#spent way too long learning javascript to get it all working nicely

[lost-where-the-forest-would-grow]

Finally got my website sorted with a more functional music library. It even has a jukebox! For those who want to listen to my music or get scores for it the link is at https://chroniclesofautumn.com/library.

I still have some stuff on my soundcloud up and occasionally youtube, although those are more auxiliary as far as I am concerned for now. I will bring those into parity with the website either as stuff comes in or I find the time.

[bltngames]

Review: Lloyd the Monkey 2

Back before TSSZ News imploded, I would often do write-ups for many of the games at the Sonic Amateur Games Expo (SAGE). SAGE is an annual online expo that I started all the way back in September of 2000. I personally ran SAGE for over a year, and remained deeply hands on for at least another two years as it continued to grow. The main focus of SAGE was primarily to showcase fangames, in particular Sonic fangames, but the event never limited itself to any one type of game. It's never been uncommon to see original games appear in the lineup -- especially now, given the modern indie scene. 

One such original game was Lloyd the Monkey, a bit of a strange game, written in Javascript of all things and run through a webpage. That by itself was notable enough to stand out from most of the games at SAGE, but Lloyd was also a completely original product created by someone who possibly seemed to be young and new to game development. Making games is no easy feat, especially when they’re written in Javascript and you’re doing tons of original artwork yourself. Taken as that whole, the game impressed me, even if it was more than a little rough around the edges.

Now we have Lloyd the Monkey 2, written in Unity. The developer, Noah Meyer, sent me a Steam key in order to review the game. Up top, I just want to say how I think it’s kind of brave to go all the way in putting the game on Steam and everything. It felt like just a few years ago, newer indie developers sort of had to work up to releasing their game on Steam, usually getting a few releases under their belt first. People view games differently when they’re asked to pay for them, and critics may not be so willing to let circumstances influence their review. It can be a harsh world out there for a beginner.

Lloyd 2 is a much bigger, more ambitious game than the first. Whereas the original Lloyd didn’t even have sound effects, Lloyd 2 introduces voiced cutscenes, some of which are full-on animated cinematics. Quality is about what you would expect -- I would assume the developer sought out friends and acquaintances to voice characters in Lloyd 2, leading to wildly varying audio quality due to differences in recording hardware. Lloyd himself sounds fine, but some of the other characters are a bit quiet, while others have clear background noise. Nothing I heard was unlistenable, however. 

The story is also a little hard to follow. Not much is done to refresh our memories as to who anyone is or what’s going on, we’re just kind of thrown into the middle of things and turned loose. On one hand, it’s nice that the story doesn’t slow the pace of the gameplay down too much. On the other, you’re given a map screen with different objectives to clear but there’s very little context as to what you’re doing or why. At one point I made my way to the end of a Power Plant level only to confront what appeared to be an evil monkey. Despite a whole cutscene involving a conversation between four or five different people, this evil monkey never seemed to say a single word. He just stood there in total silence with a sinister smile. Then I killed him.

I suppose maybe I missed something, however. With greater ambitions comes a number of unfortunate bugs in Lloyd 2, one of which happened not long after our monkey and his crew landed on planet Grecia. I entered what appeared to be a castle to talk to the Queen, but I think the game expected me to take a lower route, where I was apparently meant to overhear the Queen making secret preparations before my arrival. Instead, I took the direct route straight to her chambers, and triggered the cutscene with Lloyd standing in front of her while ominous music played, even though the camera was still clearly focused on the next floor down. I apparently still had some amount of control, because midway through her dialog I touched a teleporter that sent me to the game’s map screen before she was done talking. If that cutscene was meant to give context to what I was doing, I didn’t get a chance to see it.

That was one of the more harmless bugs in my time spent playing Lloyd 2. Harder to ignore was the fact that, within the first 30 seconds of getting control, I soft locked the game. Lloyd 2 opens with a short prologue section where you play as a man with black hair. If you decide to ignore the obvious and go left instead of right, you quickly run out of solid level tiles and begin falling indefinitely. Later areas feature invisible walls presumably to prevent this exact scenario, but for whatever reason they weren’t implemented in the prologue. 

For the most part, Lloyd 2 seems to be a co-op game. Many levels see Lloyd teamed up with an alien princess named Lura, with gameplay vaguely reminiscent of Mega Man X crossed with the tag mechanic from Sonic Mania’s Encore Mode. At the touch of a button, you can switch between the Swordsman Lloyd and the more projectile-based Lura… assuming your partner is still alive, I guess. While playing alone, your partner is controlled by artificial intelligence, but it’s incredibly basic and prone to accidentally committing suicide. That wouldn’t be such a big deal (considering Tails in Sonic 2 never acted in self-preservation either), but once your partner dies, they stay dead. Your only option to bring them back is to either restart the stage or hope another cutscene triggers, since they’ll magically spring back to life in order to say their dialog (though, again, usually only seconds before they fall back into the next death pit). 

This might not be much of a problem, depending on your viewpoint. There’s not much incentive to switch between Lloyd and Lura, so once you pick whoever you think works the best, chances are, you’ll just stick with them. You do unlock special team-up attacks after beating each boss, but this just reinforces the idea that Lloyd the Monkey 2 is meant to be experienced with another person holding a second controller, as most of the team-up attacks require both characters to do something specific that the single player artificial intelligence usually can’t interpret. Regardless, the team-up attacks never seem strictly necessary to progress, so they can be safely ignored if you’re playing solo.

I understand this is a pretty negative review I’ve written here. Lloyd the Monkey 2 aims high and tries to the best of its ability to get there. I assume it was a struggle to get even this far. Making games is hard work, and like any skill, takes practice to get good at. Just because this is Lloyd the Monkey 2 doesn’t mean Noah Meyer, its developer, is automatically an expert. I'm sure he's doing his best, and, quality aside, this game has a lot of heart put into it. This isn’t something cheap, quick, or lazy. It’s really, genuinely trying, and that matters. 

I’ve said a few times here and there that I see pieces of myself in the releases of Lloyd the Monkey, and I still see them here. I remember, for an early SAGE event, I was working on a fangame project of mine called The Fated Hour. I was probably already a year or two or maybe even three deep in the game by now, and after a lot of hyping up the community, this was their first chance to play the game. I spent months and months coding this iteration of my engine, and by my standards back then, it seemed like bleeding edge technology. I felt like I was going to blow everyone's minds. 

It was a mess. Few were impressed. Even worse, the game straight up didn’t even run correctly for some people. What followed was multiple patches, and even rebuilding some entire areas from scratch. My ambitions got the better of me and I unintentionally cut corners -- not because I was trying to cheap out on doing proper development, but just because I simply didn’t know any better. I may have done the best I knew how to do, but I was running faster than my body could keep up with and I stumbled.

When I see things like the missing invisible walls in the prologue, or how easily partner characters commit suicide by accident, I think back to that demo for The Fated Hour, and how I've been in this exact place myself. There’s even a side quest in Lloyd 2 where you have to track a floating girl as she drifts through a level -- there was a nearly identical set piece in The Fated Hour, where you were chasing a robot. It’s a very strange feeling to see something like that and think, “I’ve been here before.” Like looking through a window at a younger version of yourself.

It’s true that I stumbled, but I didn’t let that stop me. I learned by doing. I kept going. Three years later, a game of mine was featured on TV, leading to more than a million downloads. The mistakes of past projects did not weigh me down and I soldiered onwards, newfound knowledge in hand. 

So where does that leave us with Lloyd the Monkey 2, then. Well, it's not exactly a game to compete with Super Mario Odyssey, but given the circumstances in which it was created, I don't think that's necessarily the point. As a learning experience clearly made for the fun of its own creation, I think it's a success. And who knows what awaits in the years to come?

[tap-tap-tap-im-in]

A Web Development Master Post

I’ve spent the last two years working as a professional developer. I didn’t go to college for this, and just about everything I know I’ve either taught myself or learned from looking through other people’s source code as we research if we want to pull a project into our code base. I love it, and I have done some things I never would have expected from myself at the start. But before we get into any of those, I wanted to put together a list of resources I wish I had or worked with more fully when I was sitting in my job interview two years ago. Think of this as part resources on how to learn some of these skills, some recommendations on applications to incorporate into your workflow, and a few opinions on some of the other common applications that you’re welcome to heartily disagree with.

First things first lets get a few resources together, and for those of you who are already familiar with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP, none of these will be a surprise. It might be worth your while to jump ahead.

Online Resources

https://www.w3schools.com/

Starting out, W3 schools will probably be pretty omnipresent for help. They have tutorials for HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, ASP, and many other web technologies. They pride themselves in being the largest web developer site, and unfortunately that has a downside. They don’t always update all of their articles to the most current specifications. This is a wonderful resource, as they do a good job of explaining a lot of these concepts in a beginner friendly way, but when you’re ready for nitty-gritty details, it’s almost always best to go with a more specialized developer resource.

https://css-tricks.com/

CSS is a powerful and flexible tool. Every day I see projects where developers have pushed it to new heights, but sometimes it’s a little arcane too. Well the wizards over at CSS-Tricks have collected a large number of articles and tutorials that explain everything from how z-index works to how to use newer layout-centric rules like Flexbox or Grid. If a CSS rule is misbehaving, 9 times out of 10, I can find a clear and concise reason on this site, and more importantly, I find many recommendations on how I can achieve the same effect differently.

https://flexboxfroggy.com/

Speaking of Flexbox, Flexbox Froggy is a one-note kind of resource, but it teaches all of the core concepts behind flexbox, and it can also teach CSS savvy managers why moving to a new layout methodology would benefit your work flow.

https://cssgridgarden.com/

Created by the same developer as Flexbox Froggy, and it does the same thing with Grid concepts.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/

Mozilla’s developers have been at this game a long time, and their resources are next to none. In my opinion, this collection does not do much help a beginner understand, but the trade-off is that once you’re over that initial hurdle, the information you’re looking for is almost always only a few clicks away. This is the first, and often the last, place I go whenever I’m looking to solve a weird JavaScript bug that the rest of the internet is too clever to have encountered, (or to explain why only IE9 is seeing it).

http://php.net/manual/en/index.php

I know PHP isn’t a popular language right now, but it’s powerful, it’s flexible, and it’s still the primary language of the largest and most popular CMS on the planet, for better or worse, WordPress. Especially if you’re going to work freelance, you owe it to yourself to at least be familiar with PHP, and this will be your best friend. It’s no nonsense, and not beginner friendly, but it’s clear, and the comments on the articles are often as helpful as the articles themselves.

https://codex.wordpress.org/Developer_Documentation

Speaking of working in freelance (or even for a firm like I do), I have my own opinions about the way WordPress works, but you’re going to be doing projects in WordPress, and you aren’t going to be able to accomplish them without this. I have a small problem with the way functions and parameters are explained (it isn’t always easy to differentiate how one calls a function manually, or if it is called by filters, or how it is different from they three other functions named roughly the same thing), but I do know that the WordPress core developers work very hard, so there is always a method to the madness, even if you don’t have the key to see it.

https://stackoverflow.com/

When you get to the debugging stage, you’re going to become familiar with Stack Overflow pretty fast, as it almost always dominates the first few google results for a problem. Now, I’ve had developers try to scare me away from using Stack Overflow because it is open for beginners and experts, and sometimes it’s hard to tell quality of answers, but I strongly disagree with that. While it’s true you should always look cautiously at using someone else’s code right out of the box, there are a lot of members of the community that go out of their way to explain what the code is doing, and those are the answers you should be looking for. You don’t have to use their code, but if you can understand why you had the problem in the first place, you grow as a developer, and now have the tools to solve the problem. Stack Overflow is a big part of the Open Source community, so it’s always nice to give back at least as much as you take, so if you see a question you have the answer to, feel free to share.

https://github.com/

Eventually, you’re going to run into a project where you need a plugin developed by someone else, either because you don’t yet have the knowledge or you don’t have the time, but the client needs the functionality. 9 times out of 10 you’ll find what you need on GitHub, and honestly, you should be getting together your own GitHub with plugins and projects of your own. No matter how single purpose they may be, you’d be surprised how useful things can be in very specific situations. GitHub, like Stack Overflow, is a big part of the Open Source community, so it’s always nice to give back when you can. Make suggestions or report problems you have with any projects you pull, and in doing so you’ll make the community a better place.

Applications for Windows Based Developers

Now, for the next section let’s get into some tools. I love gaming, so I have a Windows computer at home. I don’t really know why we’re wasting money on a Windows license at work, but we are so I can mirror the full stack in both locations. Here’s what I use.

https://notepad-plus-plus.org/

When I first started, my boss insisted I use Dreamweaver for everything. I have nothing against Adobe, and their products are quality, but Dreamweaver was way more trouble than it was worth. Everything I cared about from Dreamweaver I can do in this free and Open Source program, with some extra functionality I find it extremely hard to mimic in Dreamweaver. Notepad++ is fast, stable, and hugely extendable. If you’re doing this as a full time job, I strongly recommend switching to a dark theme for the sake of your eyes. Blackboard is among my favorites (unless you’re trying to write Python). I also really love its macro functionality, I have a couple of re-used DOM structures programmed in there right now as well as my multi-line comment format.

https://winscp.net/eng/download.php

Arguably, the best part of Dreamweaver is the built in FTP client that lets you push changes directly to the server, but set Notepad++ as your primary editor in this, and suddenly you even have that feature, as this will sync temp folders back to the server. This is probably the best FTP client I’ve seen on Windows, with full support for SFTP and SSH (built on PuTTY) with all sorts of encryption and authentication options. It’s also hugely configurable and fairly dependable. If you’re working on a remote server using a Windows machine, this is probably how you should be accessing the file system.

https://www.putty.org/

I hope that as a web developer you don’t have to learn to be a server administrator, but as a web developer I am telling you you’ll probably have to learn at least a little bit about Unix/Linux server administration, as they are by far the most popular web server stacks out there, and you’ll be controlling them with an SSH client at some points, even if a web interface is available. This is a great one, with all sorts of authentication options, so if (like us) you know you need root access to a server remotely, but you don’t like the idea of protecting that with just a simple password, you can set up Public/Private key pairs with encryption passphrases.

http://www.wampserver.com/en/

Let me be clear on this: WAMP, which stands for Windows Apache, PHP, MySQL, is great to have. It’s good for training, it’s good for prototyping tools without having to wait for a virtualized server to start up, but the differences in environments between running Apache, PHP, and MySQL on Windows versus Linux will bite you eventually. Don’t expect to be able to push anything you worked on in WAMP directly to your Linux based server without having to fix a few problems here and there. That said, I have a number of things I run in my WAMP server all the time (linting, IP geolocation, domain DIGs, and a few others). It’s a great tool, but it isn’t a replacement for a staging server.

https://www.virtualbox.org/

You should be using a virtual machine for your staging server. That way you can simulate things like network communications and how your code will actually be run on Linux. Virtual Box is free and powerful. You’ll need to get ISOs for whatever operating system you intend to run, and you should be aware that at least some versions of Windows have it written into their License agreement that you can’t run them virtualized.

https://www.gimp.org/

Gimp is powerful. I don’t really know how to use it well. It’s always been one of those things where I know I need to sit down and teach myself, but since I’ve fallen far into the trenches of server backend work, I haven’t ever had the motivation. Mostly, I use this to resize images when I notice that a website is loading a 14MB PNG on the homepage for some unknown reason. Please designers, think of the mobile phones, keep total page loads (Including all resources, pictures, scripts, and DOM structure) as close to or below 1MB as you can, especially if your site is supported by ad revenue, as there’s no telling how much the ads will need to load on top of that.

https://tools.stefankueng.com/grepWin.html

GrepWin is an implementation of Grep functionality on Windows. For those of you who aren’t aware, Grep is a terminal tool on Linux/Unix that uses a very efficient algorithm to search through large amounts of text for whatever you define, be it flat text, or something represented by a regular expression. It’s super useful for renaming an included document or global variable, and can really save your bacon if your error reporting is being vague. I like this particular implementation because it has context menu integration, so it’s as easy to use as right clicking in the directory you want to search in and telling it to search. It also supports text replacement with backups, so this simple tool is extremely useful more often than I’d like to admit.

https://gitforwindows.org/

The last tool is an implementation of Git for windows that also includes a Bash terminal. This is important because a lot of developers work in Linux, and so installation directions might only be available as Bash code, this makes it easy to move past that step without being bogged down translating that into Windows CMD code. This is a full implementation of Git, so it comes with all of the version control features and easy project building that Git provides. If you end up working with Electron or Node.JS in general, you’ll end up leaning on this pretty hard.

And that’s it. I’m hoping that later this week I can get into more interesting stuff, but I wanted to have a foundational post of the resources I might reference and the tools I’m using for people to fall back on. It’s the kind of thing I wish I had to reference when I was starting out, especially since all of the tools I’m using now are free and Open Source, and making that change has sped up my workflow significantly, as the only application I’ve listed here with any noticeable boot time is Gimp, something I hated about Dreamweaver every time I had to shut the computer down for whatever reason.

I plan on coming back to this post periodically and updating it as my opinions change, or I become aware of other resources that should be on here. Eventually I’ll also be lining out a software for Linux section, but I’m still shopping around for an affordable and stable Linux development machine.

Next time I think we’re going to dive right into some anecdotes about code commenting and design patterns, and why it pays to think about those from the beginning. Nothing glamorous, but I’d argue hugely important, and you get to laugh with me about some dumb things I’ve done.

[t-baba]

An interview with the author of 'JavaScript: The Definitive Guide'

#490 — May 29, 2020

Unsubscribe  :  Read on the Web

👀 This week we have a fun bit of bonus content at the end of the issue — an interview with David Flanagan, someone who's written more JavaScript books than I've had hot dinners. 😆

JavaScript Weekly

Snowpack 2.0: A Build System for the Modern Web — Say bye-bye to your bundler and let modern browsers’ ES module support do the heavy lifting with Snowpack. Or if you need to target more than just modern browsers, you can always just use it to speed things up in development. This talk by Ryan Lanciaux introduces the idea of escaping using bundlers, if you’re new to this area.

Fred K. Schott

The Process of Making Vue 3 — We know a lot of you are excited about the next major version of Vue.js – the final release is due soon (betas available here) and here Evan talks about the process and how it differs from Vue 2 at a high level.

Evan You / Increment

New Course: Design Systems with Storybook & React — Learn to create a design system from scratch using React, and document the design system to share with your team using Storybook.

Frontend Masters sponsor

A First Look at Records and Tuples — An introductory look at two new compound primitive value types in the ECMAScript spec: Records and Tuples.

Axel Rauschmayer

▶  What's New in TypeScript — You might know Daniel better from all his TypeScript release posts, but here he is in video form with a brief TypeScript introduction followed by essentially a code and example-heavy ‘state of the union’ about where TypeScript is at and where it’s headed.

Daniel Rosenwasser (Microsoft)

htmx: Build Dynamic Pages Using HTML Attributes — Billed as the ‘successor to intercooler.js’, htmx lets you add dynamic Ajax-y elements, Server Sent Events (SSE), WebSockets and more to a site using just HTML attributes.

Big Sky Software

⚡️ Quick bytes:

🎉 Node.js is 11 years old this week.

💰 The company behind the React-based Gatsby framework has raised $28m in series B funding.

🎧 The TC39er podcast has continued to interview TC39 delegates and is at episode 4. Worth listening to if you want more 'inside baseball' of the JavaScript world.

💛 In the latest Stack Overflow survey results, JavaScript remains the most popular language. However, TypeScript is higher on the 'most loved' list.

💻 Jobs

JavaScript Developer at X-Team (Remote) — Join X-Team and work on projects for companies like Riot Games, FOX, Coinbase, and more. Work from anywhere.

X-Team

Find a Job Through Vettery — Vettery specializes in tech roles and is completely free for job seekers. Create a profile to get started.

Vettery

📚 Tutorials and Opinions

Analyzing the Performance of Notion's Electron App — I was going to save this for our React newsletter but it’s too good! A real deep dive into analyzing the performance of a desktop JavaScript app for a popular note taking service and some basic optimizations that can be done.

Ivan Akulov

ECMAScript 4: The Missing Version — If you were around the JavaScript world in the early 2000s, you might recall how long discussion around ES4 rumbled on before it ultimately fizzled out. Some of the ideas were picked up by ActionScript, as used by Flash, but it felt like we lost a lot of potential progress in that decade.

Evert Pot

3 Hacks to Level Up Your Dashboards — Watch this webinar to learn about three elements that will help you build better dashboards for your application.

Logi Analytics sponsor

Some Causes of Memory Leaks in JavaScript and How to Avoid Them — A primer on the basic ideas.

Ekaterina Vujasinović

How To Create Better Angular Templates with Pug — Pug is a template engine that allows you to write cleaner templates with less repetition.

Zara Cooper

A (Mostly) Complete Guide to React Rendering Behavior — Details on how React rendering behaves, and how use of Context and React-Redux affect rendering. There are a lot of concepts compressed into this article.

Mark Erikson

▶  A 50 Minute Deno Crash Course — A lot of people are cranking out Deno videos right now, but Traversy Media has a solid reputation for getting these things right. In 50 minutes we get a nice, balanced approach to Deno’s plus points, tooling, building an API, etc.

Traversy Media

Today’s JavaScript, From An Outsider’s Perspective — Lea is a JavaScript expert, of course, but she was trying to help a computer scientist friend work with JS and commented on the frustrations along the way.

Lea Verou

10 JavaScript Quiz Questions and Answers to Sharpen Your Skills — Lots of tidbits here to sharpen your skills and understanding, but keep in mind that not all JavaScript interviews will be like this(!)

Nick Scialli

🔧 Code & Tools

RoughNotation: A Small Library to Create and Animate Rough Annotations — Uses Rough.js for the handdrawn look. Lots of nice interactive examples on the page showing the diversity of annotation types.

Preet Shihn

AudioMass: A Full-Featured Web Audio Editing Tool in JavaScript — Runs entirely in the browser with no backend or plugins required. Impressive. Source here.

Pantelis Kalogiros

See Runtime Values Right in Your Editor as You Type — Quokka.js is a rapid prototyping playground for JavaScript & TypeScript. Code runs immediately as you type and results display in your editor. Discounted by 40% for the next few days.

Wallaby.js sponsor

Fluor.js: A High Level Way to Add Interactions and Effects to Pages — Think a modern jQuery-lite. Pretty short and sweet for what it is.

François Vaux

Angelfire: Add Custom Context Menus to Any Page Element — Hands up if the name of this project takes you on a nostalgia trip to the 90s.. 🙋‍♀️

Rishabh Anand

number-precision: Tiny Library for Basic but Precise Arithemetic — For when you don’t want 0.1 + 0.2 to equal 0.30000000000000004 😏

NEFE

Perspective: Streaming Pivot Visualization Via WebAssembly — An interesting use for WebAssembly here. Originally built for J P Morgan, Perspective is for building real-time high performance interactive visualizations, powered by a C++ engine compiled to WASM under the hood.

The Fintech Open Source Foundation

AppSignal Adds Next.js Integration - Automatically Adds Web Vitals Monitoring

AppSignal sponsor

Autopilot: A Cross-Platform Desktop Automation Library for Deno — Another example of where using Rust for dependencies opens up some fun options to Deno. If you’re using Deno, don’t forget our Deno Weekly newsletter where we’ll be focusing on things like this :-)

Divy Srivastava

vue-list-scroller: A Vue Component for Efficiently Rendering Large Lists — Uses the ResizeObserver API to help with creating a Twitter-like feed that has thousands of items, and supports infinite scroll.

Ivan Safonov

Notable Improvements to the Profiler in React DevTools 4.7.0 — This tweet thread from Facebook developer Brian Vaughn distills out the highlights from the changelog.

Facebook

💬 A Q&A with… David Flanagan Author of JavaScript: The Definitive Guide

David has been programming since 1981 and getting paid for it since 1985. In 2011, he started working at Mozilla. Since then he's worked as a full-stack engineer on MDN and at Khan Academy. He currently works on cloud software at VMware and is in the process of releasing the seventh edition of JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, a hugely popular JavaScript book published by O'Reilly.

Why a seventh edition now?

I allowed the sixth edition to become badly out of date (sorry!). So the seventh edition is a major, and long-overdue, update. Importantly, it covers ES2020 and even mentions some features expected to be formalized in ES2021. Also new in this edition is a detailed chapter on Node, reflecting the reality that JavaScript isn't just for web browsers anymore.

(Ed: David has written more on what's new in the seventh edition here.)

What was the story behind writing the first edition?

I started on it shortly after I wrote Java in a Nutshell. In those days the buzz around Java was that Java "applets" could add dynamic content to web browsers. JavaScript seemed like a promising alternative and I remember talking to an engineer from Sun Microsystems (the company that created Java) about what I was going to work on next. When I told him I thought JavaScript might become more important in the browser than Java, he scoffed. But seven editions of my book later, I'm starting to think I was right(!)

What's your favorite chapter?

Most interesting JavaScript code is asynchronous, and now that Promises are a core part of the JavaScript language, I dedicate chapter 13 to asynchronous programming with callbacks, events, Promises and async/await.

Promises are a revolutionary addition to JavaScript, but once you move beyond the simplest examples, it becomes very easy to misuse them and you need to understand them deeply in order to use them correctly and with confidence. So I devote more than 20 pages to explaining them in depth. These are some of the most complicated pages in the book, but if they increase the understanding of Promises, I'll feel I've provided an important service to the community.

You've spent so much time writing books about JavaScript, but what other technologies interest you?

I'm intrigued by both Go and Rust and would enjoy documenting those languages. I've thought about writing short books about React and Angular. And I've wondered whether it is possible to write an interesting book about coding for a non-technical audience.

What's the secret to being able to write so many programming books?

No secret, really: from about 1991 to 2011 I was self-employed and for most of that time, writing books was my primary job. This 7th edition of JavaScript: The Definitive Guide is the first book I've written while also working a regular software engineering job.

You can find David on Twitter @__DavidFlanagan or more about JavaScript: The Definitive Guide at O'Reilly Media.

by via JavaScript Weekly https://ift.tt/2BilxR3

[thesteveyates]

This week i was down at the yard one evening when i happened to bump into Chris the boss who was slinging the next boat due to go down the slip.  Chris was just back from an early season sail with some of his university students : his main job being a university lecturer at the maritime college.    It was that kind of evening when neither of us were in a rush to get stuff done so, like the old seadogs we pretend to be, we had a good ‘gam’ about stuff that we were doing.

We both come at our sailing from completely different backgrounds and experiences of boats : mine being very much ‘IOR’ but also with a few years knocking around a boatyard.        Chris probably has even more ocean miles that i do, is definitely as experienced a long distance sailor and is far better a boatman and all round fixer of boat problems.

For some reason we got to talking about simple boat designs and came around to ‘Bolger-boxes‘, we don’t have any of the late Phil Bolger’s designs in the yard although we had been talking about simple-but-functional boats which lots of the craft in the yard are…..rather than the pretty and the conventional.            Chris actually knew of a Bolger design that he was very enthusiastic about but one which doesn’t feature in my book of Bolger‘s designs….one that he thought might interest me.  I’ll come back to the actual boat in a moment…the thrust of our conversation being along the lines of the difficulty of finding larger boats (than mine) that are offshore capable and will lie upright in a creek or on the beach.  Chris, like me, is a great believer in being able to do that, in fact it has been Chris’s knowledge of the west-country rivers that has opened up many of the great little shallow anchorages to me and WABI”’

The ‘Bolger-box‘ that Chris mentioned  by the way is a cat-yawl design called ‘Romp’ and it’s one i’d never heard of nor ever knowingly seen a picture of : there aren’t even that many photographs of the design on the internet.  Here’s the boat (below) that our man was talking about, and yes it’s one that could get my enthusiasm running and yes, it’s definitely an oddball one.

Firstly, i can exactly imagine this one sitting comfortably on the firm sand/mud of Ruan creek , or anywhere else for that matter, i can easily imagine taking her across to France and then parking her on the mud far up one of the Brittanny rivers and i bet she would be a comfortable boat to live aboard and voyage with.  I don’t reckon she would be a good upwind boat in the channel as, if anything, she looks like a little barge…..in fact i want to go very ‘left-field’ here and suggest that she might even be better with leeboards just like a real barge.

As with the boats that Chris and me were talking about this one holds the same practical and functional appeal as my little boat does.  Aside from a couple of mentions in Bolger related websites i haven’t found out much more yet about the design or the few that have been built.

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Today, that one wasn’t really what i came to talk about as this post is ‘one for the weekend‘, that is , the series in which i highlight boats that are on the market through Ebay and which i think are worth a look at.

About a year ago my own decision making about boats was almost exactly hanging between ‘proper’ offshore and ocean going boats , classic cruiser-racers say and the much more specialised boats geared towards shallow draft and drying out.  It should be pretty obvious which way i have gone with that now but a year ago i was on the verge of buying this boat just before my knee became a real problem.

This is the actual boat we went to see down at Portland marina/boatyard and spent the morning aboard having a very thorough examination of.  She was already on the brokerage at a fair price although the owner really wanted to get rid of her and at that stage had put her up for auction on Ebay…..which was when i picked up on her. I covered the boat briefly once before, for those that don’t remember it’s a ‘Javelin’ half tonner to the older IOR rule and had been a competitive racer briefly and then a very capable cruiser-racer.  I was very tempted to make an offer on the Javelin as i thought her crude race boat interior would be easily converted into a much more comfortable boat for a couple and to be honest, this is the kind of boat that i grew up with in the ISORA circuit.

I thought then, and still think now, that the Javelin would have been a competent and fairly quick cruiser-racer for genuine offshore cruising although the compromise would have been her inability to dry out easily and i think i would have been nervous about trying to dry her out on beaching legs.

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What actually happened here is that my knee needed a more urgent rebuild and i couldn’t take the Javelin project any further at that time.  I happen to think that she would have made a very capable cruiser almost along the same lines as Free-Range sailing’s ‘Mirrool’…the limitation with the Javelin being the 5 foot draft.

The first reason i am highlighting the Javelin half-tonner again today is that i still happen to believe a 30 foot ,early GRP boat would make an excellent long term cruising boat for a young couple….again just like Troy and Pascale’s ‘Mirrool’.  The Javelin is slightly more extreme a boat with her fin keel rather than the semi-long keel and i suspect both a bit quicker and a bit wetter a sailing boat in a breeze upwind.

The second reason i am highlighting the Javelin today is that there is one for sale/Auction on Ebay right now and it’s a boat that i have actually seen out sailing.  Its a slightly strange coincidence but when i was passing Lymington one evening on the ‘Inanda’ trip there was an evening race in that end of the Solent and the Javelin was one of the boats that came past me…..i was a bit too busy dodging weekend racing  yachties to get photographs.

Anyway, here she is and a very low starting cost.   When she came past me her sails looked good and flat , she looked very balanced and well behaved too. I had a quick look through the sale details, obviously the 2 Javelin’s are very different boats, the one i saw had a very new looking engine but would have needed new sails and an interior rebuild….the current one on Ebay has very nice looking sails, very high quality deck gear and a conventional looking cruiser-racer interior…..the downside if anything might be the old engine although i haven’t seen it so can’t comment on that.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Javelin-30-Sailing-Yacht-Boat-Fin-Keel-1974/264274947404?hash=item3d8803ad4c:g:5FsAAOSwkDtcMdDI

Not related but this is where i fetched up that evening.

One for the project shed then.

Back to the boatyard then and two sailors having a good gam about boats.  Something i have often said here on the blog is that up until about 20 years ago i had a very narrow view of boats and an equally limited ‘type’ experience.  I was a bit like a stick of rock  (except fatter) ….if you’d sliced me across the middle you would have found the letters ‘IOR’ running right through the middle !.   It wasn’t until i left professional sailing behind completely that i discovered that there were ‘other’ boats out there and that some of them were far more functional craft than the race dinosaurs that i sailed.

Chris, as i have said, has a much more broad base of past experience than i do and he has sailed far more different kinds of boats than i have….at one point i was enthusing about a ‘Freedom’ design in the yard …..and he immediately told me about a passage that he’d recently done in one and how good that one was off the wind.

While we were chatting away i noticed the alloy mast of an obviously small boat on the other side of the reed-beds just around the next bend in the river and clearly coming upriver on the evening tide.

Chris said that it was a group of lads who had rescued an old and basic sailing boat and were enthusiastically trying to get it sailing again.  More enthusiasm and less cash was the impression i got from Chris….and good for them too.  There are so many small potentially viable project boats out there that just need a lot of enthusiasm, some work and some money, not much….that would make great little boats at low cost.

Chris used two expressions that were so memorable that i’m going to repeat them here : ‘run what you brung’ which is a bikers expression , basically meaning sail with what you have and don’t waste time wishing you had something better, second : “Its all valid“…in terms of boats…..the boat might not be pretty or a great marque but it can still give you as much adventure as you can handle.  I was once a kind of boat snob but today i see where Chris is going with that idea : that it doesn’t really matter what you own, it’s the adventure, and i think the process of learning that’s important.

I really admire that kind of approach as it reminds me of my first boat, a very bad East German Folkboat and then the  boat that an old ‘Whitbread‘ mate of mine and his brother owned between them …a rough secondhand Achilles 24.     Both boats were very secondhand ,rough and  worth very little,  and both of them taught us stacks about the basics of going to sea in small craft   We can then  both then trace our sailing stories up to a kind of pinnacle that took us right round the world under sail via the great capes and in  the longest fully crewed yacht race that existed back then.   Most of us in that crew came from a background of sailing small and not-great boats and anyone that was useful had some key skill to offer that they’d had to learn from running those boats.

Some time during that race i had to splice up big rope to wire halyards and i only knew how to do that because i’d had to learn that technique for my folkboat….likewise when we blew the head out of the blast reacher it was Sam who hand sewed the head ring back in place because he’d learnt that aboard his Achilles.  As i remember it he watched me splice and i helped him with the sail……a couple of years later and i was doing a similar sail repair myself just from having it seen done once : in medicine we have an expression “see one, do one, teach one” !

So, i’m going to make a point here.               I honestly think that not having a big budget for a new boat and/or taking on a project boat at some point in our sailing lives (preferably early on) makes us much better sailors ultimately.    That’s because we have to do what countless generations of sailors (not yachtsmen) have had to do and that is improvise : make and mend is the sailors expression.   I might be slightly weird but i happen to think that having a not great boat early on also teaches a lot about basic seamanship especially if that little boat has to be sailed nearly everywhere.

So, here is the point of the pointy end today….

Right now on Ebay there are several viable project boats coming and going, here is just one of them and exactly the kind of thing i would be looking for if i was just coming into the game with a few hundred pounds in my pocket and maybe the chance to put a few hundred more into the boat.  It certainly doesn’t have to be THE boat, in fact it’s probably better if the first one is on the rough side : then you won’t worry too much about learning the basic skills on it.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Listang25-sailing-boat/382888835082?hash=item5925f3f80a:g:pA0AAOSwN0hcqeIv

Lets say you were a young sailor who was looking for their first boat, or maybe someone who was on a very tight budget but wanted to go cruising.  A project boat like this could teach you every stage of getting a boat on the water if you just decided to do as much of it as you could yourself.   Learning how to do a simple GRP repair or just sorting the mast out and stepping it with maybe a mate to help….it can be done…  or maybe building a basic electrical system out of a 12 volt battery, a PV panel and some wiring.   It’s all useful stuff for the day you really have to repair something in the southern ocean or out on a long cruise where there are no marinas and boatyards.

Ok, so the Listang isn’t the prettiest of boats and it’s pretty far down the project slope except that it’s got a hull/deck , keel and mast, some sails and gear.  Right now it’s only one of 3 or 4 just on Ebay and of course they appear and disappear every week.  This week there is a complete hull for £50…you couldn’t build a new hull for that….or how about a Sadler 25 that’s been sat in a field for 5 years ?…..there is one on the site right now.

I reckon that if you could get that little boat on the water with very little hard cash spent but with some hours work done and basic skills learnt ….that you would know far more about boats and your little boat specifically than the wealthy but incompetent couple on their brand new 40 footer with all the toys and a still wet day-skipper certificate.

One for the creek, one for the shed and one for the weekend. This week i was down at the yard one evening when i happened to bump into Chris the boss who was slinging the next boat due to go down the slip. 

[blackgoddessofsassiness]

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[operationrainfall]

Title MO:Astray Developer Archpray Inc. Publisher Rayark Release Date October 25, 2019 (Steam), September 10th, 2020 (Switch) Genre Action Platformer, Metroidvania, Puzzle, Story Driven Platform Switch, Steam Age Rating Teen Official Website

MO:Astray is a game about a blob and its quest through an unknown place, on an unknown planet. The hook itself sounds promising. Traverse through numerous biomes wondering why your blob has gone astray, while trying to solve what happened along the way. When I was offered the opportunity to review MO:Astray, I had to hook my claws into it and was unprepared from the beginning how much it would wrench my heart. As always, I like to start my reviews off with this one question for the readers: Is this game fun?

Blob Time

From the very beginning of the game I knew I was going to fall in love. The intro screen, the tutorial afterwards, everything about this game so far touched my senses in a way that hasn’t been done in a very long time. The art style, the sound design, and the atmosphere behind the game screamed the following to me: this game is a passion project. So, I started a new game and selected from one of the four difficulty modes, Adventure (Hard).

During the tutorial, it starts off in a barren land. You’re a grey blob in the middle of a pool of water surrounded by various reeds and fauna. During this tutorial you learn how to move, jump, and stick to walls. To jump, you have to aim your blob first, and jumping has arcing in it, so your blob falls after a bit of time. The way the controls are designed feel good from the start, and I had no reason to swap any of my controls to different control settings. It’s a standard system, though here are your starting controls:

Move: Left Joystick or D-pad

Aim: Right Joystick

Jump: ZL

That’s it. Super simple, yet works very well for storytelling purposes in the beginning of the game. Later on, you get more abilities and upgrades that allow you to do more with your button scheme and setup.

It’s so cute!

As soon as it throws you into the first chapter, you’re greeted by a guide. However, she’s just a voice and recalls her past memories as you traverse through the game. The blob gets more physical features, some ears, a sign on its head, and a heads up display. At this point, the game actually starts.

Moving on, this game teaches you about hidden secrets from one of the earliest scenes – there’s blue blob fragments that cover specific areas. If you choose to follow these blob fragments,  you’re greeted with your first Memory Fragment. These Memory Fragments are what help support and enforce the game’s story along the way as you try to piece together what happened to this place. Memory Fragments also give you a larger health pool when you collect five. You can view these Memory Fragments at any time under the “data collection” option in the pause menu.

Travelling through this abandoned area, you learn that the game isn’t nearly as innocent as it seems. There are traps, puzzles, and a mysterious pink fauna that kills you immediately upon touching it. Further on, you start to encounter Infected – previous inhabitants of this world that have turned into plant zombies. The game promotes the idea that you’re easily killable and does it well in the first scene with one of these Infected. Remember how I said that the early controls work for telling a story? This is what I meant. When the game limits you on your options and allows you to grow, it’s usually conveying a reason or purpose behind it. In this instance, the purpose is to give you anxiety as you’re running through the world.

Thankfully, if you die in this game, you respawn immediately at the beginning of the last checkpoint you triggered. This is really nice, because you will die a lot in MO:Astray – it’s no slouch when it shows its difficulty. That isn’t to say that you’ll stay weak forever in MO:Astray – your blob DOES progressively get stronger and stronger.

Oh boy. Not ready for this heartache.

Upgrades – there are quite a bit of them in this game, though I’m not going to spoil any of them excluding the first ability you get because it’s one of my favorite additions to a game, ever. Once you’re about fifteen percent of the way through the first chapter, you get the ability to jump on enemies’ heads after a mini tutorial by accidentally jumping into a experimentation vat. Mo can read the monsters’ memories, how they lived, view flashback cutscenes depending on the monster, and who they were before whatever disaster happened.

MO:Astray, in a subtle way, reminds you that these monsters were once living beings with their own thoughts, families, and ideals. The information it gives is their last thoughts before death, what career they had, their name, age, gender, and “resurrection permits.” These resurrection permits come in handy later when solving puzzles. It also doesn’t shy away from collecting these as there’s an entire log in the pause menu, under data collection, called “Monster Memories.”

A few of these memories throughout MO:Astray sent complete chills down my spine. Furthermore, these Monster Memories help to further piece together the lore and the disaster that fell upon this land.

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Mo:Astray is difficult, but in a good way! The platforming is fun and interactive, and incredibly challenging based on what difficulty you chose to begin with. The game changes platforming sections if you play on different difficulties, with easy and normal having some traps removed. You can see how many times you’ve died by selecting a chapter and hovering over individual areas – I died a total of 341 times on Adventure (Hard) difficulty.

Variety-wise, the game does very well in showing the differences between each individual area as well as individual monsters, puzzles, and platforming traps – this variety helps keep the game fresh and alive throughout the entire experience. MO:Astray has a keen eye for game design as no one area felt unfair, even though I died literally hundreds of times throughout my playthrough. Game design in general for this game is well done, as it leads players naturally to secret areas and rewards trying different methods to progress.

Continuing on game design, let’s get to the Bosses. The way MO:Astray tackles bosses is a way I’ve never seen before. Each boss has its own puzzle mechanic to take down each bad guy. Without spoiling too much, the first boss relies on you attaching yourself to enemies so that it damages itself rather than you attacking it. These types of puzzle mechanics are used in every single boss fight and lasts until the end. Personally, the fact that MO:Astray stays consistent with the puzzle action theme throughout the entire game is incredibly impressive to me.

Plant thing of Doom

I need to mention this for any puzzle solving fiends – there’s a TON of puzzles in this game. All areas include one or more puzzles to solve to progress. One of my favorite features about this game is how it has the ability to hide secret areas with puzzles. Furthermore, there are Monster Memories, Memory Fragments, and even secret cutscenes behind expanded portions of already area progressing puzzles.

Each individual area has its own aesthetic to it. Chapter 1 is all about broken and destroyed labs, and the further you progress, the more that chapter’s biomes change. Later on you’ll have the opportunity to see gorgeous fauna filled zones, pristine labs, and corpse riddled zones as Mo blobs his way through this horrifying place.

Speaking of aesthetics, did I mention that this game is literal eye, ear, and sensory candy? Every individual scene looks like a rollercoaster joyride in a theme park of despair. Art style, sound design, and story design combine to make one of the most atmosphere rich platformer games I’ve laid my hands on. Seriously, the team did a knockout job on making you feel like you’re far away from home in an unnatural hellscape.

The game is deceptively cute, because even at points of extreme sadness, looking at Mo filled me with determination. I’ve attached an art gallery to showcase the artists’ hard work, below.

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MO:Astray’s story is a gripping tale that will have you on the edge of your seat from start to finish. I won’t go into spoiler detail, but the gist of the story is that something went horribly wrong with experiments. Mo is now traveling through the said aftermath of these experiments. Learning the mystery of what exactly happened to whatever place you’re on is absolutely delightful. Not only is the game filled with tons of hidden lore and goodies to show what happened, at the end of every chapter you’re given flashbacks. These flashbacks are in comic book form and each of them gives you crucial information. For those willing, collecting all the Memory Fragments awards you with a different ending than the normal one. The story clicks in place as you progress, offering a satisfying conclusion to an already wonderful game.

What’s great about the story is that you can completely miss out on story details in your first playthrough, so the game encourages you to run through each chapter again via chapter select. On my playthrough, I completed the story 100% of the way through. However, I missed quite a bit of Monster Memories, so I decided to go grab those as well.

Because the game supports your ability to hoard information like a sponge, reading through everything in the Data Collection is a treat in itself. I spent a good hour or two just reading every story and piece of information.

After completing the game at least once, you get “Speed Mode” and a few other secret goodies. Speed Mode is a mode specifically for speedrunning the game so you can compete with other players’ scores online.

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I went into MO:Astray expecting a fun, enjoyable platforming experience after watching the incredibly well made trailer. I wasn’t disappointed, and this game has more than driven my expectations past their limits. From the first boot up of the game, to the very end, I was filled with an exuberant joy I haven’t experienced from a platformer in ages. The only negative that I have for this game, is that I wish there was more. I didn’t want to stop playing it! To answer the question, “Is this game fun?”, I’d gesture to say that this game is incredibly fun and more than worth its current price point at $15 on Steam and Switch. I personally clocked in around 13 hours of gameplay, with a few hours of story reading.

MO:Astray is one of the best games I’ve played in the past 5 years. I mentioned this earlier, but this game truly feels like a passion project by developers that truly care about game design, as well as making the player feel the weight of the situation Mo has to go through. Personally, I’ll be recommending this game to everyone who loves story driven platformers – Archpray Inc. knows how to deliver.

[easyreview cat1title=”Overall” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”5″]

Review Copy Provided by Publisher

REVIEW: MO:Astray Title MO:Astray

[amandasmith03]

Lynchburg SEO Companies Tips To Jump-Start Your Search Engine Results

Search engine optimization is an important for a successful business. The following article has tips below will help you with your search engine optimization plans. Use the advice below to boost your business stronger.

This means repeating keywords should be repeated as often as you can without breaking up the flow of the writing. As search engine rankings are built off the presence of keywords, you will find your rankings improving.

You must have patience when increasing the Lynchburg Search Marketing for your website. You are not see any huge changes or an influx in traffic overnight. It can take months or longer for new sites. You need to build a reputation, and that takes time.

For SEO purposes, it’s a wise move to use several shorter articles on your site versus a very long article. Long pages get weighted less than shorter ones by the search engines. Also, viewers will likely read shorter articles.

Learn about exactly how much experience this expert actually has. You also need the best information and knowledge of any risks in order to make an informed decision.

This information is according to metrics like Quantcast scores.Discussion areas are a good way to hold onto your visitors.

Using a product feed can really help draw traffic and business to your site. Feeds can contain information about your business such as prices, descriptions and prices.Submit them to sites for shoppers as well as to search engines.

Consider using a pay-per-click strategy as a good affiliate marketing tactic. Although the profits start small, they can rapidly increase based on affiliate referrals.

Once you’ve selected the keywords you’ll be using on your site, be sure that some land in your titles too. Your title should be relevant, so choose a title that is both intelligent and relevant. This will cause your site to be clicked on because it best fits what the search results.

Keep each page of your pages to a single subject or product. Don’t try to promote all your products on one post. This will keep your readers interested and frustrate the customer who is looking for specifics. A page that only focuses on one thing will do well at getting people to visit.

Include quality keywords in each page’s URL.

SEO takes time, so you must be patient when you are trying to increase the search engine optimization for your site. Huge amounts of traffic and major changes will not happen in one night. Rather, it may take many weeks, even months, especially if your website is brand new. Just like a traditional business, it will take time to build your name.

Blogging increases your own website will increase traffic because it will be more visible to search engine results.This can also increase the number of visitors to your website traffic.

Research keywords before you know what to write. Learn which keywords will be best for you to incorporate into your site’s content and titles. Keyword research can let you know what search terms people are searching for in your categories.

You need to go through your site for errors, lest you leave the “r” out of the word “shirt.”Make sure your site is easy to read for both human visitors and machine.

Improving your ranking is not solely about drawing in visitors. You also need to keep them there. It is proven that spending more time working on a site increases the page rank. Do every thing you can to keep visitors engaged. Forums, blogs, and posts that can replied to are all great means to increase visitors’ time spent on your site, as they all build interest.

Use products such as AdWords or AdBrite. DIY Lynchburg SEO Marketing might not always produce the jump in rankings you want.These advertisements will really help increase your views. Using advertising product from a top engine like Google can be a huge boon to your site grow.

Javascript is something you can use on a website, but there are search engines bots that don’t work well with it. Using Java on a site is up to its owner, but keep in mind that it makes your website rank differently.

You want to make sure the search engines read as well as index alt tags, therefore the keywords in these tags help improve your page ranking.

A site map for your business site is an important part to any SEO strategy. It makes it much easier for the search engine’s spiders to crawl through your website’s information. A significantly large website might require more than one site map. You should not have too many links on any site map, it becomes too much for the search engine spiders.

Lynchburg SEO Companies can help your site. Many businesses overlook this symbiotic relationship.

Join the local Chamber of Commerce and Better Business Bureau for better search engine ranking. This helps you with local searches as they are generally automatically linked to you.

Don’t just publish a page that only contain links. Blend them into the other content on your page. Pages filled with only links tend to be ranked poorly by search engines don’t rank them highly.

A site map can help you bring more traffic to your website. A site map will link your pages to each other. Visitors will find the links on your site so it will drive traffic to your other pages.

Think like a customer when selecting search engine optimization keywords.Determine what string of words and phrases people are typing into search the web.

The leading paragraph should have your keyword at least twice. After your opening, you want to place the keywords many times in the following 200 words, making sure that it flows nicely and it doesn’t seem overused.

Find out what the company’s experience is in your field, their SEO Consultants techniques, how long it will take before you see results and of course how much they charge. Ask for former client recommendations and examples of their claims.A great company which is reliable will happily comply.

One of the steps you need to take to optimize your website for searches is creation of a meta description tag that is both clever and informative. Avoid making your tag longer than 30 words. Don’t pass 100 KB on the heading page.

Keyword Phrases

Focus on keyword phrases and not just the keywords with your SEO Services techniques.Do you typically search with only one word only? You have to choose phrases that will bring customers to your website who are looking for exactly what you’re offering. ” rather than “A sale is what we’re about to have! This is the quality of your keyword phrases properly.

Search engine optimization is a type of marketing.You use keywords or phrases somewhere in your content in a specific way that will generate higher search engine rankings. This is the best way to bring people going to your products can find your website.

Create a site map that includes your keywords. This is the best way to let viewers traverse your sites, and it also provides a good starting point for search engine optimization. Search engines use them in order to put websites in a higher position on the search lists, because the ease of access is an important facet in their ratings.

You should leave informative and helpful comments on applicable blogs. If your comment is helpful and relevant, some blog creators will let you keep the link. You should not leave your link on blogs that have nothing to do with the content of your site, not throw people off. You will find it easy to spread around comments and links on blogs where you’re familiar with the subject.

If you are going to use link directories to get links back to your site, it is imperative that you use only sites with high quality links, as well as legitimate sites. Many directories have poorly designed or are simply out of date. Make sure you only associate your name with it.

Use keywords in your META tags as often as you can.Try to keep your keywords as relevant to web searches.

Think about making a podcast. You can include both audio and video content in a podcast, just be sure it is content your users care about. You can create a podcast as simply as getting a video recorder or other audio device and recording a podcast. Descriptions of your podcasts, then appear to search engines.

You can pursue search engine optimization properly by using the advice that was provided. In order to keep up with the competition, a business simply must employ effective Lynchburg SEO Agencies methods. This is why you can do well in business with the article you just read.

When you start a journey, knowledge is a great tool. So before you begin getting involved with the topic of When it comes to search engine optimization, you really shouldn’t count on your company’s Google ranking to someone who is not a Lynchburg SEO Expert. If you are reading this, you most likely are seeking for someone who can assist you heighten your organization’s online visibility, website traffic, and leads., learn all that you can about them. Use the information from this article to assist you in finding success.

from https://mrphiltucker.com/lynchburg-seo-companies-tips-to-jump-start-your-search-engine-results/

from Mr Phil Tucker - Blog https://mrphiltucker1.weebly.com/blog/lynchburg-seo-companies-tips-to-jump-start-your-search-engine-results

[horsebitesfence]

One year Sober – Sophie Helf interview

How is New York ? We know from Twitter and your guest spot on the Death Panel Podcast that you spent a year working toward moving back there, and you made it!   How has it been going so far?   

– It’s been wonderful. The past year was incredibly difficult – going through surgeries, relearning to walk – but I knew I wanted to move here so did whatever I could to heal up quickly. So far I’m quite happy here! It’s nice to be able to see all my friends, go where I want, explore different opportunities. Simple things feel so good – having my own room, living with nice people, ‘hustling’ for work (ha!). Not a fan of the weather though.

We really love your piece for the Outline, where you talk about inspo porn, being a little worm  and how you love your legs.  We I hear you’re getting new prosthetics –  how do they compare, and might they lower the chance of another infection? That must have made the move that much harder (and more inspirational).

–– Thank you! My new prosthetics will actually be vacuum-powered – every time I take a step the ends of my legs sort of get ‘sucked’ into the prosthetic, so to speak. Everything is custom made, from the liners to the sockets, so it’ll be a lot harder for my legs to chafe. The infection was miserable but has healed up pretty well so far. Sometimes the leg still hurts but not nearly as badly as it did before.

They sound cool and we hope it goes on healing really well.  

You’ve been tweeting about using the subway since you’ve been back there.  From here it seems like New York’s public transport infrastructure is pretty run down –  kind of hostile for users in general and especially for disabled users.   Has that been your experience?  

–– The infrastructure can be pretty shit, depending on which station you’re at. The one near my place is just a set of stairs leading underground that I have to carefully waddle down (though I’m getting better at that). Most people here stick to the ‘keep right’ rule, which is nice, but there have been occasions when I’ve had to dodge someone and almost fallen down. At the larger stations with various train lines there are elevators and escalators, but if you’re at a smaller one it’s probably just stairs. Good exercise, I suppose, but for people with mobility issues it’s incredibly unfriendly.

Sort it out NYC. You’ve lived in London, SF and New York;  how do the three cities compare in terms of transport, access, attitudes? 

–– The Bay Area actually has a fantastic subway system for disabled people. Every MUNI and BART station has an elevator and the trains can easily accommodate someone in a wheelchair. London stations were squeaky clean and most stations had elevators, even at the farther-out ones; I took it for granted at the time, but looking back it was very well put together. New York definitely has the most unfriendly transport system, but from what I’ve heard there have been rallies to make it more accessible, which I’m hoping leads to something better.

Yeah, London’s public transport infrastructure’s pretty good, but there are just so many people, and not everyone is good at keeping left or moving carefully.  It doesn’t help that the UK is one of the few countries where you’re supposed to pass on the left side, whereas London is such a global city that many people naturally tend toward the right.   

It’s better not to travel at rush hour if you can help it, but that’s not always possible, and it’s also pretty restrictive. London Transport now do a ‘please offer me a seat’ badge, but we also need ones that say ‘don’t push’, ‘give me space’, ‘keep your distance’ . Or maybe just ‘keep the fuck away from me.’ And more ‘keep left’ signs – it makes such a big difference. 

–– London transport gets so incredibly crowded, more than in New York or San Francisco, I think – I definitely understand why you’d avoid rush hour! I generally try not to go places during rush hour; seeing as I’ve mostly been working from home, it’s been easy to avoid it. I’m hoping to get a 9-to-5 job, though, and am not sure how I’ll deal with the crush. Stay posted for developments!

Yes!  Best of luck!  And best of health insurance. 

One of the many things to love about your Twitter is the way you tweet on MH stuff, and meds, and coffee, and coffee on meds. You also tweet about sobriety. What’s it like being at NY parties sober? 

–– I’ve definitely had my mental health issues in the past, which led me to getting sober. It’s the best thing I’ve done for myself, I think; my mental health, though not perfect, is doing better without the guilt I used to get when I’d wake up after a messy night out. I don’t really mind people drinking around me (or doing coke in some cases – oof) and people have been really respectful of my decision not to participate. I feel really lucky that hardly anyone’s pressed me on why I got sober; if someone does, I just say ‘I felt like it’ and don’t go into anything deeper because I don’t really owe anyone an explanation.

Yes to respectfulness, and to not owing.  And congratulations on a year sober. 

[One Horse Bite discloses: I spent years feeling shame about MH stuff, being in denial and trying to ‘act normal’, which in hindsight has had distorting life-effects.  I held out against doing psych meds for a really long time, even though they’re almost free, thanks to the NHS, what’s left of it – maybe that’s why they don’t get pushed on people here so hard.  After my accident, I finally gave myself permission to try meds, maybe because I felt like it gave me a concrete reason to need them, one that carries less stigma than mental illness.  And then I still wasn’t ok!  Both due to the accident and because I was already not-ok, pre-accident. The accident was the last straw really; like I had no spare capacity to handle it. Invisible Strings / @M_Kelter, who tweets on autism and depression, suggests that in place of ‘comorbidity’, we might use the term ‘meanwhile’. Meanwhile, I had to begin to address the MH stuff I’d already been carrying, and admit to myself I’d been carrying it all that time, as well as with the accident. Meds were helpful with that, even tho it took a bit trial and error to find the right ones;  for most of last year I was on what seemed to help at first, and then made me increasingly and dangerously disinhibited. There were – incidents, including but not limited to shouting ‘walk left’ at people on the underground. Still no ragrets – sort of; once I found the right meds, or the more-right ones, anyway, I kind of wished I’d started on them years ago, though it’s important to stress that nothing has helped so much as finally having stable housing for the first time in my adult life, post-accident. Also to note that my being in a state of ‘invisible homelessness’ at the time of the accident was a key causal factor in the accident itself. Meanwhile ��. ]

Sophie, you went to art school, but studied design rather than fine art, and are now a coder; so while you’re art-world networked, hopefully you’re a bit less subject to the horrid vicissitudes of all that. How did you get into coding?  

–– I was at Central St Martins from 2012 to 2015, a couple of years after they moved into that awful Granary Building.  Very strange being there; they insisted that the great corridor in the centre was a space for collaborating, but you had to get express permission from tutors or higher-ups to put things there, and – I hated this – your tap-card could only get you into your studio.  So if you were a design student and wanted to go into the fine art studios, you’d have to borrow a fine art student’s card to get in. It really kept all the different programmes separate from each other and discouraged collaboration in the end.

–– I got into coding after coming back to California from CSM without a Bay Area design/art network, without any idea how to get a job. I needed a portfolio site to present my work on but hated all the templated ones (Cargo Collective etc.), so decided to learn a bit of HTML and CSS to build one myself. To my surprise, I really enjoyed it, so started learning JavaScript as well. Choosing whether to professionally pursue coding instead of design was a huge decision to make, but eventually I decided ‘fuck it’, successfully applied to and attended a coding bootcamp. 

Now I do front-end development, which focuses on the look and feel of a website and how a user interacts with it. It’s been interesting navigating the different splits and rivulets of ‘the coding world’, so to speak; there’s ‘the tech community’, which I do feel separate from as I tend to view coding just as something I do and not an entire lifestyle. Code can intersect with art and design in tons of different ways and I do like Twitter as a tool to keep up with some of the people I admire. 

Can we be really prurient and ask what you meant when you tweeted about missing mid-2000s SF ?  

–– I like this question! I guess it was a tweet that was sort of mourning what San Francisco used to be like back before it was stuffed and crawling with tech people. I was in high school in the mid-2000’s and specifically remember San Francisco as – scuzzier, I guess; still kind of eerie and loose and a little more dangerous. I was a little shit back then and spent a lot of time at a park called Dolores Park, which used to be crusty as hell and filled with naked hula-hooping people and boozy high schoolers passing around bad weed (including me and my friends). Now it’s squeaky clean and gets stuffed with frat kids on the weekends. I’ll admit that I do love to complain about current SF a little too much. Cities do change, of course, but it makes me sad that SF is so incredibly unaffordable and losing much of the weird, wonky character it used to be known for. It does still constantly smell like weed and piss though, which is oddly comforting.

Is that what made you so keen to get out of there, aside from the glut of other coders, and the fact that it’s your home town – or was it more about getting to NY  ?

–– Honestly I think you really hit the nail on the head re: tech people and hometown. It’s a tiny city and I felt like I’d explored every corner, done everything I wanted to there, and got a little tired of bumping into parents of kids I went to high school with while I was buying a Diet Coke at the grocery store. And yes, I really wanted to go to New York – a lot of my friends live here, and it’s a whole new city to get to know and explore. I’ve been here for a couple of months and feel like I’ve seen a tiny droplet of what’s out there, which I like. And, truthfully, it’s cheaper both transport-wise and rent-wise, which is important while I’m freelancing while looking for a job, and will continue to be nice once I’m salaried – more to save for retirement, health insurance and occasional fun things. I’ve wanted to live here since middle school so it’s nice to, you know, be here. I like it a lot.

Sophie, thank you!  Enjoy New York.  

Thank you for interviewing, this was very fun!

S

X

[templified]

Making Money With WordPress | Templified

New Post has been published on https://templified.com/making-money-with-wordpress/

Making Money With WordPress

It is challenging work, but it is incredibly rewarding if you put in the time and effort.  WordPress is a great way to achieve your goals, particularly if you want to work from home, like I do.  Lucky me!!  Sigh…

WordPress is equally suited to either the life of a freelancer or an entrepreneur trying to make it in the world, all alone.  Let’s discuss the differences though, because a freelance designer or coder is a much different life than that of an entrepreneur or solopreneur, as some people call it.  Considering the amount of overlap, there could be some misunderstanding regarding the differences between the two.

The WordPress Freelancer

Being a freelancer retains a certain mystique. The dream is that you get to do exactly what you want

The fact, however, is…somewhat different.

While, yes, there are times in which you never consider trousers, the Motive is most probably because you’re so active.

Whether you are a designer, programmer, or articles creator, your own time Is probably not likely to be invested on your own pet projects. They are not your boss, but also you rely upon these to get compensated. So as you do work on your own, you can not just make your own conclusions concerning a project.

You get option customers and Projects, in addition to selection of working place (and re:trousers, dress code). However, you’re essentially doing somebody else’s work.

Freelancers are self explanatory, but they aren’t independent. They’re Dependent on other people for their livelihoods, which isn’t a terrible thing. At the time that I’ve been freelancing, my skill set and community has expanded over it did throughout the near-decade in the school. Freelancing is an awesome alternative for extroverts like me since the normal interaction with customers is energizing. Dream of this freelancer compared to the freelancer .

The difference between a freelancer and also a solopreneur is a solopreneur is the company, even though a freelancer functions for the company.

Despite being closer to the dream, as it becomes fact, the Solopreneur course is honestly a good deal tougher than simply copying. Whereas a freelancer might be hired to reestablish a pixel-perfect CSS variant of the plan PDF AwesomeCo gave themthat’s their job. They codethey tweakthey earn their work fit AwesomeCo’s, plus they get compensated. Recreates it into pixel-perfect CSS, manages the transition from staging to production, manages the advertising and PR to get individuals to the brand new website, and also the customer support from the new website layout’s bugs. On top of this day of AwesomeCo’s firm itself.

You will find a great Number of individuals around who are cut out for this sort of work. Those individuals are gifted and skilled in several locations, self-motivated, disciplined, and motivated. They have good ideas, and they understand just how to do them.

They get the advantages of outsourcing — selection of work location, A Solopreneur Isn’t an Entrepreneur

A number of the confusion about solopreneurship also centres around the best way

That is true. The gap, however, is that they do not mean to be lonely forever. They do not see themselves as the business enterprise. Nick Roach did not begin Elegant Themes together with the mindset he’d have the ability to design, build, and promote every product the firm would produce.

Entrepreneurship is all about business growth and growth. Your Objective Is to bring together the best team to produce the ideal product or service. Solopreneurship is all about taking your own thoughts, nurturing themand performing literally everything you can to create them (and so yourself) successful. You are not building a staff; you are building a better . Similarities Solopreneur, there are a number of things which you are going to need to take care of either manner.

You’ll Be Self-Employed

Becoming self explanatory is wonderful. Paying taxes while being self explanatory…not too much. The same is true for health insurance. Having It’s wonderful; paying it all yourself…well, you know. Whether you are a freelancer or solopreneur, you are working as a sole-proprietorship or as a person. There are a number of muddy tax and company legality problems with selecting which way to proceed, so be certain you research on what to anticipate in any event. Will. Consume. You.

Whichever way you move, your time will be absorbed. Your mental energy Will be swallowed. Along with your physical area will be absorbed. Among the main abilities a one-person-business individual must learn is the time direction since in the event that you do not, you are going to wind up working weekends, nights, vacations, and carrying up buddy time, family time, and time.

Moving into company for/by yourself, you sort of expect that. However, As a freelancer, I’ve considerably easier of a time doing this than solopreneurs, sure, but they can not work 24/7. Burnout is actual, and tiredness and fatigue are legit health problems. Side-hustles have dropped apart as my time was spent focusing on other people’s projects and trying to find new customers when these projects are finished. Solopreneurs possess a similar problem: they need to prioritize the 1 thought they base their company around at the cost of all of the additional new-and-shiny ones who pop up.

You Might Not Get Paid.

I’m personally super blessed. I have never had an unpaying customer nonetheless. However, I will. Freelancers live off bill due dates, hoping against hope occasionally their customers send the amount from the date on the invoice. Of the period they perform. Other times…well, be sure to get a fantastic attorney.

Solopreneurship runs equally. Sometimes you will wait for customers to Get payments for you, although other instances, you may click refresh over and over to determine whether any new earnings have come through at the past 15 minutes.

Regardless of what, you will not be receiving a regular paycheck. For this reason, you have to learn how to budget and build up a nest egg. Differences

For every one the ways these avenues are alike, they do fork in a few points, also.

Solopreneurs possess the skills and capability to do everything because of their Companies. Sales, advertising, layout, customer support, bookkeeping, whatever. But they might not necessarily have the time or the tools. While they’re a one-person company for certain, there’ll be occasions when deadlines and extenuating circumstances (or easy inability–it occurs!) Perhaps they want a much better emblem designed than they could perform, or they simply don’t have enough hands to package and ship the most recent batch of orders. One-off or recurring position. Or perhaps they will hire a temp or find an intern for a brief period. They need to be cautious, however, since those prices eat in their own profits.

Freelancers subcontract, also, but not in precisely the exact same manner. A freelancer Will choose a customer like AwesomeCo to construct The upcoming Big Program, but perhaps they can not write a line of Swift. They subcontract a programmer, work together to code the applications, issue them a 1099 that is built into AwesomeCo’s bill that is subsequently paid in full into the freelancer. In the long run, they are not out any cash, even though a solopreneur is. Quantity of Hats

As a freelancer, you may often do something. You may select your Specialty, and you’ll do that nicely. Perhaps you’re a web designer or even a backend programmer. You may use fifteen distinct customers, but you could be composing PHP or JavaScript to all of these. Various customers, 1 hat.

As a solopreneur, however, you do not get that luxury. You Need to be What has to be treated most instantly determines that hat you wear any particular time. Construction

Since the Amount of hats solopreneurs and salespeople wear, their Days have a tendency to seem somewhat different. You will probably have fairly ordered times as a freelancer. Time direction comes into play with much since you may setup Monday to get AwesomeCo’s site, Tuesday for admin and charging, and Wednesday for meetings. You will probably have different deadlines you will schedule work and out on in sequence of significance and/or urgency. And yes, you might find an emergency call from a customer today and then, however your calendar will largely show you exactly what to anticipate.

Solopreneurs, however, will not have any idea. Since they really do everything, They’re in the forefront of circumstance. You can not state that Monday is going to be committed to charging and government since there may be a massive purchase for a thousand of the products which needs to be sent. Or perhaps there will be a return you need to manage in the center of this day. Freelancers will not need to be worried about all of of them –just those the solopreneur contracts to take care of.

That is not a simple question to answer. It is not a matter I can Response, anyhow. As you have noticed, the solopreneur requires a very different set of skills than a freelancer will. Neither of these is always better than another, but I’d probably let you carefully consider before trying the solopreneur route.

Being a solopreneur is elevated risk. But with that danger comes the Opportunity In a higher reward compared to outsourcing. It is not frequently that outsourcing can be regarded as the more secure alternative, but in this circumstance it’s. In any event you go, you are relying on your self, and in the long run, it is your responsibility to know your personal limitations.

Now, proceed to work. I believe you.

[theworldtravelingblonde]

Part I

When most people think of summer time they think of relaxation and sleep.  When I think of summer, I think about traveling, traveling, and more traveling. Do not get me wrong I love relaxation and sleep, but I cannot stay idle for long.  Every moment that I am not working, I try my hardest to go on an adventure. I long for the next adventure before the one I am on is even done. Summertime is the time of the year that I try to go on as many adventures as possible. I have so many places I want to go and my bucket list is over flowing with ideas with new being added each day. Summer is the perfect time to see new places and try new things.  This past summer was no different and it was full of adventure up to the last minute of it.

I went to several states and places this summer. I traveled around Arizona and explored the Mississippi Gulf Coast before going on my biggest trip of the summer. Most summers I go on a grand trip, and this past summer I had a very New England Summer.

I started my trip to New England by visiting Boston.  I had been to Boston once before and was very excited to revisit the city.  Last time I explored the city, I got to stay at the Boston Marriott Long Wharf and enjoyed my time there.  The Long Wharf hotel is in the middle of everything.  It has a beautiful park across the street and all the ferries are on its docks.  This time however, I stayed at the Residence Inn by Marriott Boston Downtown/Seaport in the neighborhood of Fort Point.  It was a gorgeous hotel and close to many things too. The hotel had a gorgeous interior being that the building is a historic building.  I loved the industrial vibe of the building and the room. It is situated in the heart of the financial district near the Boston Tea Party Museum and the T. It also is close to a Shake Shack, and I couldn’t leave without trying that.

I spent four days in Boston exploring as much as possible.  I went to every National Park site in the city minus Boston Harbor Islands, because I ran out of time.  However, I did visit 7 park units that were in and around the city.  In the city, I visited Boston NHP, Boston African American NHS, Frederick Law Olmsted NHS, John Fitzgerald Kennedy NHS, and Longfellow House NHS.  Right outside of the city I visited Adams NHP and Minute Man NHP.  So many park, so little time.

The first day we got there my mother and I immediately started sightseeing.  We started with the sites closes to the hotel, which were the sites that belong to Boston NHP.  We visited Old South Meeting House, Old State House, Faneuil Hall, and Quincy Market. The Old State House is the place to see where the Boston Massacre took place.  I took hundreds of pictures in just that afternoon.  If you visit Faneuil Hall make sure you head upstairs to see the meeting hall.  I had been in this hall before, however I only ever saw the downstairs where shops were. In the shops, you can see an old-time printing press and buy a copy of the Declaration of Independence. As a teacher, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to buy my own copy (I now have 3 copies of the Declaration of Independence).  The first day came to an end with a stop for dinner at Hard Rock, a stop at my first Primark, and a trip to Whole Foods in Chinatown, any city I go to I seem to find the Whole Foods.   It was a great first day!

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When my mother and I go on a trip we go hard. We start early in the morning and no time is wasted.  The next day my mom and I started our day off with a walk to the T station at Boston Commons. From there we took the T to our first park site, which was Frederick Law Olmsted NHS, where we learned about his achievements in landscaping.

If you have ever been to Central Park, the Biltmore Estates, or US Capitol you have stood in one of his designs.  He designed many park and grounds around this country. The grounds out his house looked magical.  I loved seeing all the greenery.  After exploring his house in the beautiful town of Brookline, we Ubered to the other side of town for JFK National Historic Site.  This site is small, but in a beautiful neighborhood.  The site was his childhood home.  After his death, his mother decided to work on a museum in this home.  She was putting this site together while his wife, Jackie O, and brother, Bobby, were putting together his library.  At the site you can watch a film and tour the house.  Again, the house is pretty small, but worth the ride out to Brookline.  The neighborhood where the site is, is located is near the downtown of Brookline, which I found absolutely adorable.  I would have loved to explore it more; however, we were on a time crunch to visit everything else I wanted to see in the city that we just had to pass through.  I am one of those crazy travelers who have an already made schedule, and I take months perfecting the schedule.  My mother and I got on the T after a quick stop in Trader Joe’s, another store I can’t seem to pass up, and we were off to Boston Commons once more. By the time we made it back to the city, it was time for lunch.  My mother and I did not have time to stop and eat at a restaurant so we packed a lunch and sat on the grass in the park. I love picnicking in city parks, and wish I could do it more often.  However, I live in Phoenix and parks don’t normally have grass everywhere and it is a tad bit hot in the summer.  Once my lunch was done and I had my fill of people watching, it was time to walk.  We headed to the Boston African American National Historic Site.  It is an amazing site located the gorgeous neighborhood of Beacon Hill.  My mom and I explored the school and meeting house. We also got to see a Frederick Douglass exhibit in pictures.  After we finished the tour it was time for me to find Acorn St.  Before going on this trip like many millennials who like to travel I researched the most instagramable places in the city.  I love history, but I also love photography, and when I go to a new place I like to see and do as much a humanly possible.  I had noticed that many people visit Acorn St. when they visit Beacon Hill, and I was no different.  I of course took way too many pictures, but I was not the only person there.

I spent a little time there capturing images of Beacon Hill before I decided it was time for a coffee break. One thing I seem to find in cities is coffee shops.  (As I am writing this blog I am currently in a coffee shop, while on vacation.) I found the cutest café near Boston Commons, Tatte Bakery & Café.   It was extremely busy, but I was in heaven.  Once I was reenergized with my latte, I was ready to take on Boston Commons. Unfortunately, it was more of a quick walk through rather than a nice visit.  Again, I took many pictures, and hope to go back to take in the beauty a little longer. I absolutely love the park, but I can say I love libraries more and I was off to see one.  I spend a lot of my free time reading. When I am in cities I usually find a bookstore or a library to visit.  In Boston, I found a grand library.  Boston Public Library was like no library I have ever seen before.  There was marble on the staircases, and the ceilings were breathtaking.  I had found my happy place. Once I was done oohing and ahhing over the beauty of the library, we decided to finish the first day with retail therapy.  Near Boston Commons is a mall that had Vineyard Vines, which is one of my favorite shops. I had to purchase a shirt with a colonial whale on it.  By the end of the day my feet hurt and it was time to head back to the hotel to rest.

We had already done so much in two days. However, our vacation was a long way from being finished.  As usual the next day started super early with a walk to the T and a commute to Cambridge.  We went to Cambridge for two reasons.  The first being that Longfellow’s house was there, and I want to see every National Park site, and the second being that Harvard is in Cambridge.  We spent the morning exploring the park site and learning more about Longfellow and his eccentric children, George Washington, and a family named Vassall. The Vassall family was one that had great power in Massachusetts and as I explored history throughout the Boston area their name seemed to pop up.  The Vassall’s were loyalists with lots of money. The family had plantations in Jamaica where they made a lot of money. They fled the area at the beginning of the American Revolutionary War due to the hostility from the Patriots, because they pledged their loyalty to the crown.  John Vassall left his mansion to his slaves when they fled. He truly thought that his family and him would return to their luxurious home after the British suppressed the Patriots, however history went differently and the Vassall family never returned.  Instead they went back to England.   John Vassall and George Washington were very similar and after Vassall left Washington arrived.  Once an English estate became a hub for a revolution.  Many famous American hero’s and turncoats have walked through the doors to the mansion like John Adams, Nathanial Greene, Benedict Arnold, and many more. After Washington left the house more people owned the house and it even became a boarding house.  One of the boarders was Longfellow who ended up owning the house after he was done boarding. Longfellow did some of his most famous works of literature here including the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, and Evangeline.  The house saw many more famous visitors during Longfellow’s ownership like Charles Dickens, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and many more.  As we were on the tour of the house we realized that the Longfellow children were pretty interesting.  The one son named Charles traveled a lot and brought back many exotic things, and also had his body covered in tattoos.  He was an interesting man for his time.  After we took in the whole tour and looked at the gardens it was time to head out and toward the city.  Before we took the T back into Boston we visited The Coop so I could get a new Harvard sweatshirt and then we headed back to the city.

As I mentioned before my family packs quite a bit into vacation days. It was not quite noon yet when we got back to the city and we needed to finish the Freedom Trail.  We were headed to the North End to explore Paul Revere’s Home and the Old North Church.  Paul Revere’s Home was okay, but super crowded.  We did not stay long, and I enjoyed the Longfellow house more.  I spent more time waiting in line for the bathroom than I did exploring the property.  The Old North Church is beautiful! This was my second time in it, and I just love exploring the area.  We did not have time to stop and eat so I pulled out some seaweed chips and munched as we walked across the bridge to Charlestown. We first went to Bunker Hill and explore the museum briefly to cool off, it was a little hot that day.  After that we decided to climb the monument.  I did not like the climb the first time, and sure didn’t like it the second time around. I am not afraid of heights; however, the monument is very tight.  Also, I am not a huge fan of spiral staircases, especially going down them.  I often misjudge steps if I don’t pay attention and it is just uncomfortable going up and down the monument, and yet I have done it twice. The whole time going down I kept telling myself don’t trip.  The monument was very crowded and we could only stay at the top for a minute or two.  After all of this climbing we had one more place to go on the tour of the Freedom Trail, and that was the USS Constitution. I had already been on the ship before so we did not spend a lot of time there. We went on the ship and explored for about 20 minutes and decided we had enough.  By this point my feet were a little tired from walking so we took a boat back to Long Wharf pier.  I am not sure if we were technically aloud on the boat, because we didn’t have tickets, but no one asked us for our tickets either.  We were looking for the ferry, however we were at the wrong boat dock, so we got on a tour boat.  Either way I was very glad for the lift, and the boat ride was beautiful. We finished the day with some Shake Shack and we were off to bed. (By the way this is where my love for Shake Shack started…and there is one near my house at home!)

Our trip to New England was already jammed back and we still had one day left in Boston before exploring New Bedford, MA.  On the last day the weather was not cooperating with us.  We took the T to JFK/UMass and then walked a mile to the JFK Library.  It was an extremely hazy day, which was sad, because it was hard to see the harbor islands from the library. We explored the library to finish the JFK story we started at his boyhood home. It is a nice library and you can go at your own pace. We were at the library for a few hours exploring his start in politics to his untimely death.  There are many videos to watch as you wander throughout the museum too.  Outside the library there is a nice walking path you can explore with benches near the water, so we sat down to eat our packed lunch. Once we were done, we took the bus back to the T and went back to the city. We had completed all the National Park units in the city already so we decided to visit the Boston Tea Party Museum that was close to our hotel.  The museum was very nicely set up and a little cheesy, but I loved it. The history buff in me was ecstatic to go through the museum.  You start the tour by going to a town hall meeting to discuss the endeavor of dumping the tea.  After the meeting you move to a ship and “dump” the tea.  They have boxes rigged to string that you can pretend to dump, and so you can get an “Instagram worthy” picture.

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After exploring the ship, you go into the museum to finish the story which leads up to Lexington and Concord with the shot heard around the world. The museum was fun and a great way to explore Boston’s history.  As I said it was a little cheesy, but told the story so well and it is hard to be board at this museum. My mom and I were done with sightseeing in the city by this point so we decided to get dinner at Union Oyster House, which is the oldest operating restaurant in America dating back to 1826. We both got New England clam chowder to finish our day, because what is a trip to New England without some clam chowder.  The next day we would be leaving the city and headed south to New Bedford, MA to finish our New England Summer.

I will continue to write about my New England Summer in part II.

        A Very New England Summer: Part I Part I When most people think of summer time they think of relaxation and sleep.  When I think of summer, I think about traveling, traveling, and more traveling. 

[boxyladies]

Hi everyone!

It’s been a minute, hasn’t it? I’ve been so incredibly busy with work lately, but hopefully I can stop by for a new blog at least once this week. I love blogging, but when I’m faced with a long commute, then working til 9 or 10 at night, blogging tends to get the shaft, because I’m not about to kill myself for my fun hobby, ya know?

I will say, my Low Buy went out the window this month. I think it was a combination of getting a $200 Ulta gift card (which WOULD have been part of my Low Buy) but then with all of the hours I’ve spent working, I plain just wanted to buy some stuff. I felt like I earned it. I bought the Natasha Denona Sunset palette yesterday – so I’m going to do a full review on that at some point, too,

I bought a lot of things this month, but some of my favorites are:

The BH Cosmetics Zodiac Love Signs Palette ($27): One of my favorite smaller YouTubers did a series over the holidays where she did a new look every day using an older palette, and she convinced me to buy the original BH Cosmetics Zodiac palette… and I don’t really like it that much! But then I was looking at the Love Signs palette, and I was like, “ugh. I will probably like that one much more.” And I do. I need to remember that I’m not as into cool tones and that I just need to embrace allllll of the warm tones. The main reason I love this palette so much is because the mattes are so gorgeous. Super blend-able, and just overall really, really nice. The shimmery shades are really nice, too! I was sort of nervous the baked shades would be drier or harder to work with, but they are buttery and soft. I’ve been reaching for this palette a ton. I think I’ll do a full review on this because it will be fun to swatch.

I’ve purchased a few brushes that I really love this month, from Smith Cosmetics and Smashbox. The only things these brushes have in common is that they are all really unique shapes. While I have a ton of makeup brushes, I really don’t have any others that look or perform the way these do, so I’ve been very happy with them. They are expensive, but worth it, if you have the disposable income to spend on makeup brushes, in my opinion.

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So I got all four of those brushes, but the ones I’m using every day are the Smith 154 Quill Face Brush ($38.50) and the Smith 104 Fan Brush ($28.50). I’m using the Quill face brush to lightly dust powder over my face and under my eyes. And I’m using the atypical fan brush for highlight.

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I’ve been using the Smashbox Sheer Powder Brush ($40) for a light dusting of powder, the Precise Highlighting Brush ($28) for, well, highlight, and the Buildable Cheek Brush ($36) for a wash of blush.

I read an amazing book last month called “Educated” by Tara Westover. As they say, truth is stranger than fiction, and this memoir was absolutely CRAZY. The author was raised as a survivalist, whose parents really didn’t believe in the importance of education. How she was able to pull herself out and learn about the world around her was fascinating. I absolutely recommend.

I’ve also been watching a few shows as I’ve been working and now, blogging. The first is totally random: Designated Survivor. This probably caught my interest because of my love for Maggie Q. I’ve been binging the first two seasons on Netflix. It’s not a really complicated story, so it’s easy to have on in the background while I’m doing other things.

I’ve been waiting for Hanna for weeks, after I saw the preview about a month ago. It’s essentially about a girl who was given some special soldier-esque mutations as a baby, but then was supposed to be killed when the government terminated the “project,” so she’s essentially been on the run for her whole life, and lived with her father in the woods until she was a teenager. Then… her curiosity gets the best of her and she leaves the forest. Spy thriller chases ensue. It’s pretty great, and the girl who plays Hanna should win all of the awards.

What have y’all been into lately? Tell me everything.

xo, L

Current Favorites | Where I’ve Been | Boxy-Ladies.com Hi everyone! It's been a minute, hasn't it? I've been so incredibly busy with work lately, but hopefully I can stop by for a new blog at least once this week.

[youthquakeroats]

Achieve Better Search Engine Optimization Thanks To This Article

If you have ever spent a moment’s time looking for something on a search engine of your choice; you have seen the results of powerful search engine optimization. Everything that came up first on that list was placed there through careful marketing techniques. You can learn some of these same techniques by reading through the rest of the article below.

Be aware that additional advertising won’t have a real effect on your SEO. Advertising is a great way to boost momentary traffic, but not like the traffic built through boosted rankings.

Optimize your presence on search engines by getting other (reputable) sites to link to your site. If other legitimate sites are linking to you, search engines will see that you are an established presence online. Seeing that you are more in demand, the search engines place your site in a higher position.

Businesses are becoming more and more aware of the value of search engine optimization and the value of maximizing traffic to their web site. One tip that may be helpful to you is to ensure that your website is one of the top sites in the specific area. The content should be unique and provide value, thus driving more traffic to your site. By doing this, your business will continue to grow and prosper as more and more consumers seek out your website.

Once you get your site ranked where you want it you can never stop working on search engine optimization. If you aren’t improving your site then you are degrading its effectiveness. If you allow your site to slip down then someone will start ranking above you. Add new, relevant content continually and always work on improving your links.

Do not expect to optimize your website once and be done with it. Expect to spend time each day working with search engine information. This is not a one step process and should not be looked at as such. Keep researching new methods and implementing them. Your visitors will appreciate the time and attention.

Write titles suited for the search engine spiders as well as your readers. Clever titles don’t usually convey the content of the article. Instead of being cute, simply create titles that tell the reader and the search engine robots what the article is about. Your title should make it clear that the reader will get something good from the article.

Put keywords in your headings and page titles. Page titles and headings come up first in internet searches, so keywords in these fields will improve your search ranking. However, do not make headings and page titles too long, because a greater number of words dilutes the importance of each word in the heading or title.

Stay away from JavaScript when writing your pages. The engines will pretty much ignore what you place in scripts and the content will not be indexed. If you feel you must use some JavaScript make sure that the majority of your content is not included or the work you put into it will be for naught.

Add a site map to your site. By putting a site map on your site, which a page listing that links to all the main pages on your site, it will make it easier for the search engine spiders to search through your site. It is best to require fewer clicks to get to a page on your website.

Creating a unique catch phrase that fits well with whatever ones marketing can be a nice thing to incorporate into ones articles. Not only will it help one provide content for their articles but it will also create a way for viewers to recognize that specific article one is producing.

Perfecting your page in terms of Search Engine Optimization will prove to be one of the wisest investments of time and money you can make if you judge by the number of hits you gain. If interested parties can’t find your page via search engines then quite likely they will never go there!

As Google and other search engines have evolved over time, they have started emphasizing high quality links. Search engines are now ignoring, manually suppressing, or otherwise penalizing web sites that attempt to fraudulently attain first page status in search results. The lesson is to only present your page in an ethical and responsible manner in using valid Search Engine Optimization.

Set up a strategy on getting inbound links to your website from relevant, highly-ranked websites. Of course, everyone’s goal is to find a way for Wikipedia, the most highly ranked site of all, to send us it’s link juice. Your goal should be to find other websites who’s topic matches yours to provide you with their Page Rank boosting links.

If you wish to have your company, website, or blog listed among the top leaders when your topic is searched, you are going to need to follow some of these basic outlines. After which, you can expand outwards and twist the marketing campaign. Hence, better suit your audience or niche. All it requires it time and will power.

The post Achieve Better Search Engine Optimization Thanks To This Article appeared first on Kari Hallock.

from Kari Hallock http://bit.ly/2RQfzxT via Article Source

[ttorialcom]

[Udemy] Software Testing and Quality Assurance Fundamentals

QA software testing course that will help you get a manual software testing job. Covers testing types, test plans etc. What Will I Learn?   Will get a general idea about the profession Will know what a day in the life of a software tester looks like Will get familiarised with some necessary vocabulary Will get some hints for a job interview Will get some hints for the first days at work Requirements Be an advanced computer user Good problem solving skills Be interested in the tech industry Description Software testing entry level median salary in the U.S is $50,315. The national average overall (not only for the entry level professionals) is $60,728 per annum, as stated by Glassdoor. Not so bad for a job that does not usually require a higher education, right? Software testing can be a great gateway into the tech industry due to a salary you might expect, interesting and challenging job, and further growth opportunities in tech. The IT market is booming, small startups become unicorns and their founders worldwide celebrities. However, in the beginning startups do not have much money and many benefits that they can provide to employees, therefore, many experienced professionals ditch startups for safe nine to five jobs with good salaries. This opens an opportunity for less experienced people to come and join the whatever revolution that company is undertaking. Startups tend to grow very fast as well, which means you can rapidly grow with them. If you are interested in IT overall, a quality assurance job can be a great gateway position to the tech world and other roles within it. You will have to learn so many aspects of your company’s products, that would sometime find yourself to be the only holder of some information. For example, developers usually do not need to know everything about the system, only the parts they are working with. Perhaps a few senior software engineers who have the whole system architecture in their heads would know the most of the answers. People from other departments have probably never wandered in many areas of the system, so sometimes, colleagues would come to you for answers. You would be mostly working with developers, you will learn many tech terms and get a good understanding how software development works. If you are eager to become a developer later on, such job would a nice starter. This course unveils what software testing and quality assurance are, provides job hunting and interview advice, and gives a realistic picture of what your day as a manual software tester would look like. This is a course for beginners who would like to do manual testing. Although, I mention opportunities for further development within the software testing world (e.g. Automated testing, unit testing etc.), the materials will not pay much attention to those. In this course, I am going to cover why this profession might be appealing to you, will go through QA testing types (functional testing, exploratory testing and others) and explain when to use which type. I will cover what business systems are and what types of business systems are most commonly used by QA. You will learn about the GUI testing, software development life cycle (SDLC), will discover what it takes to become a good tester and how your regular day at work will look like. At the end of the course, you will also know how to write a fantastic bug report that everybody will love. A little bit about me. A few years back, I was attempting to move from a finance job to something more technical and challenging. I wanted to do front-end development, but was struggling to learn it by myself. There seemed to be too many concepts to grasp within a limited free time. So I took a Software testing job to start with. I was lucky with the company and the tech team in it, who were very supportive from the beginning. During my first interview I mentioned some of my knowledge of Angular, and said I would like to eventually do front-end development. For the disclosure, it took me nine months to join the front-end team. The learning process was the following: about one or months were spent doing purely manual testing and learning the system. Say if your company has a big product or many products, or the products are complex, it might take a long time to get familiar with the system. As a QA engineer you really have know pretty much everything about the system. For system testing, you should become a super user. Once I knew most of the system, I started learning Selenium and using Selenium IDE. With that I could write some basic automated tests for some repetitive tasks. It helped to  speed up the work a lot. Once I was comfortable using Selenium on its basic level, I moved to Coypu (a framework for C# that uses Selenium). That was more challenging, because now I had to learn the back-end architecture of a fairly big system. After a few more months I started transitioning to the front-end. I used a QA software testing job to get into the new field, and it worked like a charm. If you are curious about software testing but yet hesitant, think of it as a gateway career opportunity. A fairly easy road to the tech world. Many people enjoy doing software testing and Quality Assurance and stay in their jobs for many years. I don't want to make an impression that this should be only a temporary job opportunity. However, most people, as statistics show, move away to something else after an average of two years. Could you use that leverage for your career? QA software testing is peculiar in the way that you have an option to learn some basics and have a consistent job without much worries or you can constantly learn new tools and frameworks and dive more and more into technical parts. Whatever floats your boat.  If you decide to grow, here is some advice. Once you are familiar with basic testing patterns, move more towards Quality Assurance. If you don't know the difference between Software Testing and Quality Assurance, find it out in the course (in the introduction). Have structure of the system you are testing outlined, know what parts are more vulnerable to changes and break the most. When you are done with that, learn how to use Selenium IDE. With that, you will be able to do basic test automation. It will be buggy, not very reliable, but it will work. Then using your Selenium knowledge, you can start creating more complex tests. For example, if a company you will get a work at uses Java on the back-end, you can learn some basics of that language and use special Selenium frameworks with that language. If you are more interested in the front-end development in the future, there is a lot of space for QA software testing there as well. You can start with simple UI testing using something like StoryShots for Storybook. Storybook provides a nice way to keep your UI elements in one place for the reference. You can play with those elements, see how they work, use knobs etc. And then, you can take a snapshot of those elements all together. So when you run the test, it will tell if there was change in the UI somewhere from the previous time you ran the test. Such testing would provide an extra level of security for finding UI bugs.  There is a more serious front-end testing that can be done with the help of frameworks like jest and mocha. This would require more JavaScript knowledge compared to StoryShots, but would allow to provide significantly more security to a front-end application. You would have to read loads of code, understand how it works, and create tests for. Essentially, once you master it, you will capable of doing software development on your own. There is a term “developer in test”. It describes a person who is a software developer but who focuses on quality assurance. If you compare salaries of a manual tester and a developer in test, the difference would be quite huge. If you work hard, you can comfortably reach that level within a year. Fancy that?   Here are some of the common interview questions, answers to which you can find in this course. What is a test case? What is a test suite? What is a software testing? What is the difference between software testing and quality assurance? What is positive testing? What is negative testing? What is the difference between white box and black box testing? What are the different types of testing? What testing type is likely to bring more results? What is GUI testing? Do you know of any usability guidelines? What is Software Development Life Cycle? Why ad hoc testing (aka monkey testing) can be useful? How do you report bugs? How many bugs do you report in one bug report? Who is the target audience? Be interested in a QA engineer job Be interested in a software tester job Looking for an entry job at a tech company source https://ttorial.com/software-testing-quality-assurance-fundamentals

[operationrainfall]

Title Keen: One Girl Army Developer Cat Nigiri Publisher Phoenixx Release Date July 2nd, 2020 Genre Puzzle Platform PC, Nintendo Switch Age Rating T for Teen – Blood, Violence, Use of Tobacco Official Website

Something you should know about me is that I’m not amazing at puzzle games. I like them on occasion, and find them fun in short bursts. But I also don’t consider myself an expert at the genre, let alone what I call ice puzzles. Those are the games where everything works like a block of ice, and you’ll slide until you hit something solid. Keen: One Girl Army replaces a block of ice with a spunky ninja girl on roller skates. There’s a lot to catch your attention in this game, and it’s much more than a simple puzzle game. The question is, does it live up to the ambitious scope of developer Cat Nigiri? Or does it slide headfirst into a brick wall?

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One thing I want to get out of the way first regards the visual style of the game. It really looks like something made first for mobile, but that’s not the case. Keen is only for PC and Switch. I think the reason for that artistic choice, then, is due to Cat Nigiri’s background. Long story short, they started out with mobile game development, and though they’ve since made things for consoles, I’m sure they’re still inspired by their roots. With that out of the way, let’s talk a bit about the story of Keen.

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The plot of the game is both more and less interesting than I expected. The main character, Kim, is the latest in a long line of ninja warrior women. Her mother is out of the picture, but she was renowned as one of the best back in her day. Kim is raised by her Gramma. In the tutorial stage, Gramma talks you through the basic controls and gives you some insight into the world of the game. It seems that outside forces are up to no good, threatening not only your home but everywhere else as well. The enemy is mostly comprised of zombies, robots and the occasional ghost. As you progress through the game, you’ll learn more details about what’s happening and who is behind it. I admit I was compelled by many aspects of the plot, but in the end there were too many loose ends for my tastes. Things that seem relevant got left behind and other revelations just left me more confused. While that was a bit disappointing, thankfully you’re not playing Keen just for the plot. This is a puzzle game, after all. So let’s spend some time talking about how it plays.

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Kim is a spunky ninja on roller skates, and that effectively tells you how she controls. Once you pick a direction, she’ll keep charging until she hits a wall, object or hazard. Thankfully she’s equipped with a means of dealing damage, the family naginata. If she has a straight shot through a foe with adjacent extra spaces, she’ll race through them and deal 2 damage. If she lands adjacent to a foe, she’ll do 1 damage instead, and momentarily stun them. Every enemy only moves when you do, so you have some control over how skirmishes progress. That said, the enemy AI is pretty smart, so making the wrong move often results in Kim taking some damage. Most foes only move around and hit her when up close and personal, but others can hit from a distance. Some nasty ones even go invisible, and only show up when they move, which is a giant source of anxiety. Others are intangible, forcing you to hit them once they’re corporeal. The combat works pretty well, so long as I had enough room to maneuver and wasn’t surrounded by enemies. But the farther you get in the game, the more intense things get, with nastier foes introduced at a rapid clip.

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It’s not all combat in Keen, thankfully. Most of the game is figuring out how to get from point A to point B. Rooms are all interconnected in complex ways, so what might look like a simple path is often convoluted. Making things trickier is that often you’ll find hidden rooms in dark corners. Many of them are optional, but in some areas you have to find the hidden room just to progress through the level. Speaking of optional, you’ll also find hidden Shrines on the world map. These provide new abilities to help Kim survive, but you can’t just enter Shrines for free. They cost Orbytes, which are found in a variety of ways. You can earn them by fulfilling certain requirements in stages, such as only moving so many times or avoiding taking any damage. You also will find Orbytes inside stages. You’ll need a specific amount to enter each of the several Shrines, and I can say it’s worth the price. I found about 3 in my playthrough, and each one rewarded me with life saving tools. My favorite was probably the shield which prevented taking damage, but I also got cool stuff like shuriken and lightning strikes. Each of these is gone once used, but you can recharge them by rolling into a checkpoint. Those are sprinkled throughout each stage, and they’re real lifesavers, since they also fully heal you.

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As you progress through Keen, new and more dangerous traps and hazards are introduced. You’ll find blocks you can move, switches you have to activate, laser turrets, timed explosives and much more. Understanding how they all work is integral to your survival, though thankfully you have unlimited lives. If not, I’m not sure I would have been able to beat the final boss of the game. Yes, I was surprised Keen has boss fights too, at first happily so. There’s only a handful, but each one gets progressively more challenging. Each boss will summon foes to distract you, as well as littering the field of battle with traps that can end your life. They also have multiple phases, so you’ll need to memorize their attack patterns and react properly to have a chance. Though I spent about 6 or 7 hours to beat the game, 3 of those were spent on the final boss alone. So prepare for a steeper challenge than you might expect from a game in this genre.

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Visually, there’s a lot I like about Keen. It has a cute chibi aesthetic that looks like a Bratz doll doused in neon. I also really like the use of color in this game, with bold and bright choices contrasting the gloomy dark corridors. Even the loading screen is attractive, with an action shot of Kim racing into battle. On the audio side, it’s also a nice experience. Lots of quasi-Eastern tunes interspersed with songs that reminded me of Michael Jackson’s Thriller. It’s a weird mix, for sure, but it works pretty well. There’s even voice acting in a small capacity, mostly to give Kim more personality. Overall, the game looks and sounds great.

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I’ve tried to mostly focus on the good until now, but there was plenty of bad in Keen. One is that many levels have very long stretches without enough checkpoints to break them up. This means that a single death will force you back to the checkpoint, which is irritating. It also means you really can’t rely on your Shrine abilities, since you never know when you’ll be able to charge them back up. Also, I was constantly anxious that I’d get stuck in a room by progressing the wrong way. I don’t think that’s actually possible, but it did make me wish I had a way to rewind my progress on floors. I also would have loved a hint system to guide me on the right path. Cause I got lost frequently, and oftentimes the path forward isn’t clear. And regarding the bosses, I really think the game should have automatically saved after each phase was beaten, and let me respawn from that point. Without that feature, each boss requires you to beat them in one attempt. Considering the final boss has 9 phases, 3 of which can instantly kill you, made this especially relevant. I also wish the UI was a bit more easy to parse. Mainly I didn’t love having to wander all about the world map, and wish I could fast travel to locations after I’ve beaten them. And though this is a nitpick, I really was irritated by how the game avoided proper names for things, such as referring to a big town as VILLAGE. Why not call it Neon City or something else? None of these ruined my time with the game, but they all brought it down a few steps from true greatness.

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Ultimately, I don’t think I was the right person to review Keen: One Girl Army. It’s not horrible, and I like the ambitious scope of the adventure, but it’s also much more hardcore than I was expecting. That said, it’s attractive and has good replay value, apparently featuring a secret ending if you’re patient enough to 100% every level and unlock every Shrine. With all that in mind, Keen isn’t a bad deal for $15.99. Ultimately I think this is a good experiment from Cat Nigiri, and I hope they’re not discouraged by my thoughts. If you’re a fan of puzzles, not matter how difficult, then this is your game.

[easyreview cat1title=”Overall” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”3.5″]

Review Copy Provided by Publisher

REVIEW: Keen: One Girl Army Title Keen: One Girl Army

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This year my friend and I have picked Budapest as the place to celebrate our birthdays. Great way to try something different and be away from London for couple of days. It was pretty good decision, and I was excited to get the flight from London Heathrow to Budapest – Ferenz List Airport.

It was sunny July evening when we landed – 1st sight of Budapest is Danube, green neighbourhoods, blocks of flats and not so big, modern airport. Cool city. And definitely very well maintained and tourist-friendly. Few quick tips to keep in mind below.

  Transport & Getting around

It is easy to get from the airport to the city centre – just get the shuttle bus 100E and get off at Kalvin Ter M (in the heart of the city). Ticket price is 900 F (around £3). Bus ticket can be bought from a machine at stations or service desk. Staff usually speaks English and are happy to help if needed. Other option is to get Uber.

The bus is a cool way to get a sense of the city – I noticed wider streets (compared to London), mix of houses and blocks (left from Soviet time), new modern buildings and green spaces / gardens. The city reminded me of Sofia and also of Berlin in terms of architecture and some shops / brands.

Also, a good sightseeing tip is – take tram Number 2, which is following Danube. Ticket cost around £1 and you could sit and enjoy the view on the way. Danube is a pretty evening view 🙂

  Accommodation

We stayed in Pest (the flat part of Budapest) and almost everything was walking distance from our place. Our Airbnb studio flat was near the main tourist high street, Danube bank and Vörösmarty tér (Square).  It was so handy and there was no need to take public transport. I also enjoyed biking one day by the river – it was quicker way to explore the bank and also chill out. Streets are full of cyclists so definitely worth trying.

The city has plenty of Airbnb, hotels and hostels – so good choice for any type of travel. I’m fan of hostels and next time I go – I will try this option. Budapest is perfect for sightseeing, partying and meeting other travellers.

  Cash or Card

I am not big fan of cash and normally prefer to pay with a card. Luckily, in Budapest in most places to eat and all thermal baths you can pay with card. Cash is required if you purchase a ticker for some attractions or at local markets. Be aware – sometimes it is not possible to split a bill if paying with card. Also, there are ATMs almost everywhere – at the airport, near major stations and banks.

  Budapest – My favorite thing about the city is the sightseeing places and thermal baths. If I was living there, I would stop going to gym and focus on swimming in the baths instead. I enjoyed chill in the water on a hot day. Here’s what we did over the weekend…

  Walking Tour & Sightseeing

If you visit the city, I strongly recommend trying out any of the free walking tours available. They are fun and at the same time you can learn more about the city and local history. This is the tour we attended:

Budapest Free Walking Tour

It starts every day at 10:30 am – meeting point is in the city centre, Vörösmarty square (at the lion fountain). It is free and at the end of the tour, you tip as per your budget. The tour covered some of the top sights in the city like – St.Stephen’s Basilica, Chain Bridge, Royal Palace and Fisherman Bastion. Our tour guide, A. was funny with great sense of humour and she told us more about the local history with some “politically incorrect” insights. This is what I like the most! It’s cool to hear that the Change Bridge is the biggest in Budapest or Vastagh Gyorgy and his horse’s statue (it is in Buda) is famous for the balls of the horse! Apparently, before exam local students come to the statue and touch the balls for good luck. Another interesting insight is from the communist times – after Hungary was “liberated” from the Nazis by the Soviets, “Soviets wanted to make sure that Hungary is Nazi free that they forgot to go home for the next 45 years”.

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Also, you could learn several Hungarian words, which is fun as the language is nothing like any other language in Europe. Well, apart from Finnish and Estonian – apparently the 3 countries have common ancestors, who have split after arriving in Europe. In any case, I remember the essentials:

beer is shur 

wine is por 

Other cool place to visit in Budapest is the Liberty Statue – located on one of the hills in Buda and watching over the city. This is Soviet monument, and because it looks cool it was not destroyed after the collapse of communism. It’s popular spot for young people to have a drink at sunset, and enjoy the view of the city.

Not to miss is also the building of the Parliament – the working place of the Prime Minister of Hungary. It is the 3rd biggest Parliament in the world, and its architecture is absolutely beautiful! It stands at Danube’s bank and it’s a gorgeous view in the evening with all these lights.

I wanted to visit the National Museum as well, however I did not have enough time (got distracted in the baths!). As I heard, the museum has pretty interesting artefacts around local history and pagan / nomadic past of Magyars (Hungarian ancestors).

Not to miss is also the Catholic Cathedral, St. Istvan (or Steven) which has the sacred remains (piece of an arm) of the saint, who is the 1st official king of Hungary. The cathedral is beautoful and surely would be appreciated by art lovers.

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  Jewish district and the hipster Budapest

Obviously, the Jewish district is known for the history during WW2. It starts with the Great Synagogue at Dohany Street. It is the 2nd biggest synagogue (after the one in Amsterdam), though locals claim it is the biggest. It is an interesting monument and it is worth visit – just be aware of its opening hours and dress code. Also, in its garden there is a silver tree, whose leaves contain names of Hungarian Jews killed in WW2.

I’d say the district is my favourite part of the city – it is artsy, hip and young. It reminds me of London’s Shoreditch. I like the idea of using old stuff in a creative way and creating outdoorsy places, where people can socialise over a drink.

We visited very cool place – Szimpla – like a beer garden / bar open day and night. The definition of hipster place! Also, I bet it is great spot for live music in the evenings. No wonder is popular with tourists.

We enjoyed couple of Soproni pints (local beer) before moving on to the near by street food market Karavan. Here we tried the local “communist pizza” – Langos. You could also have touristy burgers and even vegan options are available. Karavan is a cool place, good to have local fast food and some beers.

This area is also popular with the many bars, garden restaurants and night life.

Thermal Baths

This is a must experience in Budapest! The city is known for its thermal baths and so I wanted to try at least 2 of them over my short stay. Baths are increasingly popular, and as I saw sometimes you have to queue to get in. I imagine this is annoying for locals because of queuing and higher prices. We visited 2 baths – Rudas and Szechenyi.

Night swim at Rudas Bath

Rudas is located on Danube bank, near the bridge. It has several sections – thermal baths, wellness and swimming pool. Entry is around 5100 F (or £15-£16). We tried out the night bathing from 22:00 to 04:00. It was busy Saturday night, and we queued for around 25 mins until we got it. The bath is well equipped with lockers, changing rooms, showers and laundry dryer.

The wellness part has 2 big pools with different temperatures – 26 C and 33 C (if I remembered correct). There are also 2 smaller pools – very cold and very hot 42 C. I tried to get in the hot one, and my feet was burning so I gave up on it. Some people manage to stay there for several minutes – admirable! I would feel like boiled chicken if I had to get it there! I was mostly in the bigger pools, which I thought are perfect place to have a nap whilst enjoying the jacuzzi effect. Really nice massage for your back or feet.

The thermal bath part on the other hand is located in an ex mosque. The mosque built in Ottoman times was regenerated and now its beautiful building is used as a bath. The night vibes are so relaxing – lights shadowing, beautiful ceiling and light blue watered pool. The bath here has 1 major pool (I assume it should be around 34 C).Once I felt hot, I was jumping in the other smaller pools – these are 4 more pools between 28 to 42 C. After hot pool, 28 feels freezing. Not to miss is the steam room too – how long could you stay in 50 C steam?

And the best bit of the bath is the rooftop! Smaller warm pool on the roof, with view towards Buda and Danube. It was beautiful! Imagine chilling there with a drink in the pool? A dream, and I quite enjoyed it. That night was even more beautiful as it was thundering and we could see the lightening in the sky from the pool. I am not sure how safe this is, but experience is worth it.

Szechenyi Bath

This bath is different – it is actually outdoors and is located outside the city centre, next to the zoo. The best way to get there is by Metro for several stops. Again, the bath is in a beautiful yellow building. It needs some renovation, however it still looks great. It has a swimming deep pool and 2 more big warmer pools. I spent my bday day there – sunbathing and chilling in all pools, trying out the bubbles and jacuzzi. Perfect place to float. Entry is again around 5400 F. There is also restaurant when you get hungry / thirsty.

Speaking of food and drink…

Places to eat and drink

One flag here – Budapest city centre is full of Italian places. I love Italian food, however I would not eat it when in Hungary. To me – this is a tourist trap, and may suit well if you fancy pizza and burger (oh yeah, burgers everywhere). I am a fan of trying local dishes, so we were looking for places to have more Hungarian meals. Of course, in tourist areas prices are 3-4 times higher than the normal for locals. We were advised to eat in Pest, as Buda is more expensive and food is not greater.

So first – what is actually Hungarian food? Meat. Loads of meat. If you are vegetarian, or worse – vegan, you will struggle and you will not try locals meals.

Hungarian dishes

Goulash (Gulyás) – this is a soup with beef and paprika. The traditional version is soup, however tourists tend to have the stew version (which is the touristy option).

Paprikash – this is a stew with chicken, sour cream and paprika sauce, and also Hungarian version of dumplings. It is very tasty and goes well with red wine for dinner! Actually we have Paprikash in Bulgaria too, but ours is more tomato focused and no dumplings.

Langos – this is very popular street food. It is actually what Hungarian eat when drinking. It is fried fatty bread topped with sour cream and cheese. Other versions include paprika. I even saw Nutella Langos. It is very similar to our mekica – which we eat for breakfast.

Cake – Budapest has a plenty of bakeries or coffe houses and you can get delicious cakes. The traditional cake is a type of Sponge cake.

  Hungarian drinks

Alcoholic on top of that.

Wine – Hungary is a wine region, so when visiting definitely try some loal wine. Red wines are particulartly good.

Palinka – Hungarian spirit, they say up to 70% alcohol. It tastes like fire. If you tried other Eastern European spirits like rakia you know what to expect 😀

Unicum – is a traditional herbal liqaur and they say is good to have a shot when getting a cold.

  Where to eat?

Depends on your taste. We tried mixture of street places and nice restaurants.

Street food places – we tried Karavan market and the Central Hall Market. The Central Market has a range of grocery stands, souvenirs and up stairs it has several street food and Cafes. I got a chocolate truffle cake for 300 F and it was the best cake I had in town.

For breakfast, we tried to very good places: Kuglof and a French bakery Amber. At Kuglof I really liked the French toast with fried eggs and Paprika, and the massive chocolate latte. At Amber I gave a try to another chocolate cake.

For dinner, I enjoyed soup guyash at Hungarian bistro. I also tried chicken paprikash at another garden restaurant Borze Kavehaz, which was pretty good. Portions here are quite big, so I was struggling to finish my meal.

  Budapest is one of my favourite cities, and I will be back. I have always wanted to visit around NYE – as it’s beautiful and why not anjoy thermal bath again when cold?

Definitely great place for weekend trip and / or solo travel!

        Weekend break in Budapest -this is why it’s a good idea!

This year my friend and I have picked Budapest as the place to celebrate our birthdays. Great way to try something different and be away from London for couple of days.

Weekend break in Budapest -this is why it’s a good idea! This year my friend and I have picked Budapest as the place to celebrate our birthdays. Great way to try something different and be away from London for couple of days.