to their parents, etc, just so they could all complain about/tease Guillermo together. CUTE. I wouldn’t assume this means Nandor doesn’t meet his family in season 2, because these two are only allowed to directly tease so much and I think gave us little clues of what might happen next season via “Oh I wish this could happen...winkwonk” etc. 

-Kayvan did several impressions of Harvey which were hilarious and on point.

- They both talked about the glitter portrait and how there were actually several versions of this portrait made before the final was chosen for the episode. Harvey thinks the final choice was made in regards to colors/lighting and what looked best for the camera. Harvey claims to have one of these and has seen all of them, but the only way they seem to differ is in the colors chosen. 

-THE POSSIBILITY OF A ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE TWO OF THEIR CHARACTERS WAS ADDRESSED. However, it was answered as I expected it to be- that is, with no definitive answer. Kayvan and Harvey both expressed their support and interest in exploring this, however, and teased that we should just wait to see what happens in season 2. They also talked about the multiple layers of Guillermo and Nandor’s relationship, the romantic/erotic tensions that they’ve explored in their chemistry, and why it’s so fun to act out and explore because of the complexity of everything. If nothing else, we shippers can feel validated in knowing that, yes, this is an element of their dynamic. Whether or not we’ll see it come into fruition, well...we’ll just have to wait and see.

-There was another puppet show with the plushies in which ‘Nandor’ sang the drug blood song and they both danced. CUTE. 

And, finally, here’s a snip of the screencap I accidentally took of the stream lol, taken from my IG story as the original is on my new phone and I don’t feel like setting up the tumblr app right now

[thevortexofourminds]

Tumblr

I’m confident that @staff and @engineering already have a plan making it possible to see these new “embedded pictures” in full-res, because the way it’s now with that “fantastic” (yes, this is irony) new and “improved” (also irony)  the new post format on the app, Tumblr will drive away not only photographers but also all other visual artists. [Edit: since the full-res issue is not an issue anymore, I gladly remove the irony. I don’t think this all is something particularly negative] Seeing full-res pictures is mandatory. For all kind of pictures. Photos or not.

I get it, Tumblr is more and more shifting away from a desktop blogging platform to a “mobile only” version. That’s just how it is. That’s how the whole internet changed. The photo-sizes on the dashboard always have been a joke tbh (not as much of a joke as on IG, of course. But IG has become a farce anyway. That’s a different story though) but at least we had  [Edit:] have the possibility to see “full-res” photos. [Edit: Even though Tumblr’s dashboard size is still kind of laughable.]

If full-res will be completely abandoned, then I really feel gloomy about the future of all sorts of visual art on Tumblr.

You thought about that, didn’t you @staff @support @engineering ?

Well... we will see... Or not... 

That’s what bugs me about Tumblr, tbh: They never tell you what’s gonna happen. Just talk about “exciting new things to come”. Could it be that there are no real plans? Just some vague ideas? Like... “Oh! That sounds good. Let’s do that!” but without really thinking through the consequences? Or is that just my impression? [Edit: I stand to this. That’s my impression of being around for about six years]

As a writer, I do indeed like the new possibilities this new post format holds, and I will - bit by bit - use some of the things. Probably not the fancy colours, but... well... who knows? And I’m curious how this all will affect my writing and my stories. These ARE exciting new features. And my current series will benefit from them. Especially, since I’ve been writing on my phone and tablet a lot lately.

But as I see it as an illustrator, photographer and also as a curator - if that all stays this way - Tumblr will lose a lot (and I mean A WHOLE FRIGGING LOT) of visual artists. And visual artists used to be the backbone of what Tumblr always tried to be: a place for creativity. Maybe that focus changed as well... we will see... or not...

My two cents.

Edit: That was faster than I thought ;) hence the edits above. Well... as it turned out, after updating my app it worked. Also on the computer. Sets are possible, re-arranging the sets is possible, enlarging is possible. And that on the app and on the computer.

I will keep this post. As a meditation on how important full-res is ;)

[haunteddefendorglitter]

Early Vectorworks Architect Cad Mac Software

Early Vectorworks Architect Cad Mac Software 2017

Vectorworks Architecture

Vectorworks Architect

Cheap Vectorworks Software

If you’re looking for CAD software for Mac, you’re not without options. We’ve found some standout Mac and cloud-based CAD platforms for you.

Powerful CAD and 3D software for Mac. Vectorworks Architect is the only industry modeling, design and documentation software created with BIM from the basics of the design process. We use this software for early concept design as it simple and easy to use and produces beautiful concept plans and elevations. Vectorworks launches and Runs! We will be evaluating Vectorworks and the new macOS 11 this week. We will be working hard to make sure Vectorworks runs well on Big Sur when it is released. And, we will also be preparing a Vectorworks that is ready to run natively on Apple's new 'Silicon' when it hits the streets in late 2020.

You’re likely to hit a wall if you’re searching for computer-aided design (CAD) software designed for Mac. There are plenty of CAD software options for Windows—you’ll see many of them in our list of the top AutoCAD alternatives—but only a handful offer support for Mac.

And, if you think you’ll bypass the issue by using a cloud-based CAD tool, you’ll quickly find that CAD vendors haven’t embraced the cloud as much as other types of software vendors have, so the offerings are still largely on-premise. According to Gartner’s Hype Cycle for IT Evolution (full content available to Gartner clients), cloud-native CAD applications still have five to 10 years before they reach mainstream adoption.

But fear not, Mac users. We’ve done some digging and have put together this list of the top-rated CAD software for Mac. Read more about our methodology at the bottom of this article.

5 Best CAD Software for Mac (presented alphabetically)

Jump to:

CorelCAD

FreeCAD

Fusion 360

LibreCAD

Onshape

1. CorelCAD

CorelCAD offers 2D drafting and 3D design capabilities, such as the drawing constraints feature for creating different geometric shapes faster and the push and pull feature for 3D direct modeling.

3D modeling in CorelCAD (Source)

Common user feedback trends

Based on analyses of user reviews on Capterra, here’s an overview of the areas of CorelCAD they like best, as well as those they feel could use improvement.

What users like:

The short learning curve: Users mention that the tool is easy to use and beginners don’t have to spend a lot of time learning it.

Compatibility with multiple file types: Users like the fact that the tool is compatible with DWG, PDF, ACIS, DXF, STL, CDR, and other file formats.

What users think could be improved:

Software reliability issues: Some users mention that the software tends to crash at times.

Better dimension functionality: Some users would like a better dimensioning feature for more accurate drawings of angles and proportions.

Who can use CorelCAD

CorelCAD can be used by construction businesses for collaborative editing on multiple devices. It offers native iOS applications, which makes it easy for field crews to add annotations in graphics and share files using their iPhones and iPads. Additionally, the tool allows team members to leave recorded messages and instructions for colleagues embedded in the graphics using a voice note tool.

2. FreeCAD

FreeCAD is an open source CAD tool that works on Mac as well as Windows and Linux. It reads many common file formats such as STEP, IGES, STL, SVG, DXF, OBJ, IFC, and DAE.

It offers different modules, including a drawing sheets module that converts 3D models into 2D views, a rendering module that can export 3D objects, and an architecture module for a BIM-like workflow.

3D model of a building in FreeCAD (Source)

Common user feedback trends

Based on analysis of user reviews on Capterra, here’s an overview of the areas of FreeCAD they like best, as well as those they feel could use improvement.

What users like:

Feature-richness for a free tool: Users mention that, although it’s free, the tool comes with a full set of features.

Reliability: Users mention that the tool does not demand a lot of CPU power and works well on devices with low RAM.

What users think could be improved:

Steep learning curve: Users mention that the tool is not the most user-friendly solution and can be difficult for beginners to learn.

Dependent on community for updates: Users mention that modules ignored by the community tend to become outdated quickly.

Who can use FreeCAD

FreeCAD appears to be best for hobbyists and home users. It’s also good for users who don’t have a high budget for software but still want to tinker with CAD modeling.

FreeCAD could also be a good choice for businesses on a budget looking for a free and open-source option.

3. Fusion 360

Fusion 360 is a CAD tool from Autodesk with design functionalities such as sketching and 3D modeling. It also supports project management with features such as task management, document management, and collaborative image editing.

Document management in Fusion 360 (Source)

Common user feedback trends

Based on analysis of user reviews on Capterra, here’s an overview of the areas of Fusion 360 they like best, as well as those they feel could use improvement.

What users like:

Comprehensive design features: User mention that the tool offers all the functionalities necessary for 2D and 3D designing.

Availability of training resources: Users like the fact that the tool comes with ample documentation and tutorials.

What users think could be improved:

System crashes: Users mention that the tool tends to crash, especially when designing and rendering large files.

Steep learning curve: Users mention that it can take a lot of time to learn the advanced functionalities of the tool.

Who can use Fusion 360

Fusion 360 is part of the Autodesk ecosystem designed for the AEC industry. This makes the tool suitable for construction businesses that are already using, or intend to use, other Autodesk solutions. Using a software vendor that offers multiple solutions will especially benefit larger businesses that invariably need software that can scale with their growing requirements.

4. LibreCAD

LibreCAD is an open source CAD tool that supports Mac, Windows, and Linux operating systems. The tool comes with 2D drawing features such as a snap tool, dimensioning, and annotations. It also supports multiple file imports and exports.

2D drawing in LibreCAD (Source)

Common user feedback trends

Based on analysis of user reviews on Capterra, here’s an overview of the areas of LibreCAD they like best, as well as those they feel could use improvement.

What users like:

Ease of use: Users mention that the tool offers an intuitive and easy-to-use interface.

Lots of tutorials: Users like the fact that there are ample video tutorials that help them get started with the tool.

What users think could be improved:

Software speed: Users mention that the software tends to lag, especially when trying to print designs.

Add support for 3D design: Users would like to see functionalities for creating 3D designs.

Who can use LibreCAD

LibreCAD is an exclusively 2D CAD tool for drawing and designing blueprints of buildings, layouts of parks, and the like. As a free tool, the solution can be used by small and midsize businesses across different industries, including manufacturing, engineering, architecture, and construction.

5. Onshape

Onshape is a cloud-only CAD solution that comes with features such as document management with version control, collaborative design creation/editing capabilities, and reporting dashboards to understand project status.

Importing documents in Onshape (Source)

Common user feedback trends

Based on analysis of user reviews on Capterra, here’s an overview of the areas of Onshape they like best, as well as those they feel could use improvement.

What users like:

Document version control: Users like the document management features of the tool, such as version history.

Intuitive interface: Users mention that the tool comes with an intuitive interface for easy image editing.

What users think could be improved:

Performance issues: Some users mention that the tool does not function well on non-Chrome browsers and has file loading issues.

Lack of features: Users mention that the tool should improve certain features such as 2D drawing and 3D surfacing.

Who can use Onshape

As a fully-cloud based tool, Onshape is ideal for businesses that need to manage design documents collaboratively with multiple stakeholders. The tool’s collaboration functionalities include document sharing, document editing, comments, and file downloads in multiple CAD formats, such as Parasolid, ACIS, STEP, and IGES.

Next steps

This report offers a mix of Mac CAD solutions—from free tools that can help you with basic 2D drawing to advanced solutions offering extensive 3D modeling functionalities.

If these tools don’t meet your needs, expand your search and check out more options. To help you, we’ve created a CAD software comparison page where you can explore products using different filters, such as features offered and pricing options.

If you’re looking to understand the CAD software market better, we also recommend that you read the articles listed below:

Methodology

To be shortlisted, products had to fulfill the following criteria:

Products had to be compatible with Mac and offer core CAD software capabilities, such as:

2D drawing or 3D modeling features

Collaborative editing of drawings

Products needed a minimum of 20 user reviews on Capterra (published in the last two years).

Products had to have a high overall rating (an average of at least 4 out of 5 on Capterra).

Note: The content in this piece that provides opinions and points of view expressed by users. It does not represent the views of Capterra.

Looking for Construction Management software? Check out Capterra's list of the best Construction Management software solutions.

What is better ARCHICAD or Vectorworks Architect? Finding the ideal Building Information Modeling Software - BIM for your firm is essential to improving your company’s efficiency. In our platform, you can easily compare different solutions to see which one is the most suitable software for your needs. Here you can match ARCHICAD vs. Vectorworks Architect and check out their overall scores (9.2 vs. 8.8, respectively) and user satisfaction rating (98% vs. 92%, respectively).

Additionally, you can analyze the specifics of costs, terms, plans, features, tools, and more, and decide which software offers more benefits for your business. In practice, select the software which helps you to add/remove features and pricing to address your company growth or lack of it.

If you would like to quickly decide on the more reliable CAD Software according to our experts we advise you take a look at these services: CorelCAD, ANSYS DesignModeler, Autodesk AutoCAD.

Free

Monthly payment

One-time payment

Annual Subscription

Quote-based

Façade design

Faster and smoother 2D navigation

Parametric custom profiles

Expression-based properties

Productivity & workflow enhancements

ARCHICAD doesn’t publish its enterprise pricing information. Contact the vendor to get a custom pricing quote.

ARCHICAD integrates with the following construction systems:

Navisworks

AutoCAD

Revit

Allplan Engineering

Tekla BIMsight

English

Early Vectorworks Architect Cad Mac Software 2017

Chinese

German

Hindi

Japanese

Spanish

French

Russian

Italian

Dutch

Portugese

Polish

Turkish

Swedish

Ikeda, Aflalo/Gasperini, FJMT

Windows

Linux

Android

iPhone/iPad

Mac

Web-based

Windows Mobile

Vectorworks Architecture

Small Business

Large Enterprises

Medium Business

Freelancers

email

phone

live support

training

tickets

An industry-leading Building Information Modeling (BIM) platform for urban planners, interior designers, designers, and architects. The platform makes planning and designing simple. This is thanks to its key design features combined with intuitive productivity and workflow tools. It also provides precise construction documentation and accurate cost estimates.

mail@graphisoft.hu

GRAPHISOFT SE Záhony u. 7. (GRAPHISOFT Park 1.) 1031 Budapest, Hungary

Comparision

Score

Live Home 3D Alternatives8.2

ActCAD Professional Alternatives8.0

Infurnia Alternatives8.0

HighDesign Alternatives7.3

Præsto AE Alternatives6.5

Free

Monthly payment

One-time payment

Annual Subscription

Quote-based

2D & 3D Modeling

BIM Modeling

Graphical Scripting

Subdivision Surface Modeling

Drafting & Annotation Tools

Schedules & Construction Documents

Project Sharing

File Import & Export

Vectorworks Architect has only one enterprise pricing. You can purchase a new license with a one-time payment of $2,945.00. Training guides are also available for you to acquire.

English

Chinese

German

Hindi

Japanese

Spanish

French

Russian

Italian

Dutch

Portugese

Polish

Turkish

Swedish

Inoxidar, Holzer Kobler Architekturen, Auer+Weber+Assoziierte GmbH

Windows

Linux

Android

iPhone/iPad

Mac

Web-based

Windows Mobile

Small Business

Large Enterprises

Medium Business

Vectorworks Architect

Freelancers

email

phone

live support

training

tickets

A comprehensive architecture software developed with BIM.

sales@vectorworks.net

Vectorworks, Inc. 7150 Riverwood Drive, Columbia, MD 21046 USA

Comparision

Score

Planner 5D Alternatives9.4

Cedreo Alternatives8.8

Chief Architect Alternatives8.5

Easy Blue Print Alternatives7.6

Envisioneer Alternatives7.5

Free

Monthly payment

One-time payment

Annual Subscription

Quote-based

2D Floor Plan Creation

Interior and Exterior Photorealistic 3D Renderings

3D Floor Plan

Mirror Floor Plan

Import Floor Plan

Over 7,000 Customizable Home Decorations and Materials

Grouped Product Packs

Product Library

Project Duplication

One-Click Roofing

Resizing Tool

Day and Night Views

Landscaping Features

Contact & Project Management

Floor Plan Sharing

Multi-Format Renders

Render Download

Quick and Easy Learning Curve

Online Knowledge Base

Phone, Chat and Email Support

Cedreo offers two plans. A 14-day free trial is also available. Here’s an overview:

Pro plan – $79/month

Unlimited projects with 3D visualization

Maximum of 40 realistic 3D renderings per month

Import blueprints

Email support

Access to knowledge base with tutorials

Enterprise plan – By quote

Unlimited projects with 3D visualization

Maximum of 80 realistic 3D renderings per month

One-to-one onboarding

Home projects catalog

Project sharing with teammates

Phone support

Email support

Access to knowledge base with tutorials

English

Chinese

German

Hindi

Japanese

Spanish

French

Russian

Italian

Dutch

Portugese

Polish

Turkish

Swedish

Loft One Contracting, Heartwood Build & Design, Sixpence 21 LTD

Windows

Linux

Android

iPhone/iPad

Mac

Web-based

Windows Mobile

Small Business

Large Enterprises

Medium Business

Freelancers

email

phone

live support

training

tickets

Easy-to-use, browser-based home design tool for creating floor plans and realistic 3D renders.

Cedreo USA 625 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139 USA

Comparision

Score

Home Designer Alternatives9.5

Carlson Takeoff Alternatives8.2

Cheap Vectorworks Software

Domus Cad Pro Alternatives8.0

Renoworks Alternatives8.0

Præsto AE Alternatives6.5

You should note that even though both ARCHICAD and Vectorworks Architect may have an outstanding range of features each software might be aimed at a different business size. If you are analyzing various solutions you should give some attention to a business size they are aimed at. Specific functionalities may scale up efficiently for large enterprises but if you run a small or mid-sized business it’s frequently better to stay away from paying for complex features that you may never have a chance to use.

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[liliannorman]

The many efforts to lick cat allergies

Time magazine’s list of Best Inventions of 2006 included an unusual creation. It wasn’t a gadget; it was a cat.

“Love cats but your nose doesn’t?” the magazine asked. “A San Diego company is breeding felines that are naturally hypoallergenic.” (Hypoallergenic means that something is unlikely to cause an allergic response.) There was a 15-month waiting list for these “sniffle­proof kitties,” which sold for $3,950 or more. 

The company selling the cats was Allerca. It had tapped into a tantalizing dream for allergy-prone cat lovers. Just two genes are responsible for making cats a problem for many people. It therefore seemed like a no-brainer to engineer cats that lacked those genes — or to simply breed cats with versions of the genes that made the animals less allergenic.

But so far, itchy-eyed cat lovers have been left disappointed.

Explainer: What are allergies?

By 2010, Allerca had stopped taking orders. Lawsuits were lining up. The sniffle-proof kitties never materialized. Some angry customers said they never received a kitten. Others were sent a cat that set off their allergies.

But for all those who haven’t given up hope, there may be new options around the corner. An allergic owner might pop open a can of allergy-fighting food — for the cat. Or maybe vaccinate the cat to produce fewer allergens. And allergy shots for owners might shift from weekly or monthly injections to a shot that offers immediate relief.

The new gene-editing tool CRISPR/Cas9 might even come to the rescue. This technology might deliver the ultimate dream to those who can afford it: a cat that doesn’t produce allergens at all. One company has made some progress applying CRISPR/Cas9 to cats.

Success in taming cat allergies might even bring good news for people whose allergies have nothing to do with cats. If any of the cat allergy–fighting measures prove safe and effective, they might be deployed against other allergens. They could prove especially useful against airborne ones like pollen, dog dander or dust mites. Up to 30 percent of the world’s population suffers from allergens in the air. So that’s plenty of runny noses to dry up.

Explainer: What are proteins?

When it comes to cat allergies, the main culprit is Fel d1. This small protein is produced primarily in cats’ salivary and sebaceous glands. Fel d1 is found in flakes of dead skin, or dander. It is spread to hair when a cat licks itself. Thus it’s not cat hair that people are allergic to, just hair coated in cat spit.

A singular target

As allergens go, Fel d1 gets around. It sticks to hair and clothing, so it’s easily carried from place to place. It lasts for weeks or months before breaking down. It’s light and easily enters the air. That makes it even more insidious. In fact, even houses without a cat tend to have a little Fel d1 in their dust, says Martin Chapman. This immunologist is president and CEO of Indoor Biotechnologies. It’s a company in Charlottesville, Va., that tests for allergens and allergies.

All cats produce some amount of Fel d1. However, that doesn’t mean that all cats are equally allergenic. In tests of hundreds of cats, Indoor Biotechnologies found levels ranging from just 5 to as much as 2,000 micrograms of Fel d1 per gram of fur. Variations in two key genes explain much of that wide range. But no one knows exactly which versions of the genes result in low-allergen cats.

It’s also not clear what role Fel d1 plays in cats. Lions and other big cats have their own version of the protein, Chapman notes. So it seems to have stuck around during cat evolution. That suggests the protein does something. Male cats that haven’t been neutered tend to have the highest Fel d1 levels, which have been linked to male hormones. Based on that association and the protein’s similarity to other molecules, Fel d1 might be a pheromone. That’s a chemical used to communicate via scent. But no one knows whether the protein plays some role in keeping cats healthy.

It’s not clear what role Fel d1 plays in cats. But lions and other big cats have their own version of the protein, which suggests it must do something, Martin Chapman says.Bernard Bialorucki/iStock/Getty Images Plus

All this uncertainty has made allergies to cats difficult to tackle. For now, options are limited. People can take antihistamines and other medications to reduce symptoms. But such drugs don’t stop the allergy.

Traditional allergy shots are known as immuno­therapy or desensitization therapy. They aim to retrain a person’s immune system to be less sensitive to an allergen. But those shots are a commitment. A patient may need up to 100 injections over three to five years.

Some people can avoid needles by taking under-the-tongue daily drops of the same U.S. Food and Drug Administration–approved allergens as in the injections. But this treatment often is not covered by insurance.

“Desensitization therapy has been the only therapy for decades,” says Gerald Nepom. He is director of the Immune Tolerance Network in Seattle, Wash. It’s a research group funded by the National Institutes of Health. Exactly how desensitization works is still not fully understood. But the basic idea is that exposing the immune system to small amounts of allergens causes the body to make antibodies that block part of the allergic response. Unfortunately, Nepom says, desensitization generally doesn’t eliminate all symptoms. And the effects aren’t always permanent.

Allergy treatments 

There is no permanent cure for cat allergies, though a number of available treatments can reduce symptoms in many allergy sufferers. New treatments aim to do a better job at this or stop the allergy process in its tracks. 

TREATMENTAVAILABLE NOW?ACTIONPROSCONSAntihistaminesYesBlock histamine productionNewer drugs like cetirizine (Zyrtec) and fexofenadine (Allegra) cause less drowsiness than previous drugsMay not eliminate symptomsNasal steroidsYesReduce inflammation in the noseReduce sneezing, congestion and runny noseOnly treat symptomsTraditional allergy shots or dropsYesExact mechanism unknown; may increase helpful antibodiesThe only current therapy that reverses some allergiesRequires many shots over several yearsAllergy shots of lab-made antibodyNoBlock immune system’s recognition of allergenFast-acting prevention of allergic responseBoosters requiredPet food with antibodiesNoCuts amount of active Fel d1 allergen in cat salivaNo shots neededDoes not eliminate all Fel d1Vaccine for catsNoPrevents human immune system from recognizing cat allergenNo shots needed for peopleDoes not eliminate all Fel d1; more testing needed to confirm safety for catsGenetic engineering of catsNoRemoves genes that direct Fel d1 production in cats With no Fel d1, nearly all cat allergies would be eliminatedEffects on cats are unknown

Newer approaches are focusing on Fel d1. They either directly neutralize it or block its interaction with the human immune system. The competition to devise an effective solution to cat allergies is fierce. Because of the large potential market — about 10 percent (some estimate 20 percent) of people are allergic to cats — a successful approach could make companies a lot of money.

Applying lessons learned here to other allergies is a strong motivator, too.

Improving immunotherapy

One problem with traditional immunotherapy is that it tries to stop one of the later steps in the allergic response. Immunoglobulin E, or IgE, is an antibody that triggers an allergic reaction. Antibodies patrol the body looking for specific interlopers. In people with allergies, the IgE only latches onto the proteins or chemicals — allergens — that trigger their allergy.

When an IgE find its allergen, the antibody raises an alarm. It does that by telling certain cells that something is wrong. Those cells make chemicals called histamines (HIS-tuh-meens). It’s the job of histamines to get rid of bothersome things by any means necessary. Those histamine chemicals might make eyes water, or trigger coughing, sneezing or itching. That’s helpful when the substance poses harm. But it is not pleasant when the substance — like cat dander — is actually harmless. In allergies, this histamine response can go way too far. It can even cause people’s throats to swell shut and other life-threatening consequences.  

Traditional immunotherapy blocks the histamine-producing part of this reaction. Yet that’s only one part of the body’s response to an allergen.

“We now see allergy as an immune-activation symphony,” explains Nepom. Rather than a strict chain of single events, it’s more like an orchestra. And it has many players (molecules) performing on cue.

Today, Nepom says, allergy researchers are getting a clearer understanding of the role of each player. “This is like figuring out which part of the orchestra is creating the problem. Is it the horn section or the strings? Or do you have a single oboe player going rogue?” Knowing that could help researchers target players in the immune system more efficiently, he says.

For example, one research group funded by the Immune Tolerance Network is wrapping up a human trial that goes by the name of CATNIP. This clinical trial is testing what’s called an “allergen-plus” approach. Scientists combine small amounts of Fel d1 with an antibody that blocks a substance important to triggering the allergic response. That substance is a protein that helps spark and maintain allergic reactions. It may be one of those rogue oboists. The idea is that if this treatment works, a patient would develop a long-lasting tolerance from a one-year series of allergy shots. That may sound like a lot, but today’s version of such a therapy requires three to five years of shots.

Other parts of the allergic response are prime targets, too, says Jamie Orengo. She is an immunologist at Regeneron Pharmaceuticals in Tarrytown, N.Y. (Regeneron is a major financial supporter of the Society for Science & the Public. The Society publishes Science News for Students.)

In a test of people with cat allergies, one injection of an antibody that binds to the protein Fel d1 provided more relief from nasal symptoms than did a placebo shot. SOURCE: J.M. Orengo et al/Nature Communications 2018 T. Tibbitts

The company has designed antibodies that are highly specific to Fel d1. These antibodies bind to and lock up the allergen before the immune system can react to it. It’s an amped-up version of traditional immunotherapy. And it’s one that could be used to target other allergens, Orengo notes.

“We don’t have to rely on the human body. We can make those antibodies in the laboratory instead of waiting for them to be generated by the person naturally,” Orengo says. Tests in mice and in people allergic to cats showed fewer allergy symptoms after just one treatment, her team reported in a 2018 paper in Nature Communications. That one treatment gave results that used to be seen only after years of conventional immunotherapy. Most people treated saw as much as a 60 percent reduction in nasal symptoms.

One shortcoming: While this approach is very fast-acting, it doesn’t retrain the person’s immune system. Someone receiving the treatment would need periodic boosters — perhaps every few months.

Special cat food

Cat saliva is the biggest source of Fel d1. Researchers at Nestlé Purina are now testing cat food containing an antibody. It binds to the protein in saliva as a cat eats. This antibody doesn’t prevent the cat from producing the allergen. It does, however, make it almost impossible for the human immune system to recognize the allergen.

“In fact, this was an important strategy behind our research,” says Ebenezer Satyaraj. This immunologist is leading the research at the Purina Institute in St. Louis, Mo. “We didn’t want to stop the production of Fel d1 because currently it is not clear what role it has in the cat.”

When 105 cats were fed an experimental Purina pet food containing a Fel d1 antibody, levels of the allergen dropped below baseline levels over a 10-week period. SOURCE: E. Satyaraj et al/Immun., Inflamm. and Disease 2019T. Tibbitts

Tests so far suggest that the food can knock down the amount of active allergen on cat hair by about half. That may be enough to offer relief to some people with mild to moderate cat allergies. The company expects to begin selling the cat food later this year.

But it won’t help everyone. People with severe allergies or asthma may be unable to tolerate any amount of Fel d1 without causing symptoms, says Michael Blaiss. He is executive medical director of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology in Augusta, Ga.

Vaccinate the cat

There are cat lovers out there who’d probably be happier letting the cat get the shots. So another new approach aims to vaccinate cats against their own Fel d1. The shot would stimulate a cat’s immune system to produce antibodies that bind to Fel d1. That should make it so that human immune cells no longer recognize — and react — to the protein.

Researchers at HypoPet AG in Zurich, Switzerland, studded an inactive fragment of a virus with dozens of Fel d1 molecules. “If you make the allergen look like a virus, the immune system thinks it is a virus,” says Martin Bachmann. He is chief scientific officer of HypoPet. He’s also an immunologist at the University of Bern in Switzerland. This “Trojan horse” then triggers the cat’s immune system to start seeing Fel d1 — which it normally ignores — as an invader.

An initial test was done in more than 50 cats. Three injections of the vaccine were given three weeks apart. They stimulated the cats to make antibodies specific to the allergen. This reduced the cats’ secretion of the protein by more than half. And it did this without harming the cats, the researchers reported last July in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. The company now plans further safety testing, Bachmann says. HypoPet is working with U.S. and European Union regulators to bring the vaccine to market.

The hypoallergenic cat

Producing a cat that makes no allergens at all is still the goal for some researchers. The fact that some cats are naturally low in Fel d1 suggests that such pets could be bred. This is what Allerca tried and failed to do a decade ago. But frustratingly, you can’t just breed two cats with low Fel d1 levels and get a litterful of hypoallergenic kittens.

Tom Lundberg breeds Siberian cats in Oregon. He cautions that breeding two cats that are naturally low in the allergen Fel d1 doesn’t guarantee their kittens will also have low levels of the protein. His advice: If you need a low-allergen cat, get it tested and meet the cat before bringing it home.Sarah Starr

Oregon cat breeder Tom Lundberg has bred Siberian cats for more than 10 years. His goal has been to breed low-allergen cats. Lundberg himself is allergic to cats. He became fascinated by Siberians after owning one to which he was not allergic. But a second one, he recalls, gave him a “snotty nose and itchy eyes.”

Lundberg has long measured his cats’ allergen levels and tracked the results of breeding. He can confirm that there’s no way to guarantee that all the kittens in a litter will hit the genetic jackpot. He and his wife, Meredith, now sell the cats they breed based on their Fel d1 levels. Those tested with the lowest levels, which are the most rare, command the highest prices. These cost up to $5,200 for a kitten in the “extremely low” range of less than 1 microgram of Fel d1 per gram of fur. Only about 1 in 15 of the kittens he breeds from low-allergen cats fall into that category, he says.

Lundberg has received hundreds of calls from people giving up Siberian cats that breeders had claimed were hypoallergenic. “They’ll say the kittens were ‘bred from hypo­allergenic lines,’” he says. “That’s like saying corn was bred from corn — it’s meaningless.”

Anyone interested in buying a low-allergen cat, he says, should insist on seeing test data. He also notes that buyers with severe allergies may not be able to tolerate any amount of Fel d1.

Indoor Biotechnologies is trying to genetically engineer a cat that makes no Fel d1. “We’re working on it,” says Chapman, who founded the company. This company has used CRISPR/Cas9 to delete two genes. The company has filed for a patent on the process. Called Ch1 and Ch2, the genes being deleted would have instructed cells on how to make Fel d1. So far, the gene edits have worked for cat cells growing in cell-culture dishes.

Next, the company will try knocking out these genes in cat salivary tissues, also growing in a lab dish. Researchers will then make sure Fel d1 is no longer being made, says Nicole Brackett. She’s a postdoctoral scientist at the company. She has analyzed the DNA sequence of the Ch1 and Ch2 genes of 50 cats. She now has plans to do the same for 200 more cats. That will help identify the best gene region to target using CRISPR/Cas9.

If the genetic trick works, engineered cats would lack part or all of the genes needed to make Fel d1. Some cats naturally produce very little of this with no ill effects. So the thinking is that preventing cats from making the protein is unlikely to harm them. But scientists won’t know for sure until someone tries it. “That’s precisely the reason to do the experiment,” Chapman says.

Typically, producing such a cat would require deleting the gene from an embryo. The embryo would then be implanted in a female cat until the kitten is born. But Chapman doesn’t want to get into the breeding business. Instead, he hopes to ultimately edit the genes of adult cats. That is similar to gene therapies being developed now for people (which use a harmless virus to deliver gene-editing tools). Recent experiments have successfully edited the genes of adult mice and even people with sickle-cell disease, for instance.

Such a virus could be delivered by having a veterinarian inject it into the cat’s salivary glands. Or it might come as skin treatment to reach the sebaceous glands in the skin. And if it edits the genes for Fel d1, “that would be exciting,” Chapman says.

One researcher working to wipe out cat allergies won’t be standing in line for any injections, however. Bachmann, of HypoPet, says that he and his son are allergic to cats. When asked if he would try any of the new allergy treatments, he replied no. “I don’t love cats that much,” he says. “I’m more a dog person.”

A personal quest

Stoli (shown here) is a Siberian cat that belongs to the author of this article. Siberian cats are considered hypoallergenic by some people. But there’s no evidence that any cat breed is universally low in Fel d1. E. Engelhaupt

I’ve always been a cat person. So when I married Jay, who’s allergic to cats, among other things, I had a problem. Whenever Jay spent time around a cat, his eyes would start to itch. His nose would run.

But Jay loves cats, too. Like many allergy sufferers, he tried all the usual treatments. For a couple of years, he got monthly allergy shots. He now uses daily nasal steroids and the antihistamine cetirizine. Eventually, his allergies didn’t seem so bad. So we wondered if he could tolerate a cat. I’d been seeing a lot of claims about hypoallergenic cat breeds. I was skeptical but curious.

We’re both biologists by training, so we dove into the scientific literature. We didn’t find much. One small study in Veterinary Sciences from 2017 reported on mutations in Siberian cats that could potentially lower their Fel d1 levels or render the protein less allergenic. It was the barest of hints. But we decided to visit a Siberian cat breeder in Georgia and see if we might luck out.

That day we brought home Stoli on a trial basis. Stoli is a nearly 17-pound sweetheart. Jay’s allergic reaction to him was occasional and mild. And over a few months the sniffling seemed to diminish even more. We thought we’d found our low Fel d1 cat!

Then in the course of reporting this story, I decided to test Stoli. I sent off a fur sample to Indoor Biotechnologies. The result: Stoli’s fur tested at 790 micrograms per gram of fur — pretty darn high.

Maybe the immunotherapy that Jay has endured over the years gets more credit than Stoli’s genes. It’s OK. Despite those test results, we are definitely keeping the cat.— Erika Engelhaupt

The many efforts to lick cat allergies published first on https://triviaqaweb.tumblr.com/

[songbay]

The Songbay Lyric Writing Competition

New Ways Songbay is Supporting Lyricists in 2020

Lyrics turned into songs. Have your lyrics turned into original songs 

Since launching Songbay ten tears ago, we’ve been helping songwriters and lyricists meet their goals and grow their careers. We’ve developed innovative ways to support them on this journey.

In this article, we will be discussing the new features just added to Songbay in 2020, such as our ‘Lyric-to-Music’ service and the ‘Lyric-Improvement’ service. We’ll be sharing the results of last year’s Songbay Lyric Writing competition, talking to our winners and revealing everything you need to know about the benefits of these features to Songbay lyricists and songwriters.

The Songbay Lyric Writing Competition

The competition opened in August 2019 with the closing date the 1st October 2019, giving participants six weeks to compose their lyrics. To enter, our lyricists were challenged to write (and upload to Songbay) a lyric based on this image:

  Photograph by Ira R (IG: @eklektikum), sourced via Unsplash (IG: @unsplash)

  The lyric could be written in any genre but had to use structures based on typical song formats, for example, verse, bridge, chorus, intros, outros, etc.

We were impressed by the standard of all the entries and will be sharing our favourites throughout this article (they can all be purchased on Songbay).

The winners of the competition were awarded the top prize of having their lyrics set to music by our professional songwriting team.

One of the biggest challenges facing aspiring lyricists is finding composers and musicians ready to turn their lyrics into completed songs. Most publishers do not accept ‘lyric-only’ submissions without a high-quality music demo. This makes it tough for lyricists to get into the industry.

  Bob Love, Winner of the 2019 Songbay Lyric Writing Competition

      Lyricists Bob Love was our first winner with his lyric ‘The Dark Road Leads To Light’

        Verse: Bed sheets loose and crumpled In my dreams I had stumbled To a dark forest, like a tunnel of trees A road ahead, sun bursts through the leaves

Confused for a time I felt fear Startled to find someone else near A silhouette of a man, tired and aged He somehow knew, I’d lost my way

Chorus: He said..The dark road leads to light It’s gonna be such a beautiful sight A whole new world is waiting for you if you push on through

   View the full lyric here >>

  We were looking for lyrics that conveyed emotion and imagination, that could also work as a song. Our team of judges quickly shortlisted Bob Love’s lyric as a winning contender. We all found his narrative and message of hope quite compelling. Bob Love is a US-based lyricist with an impressive portfolio of lyrics to his name. Bob told us, “I enjoyed the challenge of the lyric contest. The picture was hard to write about. I based it on some of my life experiences. The tunnel of trees that I came up with, I got that from my experience with cancer treatment a few years back. I had 38 radiation treatments. The hallway that led to the office where I got radiation was long and narrow like a tunnel. I called it the tunnel of tears because it was so hard to go down that hallway and face more treatments.”

“Like anyone who’s lived a while, I have faced trouble in my life. I went through alcoholism years ago. Someone told me that to get well, I had to go through it; I could not go around it. That stuck with me, and I put that into the song, ‘the ghostly old man smiled and nodded at me, pointed ahead through the tunnel of trees. It’s just like trouble you see, can’t go around it, it’s your fate, got to go through it, it’s the only way.’”

  See all of Bob’s lyrics available for sale at Songbay here >>

  Lyrics turned into songs-As the competition winner, we turned Bob’s winning lyric into a completed song, using our new Lyric-to-Music-Service.

The Songbay Lyric-to-Music Service

  We created two different versions, both based on the genre and stylistic elements suggested by the artist when uploading the lyric. For the first version, we used a rough sung chorus that had been provided.

How this worked

When uploading his original lyric at Songbay, Bob made use of our industry-leading audio narration feature. In addition to having lyrics beautifully displayed for sale at Songbay, lyricists can narrate their lyrics or use our supplied backing music to automatically play when a user reads their work.

Our songwriting team used Bob’s rough idea for the melody as the basis of the chorus for the newly created song.

Have a listen here (music by Chris Porter):

Before: 

https://songbay.co/songbay/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Bob-Love-Chorus.mp3

After:

https://songbay.co/songbay/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Bob-Love-completed-Chorus.mp3

 Full version of the completed song:

https://songbay.co/songbay/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/The-dark-Road-leads-To-Light.mp3

A completely different version using the same lyric:

https://songbay.co/songbay/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Songbay-Bob-Love-TDRLTL-FINAL-2.m4a

  Get your lyrics turned into songs with music at Songbay

‘Are you looking to have your lyrics set to music? Our team of songwriters can turn your lyrics into professionally recorded songs. Anything from a pro-quality demo to a fully mixed, radio quality master. It is an opportunity to hear your words brought to life with music and vocals. You can then use the song in whichever way you choose. 

As always with all our sales of original lyrics and songs at Songbay, you retain complete control of your lyric and can use the song however you wish, profiting from any royalties the new song may generate. It’s worth pointing out, that unless a lyric is set to music, it cannot generate any music royalties. So this is another reason for lyricists to use our new ‘Lyric-to-Music-Service’.

Bob was the first person to use this feature. He says, “The Songbay team were great working with me on the music for the song. Many thanks to Chris Porter and Gary Cubberley. We communicated by email and they matched it up just right. I was pleased. I would certainly recommend it. It’s exciting to see your song come to life.”

  Have your lyrics turned into songs here >>

  Commended Entry in the 2019 Songbay Lyric Writing Competition

Dancin’ With Trees by Ric Holland  >> 

  The team behind our new services are: Gary Cubberley, Chris Porter, Valery Proletarski, Simon Graham, Olga Wells, Andrew Adigun, Andrew Hockney, Nandish Sadrani and Justine Perry.

Collectively, they have huge experience in all aspects of the music industry, including composing, songwriting, lyric writing, music production, arranging, recording, mixing, mastering, session singing and vocal coaching. They have written and recorded in session with artists such as:

Kazabian, Keane, Ellie Goulding, Ed Sheeran, Nick Cave & The BadSeeds, Patti Labelle, Jamie Cullum, West One Music, Faye Tozer, Amy Pearson, and Dagny (to name a few.) Members of our team have also been involved with prominent London West End Musicals, including Les Miserables and Billy Elliot. In the Orchestral and Opera world, with The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Concert Orchestra, Trinity College of Music, Royal Opera House Covent Garden and Wessex Opera. Songbay’s current clients include The BBC, ITV, BBC Radio, Channel 5, BRMB, Endemol Shine, and Tiger Aspect. Corporate clients include McDonald’s, DFDs Seaways and Konica Cameras.

.

We chatted with one of the Songbay songwriters, Chris Porter, about the new service.

  What do you find most interesting when writing music for the lyrics? 

The best and most interesting thing about creating music for lyrics is the different ’shapes’ you are made to work in – because of another creative’s artistic vision. Because all lyricists have different influences, approaching other people’s lyrics will always be different from the way you approach this task with your own. This means you nearly always make music differently from the way you normally do. This, in turn, means that you often find yourself slightly outside of your comfort zone – which, as has been regularly observed, is where the magic happens! Ultimately, successful songwriting is all about synergy – the perfect coupling of music, lyrics, and atmosphere – and that’s what I always try my best to achieve. Further, under these circumstances, it is a collaborative process. And I have very often found that two heads are better than one!

What is most challenging? Combining collaboration with subjectivity. Because this process is a collaboration (and because anything creative is subjective) I’m concerned that what I make will meet the expectations of the lyricist. The more information that can be supplied in terms of style and production choice all help to head off these anxieties. As a rule of thumb, I always try to let the lyric dictate musical choices, and then try to create music that is sympathetic to the original lyric. As a writer, I might be tempted to want to edit, adjust or refine a lyric. Here, I don’t have that luxury – the lyric exists, and is to be treated as the finished article.

Any other thoughts? 

Lyrics into songs is all about communication, I find that behaviour breeds behaviour. A successful song communicates – that’s its function. And as I’m a natural enthusiast, I will always want to create something that I can get enthusiastic about. And I hope, therefore, that this is communicated in the work – be it heart-breaking ballad or angsty protest rant!

  Here’s a couple more recent examples of a Lyric-to-Music service in action:

‘Beautiful Life’ by Piper (Chorus)

What a beautiful life you led What beautiful things you left behind my friend And I know that someday We’ll meet again What a beautiful life you led

What a beautiful world

https://songbay.co/songbay/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Beautiful-life-lyric-demo-with-music-arrangement-with-sung-vocals.mp3

Music by Songbayteam member Simon GRAHAM

  The ‘Gigolo’ by J-A-Y

Verse

Another Friday night another night of interaction, beauty’s only skin deep part of attraction, she’s wearing her high heels, a see through skirt, a call designer number with a DKNY shirt. So i smoozy on over with my hat and my cane, Oscar De La Renta’s meeting macho man, they ‘play that funky music’, the DJ boosts the gain, I give her thirty minutes till she’s screaming my name.”

Chorus

“I put my Guccis on, I’m gonna put Armanis on, Gonna put my CKs on, I’m gonna put Moschinos on, She’s gonna put Versace on, She’s gonna put Givenchy on, Vivienne Westwoods’ on, She’s super sexy Ralph Lauren,

https://songbay.co/songbay/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Friday-cropped-section.mp3

Music by Songbayteam member Gary Cubberley

  Have your lyrics turned into songs here >>

  Commended Entry in the 2019 Songbay Lyric Writing Competition

All The Things That Matter by Meggy

    The Lyric-Improvement-Service

“Receive professional analyses and evaluation of your lyrics. Receive detailed lyric improvement suggestions. Improve your lyric writing skills and boost your selling chances. We review and analyse your lyrics and show you how to make them stronger. We give you an independent perspective of your writing skills and the tools to become more creative!” 

We have also launched another feature for lyricists- Lyric-Improvement

You can submit your lyrics for independent professional review. Receive detailed analysis and evaluation of your new lyrics before making them available for sale at Songbay. We’ll also suggest improvements to existing lyrics from your porfolio.

We can make your lyrics work better with music, before investing time and money in composing and recording. For this reason, the Lyric Improvement Service goes hand-in-hand with our Lyric to Music service and is offered without charge when ordering the latter.

  Commended Entry in the 2019 Songbay Lyric Writing Competition

‘Walking Into The Light’ by Linda Tarry

    Runners Up

The term ‘Runner up’ is not completely accurate here, since several of our judges had the following lyrics marked as their winners!

Sheree Shaw

Our competition runners-up were Sheree Shaw and Emma Chute. They are both talented lyricists, who have been on Songbay for several years. Their writing skills are often in demand for collaboration projects with other artists. Sheree is based in Scotland, UK, and Emma in Perth, Western Australia.

As part of their prizes, they received exclusive free access to our new lyric-improvement-feature.

They shared their thoughts with us on the task of writing to a given image.

Sheree’s winning lyric was: ‘Out of the Woods, Into The Light‘. She said, “When I was given the task of writing the lyric based on the picture, I looked at the picture and wrote what I thought the picture represented. I felt it showed a feeling of being lost and someone who was trying to hide from the outside but could see that there was light. I would write a lyric based on a picture again as I found it helpful for bringing new ideas.”

Emma’s winning lyric was “Ol Piney Grove“. She told us, “I actually wasn’t going to enter as my writing usually just starts and then goes on, so to write on a subject took a lot of thought. I was driving and saw a place called Piney lakes. So initially the lyric was going to be a lot darker. But then I saw the house in my head and the man and the story just came but it was very challenging. I was very surprised and did a little dance around when I found I had come as a runner up.”

Here’s what they had to say on the Lyric Improvement Service:

Emma: “The lyric appraisal was very helpful. It showed me where I can miss giving the whole story or finish too quickly.”

Sheree: “When I received my appraisal I found it helpful and will be using the advice in my future work.”

If you would like analyses, evaluation, and feedback on your lyrics from our team, you can find the service in your user area at Songbay. Just choose ‘Lyric-Improvement’ after uploading. There are two options to choose from – Standard and Advanced. The latter also includes suggestions for re-wording the structure of the lyric as well as alternative word choices and phrases. It also gives you our complimentary guide ”Revamping Clichés” with expert advice on boosting the quality of your lyrics and many other useful writing tips and tricks.

  Commended Entry in the 2019 Songbay Lyric Writing Competition

The Walk of Defiance by Sheena Hope

  Chris Porter is involved closely with the new lyric improvement service. These are his thoughts:

“I do my best to bring to bear my English education in tandem with my decades of listening! Whilst there are all manner of rules concerning grammar and form, the poetry of lyric-writing is a wholly more fluid affair, and I tend to apply a perspective of ‘feel’ over the rigour of simple English appreciation. I also consider flow. The simple sounds of the words all feed into a considered appraisal. Whilst I sometimes wish it were as simple as ‘I like this’ or ‘I don’t like that’, I recognise that kind of close-minded thinking as the opposite of what creativity should be about. Ultimately, however, ‘feel’ tends to win. Does it communicate? Does it make you feel things? Does it get your intended message across? These are the kinds of things that appraisals should address. I favour a holistic approach to appraisal, therefore. And certainly not just whether it rhymes or repeats enough – though that can be important, too!”

  Commended Entry in the 2019 Songbay Lyric Writing Competition

‘Find The Way Through’ by 3 Song Writers From Scotland

  So how did we choose our competition winners?

With great difficulty!

As always when auditioning original lyrics for sale at Songbay, we were looking for strong writing techniques – use of metaphor, personification, alliteration, poeticism, and emotion. Additionally, we considered how closely the lyric followed the given brief and whether we could see it working when set to music.

We all had different opinions and favourite entries…

All the judges made shortlists of favourite entries. From this, we were able to create an ‘in common pool’ of the Top 20 entries.  The winners and runners-up were finally selected after hours of deliberation.

  Commended Entry 

‘Break In The Trees’ by Zephyrhillmusic 

  List of All Prize Winners in 2019 Songbay Lyric Writing Competition

  Here is a list of winners, runners up, and commended entries from the competition:

  First Place Winners:

Bob Love  ‘The Dark Road Leads to Light’ – https://songbay.co/view-lyric/2337184/

Maria Teresa Guzman  ‘Life Under The Woods’ – https://songbay.co/view-lyric/2337263/

  Runners Up:

Emma Chute  ‘Ol Piney Grove’ – https://songbay.co/view-lyric/2337161

Sheree Shaw  ‘Out of the Woods, Into the Light’ – https://songbay.co/view-lyric/2337223

  Highly Commended:

(Not in any order of preference)

Ric Holland  ‘Dancin’ With Trees’ – https://songbay.co/view-lyric/2337219

Meggy  ‘All The Things That Matter’ – https://songbay.co/view-lyric/2336844

Sheena Hope  ‘The Walk of Defiance’ – https://songbay.co/view-lyric/2336748

Zephyrhillmusic  ‘Break in the Trees’ – https://songbay.co/view-lyric/2337224

3 Songwriters From Scotland  ‘Find The Way Through’ – https://songbay.co/view-lyric/2337210

Linda Tarry  ‘Walking Into The Light’ – https://songbay.co/view-lyric/2336778

    We’re delighted at the success of the competition and would once again like to thank everyone who took part.  We’ve already started planning the Songbay Lyric Writing Competition 2020!

  Do you want your lyrics turned into songs? do you want to use our lyric improvement feature? Do you want your existing song improved, re-arranged with professional musicians and instrumentalists, or re-recorded and mastered? if so, don’t hesitate to get in contact with us for more details at enquiries@songbay.co

Contact Us >>

Fact: Songbay is the world’s largest original lyric library. It is a home for composers, songwriters, producers and song and lyric buyers. They are all looking to connect with each other! Songbay offers free copyright registration of all uploads and sellers keep 100% of sale fees.

  **Unfortunately, we were unable to contact one of the recipients of the winner award. We’re hoping to update on this soon.

  Features Covered in this article

  Lyrics -to-Music-Service

Lyric-Improvement-Service

        The Songbay Lyric Writing Competition was originally published on Songbay Music and Lyric Sales

[wikimakemoney]

Chaotic communication: COVID-19 is rewriting our cultural rules of connection

30-second summary:

Not only are face-to-face chats more frequent, they’re increasingly unannounced, unplanned and unavoidable. A jarring juxtaposition to our pre-COVID habits. It’s communication chaos.

While it seems haphazard, each call, chat and interaction is an expansion of community that chips away at our cultural fear of IRL intimacy and democratizes digital communities.

This migration gives brands a mandate to expand their offerings to bigger, more diverse groups of consumers as they use live-streaming and digital tools to build new communities all over the country.

The foundational cracks in the influencer veneer have been growing over the past few years, but the COVID crisis provides a magnifying glass that’s amplifying influencer’s social media shortcomings.

Wholesome, positive –if not strange and mindless– content has become a balm to cure our anxiety, a form of self-care that fills a void and provides a sense of calm that sheet masks and sourdough cannot.

When we emerge post-COVID, shell-shocked, knowing that catastrophe can hit again at any moment, we’ll still want straightforward talk from brands. Brands need to learn this lesson quickly if they hope to pivot successfully in the ‘new normal.’

Talk to any Millennial or Gen Z’er two months ago, or… text them; they would say there are fewer things more anxiety provoking than actual, in-real-time phone calls. The abruptness; the uncontrollableness; the awkward pauses. But that was the Old World. In the solitude of COVID induced quarantine, a craving for intimacy and personal connection means consumers, once notoriously adverse to spontaneous, face-to-face communications, are now clamoring to hear each other’s voices and see each other’s face.

Verizon fielded over 800M phone calls per day within the first two weeks the country was locked down; the word “Zoom” has become a stand-in to mean any “video chat,” and apps like Houseparty have seen downloads increase 70 fold.

Not only are face-to-face chats more frequent, they’re increasingly unannounced, unplanned and unavoidable. A jarring juxtaposition to our pre-pandemic habits. It’s communication chaos.

Quarantine and the COVID crisis have totally rewritten our cultural rules of communication. But the frantic ways we’re corresponding now will likely shift the way we connect long beyond the end of lockdown.

Shift 1: A quest for intimacy in digital communities

Your bestie going live. Your boss going live. Your bank going live. When we were ordered to stay home, it only took a matter of days for everyone to start broadcasting themselves, most times to seemingly chaotic and confusing ends.

Recently on IG live, comedian Whitney Cummings agreed to talk to anyone in attendance: she wound up chatting with baby squirrels.

I just did an IG live with anyone who asked me to join and I was scared but then the person I picked had baby squirrels and I will now be doing these a LOT pic.twitter.com/MztHwbIkYZ

— Whitney Cummings (@WhitneyCummings) May 2, 2020

The official, verified account of Skittles has, on more than one occasion, stirred up drama in the comments section of Bowen Yang and Julio Torres’ Instagram Live chats.

Club Quarantine— a daily digital Queer dance party that happens every night via Zoom– allows virtual clubgoers to join in with their cams, or just watch from behind a black tile, eliciting both an exhibitionism and vouyerism harking back to the random recklessness of the bygone Chat Roulette era.

But while it seems haphazard, each call, chat and interaction is an expansion of community that chips away at our cultural fear of IRL intimacy and democratizes digital communities.

Club Quarantine is not just a fun party; it’s a way for young queer people all over the world to be exposed to a community they may never have been able to access, or even imagine, before.

As more white collar workers are beginning to wonder not when they’re going to return to the office, but why they would ever return to an office at all, major coastal cities are staring at an exodus of their creative class and a bit of their cultural capital.

This migration gives brands a mandate to expand their offerings to bigger, more diverse groups of consumers as they use live-streaming and digital tools to build new communities all over the country.

Take The Wing, a women’s co-working space founded in New York City with offices in chic urban hubs like San Francisco and London.

When forced to close, they quickly pivoted from Millennial-pink meeting rooms to Zooms, making the interconnectedness of their community and celebrity-speckled programming accessible online for people all over. 

Shift 2: Exasperation with asperation

The foundational cracks in the influencer veneer have been growing over the past few years, but the COVID crisis provides a magnifying glass that’s amplifying influencer’s social media shortcomings.

When the crisis hit, Influencers and celebrities were among the first to draw our ire for using their privilege to improve their situations: fleeing from (highly infectious) cities to (highly staffed) second homes, and broadcasting (off-tune) singalongs after just a few days of being confined to their sprawling estates.

The highly-filtered, everything-is-perfect image that is the hallmark of influencer and celebrity marketing has never been less appropriate than it is now.

In a global crisis, consumers are rejecting content that screams aspiration and are instead looking for ways to share in and mitigate our collective exasperation. So what’s to fill this anti-influencer void? More unpolished, even unhinged, content.

Sixty-four year old character actor Leslie Jordan has seen his following balloon from 80k to 4.2 million thanks to a stream of monologues showcasing the absurd mundanity of lockdown: ironing for fun, baton twirling for exercise, watching porn while eating cereal.

But we’re the stars, too. From live baking and hair-coloring tutorials, to yoga flows in cluttered bedrooms, to organized weekly Zoom sessions, we’re all content creators and each other’s Influencers, now more than ever.

“Coming to you live” from the physical and emotional messiness of quarantine is recalibrating our relationship with reality, causing us to eschew unreasonable expectations and embrace “doing the best we can do” as the new form of “living our best life.”

Heiniken’s recent spot montages the relatable pain points of our endless digital gatherings and nods to the fact that quarantine life isn’t great, but we’re all trying to make it through.

Shift 3: Optimism is self-care

Optimism was already growing as a countertrend to the vitriol on the internet, but today, it’s flourishing.

During the pandemic, against a backdrop of endless doomsday news, we’re clamoring for more optimism. The sarcasm and troll-like tone that was once the hallmark of the internet is being replaced by content that uplifts.

For a moment this week, “Duck Pool Party,” a stream of ducks playing in a pool, was the most viewed Reddit livestream. Even notoriously snarky brands like Wendy’s have shifted their Twitter strategy, at least temporarily, to encourage camaraderie through games, activities and shared stories.

Wholesome, positive –if not strange and mindless– content has become a balm to cure our anxiety, a form of self-care that fills a void and provides a sense of calm that sheet masks and sourdough cannot.

Shift 4: Fascinated with facts

In March, consumers were letting out a collective sigh of exhaustion as their inboxes filled with branded emails detailing how we were all “in this together.”

But against the background of a pandemic, these vague platitudes have a counter-effect, reminding us all just how much these companies haven’t been there for us in the past: what little cooperation we received from airlines and car companies before, and what little practical application they have in this stripped back version of reality.

Instead, we want to hear the straightforward truth.

Unlikely figures like Dr. Fauci and New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo have emerged as the leading men of the pandemic (and even more bizarrely, sex symbols), and Cuomo’s curt, distinctively Dad-toned Powerpoint slides have found a cult-following of their own.

Frito Lay’s COVID-spot “It’s About People” has won praise for saying what they were doing to help employees, instead of selling chips.

But the most trustworthy brand voice comes from a most unlikely player: Steak Umms.

The frozen meat company has emerged as a “voice of truth” thanks to their straight-forward, no-nonsense tweets that are at times, radical, at least for a corporate brand.

Their willingness to tweet bold opinions– and not mild platitudes–earned them double their pre-COVID audience, and the admiration of the internet.

When we emerge post-crisis, shell-shocked, knowing that catastrophe can hit again at any moment, we’ll still want straightforward talk from brands.

Brands need to learn this lesson quickly if they hope to pivot successfully in the ‘new normal.’

Megan Routh is a cultural anthropologist, writer and strategist at Open Mind Strategy whose expertise lies in translating cultural insights and trends into actionable strategies for Fortune 100 companies including: PepsiCo, Calvin Klein, JP Morgan Chase, Mondelez, Target and the United States Postal Service. With a decade of experience conducting research, moderating workshops and cultivating trend and cultural intelligence across countries in North America, South America, Europe and Asia, Megan has helped clients uncover emerging directions in culture, business and consumer behavior to develop strategies and innovate products, services, and experiences.

The post Chaotic communication: COVID-19 is rewriting our cultural rules of connection appeared first on ClickZ.

source http://wikimakemoney.com/2020/05/25/chaotic-communication-covid-19-is-rewriting-our-cultural-rules-of-connection/

[yammineyammine]

Yammine: Top Parts From SEMA 2018

When you work the SEMA show, it can be a dizzying experience. There are more parts and cars than you’re physically able to comprehend. Every manufacturer is in attendance with their latest components ready to show them off to buyers, sellers, and media folks like us. We are so busy checking out new parts, running from hall to hall, doing FB Live videos, IG posts, web galleries, and online Web stories during the event, but we also have an eye on the print content you’re reading right now. After all, we can’t cover everything SEMA via galleries, FB live videos, and IG posts. The easiest way for us to tell about SEMA is a full story on the trendsetting and hard hitting parts each manufacturer hopes to make a mark in 2019.

One of the more popular wheel companies in the Mustang market, Billet Specialties was at SEMA showing off a variety of wheel designs. When we think of Billet Specialties, we are instantly reminded of its drag offerings. However, the company has a full lineup of street wheels, as well, especially from its B-Forged line.

It’s no secret that 1961-1979 F100s and 1966-1977 Broncos are hot right now. BSI Performance is one company hoping to catch lightning in a bottle with its 1966-1977 Bronco chassis offerings. BSI’s Bronco chassis features a mandrel bent frame, Currie Dana 44 axles, triangulated 4-link rear suspension, a Borgeson power steering box, King coilovers, Wilwood brakes, and Speedway Engineering front and rear sway bars. Best of all, though, in our eyes is that you can also get a BSI Bronco chassis outfitted with a Coyote engine and transmission.

Arguably one of our favorite SEMA booths, each year Ford Performance rolls out new products aimed squarely at the Mustang performance market. Obviously the hot news for 2018 is the Gen 3 Coyote engine from the 2018 Mustang GT. The Gen 3 crate engine is rated at 460 horsepower and 420 lb-ft of torque. We were able to install this engine, along with a Ford Performance control pack into our latest Week to Wicked 1967 Mustang. The big difference between the Gen 1, Gen 2, and Gen 3 Coyote engine is that the Gen 3 features direct and port fuel injection. Other features of the Gen 3 are longer head bolts for increased clamping load, sintered steel connecting rods from the Boss 302 program, high-flow aluminum heads, a 10-quart oil pan, and a 12:1 compression ratio. If you believe in Coyote-swapping the world, the Gen 3 is the latest and greatest.

In the fuel system game, one company gaining strength and market share is Fuelab. Making a strong showing in the X275 world, Fuelab hasn’t forgotten about the streets. New from Fuelab is its 484 H/E line of brushless twin screw in-tank fuel pumps. The 48401 is designed for combinations up to 625 horsepower, while the 48401 and 48403 are rated for 850 and 1,250, respectively. The 484 series of pumps is compatible with gasoline, diesel, methanol, and ethanol, and use a brushless design quiet operation and increased durability.

Remember back when EFI first came out, and a lot of people swapped everything out for a carburetor? When that happened people were introduced to all the problems that lead to manufacturers switching to EFI in the first place. Those issues being cold start problems, part-throttle hesitation, and tuning issues. K&N’s new Electronic Carburetor Injection (ECI) can help make those issues a thing of the past. The new ECI’s billet aluminum spacer plate sandwiches between your Mustang’s carburetor and intake manifold, and is designed to be a supplemental source of fuel to prevent fuel starvation and maintain a proper air/fuel ratio. The ECI features a remote-mounted ECU, and injector activation upon startup to aid cold start and maintain idle. Using an oxygen sensor, whenever the system detects a lean condition the injector will kick on to bring the air/fuel ratio back within spec.

McLeod has really stepped up the Mustang game and here’s why. First up is a T5 shifter (pictured). When many aftermarket companies have moved past the transmission of our youth, McLeod brings it back like our favorite Metallica tune with this new shifter that features a CNC-machined construction, 50-percent shift throw reduction, adjustable shift height, and stout shift stops. This shifter follows on the heels of McLeod’s new 6R80 and 10R80 performance rebuild kits and a steel pilot tool for clutch installations.

The big news out of ProCharger’s SEMA booth is its new CrankDrive, and its ongoing application integration. While the CrankDrive debuted back in 2017, ProCharger is still releasing additional applications. We hope to see a small-block Ford CrankDrive soon, and when it hits, you will be the first to know about it. ProCharger is also working on a Coyote CrankDrive, saying such a unit requires more fabrication, but it is on their radar. ProCharger’s CrankDrive also won a SEMA new product award, which is a big deal for any performance manufacturer.

As Mustang enthusiasts, we want our cars to be fast, comfortable, and handle the curves. That’s a lot to ask, but the folks at QA1 has a product that should help satisfy our needs. QA1 bills its MOD series shocks as the first on-the-car revalvable shock on the market. With the company’s QuickTune Technology, you can revalve your Mustang’s shocks without removing them, and it can be done in a matter of minutes. This technology will truly allow you to turn your street car into a drag car with just a few minutes work.

A floor jack is great, but QuickJack’s line of portable car lifts takes that thought to a whole new level. QuickJack’s portable car lifts come in a variety of capacities, ranging from 3,400 pound cars to 7,000 pound trucks. Available in a variety of lengths, QuickJacks are ideal for DIYers and/or shops with limited area or ceiling height. With a simple push of a button, you can raise your Mustang off the ground for easier wheel swaps, exhaust installations, transmission/clutch service, and a lot more.

Putting performance on its side (literally), Roush Performance featured a new RS3 to show the improvements both under the hood and down below. The RS3 features a Roush Phase 1 supercharger to boost the Coyote under the hood to 710 horsepower, while an available custom-tuned 3-way adjustable coilover suspension handles the bumps and curves. The RS3 also features Roush-designed wheels wrapped in Continental ExtremeContact Sport treads. According to Roush, all of this adds up to 1.07g on the skid pad.

We never go to SEMA without making the short trip over to Shelby American and the Shelby Heritage Center, which is also in Las Vegas. It’s almost a tradition to make the trip to check out the Shelby vehicles on display, pick up new Shelby American apparel, and to just be in awe of the place. We were able to take in the amazing CSX 2000, the very first Cobra ever built, and also this little Ford GT display. The Ford GT in the middle is known as Workhorse One, a test mule built in 2002 and later presented to Carroll Shelby. This Ford GT was the start of a new collaboration between Ford and Shelby that lead to the Shelby GT500. Interestingly enough, Workforce One features a Terminator 4.6 engine, and not the 5.4 that production GTs boasted.

The electronically controlled transmissions of today need a little help when paired with various custom engine swaps. US Shift’s Quick 6 transmission controller is aimed squarely at the Ford 6R80 transmission. The Quick 6 now features pre-loaded data, a simplistic setup-and-drive procedure, stock-like shift feel, and aftermarket converter compatibility. With the Quick 6, you can have up to 4 different shift calibrations on board. As mentioned, the Quick 6 is available for 6R80 transmissions and US Shift should have 10R80 applications ready soon.

Back in the Fox days, Weld Racing wheels were one of the more popular day two mods. Today, the company is making it really easy to continue the trend with the new S72, Full Throttle wheel, and a new polished version of the S77. As you can see, the Full Throttle is available in a beadlock for street/strip applications. The Full Throttle wheel is from Weld’s RT line, featuring a forged construction, a variety of sizes from 15- to 18-inch diameters, and availability in non-beadlock, single beadlock, and double beadlock.

Whiteline chose this S550 Mustang as the best way to garner attention to its SEMA booth. Whiteline carries Fox, SN95, New Edge, S197, and S550 Mustang parts, and a couple parts we saw highlighted were the company’s rear adjustable toe arms and vertical links for 2015-2018 Mustangs. Whiteline’s catalog is full of suspension components aimed at increasing the handling of your Mustang.

It seems the use of nitrous has taken a back seat in the Mustang performance arena, lately. Everyone has fallen in love with boost, but ZEX’s perimeter plate nitrous systems is a great way to boost your Mustang’s horsepower. ZEX says its perimeter plate is designed to “provide a perfectly atomized blend of fuel and nitrous that is equally dispersed among all cylinders.” A billet aluminum plate ensures proper distribution of fuel and nitrous, and ZEX’s nitrous systems come with everything needed to install. With a ZEX nitrous system, you can be making gobs of power with just a few hours work.

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[itsworn]

Top Parts From SEMA 2018

When you work the SEMA show, it can be a dizzying experience. There are more parts and cars than you’re physically able to comprehend. Every manufacturer is in attendance with their latest components ready to show them off to buyers, sellers, and media folks like us. We are so busy checking out new parts, running from hall to hall, doing FB Live videos, IG posts, web galleries, and online Web stories during the event, but we also have an eye on the print content you’re reading right now.

After all, we can’t cover everything SEMA via galleries, FB live videos, and IG posts. The easiest way for us to tell about SEMA is a full story on the trendsetting and hard hitting parts each manufacturer hopes to make a mark in 2019.

One of the more popular wheel companies in the Mustang market, Billet Specialties was at SEMA showing off a variety of wheel designs. When we think of Billet Specialties, we are instantly reminded of its drag offerings. However, the company has a full lineup of street wheels, as well, especially from its B-Forged line.

  It’s no secret that 1961-1979 F100s and 1966-1977 Broncos are hot right now. BSI Performance is one company hoping to catch lightning in a bottle with its 1966-1977 Bronco chassis offerings. BSI’s Bronco chassis features a mandrel bent frame, Currie Dana 44 axles, triangulated 4-link rear suspension, a Borgeson power steering box, King coilovers, Wilwood brakes, and Speedway Engineering front and rear sway bars. Best of all, though, in our eyes is that you can also get a BSI Bronco chassis outfitted with a Coyote engine and transmission.

Arguably one of our favorite SEMA booths, each year Ford Performance rolls out new products aimed squarely at the Mustang performance market. Obviously the hot news for 2018 is the Gen 3 Coyote engine from the 2018 Mustang GT. The Gen 3 crate engine is rated at 460 horsepower and 420 lb-ft of torque. We were able to install this engine, along with a Ford Performance control pack into our latest Week to Wicked 1967 Mustang. The big difference between the Gen 1, Gen 2, and Gen 3 Coyote engine is that the Gen 3 features direct and port fuel injection. Other features of the Gen 3 are longer head bolts for increased clamping load, sintered steel connecting rods from the Boss 302 program, high-flow aluminum heads, a 10-quart oil pan, and a 12:1 compression ratio. If you believe in Coyote-swapping the world, the Gen 3 is the latest and greatest.

In the fuel system game, one company gaining strength and market share is Fuelab. Making a strong showing in the X275 world, Fuelab hasn’t forgotten about the streets. New from Fuelab is its 484 H/E line of brushless twin screw in-tank fuel pumps. The 48401 is designed for combinations up to 625 horsepower, while the 48401 and 48403 are rated for 850 and 1,250, respectively. The 484 series of pumps is compatible with gasoline, diesel, methanol, and ethanol, and use a brushless design quiet operation and increased durability.

Remember back when EFI first came out, and a lot of people swapped everything out for a carburetor? When that happened people were introduced to all the problems that lead to manufacturers switching to EFI in the first place. Those issues being cold start problems, part-throttle hesitation, and tuning issues. K&N’s new Electronic Carburetor Injection (ECI) can help make those issues a thing of the past. The new ECI’s billet aluminum spacer plate sandwiches between your Mustang’s carburetor and intake manifold, and is designed to be a supplemental source of fuel to prevent fuel starvation and maintain a proper air/fuel ratio. The ECI features a remote-mounted ECU, and injector activation upon startup to aid cold start and maintain idle. Using an oxygen sensor, whenever the system detects a lean condition the injector will kick on to bring the air/fuel ratio back within spec.

McLeod has really stepped up the Mustang game and here’s why. First up is a T5 shifter (pictured). When many aftermarket companies have moved past the transmission of our youth, McLeod brings it back like our favorite Metallica tune with this new shifter that features a CNC-machined construction, 50-percent shift throw reduction, adjustable shift height, and stout shift stops. This shifter follows on the heels of McLeod’s new 6R80 and 10R80 performance rebuild kits and a steel pilot tool for clutch installations.

The big news out of ProCharger’s SEMA booth is its new CrankDrive, and its ongoing application integration. While the CrankDrive debuted back in 2017, ProCharger is still releasing additional applications. We hope to see a small-block Ford CrankDrive soon, and when it hits, you will be the first to know about it. ProCharger is also working on a Coyote CrankDrive, saying such a unit requires more fabrication, but it is on their radar. ProCharger’s CrankDrive also won a SEMA new product award, which is a big deal for any performance manufacturer.

  As Mustang enthusiasts, we want our cars to be fast, comfortable, and handle the curves. That’s a lot to ask, but the folks at QA1 has a product that should help satisfy our needs. QA1 bills its MOD series shocks as the first on-the-car revalvable shock on the market. With the company’s QuickTune Technology, you can revalve your Mustang’s shocks without removing them, and it can be done in a matter of minutes. This technology will truly allow you to turn your street car into a drag car with just a few minutes work.

A floor jack is great, but QuickJack’s line of portable car lifts takes that thought to a whole new level. QuickJack’s portable car lifts come in a variety of capacities, ranging from 3,400 pound cars to 7,000 pound trucks. Available in a variety of lengths, QuickJacks are ideal for DIYers and/or shops with limited area or ceiling height. With a simple push of a button, you can raise your Mustang off the ground for easier wheel swaps, exhaust installations, transmission/clutch service, and a lot more.

Putting performance on its side (literally), Roush Performance featured a new RS3 to show the improvements both under the hood and down below. The RS3 features a Roush Phase 1 supercharger to boost the Coyote under the hood to 710 horsepower, while an available custom-tuned 3-way adjustable coilover suspension handles the bumps and curves. The RS3 also features Roush-designed wheels wrapped in Continental ExtremeContact Sport treads. According to Roush, all of this adds up to 1.07g on the skid pad.

We never go to SEMA without making the short trip over to Shelby American and the Shelby Heritage Center, which is also in Las Vegas. It’s almost a tradition to make the trip to check out the Shelby vehicles on display, pick up new Shelby American apparel, and to just be in awe of the place. We were able to take in the amazing CSX 2000, the very first Cobra ever built, and also this little Ford GT display. The Ford GT in the middle is known as Workhorse One, a test mule built in 2002 and later presented to Carroll Shelby. This Ford GT was the start of a new collaboration between Ford and Shelby that lead to the Shelby GT500. Interestingly enough, Workforce One features a Terminator 4.6 engine, and not the 5.4 that production GTs boasted.

The electronically controlled transmissions of today need a little help when paired with various custom engine swaps. US Shift’s Quick 6 transmission controller is aimed squarely at the Ford 6R80 transmission. The Quick 6 now features pre-loaded data, a simplistic setup-and-drive procedure, stock-like shift feel, and aftermarket converter compatibility. With the Quick 6, you can have up to 4 different shift calibrations on board. As mentioned, the Quick 6 is available for 6R80 transmissions and US Shift should have 10R80 applications ready soon.

Back in the Fox days, Weld Racing wheels were one of the more popular day two mods. Today, the company is making it really easy to continue the trend with the new S72, Full Throttle wheel, and a new polished version of the S77. As you can see, the Full Throttle is available in a beadlock for street/strip applications. The Full Throttle wheel is from Weld’s RT line, featuring a forged construction, a variety of sizes from 15- to 18-inch diameters, and availability in non-beadlock, single beadlock, and double beadlock.

Whiteline chose this S550 Mustang as the best way to garner attention to its SEMA booth. Whiteline carries Fox, SN95, New Edge, S197, and S550 Mustang parts, and a couple parts we saw highlighted were the company’s rear adjustable toe arms and vertical links for 2015-2018 Mustangs. Whiteline’s catalog is full of suspension components aimed at increasing the handling of your Mustang.

It seems the use of nitrous has taken a back seat in the Mustang performance arena, lately. Everyone has fallen in love with boost, but ZEX’s perimeter plate nitrous systems is a great way to boost your Mustang’s horsepower. ZEX says its perimeter plate is designed to “provide a perfectly atomized blend of fuel and nitrous that is equally dispersed among all cylinders.” A billet aluminum plate ensures proper distribution of fuel and nitrous, and ZEX’s nitrous systems come with everything needed to install. With a ZEX nitrous system, you can be making gobs of power with just a few hours work.

    The post Top Parts From SEMA 2018 appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

from Hot Rod Network https://www.hotrod.com/articles/top-parts-from-sema-2018/ via IFTTT

[oovitus]

How The Minimalists Are Using Social Media in 2018

By Joshua Fields Millburn & Ryan Nicodemus · Follow: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram

Have you ever quit social media for an extended period of time? How did it change your perspective?

After using social media almost every day for the last seven years, we decided to walk away for a month to see what would happen. So, on December 31, 2017, before the ball dropped, we deleted all our past tweets and Instagram photos, we ceased our Facebook and Pinterest activity, and we uploaded a cryptic video alluding to our disappearance.

Then we were gone.

And now, a month later, we’re still alive, and we’re entering February 2018 with a blank slate.

During our month away, we learned some important lessons. And we unlearned a few bad habits. Most important, we discovered a need for us to use social media differently going forward.

Lessons Learned

Purpose. For us, once we’d created a blank slate, the purpose of social media became evident: communication. Not to sound overly simplistic, but want to use these platforms to effectively communicate our thoughts, ideas, and creations, and engage our audience directly with questions and answers—not broadcast our every thought. Social media can be a noisy place, and we don’t want to add to the noise—we want to whisper to the people who are listening.

Mindfulness. Whenever an activity occupies much of our mind, we need to take a step back and assess whether it’s worth the time we spend on that activity. Our friend Jessica Lynn Williams, who helps us organize our social feeds, discovered an important insight without the pall of social media in her everyday life: “Stepping away from social in January gave me the clarity of mind to see ‘the asshole in my mind running amuck’ (as Dan Harris says), and it has prompted me to adopt a regular meditation practice, which is something I’ve been afraid of for a while. This will be the year I take back my mind.”

Augmentation. We want to use social media to augment our creations—blog, podcast, books, films—not as the main platform on which we create. While we’ll be active on the different platforms, it’s worth noting that the best place to follow The Minimalists isn’t social media; the best place to follow our creations is by subscribing to our blog or by subscribing to our podcast (or both). Social media will simply append those platforms.

Unfollow. Whether it’s celebrities on Instagram, friends on Facebook, or news outlets on Twitter, the folks we follow often negatively affect our moods. We get caught up comparing ourselves with others, we get dragged down by naysayers, and we start twitching for 24-hour “breaking” news. Whenever this is the case, it’s best to unfollow those negative influences and instead curate a feed that includes people and brands who inform us, challenge us, and improve us. Letting go of the negative is the only way to make room for the valuable.

Value. As The Minimalists, we’ll post to social media only when it will add value for others. Before we publish to any platform, we must be able to affirmatively answer one question: Does this add value? If not, then delete.

Unlearned Bad Habits

Idiots. If the purpose of social media is to communicate with other humans, then we also must be careful with whom we engage. People find it easy to be keyboard crusaders, interactions with whom are rarely productive, so it’s important not to engage with the snarky critics, because this isn’t for them. Hence, if you’re a seagull, you’ll be blocked without discrimination, and you won’t be unblocked—ever. We have a renewed desire to communicate with our audience and a new vigor to avoid arguing with idiots.

Pacifiers. By removing the social media apps from our phones—which often pacified us whenever we had a silent moment in an airport, waiting room, or other interstitial zone—we learned that new pacifiers always appear. If you get rid of Facebook, you twitch for Twitter. If Instagram is gone, YouTube steps in. Two thousand years ago, the Stoics complained about people getting lost in books instead of going out and experiencing the real world. Today, we complain that nobody reads books anymore because everyone is lost in the tempting glow of their screens. Whether it’s books or social media we get lost in, we must work hard to use these tools deliberately to help us function in the real world—not remove ourselves from it.

Promoless. There’s too much “branding” going on these days. No, there aren’t any advertisements on our website or podcast or social media feeds, but even we have been guilty of too much self-promotion getting in the way of our own creations. Perhaps Derek Sivers said it best: putting ads in your work is like putting a Coke machine in a monastery. We feel the same about all the shameless self-promotion that’s going on these days, including our own. It’s solipsism run amuck. We’re pledging to remove the Coke machine from the monastery immediately so you can better enjoy what we’re creating and sharing without the promotional eyesores. Yes, we’ll occasionally talk about what we’re working on—including events, books, and projects—but we won’t let it get in the way of what we’re creating. If anything, promotion should be similar to the end credits of a film, not the main plot.

Triplicate. Over the years, we began using the different social media platforms the same exact way, which, when you think about it, is insane. It was a digital version of those old carbon-copy forms from decades past: post a photo to Instagram, repost it to Twitter, and then re-repost it to Facebook. Lather, rinse, repeat. Triplicating our efforts isn’t only tedious, it’s the opposite of using these platforms intentionally.

Using Social Media Differently

Because each social media platform is different, we want to use them differently—not as a carbon copy—so we’ve decided to focus on the specific strengths of each platform by identifying their primary and secondary uses. These changes should help us avoid creative overlap and will allow us better communicate with our audience as a result.

Facebook. We’ve found our Facebook audience engages most with the articles we post. Thus, we’ll use our Facebook account primarily to share useful links, be it our essays or others’ articles. Secondarily, we’ll use Facebook to publish short Audiograms and photo albums from past tours.

Twitter. Twitter is the best platform for us to share our text-only Minimal Maxims, so that will be its primary use. Secondarily, we’ll use Twitter to communicate directly with our audience: the brevity of this platform makes it the best place to interact with other people, so if you want to interact with us directly, Twitter is the best place to do so.

Instagram. Instagram is undoubtedly the best platform to share photos, so, going forward, we’ll use IG primarily to share beautiful black-and-white images. Secondarily, we’ll use the ephemerality of Instagram Stories to broadcast updates, current events, ephemera, and useful excerpts from our blogposts and podcasts. And we’ll occasionally use Instagram Live for unplanned live broadcasts, which are deleted after 24 hours.

Pinterest. Pinterest is the Internet’s corkboard, so it’s ideal us for us is to share letter boards that contain challenges and simple-living reminders from The Minimalists. We’ll also use our Pinterest account to repost photos of minimalist living spaces.

YouTube. Since YouTube is the premier video platform, this is where we’ll publish videos created by The Minimalists. This will be especially relevant when we add a video version of our podcast later this year. Secondarily, we’ll use YouTube to post other video creations: video essays, web series, and scheduled livestreams.

You’ll notice our absence from most social platforms: Snapchat, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Ello, Google+, Periscope, Flickr, Reddit, Quora, et al. That’s not because these services aren’t useful; they simply aren’t useful for us right now.

All things considered, we hope to use our new strategy to creatively add value to people’s lives. This is our recipe, and it isn’t ideal for everyone. Truth be told, it might not be ideal for anyone but us. And even then, we’ll likely adjust how we wield these tools after using them differently for a while.

No, we don’t expect you to follow us on every platform. Hell, we don’t expect you to follow us any platform. But if you find value in what we’re communicating, feel free to join us on our new journey. And if you ever stop finding value in what we’re sharing, please unfollow us at anytime.

P.S. Ella will continue tweeting her beautiful nonsense as usual.

Subscribe to The Minimalists via email.

How The Minimalists Are Using Social Media in 2018 published first on

[bringbackliztofacebook-blog]

To Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook Founder

Dear Mark

Happy holidays to you and your family.

I hope you are doing great, and congratulations on the new baby! Yay!

On a sad note, Mr. Z, I’m posting this because I wanna let you know that my account on your amazing site, FACEBOOK, was taken down because it was tagged/flagged as an account of a “spammer/abuser”. This thing saddened me as I had that account for 8 years and 5 months. I had all my memories from my university years there. I used it as an online diary of my life, my triumphs, my frustrations, my joys, my failures, and almost of my craziness were chronicled there. It had been a communication tool for me too. I stayed connected with cousins working/living abroad through that account. It was a part of my daily routine to check what they were doing with their little bubble because let’s face it, your site was and still is the best there is. It brought us close despite the distance, so we didn’t miss each other much. I also used it to talk to my baby brother who’s working in Bahrain as the international texting and calling rates are astronomically expensive for both of us. My best friend Elaine who works in a different province than me used to ask me questions about her lessons through my old account. Now, she’s gonna get married and she was frantic because I was AWOL. In all honesty, I signed up on your site because I wanted to try out the “new and exciting social media” of 2009; however, as your site grew, it became more than just a social media site for me. I connected to several people using your site, like my former students(I’m an English as Second Language Instructor to Koreans and Japanese by the way) for instance. I kept tabs on their whereabouts and their successes on Facebook. It had been part of my daily life. I also posted photos of my nieces and nephews when they were just little like Christmases/New Years/Birthdays celebration photos etc. most of which were only posted on Facebook thinking I’d forever have this account, so no need for back-ups, and when I was logged out, I felt like my connection and memories got shattered, literally. My friends and colleagues from work will be able to tell you how devastated I was when it happened. And oh, I’m using a nickname there so I have no IDs to prove that I own the account. I don’t wanna commit fraud in this process, hence I won’t be making “fake IDs” just to prove my identity to get this account back.

And just last October 17, 2017, I launched a page called Halfblood Hill there (www.facebook.com/demigodsareamazing). It made me know cool people from all over the world. I worked with people like Margot, Claire, Ryan, Nicole, Brianna, and Cassidy. A team of people in love with the world created by Rick Riordan. A story world where difference is celebrated, where your uniqueness makes you special, where friendship -old and new- triumphs over even the worst and most powerful forces known to mankind. The vision that I had when I created the page was for people to get connected by being in a community of unique individuals sharing their gift to the world. Now, I have no access to that page. I have tried to make other accounts because I still wanna be connected to the page likers, but I still got taken down no matter what. What I’m saying is that I miss interacting with them there. There were these two girls from Australia, Mikayla and Olivia, whom I personally or “cybernatically” talked to through the page every time they commented on the posts of the page. And, I may have other pages, but I have never really known the “admin” role on the page, so I thought I could be the sole “admin” and the page would still be okay. Sadly, the page is now run by “editors” only. They wanna improve the page to grow our audience and widen our family, but they can’t. I also created Dam It’s A Demi Kinda Thing (www.facebook.com/demigodsaredamsassy) using my “new” account, but sadly this “new” account got blocked by your system, too.

Around the same time I created Halfblood Hill, I joined a Facebook group where we ROLE-PLAY(RP) as people living in a camp. Inside this camp, I was HERMES(yes the god Hermes, we don’t care about gender orientation there). During my first two weeks in this said group, I was a camper. That was then that I met some great people, then I got promoted to “god” status. I got to talk to other “gods and goddesses” like Aaron, Didi, Sela, Norwin, Hayley, Joey, Caroline and then Bella got promoted, so we talked all the time. Then I got to have amazing conversations with campers like Unnat, Eleazar, Alex, Derek, Mustafa, Star, Hannah, Emy, Mollie, Sarah, Pearl, and a whole lot more. All these people had been amazing to me, and I miss them terribly.

I also have been helping admin the pages Emblem3 Philippines, Team Inspire Philippines, and Team Inspire Iloilo, Philippines. E3 PH is a street team for the band Emblem3. We do fun stuffs there. The Team Inspire pages are dedicated to promote positive deeds and acts of the young minds of today's generation. We encourage people to be better versions of themselves.

I know that your mission statement was to connect people. I was only connecting with people. I had only wanted to reach out more. I hope you see this one and let me back into the world where I had so many memories and friends. If sharing my pages to my one thousand plus friends on Facebook, offended them. I’m deeply sorry.

If sharing my support for the LGBT community, offended anyone. I’m sorry I offended them, but I won’t withdraw my support or change my views for this community.

If I came out as an abusive HERMES, I was role-playing. It was part of a make-believe world scenario. I’m truly sorry because at the end of the day, Hermes was just a role. In real life, I don’t promote bullying, I grew up being name-called because I was and still am fat. So, I know how being bullied feels like. I won’t intentionally inflict the same pain on anyone. I really do hope you see this one and make magic happen to let me back to my account.

Best regards.

Happy Holidays!

Yours, Liz Reyes Stilinski

(PS: Liz is my nickname, Reyes is mom’s maiden name, and Stilinski is Dylan O'Brien’s character’s family name on Teen Wolf.)

Original post on IG https://instagram.com/p/BcyPrK4HtTu/

[the-fitsquad]

Integrating Unix Into Active Directory Whilst Maintaining UNIX Style Security

The Lean Office

It is been far more than 20 years considering that Microsoft utilised the Workstation branding in its Windows 4. Workstation edition, but it seems the firm is ready to bring it back. OSHA Compliance Directive CPL 2-1.29, Interim Inspection Procedures In the course of Communication Tower Construction Activities, needs that hoists used to lift personnel need to be made to use energy lowering four the hoist in this incident was not. Restricted GPU (video card) overall performance. On my a lot more lazy days, a treadmill laptop desk tray allows me to fire up my laptop computer and watch a film streamed by means of Netflix or to catch up on some Television by means of Hulu. When fully configured) workstation that builds on HP’s longstanding dedication to the media expert. Workstations have far more computing skills in comparision with other laptops, but 3000-series neverthless are inexpensive. Supporting 384 GB of method memory and dual M.2 slots for HP Z Turbo Drive PCIe SSDs, users can reportedly experience functionality in visual effects and design and style visualization workloads.

Intel® HD Graphics offers excellent visual functionality for sharper images, richer colour, and lifelike video and audio. The requested operation can’t be performed while the virtual disk is compacting. Buy Intelligent Desks and education furnishings from Office Reality and obtain your order with our free delivery service to UK mainland addresses as normal. By mounting office storage to partition walls you can clear up desk space, giving personnel a lot your domain name more space for the pc, keyboard and critical papers. Like their predecessors, which remain offered, all of the new HP Z-series workstations function tool-much less access. Whether you are an architect, engineer or designer and no matter whether you are in the workplace or at the customer’s site, you need your mobile workstation to provide the maximum efficiency.

Chef is a systems and cloud infrastructure automation framework that makes it effortless to deploy servers and applications to any physical, virtual, or cloud place, no matter the size of the infrastructure. That said, the laptop comes with a quite potent graphics efficiency and as an added function, it comes with a 15-inch vibrant Complete HD IPS show. And, smartly, the elements themselves were definitely regarded as as the move to the BMW Designworks case coincided with the upgrade to Intel’s Nehalem processors, which have produced fairly a splash as nicely. I witnessed the LEAN manufacturing process and how staff modifications jobs to maximize efficiency at different occasions of day. If we talk about modeling with 3D CAD software (such as SolidWorks), it is mostly a single threaded operation meaning that it will use only one particular core at a time.

Proper now, today, we are wasting time on what I get in touch with political frivolities and nonsense while the day-to-day lives of the Poor Africans are in shambles, our decrepit and dysfunctional lives of the poor are worsened by a Dumb intelligentsia, which is self-assured, falsely, so, in itself and about itself, and are seriously ignorant of the suffering and the techniques and implies as to how to ameliorate and appropriate these injustices against our poor African men and women. If you would like to maximize the location of your small office, there are some considerations you require to know due to the fact those issues will help you to boost the use of floor space so you can use your office for running your company rightly. Powered by an 2x Intel Xeon 5140 2.33 GHz processor and four GB DDR2 SDRAM, the xw6400 Workstation lets you breeze by means of your enterprise applications with ease.

Beyond processing speed and capacity benefits, Intel Xeon processor E3-1200 v2 solution household-based workstations give users improved levels of reliability, stability, and potentially accuracy when compared to enterprise or consumer desktop options. A PAW constructed using guidance provided in Phase 2 can be used as a beginning point to supply security for these roles as most ICS consoles (which includes such frequent standards as SCADA and PCN) don’t demand browsing the open Net and checking e mail. Be wary of any decorator interior style office furnishings manufacturers in chennai that promises you the moon they probably can not deliver it. In the video above, you will see some easy tests becoming run exactly where HP has setup performing a head-to-head test of the Z840 workstation versus the Mac Pro.

Today there is a wealth of workplace furniture available that is in a position to combine practicality with look, and functionality with comfort. Some of the services that we supply incorporate network and server support, installation repair and upgrades for your servers, network and technique administration, documentation and coaching and repair, upgrades and installation of workstations and desktops. The default configuration in this PAW guidance installs administrative tools on the PAW, but a jump server architecture can also be added if essential. We are certain that we have the excellent answer for any of your boardroom desks or residence workplace desks requirements. Today’s GPUs are powerhouses and include hundreds of individual stream processors for massive parallel computing and almost everything from video transcoding, encoding, and editing get a speed boost from stream processing.

Among 2000 and 2002, IBM partnered with the workplace furniture manufacturer Steelcase, and researched the application, hardware, and ergonomic aspects of the cubicle of the future (or the workplace of the future) beneath the name “BlueSpace”. At STH, we have really broken Cinebench R15 with a quad Intel Xeon system that scores more than 11.5K with Platinum 8180 CPUs. Two series of cards which are excellent for CAD use are NVIDIA Quadro and AMD FirePro. OSHA inspectors cited the business for violating section 5(a)(1) of the Occupational Security and Well being Act for directing staff to eliminate diagonal structural members on communication towers without having making use of short-term braces or supports, and for allowing employees to be tied off to bracing that was not capable of supporting at least five,000 pounds.

The Hyper-Threading assistance enables two threads to run simultaneously on each and every core – Windows recognizes 88 total cores on the Z840, 44 genuine and 44 virtual. Featuring Intel® Core and Xeon® processors, AMD Radeon Pro graphics and Dell Precision Optimizer. Configurable with up to 4x AMD FirePro graphics cards, the CyberStation Graphics range of workstations let you to fully unleash your design and style prospective whether or not your working in 3D or 4K, supported by the most current high-finish design and style technologies. Our most extensive property workplace workstations effortlessly residence a computer, keyboard, printer, scanner, fax and telephone, as well as added space for document storage and filing. Well, firstly, we need to have to accept that, at times, it just isn’t going to get carried out – the day remains 1,440 minutes long, and it merely does not add up. Then, instead of beating ourselves up over this absolute mathematical reality, we need to concentrate on setting realistic ambitions, prioritizing our tasks, and working on the most essential stuff.

In order to appeal to specialists across all disciplines, TurboCAD makes it possible for customers to open 35 distinct file formats such as AutoCAD® 2013DWG, Adobe 3DPDF and export up to 28, includingDWG,DXF (from R14 by way of 2013 which includes AutoCAD® Architecture extensions),SKP (Google SketchUp, to version 8),3DM (Rhinoceros®),3DS (Autodesk® 3ds Max®), IGES, STEP,OBJ, COLLADA (.DAE – export) and several more. In addition to their normal tech support processes, HP has two advanced resources at their Ft. Collins, CO facility to deal with extended-term help of their workstations. Enhanced PDFs: PDF documents produced from AutoCAD designs are smaller. A selection of effective machines that are certainly a more affordable alternative to the Apple family members, while nonetheless giving a superb common of innovation, efficiency and reliability.

The workstations are made for high overall performance with intense expandability. By storing copies of every element, HP assistance is capable to recreate any supported buyer configuration for the life of the Z series line. There are workstations created to sit on leading of a desk and other individuals that roll where you need them to be on casters. At its core, AutoCAD is a single threaded application. A workstation is a specific laptop designed for technical or scientific applications. The laptop is powered by an Intel Xeon E3-1505M processor paired with a mammoth 64GB of RAM. We have standing personal computer desks & workstations, corner personal computer desks, ergonomic, as effectively as hideaway pc desks and workstations. If the workstation gets broken in a peer-to-peer network, you cannot recover data.

The Computer Series mobile powered workstation by Newcastle Systems has been created to hold and power a selection of gear, yet also gives generous space to hold inventory. Redundant Read To satisfy a study request, the NT fault-tolerant file method successfully read the requested data from a redundant copy. HP Workstations are also extremely common amongst programmers who want to be confident of big and steady computing power. For the duration of this transition, calculations had been still performed either by hand or by those individuals who could run laptop programs. The evening auditor need to also be familiar with the nature of cash transaction affecting the front office accounting system. In the subsequent installment of this small series, I’ll appear at how HP applies their engineering knowledge to each new iteration of workstation, not just from an engineering design standpoint, but from a product reliability standpoint.

Combining the newest strong Intel Core processors, and enterprise-grade hardware, our office workstations are the excellent every-day workhorses for every little thing from internet browsing to higher-demand multi-tasking when configured with the Core i7. Ring topology is one which all of the computer systems are connected in a loop and information is passed from 1 workstation to yet another. A genuinely basic, however efficient step is to label every item of furnishings with colored stickers, as desks, chairs, storage shelves and electronic gear looks comparable. Library employees will not install or help in the installation of application on workstations or laptops. As you might count on, these higher requirements imply that workstations are costlier than consumer PCs.

Additionally, all accounts shall have two entries referred to as Debit (dr) (or charges) versus Credit (cr) (or payments). 本文是以製作萬用還原Ghost Win 7 X86+SP1+IE9 為例，X64 版的製作方法與X86相同，只有四個地方不同：(1) 要新建Win7 X64 Virtual Machine，(two) 安裝Win7 X64 ，(three) 執行ES3做系統封裝時，設定部署前執行WanDrv(x64).exe(檔名可能隨版本更新更改)，(four) 使用64位元Windows 7 專版綜合驅動包。 Apple says CPU speeds here are 30 % more rapidly than final year’s Pro, and that graphics speed has enhanced 40 %. Toshiba’s exceptional range of Tecra company laptops has produced this brilliant mobile workstation, which packs a heck of a lot of power into an easily transportable physique. The following courses are element of the Pc Assisted Drafting (CAD) certificate system and are intended to prepare men and women with the ability-set they need for achievement in searching for entry-level positions in the swiftly expanding and transforming field of computer assisted drafting.

The Application Licensing Service reported that the license authorization failed. And high-end workstations are equivalent to minicomputers. When discussing responsive website style composition, most originators and developers contemplate internet sites on cell phones, tablets, and mobile PCs. Featuring the most recent dual Intel® Xeon® processors. HP has announced a new line of desktop workstations developed to meet each the compute and safety wants of today’s workforce as they tackle solutions employing emerging technologies such as virtual reality and machine finding out. With our collection of modern day modular workplace furniture, your workplace comes to life, inspiring productivity, creativity, and collaboration throughout the day.

The HP Z620 provides a lot of punch when it comes to GPU energy, as it is specifically created for rendering graphics and heavy organization applications with its high-end graphics cards and GPU options that are certified by independent application vendors. The applications level software offers the interface amongst the user and the host system. Dell reports that the M3800 line is customized to deal with multiple projects at the identical time (where that RAM comes in handy) and handle demanding software program like CAD, normally a job associated with desktop stations. The technology behind HP’s higher resolution Z Displays give outstanding image accuracy with ultra-rapidly response occasions, smooth color transitions and extra-wide viewing angles. These consist of CPU Benchmarks from PassMark, CPU Planet , and AnandTech Under, we’ve supplied a few examples of some processors suitable for different workstation budgets, but make sure you investigation thoroughly to make sure the CPU you buy is suitable for you.

A very good computer workstation can increase productivity all through an office although also minimizing employee fatigue. So, we’re in the sitation, as Balck(African men and women, exactly where the info is put right ahead of our faces and we acquire comparatively tiny from it. It can only be put ahead of our eyes faces the eway it is due to the fact we have been so mentally and motivationally structured that we will not and can not take that data and transform it to our our personal benefit. Firms that use office workstations have an overall appear of togetherness and unity that cannot be beat – their layouts have better flow and organization, and the 1st look that clients have when walking in the door is that of a company that knows what it’s carrying out.

These are acceptable techniques of accessing tower workstations regardless of height. Investing in a high top quality graphics card, for example, is useless if you never have a CPU capable of dealing with the further capabilities—and vice versa. The 2D computer aided drawing unit aims to equip you with the fundamental understanding of the 2D drawing atmosphere, in terms of hardware, software and physical surroundings. Laptop workstations include a full-width modesty panel that provides further support and adjustable leveling glides to stabilize workstations on uneven floors. Intel didn’t say that the iMac pro would use the chip, but the stars line up: The flagship Xeon W has 18 cores and is due by Q4 2017, and Apple promised that iMac Pros with up to 18 cores would arrive this December.

I think if it have been me, looking at such a build, with the possibility of employing raytracing engines (like the a single in AE which as I realize is truly the C4D engine), or other 3D style programs, I’d develop some thing on a dual socket motherboard with the option to add yet another CPU later, as these kinds of workloads scale truly properly to as many cores as they can be provided, (assuming you’re using CPU primarily based renderers, like keyshot, C4D, Arnold, vray, and so on). Regardless of whether you use Autodesk Revit or 3ds Max for modeling, V-Ray or Iray for rendering, SOLIDWORKS for simulation, or any other sophisticated computing software program, 1 of our specialists can walk you via the complete approach, answer concerns about your specific workflow, and address all those pesky discomfort points that price you time and money.

To best fulfill the definition of CAD provided above, a CAD method should be a laptop technique that allows modeling of physical systems. Dual- and quad-core processors, specifically in the Intel Core i3 and Core i5 lines, are the norm in company PCs. Tuition and costs will differ across applications and places. PCL5e common language – Permits for easy transition from frustrating proprietary languages or legacy systems that are inefficient, restrictive and pricey to preserve whilst enhancing quality of graphics, text and barcodes. If you are in the marketplace for a mobile workstation cart , verify out our comparison table at the best of the web page, examine the product pages, as effectively, to get a sense of what other customers are saying about the mobile operate desks that they bought.

This could let Mac customers who need to run an occasional Windows app to do so without having possessing to reboot first – even though they will need to have sufficient RAM and processing energy to run each OS X and the virtual machine simultaneously. To obtain a windows 10 product crucial from MS was not adequate. In the mid-variety category of gaming laptop desks you are going to find bigger desks with a bit higher construct good quality. CPU: Intel Core i7 6700~ MOBO: Asus H100m-C ~ RAM: 16gb G.Talent Trident Z DDR4 3200mhzCL15~ GPU: EVGA Founders Edition GTX 1080 Ti @2.000mhz ~ Boot: 480GB SSD SanDisk G26 ~ Storage: 2x 240gb SSD SanDisk G26 + 1 480gb SSD SanDisk G26 ~ PSU: Zalman ZM700w-GLX 80 plus~ Show: LG 29UM68-P 2560x1080p80hz ~ OS: Windows ten Pro. Offered in a assortment of diverse shapes, sizes and types, our desks match right into any workplace space.

A single way this machine keeps up with high-end applications is by supporting dual Nvidia Graphics cards and Nvidia GPU virtualization. Hold in thoughts that max turbo frequency does not imply much since it is the max frequency a single CPU core can climb to, when it comes to multi core functionality base frequency is your benchmark. For workers assigned to brief-term projects, short-term workers, or just delivering a software evaluation, Workstation makes it possible for you to generate restricted virtual machines that can expire at a predefined date and time. As we all know there is only 1 other Apple box of tricks that can fill this void and it is about £7000.00 away from getting employed by most along with its seriously outdated hardware and, to be sincere, just not what is truly required for a pro situation.

Seamless integration with Inventor 3D CAD software and SolidWorks delivers an intuitive user experience. For 2D style, you’ll get by just fine with an entry level Quadro or Geforce card. Determine what type of storage (a desk hutch, bookcase, freestanding shelves, drawer unit, etc.) makes sense for the space you have offered and the quantity of storage that you want. Modeling with CAD systems provides a quantity of benefits more than traditional drafting strategies that use rulers, squares, and compasses. Our assessment unit is consequently slightly behind the Dell Precision 7710 , where the processor can make use of its maximum functionality all the time. Pc-aided design and style (CAD) is a personal computer technology that styles a product and documents the design’s method.

The 17.3″ Dell Precision M6600 unites exceptional processing and graphics overall performance and productivity-boosting characteristics in a sleek and dependable expert technique. When used efficiently, computer systems can enhance business elements like design, sales, preparing, speed, expense, organization, document processing, storage, reports, communication, advertising, presentation and so on. Just to rattle off a handful of much more specs (since there are not many machines like this), it provides ten USB three.1 Gen two Type C ports, dual Gig-E ports, seven complete-length, complete height PCIe slots (nine total) and optional Thunderbolt 3. All of that is housed in a cleanly laid out, tool-free of charge chassis with a 1,700 watt power provide and invective ducting.

Keep in mind, these costs are for the bare boxes only, not the graphics cards, memory, CPUs and other stuff you’ll need. Quadro Embedded Solutions (QUEST) System is for systems integrators who wish to design custom solutions with Quadro GPUs. The motherboard supports the latest Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600 v3 product family members with dual LGA 2011-three sockets. Windows ten Mobile and Windows ten desktop are two various variants of Windows 10, for example. A desktop workstation can allow the video editor to attain their vision without having restrictions or time-wasting stoppages. Server ini tidak dapat digunakan sebagai klien, karena baik secara hardware maupun application, ia hanya berfungsi untuk mengelola jaringan. 64-bit workstations and servers supporting an address variety far beyond 4 GB have been obtainable considering that the early 1990s, a technology just beginning to seem in the Pc desktop and server market place in the mid-2000s.

The Latitude E6220, E6320, E6420, E6520 and E6420 ATG business-rugged laptops are designed for the most demanding situations, with challenging-wearing MIL-STD tested Tri-Metal casing and highly tough displays. Access to controlling the minds, thoughts and behaviors via a variety of mediums and media is the stock in trade of those who manage media and the folks. Our height adjustable office workstations not only provide flexibility to our clients so they can eliminate their stagnant position and boost mobility all through the day, but also supply the excellent height position for added storage units under every individual office workstation. Kemudian masukan serial number, dan download driver VGA sesuai kategori Windows yang kamu instal. Workstation customers on the other hand, are usually scientists, engineers, architects and digital media content creators whose function calls for significantly far more computing power than the typical little business personal computer user would ever need to have.

The Software program Licensing Service reported that there is another activation try in progress for this sku. With our entry level workstation, I’d advise this create as much more of a photo editing rather than video editing or 3D modeling program, but it will work for these applications as effectively. Run 3D applications with help for DirectX 9.0c Shader Model three and OpenGL 2.1 3D graphics in Windows and Linux virtual machines. – Added management tools could need to have to be installed on PAWs to permit administrators to manage applications with no needing to connect to servers utilizing Remote Desktop. HP Z420 The HP Z420 is a strong, expandable workstation. It’s quite easy, sturdy, and huge sufficient for the biggest desk-side tower computer systems (rare these days).

The MSI WS60 6QH 088UK is an outstanding mobile workstation, and with MSI getting identified for making effective gaming laptops, it is no surprise that the organization has also produced this powerful workstation that excels in CAD and graphics applications. Teachers that use workstations with their classes have far more time to teach little groups of students. VMware Workstation’s tabbed interface enables fast access to all of your virtual machines and even settings from the property tab. You will be impressed by the workplace workstations and the way it offers a hassle-free resolution to an otherwise time consuming experience. Ergotron WorkFit-TL Sit-Stand Desktop Workstation, Black is rated 5. out of 5 by 1. That GTX 960M is a single of the most effective mobile video cards offered today inside this spending budget.

In this configuration, the user operating systems are deployed and managed centrally (on the cloud or in your datacenter), but aren’t accessible whilst disconnected. A entire mess of components can be pulled out without having touching a screwdriver: energy supply, difficult drives, RAM, optical drives, PCI expansion cards, motherboard assembly, and numerous fans. The Application Licensing Service reported that there are no certificates found in the system that could activate the product with out user interaction. Made with electronic equipment in mind, these pc desks feature holes for operating cables by way of. Consumer desktop-grade hardware has gotten so excellent these days that numerous folks query the need for pricey workstation-grade parts in their, properly, workstations.

Filed under: General Tagged: desktop computer price list, pc workstation hp z400, workstation hp maroc from KelsusIT.com – Refurbished laptops, desktop computers , servers http://bit.ly/2CpLXeX via IFTTT

[nchomeimprovement]

My Very First Garden Bouquet

This post is sponsored by WD-40® Company and its new Multi-Use Product 2.75 oz.oz. can.

This last two weeks marked a new first for the UDH: my very first bouquet of flowers that were created entirely from my own gardens and shrubs!

Granted, the bouquet was small: just one (yes, that’s just one!) bloom from my hydrangeas in the back yard, one flower and stem from my gardenia beds, and one small bloom of purple phlox from by the front door (remember all of those random plants I got on clearance a couple years ago?).

The weirdest part of all of it? Finding the guts to actually cut them off of my plants in the first place. After spending years struggling to get my gardens in shape, I’ve got a mix of new plants and ones that have been growing for a few years. So, I’m pretty used to having plants in the yard that are just starting to grow and not wanting to disturb them until they are better established. Apparently, my gardening/floral confidence is nowhere near my lets-hammer-a-hole-into-that-wall confidence.

But, when I saw how big and full one of my hydrangea plants was growing, I patiently waited for it to bloom. Both it and the gardenia shrubs bloom and re-bloom all summer, but the gardenias were sort of *off* on their timing since I replanted a few of them at the beginning of spring. I managed to get at least one stem that hadn’t yet wilted and popped it next to the hydrangea. I hope that next year, I’ll have them all better established so that the blooms happen more in sync with each other, and I can get a good variety to put on display in the house at the peak of the flowering season.

As for the phlox, it is growing in beautifully, but it really should be something I’m growing on the side of the house rather than in front (it’s been such a butterfly-and-bee-friendly plant that I didn’t want to snip off any of the larger buds, but I can’t say I’m a fan of the number of insects loitering around my front door). Still, the lilac + white + pinky-purple all looked really sweet together, so I hope I can create bigger versions of it in the future.

As you can see from the photos above, I first tried out my bouquet near the new master bathroom shower. It’s been getting some great light in the evenings and I wanted to simply take it in there just to have some fun with my camera. But eventually, the bouquet found a new home on the living room coffee table (another DIY project here).

Oh, and small tip: I realized I wasn’t super prepared for making bouquets at all. I’ve been trying to reorganize my garage in preparation for the big shed project I’m working on (more on that later of course), but I somehow seemed to have lost my favorite (read: really good quality) pair of gardening shears in my attempt to get everything better organized. Story of my life — as soon as I actually tidy up, that’s when I lose things!

I managed to find a cheap pair of dollar store shears in a miscellaneous drawer, but they aren’t exactly comparable to my “good” ones and kept sticking (I suspect they could already be rusting). The solution: a cute little 2.75-oz can of WD-40® Multi-Use Product.

WD-40® Company had sent me these “handy cans” as part of a sponsorship/giveaway they’re running with me (the giveaway is posting tomorrow first thing!), and they came in… er… handy (bah-dum-tss) before I’d even realized it.

I never even knew the product came in small versions like this, but I learned from my dad that it’s always a good idea to keep a can or two around. So far this year, I’ve used WD-40 Brand products to fix issues with my A/C unit (the fan blades get stuck and it’s the quickest/easiest solution to save on handyman repairs), a rusting issue with my master bathroom tub, the front door’s deadbolt, and more. Still, I think the thing I forget to use it on most are the little household items since I constantly think of it as a tool in my DIY arsenal. And since it’s bio-degradable, it posed no threat to prematurely wilting my new bouquet (I checked). *Note to self, this is probably a good time to also go into my gardening supplies and treat those blades, too (I have a bad habit of leaving things out to rust).*

So, there you have it… another first for me and this wacky little house (update: I posted bouquet #2 on IG as well!). What do you think of my little bouquet (how amazing is it that it blooms SO BIG???)? And have you used WD-40®’s Multi-Use Product to fix anything unusual? Don’t forget to come back tomorrow for the giveaway… it will be a bundle of products, so you’re sure to find something in it you’ll want to win!

The post My Very First Garden Bouquet appeared first on The Ugly Duckling House.

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[oovitus]

How The Minimalists Are Using Social Media in 2018

By Joshua Fields Millburn & Ryan Nicodemus · Follow: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram

Have you ever quit social media for an extended period of time? How did it change your perspective?

After using social media almost every day for the last seven years, we decided to walk away for a month to see what would happen. So, on December 31, 2017, before the ball dropped, we deleted all our past tweets and Instagram photos, we ceased our Facebook and Pinterest activity, and we uploaded a cryptic video alluding to our disappearance.

Then we were gone.

And now, a month later, we’re still alive, and we’re entering February 2018 with a blank slate.

During our month away, we learned some important lessons. And we unlearned a few bad habits. Most important, we discovered a need for us to use social media differently going forward.

Lessons Learned

Purpose. For us, once we’d created a blank slate, the purpose of social media became evident: communication. Not to sound overly simplistic, but want to use these platforms to effectively communicate our thoughts, ideas, and creations, and engage our audience directly with questions and answers—not broadcast our every thought. Social media can be a noisy place, and we don’t want to add to the noise—we want to whisper to the people who are listening.

Mindfulness. Whenever an activity occupies much of our mind, we need to take a step back and assess whether it’s worth the time we spend on that activity. Our friend Jessica Lynn Williams, who helps us organize our social feeds, discovered an important insight without the pall of social media in her everyday life: “Stepping away from social in January gave me the clarity of mind to see ‘the asshole in my mind running amuck’ (as Dan Harris says), and it has prompted me to adopt a regular meditation practice, which is something I’ve been afraid of for a while. This will be the year I take back my mind.”

Augmentation. We want to use social media to augment our creations—blog, podcast, books, films—not as the main platform on which we create. While we’ll be active on the different platforms, it’s worth noting that the best place to follow The Minimalists isn’t social media; the best place to follow our creations is by subscribing to our blog or by subscribing to our podcast (or both). Social media will simply append those platforms.

Unfollow. Whether it’s celebrities on Instagram, friends on Facebook, or news outlets on Twitter, the folks we follow often negatively affect our moods. We get caught up comparing ourselves with others, we get dragged down by naysayers, and we start twitching for 24-hour “breaking” news. Whenever this is the case, it’s best to unfollow those negative influences and instead curate a feed that includes people and brands who inform us, challenge us, and improve us. Letting go of the negative is the only way to make room for the valuable.

Value. As The Minimalists, we’ll post to social media only when it will add value for others. Before we publish to any platform, we must be able to affirmatively answer one question: Does this add value? If not, then delete.

Unlearned Bad Habits

Idiots. If the purpose of social media is to communicate with other humans, then we also must be careful with whom we engage. People find it easy to be keyboard crusaders, interactions with whom are rarely productive, so it’s important not to engage with the snarky critics, because this isn’t for them. Hence, if you’re a seagull, you’ll be blocked without discrimination, and you won’t be unblocked—ever. We have a renewed desire to communicate with our audience and a new vigor to avoid arguing with idiots.

Pacifiers. By removing the social media apps from our phones—which often pacified us whenever we had a silent moment in an airport, waiting room, or other interstitial zone—we learned that new pacifiers always appear. If you get rid of Facebook, you twitch for Twitter. If Instagram is gone, YouTube steps in. Two thousand years ago, the Stoics complained about people getting lost in books instead of going out and experiencing the real world. Today, we complain that nobody reads books anymore because everyone is lost in the tempting glow of their screens. Whether it’s books or social media we get lost in, we must work hard to use these tools deliberately to help us function in the real world—not remove ourselves from it.

Promoless. There’s too much “branding” going on these days. No, there aren’t any advertisements on our website or podcast or social media feeds, but even we have been guilty of too much self-promotion getting in the way of our own creations. Perhaps Derek Sivers said it best: putting ads in your work is like putting a Coke machine in a monastery. We feel the same about all the shameless self-promotion that’s going on these days, including our own. It’s solipsism run amuck. We’re pledging to remove the Coke machine from the monastery immediately so you can better enjoy what we’re creating and sharing without the promotional eyesores. Yes, we’ll occasionally talk about what we’re working on—including events, books, and projects—but we won’t let it get in the way of what we’re creating. If anything, promotion should be similar to the end credits of a film, not the main plot.

Triplicate. Over the years, we began using the different social media platforms the same exact way, which, when you think about it, is insane. It was a digital version of those old carbon-copy forms from decades past: post a photo to Instagram, repost it to Twitter, and then re-repost it to Facebook. Lather, rinse, repeat. Triplicating our efforts isn’t only tedious, it’s the opposite of using these platforms intentionally.

Using Social Media Differently

Because each social media platform is different, we want to use them differently—not as a carbon copy—so we’ve decided to focus on the specific strengths of each platform by identifying their primary and secondary uses. These changes should help us avoid creative overlap and will allow us better communicate with our audience as a result.

Facebook. We’ve found our Facebook audience engages most with the articles we post. Thus, we’ll use our Facebook account primarily to share useful links, be it our essays or others’ articles. Secondarily, we’ll use Facebook to publish short Audiograms and photo albums from past tours.

Twitter. Twitter is the best platform for us to share our text-only Minimal Maxims, so that will be its primary use. Secondarily, we’ll use Twitter to communicate directly with our audience: the brevity of this platform makes it the best place to interact with other people, so if you want to interact with us directly, Twitter is the best place to do so.

Instagram. Instagram is undoubtedly the best platform to share photos, so, going forward, we’ll use IG primarily to share beautiful black-and-white images. Secondarily, we’ll use the ephemerality of Instagram Stories to broadcast updates, current events, ephemera, and useful excerpts from our blogposts and podcasts. And we’ll occasionally use Instagram Live for unplanned live broadcasts, which are deleted after 24 hours.

Pinterest. Pinterest is the Internet’s corkboard, so it’s ideal us for us is to share letter boards that contain challenges and simple-living reminders from The Minimalists. We’ll also use our Pinterest account to repost photos of minimalist living spaces.

YouTube. Since YouTube is the premier video platform, this is where we’ll publish videos created by The Minimalists. This will be especially relevant when we add a video version of our podcast later this year. Secondarily, we’ll use YouTube to post other video creations: video essays, web series, and scheduled livestreams.

You’ll notice our absence from most social platforms: Snapchat, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Ello, Google+, Periscope, Flickr, Reddit, Quora, et al. That’s not because these services aren’t useful; they simply aren’t useful for us right now.

All things considered, we hope to use our new strategy to creatively add value to people’s lives. This is our recipe, and it isn’t ideal for everyone. Truth be told, it might not be ideal for anyone but us. And even then, we’ll likely adjust how we wield these tools after using them differently for a while.

No, we don’t expect you to follow us on every platform. Hell, we don’t expect you to follow us any platform. But if you find value in what we’re communicating, feel free to join us on our new journey. And if you ever stop finding value in what we’re sharing, please unfollow us at anytime.

P.S. Ella will continue tweeting her beautiful nonsense as usual.

Subscribe to The Minimalists via email.

How The Minimalists Are Using Social Media in 2018 published first on

[oovitus]

How The Minimalists Are Using Social Media in 2018

By Joshua Fields Millburn & Ryan Nicodemus · Follow: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram

Have you ever quit social media for an extended period of time? How did it change your perspective?

After using social media almost every day for the last seven years, we decided to walk away for a month to see what would happen. So, on December 31, 2017, before the ball dropped, we deleted all our past tweets and Instagram photos, we ceased our Facebook and Pinterest activity, and we uploaded a cryptic video alluding to our disappearance.

Then we were gone.

And now, a month later, we’re still alive, and we’re entering February 2018 with a blank slate.

During our month away, we learned some important lessons. And we unlearned a few bad habits. Most important, we discovered a need for us to use social media differently going forward.

Lessons Learned

Purpose. For us, once we’d created a blank slate, the purpose of social media became evident: communication. Not to sound overly simplistic, but want to use these platforms to effectively communicate our thoughts, ideas, and creations, and engage our audience directly with questions and answers—not broadcast our every thought. Social media can be a noisy place, and we don’t want to add to the noise—we want to whisper to the people who are listening.

Mindfulness. Whenever an activity occupies much of our mind, we need to take a step back and assess whether it’s worth the time we spend on that activity. Our friend Jessica Lynn Williams, who helps us organize our social feeds, discovered an important insight without the pall of social media in her everyday life: “Stepping away from social in January gave me the clarity of mind to see ‘the asshole in my mind running amuck’ (as Dan Harris says), and it has prompted me to adopt a regular meditation practice, which is something I’ve been afraid of for a while. This will be the year I take back my mind.”

Augmentation. We want to use social media to augment our creations—blog, podcast, books, films—not as the main platform on which we create. While we’ll be active on the different platforms, it’s worth noting that the best place to follow The Minimalists isn’t social media; the best place to follow our creations is by subscribing to our blog or by subscribing to our podcast (or both). Social media will simply append those platforms.

Unfollow. Whether it’s celebrities on Instagram, friends on Facebook, or news outlets on Twitter, the folks we follow often negatively affect our moods. We get caught up comparing ourselves with others, we get dragged down by naysayers, and we start twitching for 24-hour “breaking” news. Whenever this is the case, it’s best to unfollow those negative influences and instead curate a feed that includes people and brands who inform us, challenge us, and improve us. Letting go of the negative is the only way to make room for the valuable.

Value. As The Minimalists, we’ll post to social media only when it will add value for others. Before we publish to any platform, we must be able to affirmatively answer one question: Does this add value? If not, then delete.

Unlearned Bad Habits

Idiots. If the purpose of social media is to communicate with other humans, then we also must be careful with whom we engage. People find it easy to be keyboard crusaders, interactions with whom are rarely productive, so it’s important not to engage with the snarky critics, because this isn’t for them. Hence, if you’re a seagull, you’ll be blocked without discrimination, and you won’t be unblocked—ever. We have a renewed desire to communicate with our audience and a new vigor to avoid arguing with idiots.

Pacifiers. By removing the social media apps from our phones—which often pacified us whenever we had a silent moment in an airport, waiting room, or other interstitial zone—we learned that new pacifiers always appear. If you get rid of Facebook, you twitch for Twitter. If Instagram is gone, YouTube steps in. Two thousand years ago, the Stoics complained about people getting lost in books instead of going out and experiencing the real world. Today, we complain that nobody reads books anymore because everyone is lost in the tempting glow of their screens. Whether it’s books or social media we get lost in, we must work hard to use these tools deliberately to help us function in the real world—not remove ourselves from it.

Promoless. There’s too much “branding” going on these days. No, there aren’t any advertisements on our website or podcast or social media feeds, but even we have been guilty of too much self-promotion getting in the way of our own creations. Perhaps Derek Sivers said it best: putting ads in your work is like putting a Coke machine in a monastery. We feel the same about all the shameless self-promotion that’s going on these days, including our own. It’s solipsism run amuck. We’re pledging to remove the Coke machine from the monastery immediately so you can better enjoy what we’re creating and sharing without the promotional eyesores. Yes, we’ll occasionally talk about what we’re working on—including events, books, and projects—but we won’t let it get in the way of what we’re creating. If anything, promotion should be similar to the end credits of a film, not the main plot.

Triplicate. Over the years, we began using the different social media platforms the same exact way, which, when you think about it, is insane. It was a digital version of those old carbon-copy forms from decades past: post a photo to Instagram, repost it to Twitter, and then re-repost it to Facebook. Lather, rinse, repeat. Triplicating our efforts isn’t only tedious, it’s the opposite of using these platforms intentionally.

Using Social Media Differently

Because each social media platform is different, we want to use them differently—not as a carbon copy—so we’ve decided to focus on the specific strengths of each platform by identifying their primary and secondary uses. These changes should help us avoid creative overlap and will allow us better communicate with our audience as a result.

Facebook. We’ve found our Facebook audience engages most with the articles we post. Thus, we’ll use our Facebook account primarily to share useful links, be it our essays or others’ articles. Secondarily, we’ll use Facebook to publish short Audiograms and photo albums from past tours.

Twitter. Twitter is the best platform for us to share our text-only Minimal Maxims, so that will be its primary use. Secondarily, we’ll use Twitter to communicate directly with our audience: the brevity of this platform makes it the best place to interact with other people, so if you want to interact with us directly, Twitter is the best place to do so.

Instagram. Instagram is undoubtedly the best platform to share photos, so, going forward, we’ll use IG primarily to share beautiful black-and-white images. Secondarily, we’ll use the ephemerality of Instagram Stories to broadcast updates, current events, ephemera, and useful excerpts from our blogposts and podcasts. And we’ll occasionally use Instagram Live for unplanned live broadcasts, which are deleted after 24 hours.

Pinterest. Pinterest is the Internet’s corkboard, so it’s ideal us for us is to share letter boards that contain challenges and simple-living reminders from The Minimalists. We’ll also use our Pinterest account to repost photos of minimalist living spaces.

YouTube. Since YouTube is the premier video platform, this is where we’ll publish videos created by The Minimalists. This will be especially relevant when we add a video version of our podcast later this year. Secondarily, we’ll use YouTube to post other video creations: video essays, web series, and scheduled livestreams.

You’ll notice our absence from most social platforms: Snapchat, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Ello, Google+, Periscope, Flickr, Reddit, Quora, et al. That’s not because these services aren’t useful; they simply aren’t useful for us right now.

All things considered, we hope to use our new strategy to creatively add value to people’s lives. This is our recipe, and it isn’t ideal for everyone. Truth be told, it might not be ideal for anyone but us. And even then, we’ll likely adjust how we wield these tools after using them differently for a while.

No, we don’t expect you to follow us on every platform. Hell, we don’t expect you to follow us any platform. But if you find value in what we’re communicating, feel free to join us on our new journey. And if you ever stop finding value in what we’re sharing, please unfollow us at anytime.

P.S. Ella will continue tweeting her beautiful nonsense as usual.

Subscribe to The Minimalists via email.

How The Minimalists Are Using Social Media in 2018 published first on https://storeseapharmacy.tumblr.com