#what the heck is a workflow anyway

[mydnyteraven]

Sometimes I just want a screen with like 4 WIPs open at once and go from one to the other after each sentence even though they’re not even remotely close to the same vibe as each other and only vaguely involve the same characters but in drastically different parts of their adventures and character arcs.

[lets-try-some-writing]

What’s your thoughts visually on how bots habsuites/ quarters look like? And would they differ between frame types ? As prime big lol Wish we got some media on it :0

Hmm well I do imagine things would differ wildly between each continuity. However, some generalizations might be the following:

Autobots as a whole: Generally speaking, I do imagine the Autobots have habs that match their size and their rank. Rank and file soldiers are bunked together in rooms filled with recharging stations crammed shoulder to shoulder. Most don't mind since they are all together and it's not as if they have anything of their own anyway more often than not. Those further up the chain of command get rooms with less people in them until they finally get a roommate or possibly, if they are super duper special, their very own closet sized space. Actual berths are reserved for those with rooms big enough for them. Most just use recharging stations since it's generally more useful to making the most of a space.

Rank and file soldiers: The average soldier is bunked shoulder to shoulder with his or her comrades. They are each given a standing recharge station boxed right up against everyone else's unless they have an injury which warrants the usage of the handful of berths given to soldiers lower on the chain of command. Generally, such soldiers are kept in huge facilities meant to keep everyone safe and secure rather than comfort them. As such, decoration simply does not happen unless the military position a soldier is stationed at is more permanent. In which case, the soldier might paint their station with odd doodles, splotches of color, or if they are lucky enough to find some, they might slap some stickers on it.

Company commanders and the like: Directly above regular soldiers, various commanders of lower rank get bunked together as well, but they are given a tad more room. This is not a privilege as one might expect, but an actual necessity. Commanders can get called on at any time, and each of them need a little more room to work on reports and whatnot since there simply is not enough space to give each of them an office of their own. As such, their stations are a little farther apart, and between them are their personal effects and maybe something to play the part of a makeshift desk if need be. Decoration is the same as regular soldiers, with the possible addition of medallions, the odd set of fairy lights if one gets lucky, or even a poster or two.

Lieutenants and up: Now this is when a bot would start getting their own space, kind of. Bots of this rank are still bunked with a buddy or two, but they are actually issued rooms in order to supply them with the privacy needed to handle sensitive data. They also get actual berths (which can and often do double as desks). Getting a room means a bot can do almost whatever they like to decorate so long as it sort of aligns with military orders. Most often, lieutenants and the like decorate with weapons on the walls, trophies, artwork, or even murals. It depends on his strict the command center is.

Generals and Prime's Inner Circle: Inner circle bots get privileges, and one of those is a private room. A bot can do whatever the heck they want with their space so long as it doesn't disrupt workflow and the like. Decoration depends entirely on whoever owns the hab. In the case of Ultra Magnus, he lives in a mountain of datapads. Ratchet keeps mementos but will die before admitting it. Jazz has what few instruments he's managed to save. Ironhide decked his room with weapons... the list goes on. There are no limits for the most part. Comes with being constantly under threat of being assassinated.

Prime: Technically, he should be living in a high end facility, never to dirty his digits. But because this is Optimus Prime, he tends to wander. He rests wherever there is a free space and will gladly rest with the soldiers without a worry in the world. The only reason he has a hab at all is for the sake of morale amongst the troops. Although more often than not, it doubles as an extra room for injured troops in need of protection.

Not sure if this is what you wanted anon, but these are my thoughts!

[pwhiteheadarts102-03]

Oh Journal! My Journal! Our fearful trip is done.

Well… almost. It’s been a heck of a month already, and today is Thursday, November 9.

We submitted the Illustrator Project 4 that dealt with creating two logos about two movie persons from shapes. I needed extra time to get those done, and built Rose differently than I built Jack. Jack began as mostly lines, but Rose was assembled (re-assembled) with mostly shapes. Illustrator was challenging, but nothing that can’t be overcome.

We also submitted a short-term project, Project 5. I used some images from a website that were already prepared correctly. Arranging them on an art board wasn’t complicated, and working with the text wasn’t overly challenging. What it did was get my hands on Indesign, and showed me some of the things it does well, like work with layout. I’ve used Photoshop for what Illustrator and Indesign does natively - for a very long time. I now have two new tools that, when learned by use, can REALLY accelerate my workflow. I’m excited about that, as it seems my money is earned by not just creativity - which usually gets crushed by work or employer desires - but by speed. I know I can produce more if I can produce faster. Anyway…

[moodyspoodys]

FINALY I finished! R76 piece from 30s au wonderfully created by @blacksmiley-c and @slytherinladyknight, watching the au grow is great and heartwarming and I love the feels it woke up in me 

[vegeta897]

I have finally completed the animation I started 9 months ago. It’s about my friend being stranded in the woods. It’s almost based on a true story and the audio comes from actual videos of his ordeal.

Notice I said “started 9 months ago ” and not “worked on for 9 months.” There were long periods of inactivity. But I did know the whole time that I would finish it eventually. Unlike many projects of mine! I am very excited to premier this to my friends (and some family!) tonight and feeling very fulfilled.

It started with my friend Milly (Mills) posting several short videos he recorded while waiting for a towtruck to pick him up when he got his motorcycle stuck in the mud.

Something about the videos and his monologue made me want to create an animation based on them. So I cut and stitched various parts together in Renoise, and came up with the whole audio track.

The principle of my workflow is to get the entire audio track, including music, finalized before ever picking up my pen. Timing and pacing scenes by audio only is a good way to get it right, I think. If I can make something that flows just by listening to it, it’s a good bet the final animation will flow too.

With the audio track exported, my first step was storyboarding. A quick sketch for every scene or cut, sometimes with arrows or rudimentary animation to illustrate the intent. It’s during this storyboarding that most of the ideas were established. I really enjoy how I have to be creative to come up with visuals to match an audio track that was created without much regard for what it would all look like.

Here’s a rendering of the animation with the storyboards overlaid on top:

Holy heck are there a lot of cuts in this animation. It feels like a shot is rarely held for more than 5 seconds. I could go and count exactly how many shots there are but I’m lazy.

So I had the storyboard and audio track for an animation that weighed in at about 4.5 minutes, spanning almost 4000 frames. My New Years animation was longer, but that was barely animated. This was definitely going to be up there in terms of work required.

My next step was drawing in very angular outlines for the backgrounds. The triangular/polygonal style in the final product didn’t come until much later. I really didn’t know what I wanted the backgrounds to look like, and this loomed over me for almost the entire time I spent doing everything else.

I was itching to get down to the raw animation work, so I began taking on scene after scene of character animation.

The flat-color-with-no-outlines style was a choice I made quickly when I considered how much extra work it would be to give it my usual treatment. It was also refreshing to try something new.

The animation is 15 frames per second, but many parts were done at 1/2 or 1/3 rate (twos and threes, in animation lingo). Sometimes the decision came down to how "in the mood” I was to animate at the time.

Guides are important. A lot of scenes were free-handed though. When you draw a character enough times you get pretty good at it.

When I crack open a Rockstar, you know it’s time for some serious animating. 

With most of the character art done, I moved on to the motorcycle. Oh, that friggin’ bike. A Benelli TnT135. Even after studying literally dozens of photos and videos of it, it’s still a tricky 3D shape to grasp at some angles, particularly the tail end of the seat.

And then I had to animate it in that penultimate shot of our hero driving away. I shamelessly took as many shortcuts as I could to avoid as much redrawing as possible. The end result is okay. I hope the significance of what the bike is doing means the viewer isn’t focused on how realistic it looks.

At last I had to face the backgrounds. My first attempts failed miserably.

So, Adobe Animate does not really have great tools for coloring (by hand, anyway). Trying and failing to come up with a workable style was discouraging. Forests have a lot of variety in texture, all around. There’s all kinds of colors and shapes. How could I convey all that?

Go abstract. 

No, Adobe Animate does not have some cool 3D mesh feature or fractal generator. These triangles were drawn line by line, fill by fill. That includes the animated water.

I managed to re-use some backgrounds in many of the simpler shots, but some locations, like the bike and road, had angles too varied to copy and paste.

I had determination, though, because working on these backgrounds was part of the final stretch of getting this thing done. I could see the finish line.

When the backgrounds were done, I made pretty quick work of drawing and animating the various props. Basically anything that wasn’t the character or bike, like the log, the can, the foil cup, and so on.

The last few days were spent creating the title and credits, as well as polishing stuff like the color correction used to illustrate times of day. Yesterday I sent a preview of the whole video to my good friend Viper, whose critical yet supportive feedback I value the most. I must say, his generally positive response helped me sleep that night. The night before, I was tossing and turning, stuck in a mind loop of drawing triangles in my imagination. That is not a joke.

Thanks for reading! After keeping this mostly-secret for so long, it’s nice to get it all out there.

[theblognobodyfoundlastyear]

More of the same: It's all a car crash in slow motion

You know things are bad when the largest highlight of the week is buying iced tea. Which is to say, everything that has led up to this point has been, at least to some extent, meaningless. Spending years of one's teenage years looking for part-time work? Studying hard to land that elusive grade? Heck, even spending hours upon hours trying to perfect your financial workflow. All of it - all for nothing.

Of course, your natural instinct would be to thin that I'm overly pessimistic or grasping too hard onto the hopes and joys of yesteryear. I'm of the view that people who seem to "enjoy" that 30's are just putting on some kind of facade to mask the hollow lives they live. It may not always be the case, but I've yet to be explicitly disproved much of time. Yet, even in times of idleness, we would choose to wallow in our homes, desperately finding some errand or small chore to do without having to invest into a proper hobby? It's as though your 20's are your prime years not only in terms of peak physical, emotional and mental stability but also for refining the inner character.

Is that the goal then, to make a mad scramble to chisel the soul as much as one can possibly achieve before the proverbial concrete settles in and hope that the output looks at least half-decent? There would be an equal probability of things looking even worse than the initial block of marble, which from a loss aversion perspective might be the better choice to do nothing. At the same time, the same conversation would be had years later, wondering why things are the way that they are, only to remember that it was because nothing was done. One can't also help to think that this is a more systemic problem, that this experience is but a small pebble in the grander scheme of things. To which the natural justification could lead into "I don't have to do anything because other people are just as content at living their mildly miserable lives" and "I blame the system for all of my problems and why things don't seem to be getting any better", essentially scapegoating the system itself for one's lack of life-changing progress.

So is the plan to get out there and experience as much as possible, knowing full well the futility of such an endeavour? One line of thinking is that if the life has truly been a fulfilling one, you wouldn't be in this mess trying to make one's life count for something, as the condition would already have been met. And even if such a lofty goal were to be pursued, is life just a never-ending thrill-seeking adventure for the next big dopamine hit? I'd like to think this is not a pursuit for happiness or purpose per se, rather to understand more about one's own character as well as the limitations, optimisations and edge cases one is geared up for.

How would one measure the development of the self and internal personality? As with anything as intangible as this, you'd have to rely very much on gut feelings and instinct to tell you whether or not things really are changing for the better. If it turns out nothing happened, then nothing of value was lost and everything turned out the way that you feared anyway, so there's nothing to be surprised about. But if things did improve, what now? I suppose the natural instinct would be to keep building up that body, in the metaphorical sense. Keep chiseling the marble, for you can consider yourself one of the elect who have the privilege of watching their lives shift according to one's will and determination.

And for those who aren't as lucky? Perhaps it just requires some more time to figure out how this whole "developing your personality in your 20's" actually works, and stay up all night to get lucky. But how do you know you'd even make progress in the right direction? After all, we certainly don't need anymore extremists, lawless gangs and madmen. Without any hard measure for progress, this could be a very real possibility.

So the proposition is to "make the most" of your 20's, running the risk of not making any progress or even becoming worse off in the meantime? The pessimist would be quick to say that things are always going to go south, it's just the degree and magnitude of south-ness that one can control. To that end, may as well take the lesser of the two evils. This also goes to imply a stage of life in things get far worse than they already are, potentially going towards the extent of having quite literally no free time anymore, or having to pursue things that previously were governed by choice now undertaken by sheer obligation with no obvious gain. I suppose one can delay that stage for as long as possible, for even the people in that boat desperately want out. Or at least the ones I'm aware of.

Because at the end of it all, a life worthy of the calling we have received is not only one that was enjoyed but also one that served a true purpose. Obligation, as powerful of a motivator it might appear to be, is only the surface of life.

'Til next time, young padawan.

To be fair, nothing is as simple as it was in that other time and place. Which is why we should extract that essence and propagate it into the future for others to enjoy.

[petersasteria]

Mixed YouTuber Imagine!

Requested? Nope.

Pairing: None

Warning: None

* * * *

Dan, Phil, and Troye entered the office break room. Each of them held different containers containing...well, their food. They lazily sat on the chairs that were pushed under the table. The room echoed of violent thwop-pops and elongated scraw-jips as Tupperware lids fly open and Velcro bags release their treasures.

"Dammit!" Dan rolls his eyes.

Phil, with a mouth full of cold pizza, mumbles in empathy, "Wife packed you tuna salad again, huh?"

Dan tosses the soggy sandwich on the table and said,"She knows I hate this stuff! I swear I've reached my breaking point with this!"

"Why don't you just pack your own lunch?" Troye spoke whilst eating his salad. Dan glares at Troye in disdain.

"You don't get it, man. I've told her like a million times 'I don't like tuna salad' but does she listen? Nooooo"

Dan raises his hand to his forehead,"I swear I'm up to here with this!"

"Well, at least you're not like that one guy" Phil said as he wipes his mouth with a paper napkin.

"What one guy?" Dan asked, curiosity filling his mind.

"Are you talking about that guy from the office a few blocks from here? I heard about that last week" Troye chimes in.

Dan turns to Troye and said,"What the heck are you guys talking about?"

Phil wipes off the grease on his hands with another napkin, folds his hands in front of him and leans in quietly as Dan and Troye followed.

"Y'see, there was this guy over at that office a few blocks from here. He was a nice guy. What was his name?" Phil looks up to the ceiling in concentration; trying to remember the name of the said guy. Suddenly, Phil snaps his fingers,"There we go! Sivoy Melvan. Anyway, he was one of those industrious workers, never complained, always got his work done before the deadline. Hell, he would even stay late to make sure that his perfect record won't be tarnished."

Dan chimes in,"Ugh. I hate those guys!"

"Well, that office hired a new manager. Basic manager...y'know never lifted a finger in his life and get to skip right to the front?"

Dan shook his head.

"Exactly. So this guys was raised in to" Phil raised his finger quotations,"help. And since this douche didn't really know anything about that office, he would just bark orders and micromanage everyone. Everyone in the office was like, 'were gonna quit','let's get HR involved','this guy is completely heartless', the usual promises. Everyone was like that...except Sivoy."

"Sivoy would mind his own business and do his work with a silent smile. He would even ask the new manager, 'Anything I can do to help?' Well, I don't know if that manager deliberately planned to be this malicious or if it was just common nature for him, but he got this idea in his head..to see how far he could bend Sivoy, until he broke."

"Starting the very next day, the manager threw the biggest workflow on Sivoy's desk and yelled 'I need this done by 5 o'clock today or you can pack your stuff now!' Or something like that. Sivoy quickly turned to the manager and said 'Sure thing boss!' Soon enough, it was already 5 o'clock and Sivoy went to his manager's office and placed the work on the desk. 'Here you go, boss.' "

"The manager looked up at Sivoy amazed as to how he did that in 7 1/2 hours. "Anything I can do to help?" smiled Sivoy. The manager shook his head in disbelief. "Okay. Well, I'm going home now. Have great evening!" "

"The manager was gobsmacked. He tried even harder to break Sivoy."

"By the end of the week, Sivoy was as cheerful as ever. The manager eventually tried to break him, but it wasn't enough. Until one faithful day, after Sivoy did the task he was asked to do, he walked happily to the manager's office, placed the work he did on the manager's desk and asked if there were anything else he can do to help. The manager had a trick up his sleeve that would eventually break Sivoy."

"The manager gave Sivoy a budget report for the following year and told him, 'I don't care how long it takes, but you're not leaving your desk until we trim at least 5 million pounds off of next year's budget.' As always, Sivoy would say, 'Sure thing, boss.' "

"At around 8 o'clock, Sivoy was done and he walked to his manager's office with a smile and showed him the report. The manager wasn't too happy about it, so he sent Sivoy back to his spot and made him re-do his work."

"After 2 hours, Sivoy went back to the manager's office with a smile and showed him the work he had done. Again, the manager didn't like it. He made Sivoy re-do it, again. The manager did a little victory dance, because his plan to break Sivoy was working."

"After what seemed like another 2 hours, Sivoy went back to his manager's office with a tired smile and showed it to him. The manager looked at it, and said, 'Why did you do the budget for next year? I asked you to do the budget THIS year! Now, do it again!' "

"No one knows exactly what happened next. But some of the late night workers who heard the manager's tirade claim that as soon as he was finished. Sivoy took off his glasses, cleaned them off with the corner of his shirt that was still untucked, put his glasses back on, and closed all the blinds in his manager's office. What came after that was a loud crash, and a high pitched shriek."

"The door flew open and the manager came out screaming whilst blood is streaming down his face 'CALL SECURITY! CALL SECURITY!' Some witnesses claim that they saw Sivoy calmly walk out the office, blood spattered on his shirt and hands. He held a letter opener on his right hand, now stained with blood."

"The manager ran for his dear life and Sivoy followed closely whilst chanting 'sure thing! Sure thing! SURE THING!' Over and over again, volume increasing each step he took. Sivoy followed the manager until the elevator and then.."

Dan, now sitting on the edge of his seat, blinked "Yeah?"

"Well," Phil continued, "security took him away. The workers who were they told the security that they never heard Sivoy use any profanity, ever. But on that day, they never heard curse words so vile, that they almost sounded like they were in some form of ancient tongue, some demonic language."

"So that's it? What happened after that? There had to be a trial!" Dan exclaimed.

"Oh there was a trial, but Sivoy was mentally unstable to serve trial so he was put in a hospital. And everything died down and returned to normal. The manager was brought into see corporate and he was actually let go because not only did the security cameras record what Sivoy did to the manager, but they also recorded the manager's outburst on Sivoy that caused him to snap in the first place."

"Just desserts, I say!" Dan said. Troye just shook his head and started to clean his mess.

"Here's another one, and I heard this one from a girl named Sally who used to work there as the manager's admin. After the manager was let go, he was cleaning out his desk, and to pass time, he had the radio on. The manager left his office for a moment to get some more boxes. As the manager went back to his office, Sally heard on the radio, 'Sivoy Melvan was committed to a hospital and was found missing earlier today.' The manager froze in horror. Sally turned around to see the manager's expression, the door violently slammed in her face causing her to stumble and fall backwards. As she recovered, she told me that she can clearly hear the manager pleading for his dear life. She distinctly heard, 'Please! Don't do it! I'll do whatever you want!' And then, a familiar calm and soothing voice came from inside, 'Anything I can do to help!' Sally tried to open the door, but unfortunately it was locked. Sally tried to kick the door open and shouted 'SOMEBODY PLEASE HELP!' but it was too late. Sally heard the door 'click' open. What she saw was totally gruesome. The manager, cut open from his throat to his pelvis, rin cage and organs exposed. His hands were twisted into knots. His face warped into an expression of fear. In his left hand, his own heart was there. There was a message on the wall saying, 'We were wrong. He had a heart after all.'

"Damn!" Dan had to hold back a vomit.

"After that, the office was shut down." Phil finished his tale with a solemn sip of coffee.

Dan rubbed his eyes, "Whoa! Wait a minute! What happened to Sivoy?"

"This is when I'm supposed to say..'That's the strange thing'...but it's not really that strange. When they finally opened up the office, the only person in there was the manager. Sally even said that she never actually saw Sivoy. She only heard his voice...or at least what sounded like his voice and he hasn't been seen ever since."

"That story's a load of crap!" Troye exclaimed.

Dan and Phil spun around to glare at Troye for breaking the mood.

"What," Dan inquired "Like you know what exactly happened."

"I just know that that's not how it happened." Troye calmly stated as he adjusted his horn rimmed glasses.

"Okay. How do you know?" Phil jested.

"Because..." Troye leaned in close. Dan and Phil matched Troye's movement. "The hospital doesn't know I'm gone, yet."

Just then, Troye's manager leans in to the break room. "Hey Troye, I need you to do something for me."

"Sure thing, boss"

As Troye stands up to leave the now still break room, Dan and Phil glanced down at Troye's security badge for his full name.

Troye Sivan Mellet

* * * *

Lmao reblog if you liked it

[seoexpert332]

Why Most Financial Professionals Simply Don't Get It When it Comes to Social Networking

Properly here we're on this 24th time of March 2012, and we ought to think for one minute just how much our culture has transformed in that last decade. In lots of regards it hasn't always been for the better, and I'd want to cite the example of online cultural marketing, since it seemingly have invaded our Web lives to a large amount, usually making a mockery from the crucial issues and the issues of our time. The social networks have triggered the over place of governments, de-stabilized civilization, and changed the outcomes of elections. Our elections in the United States included.

empow

However, could it be a net bad or have these social networks actually produced people deeper together in other ways hence, it is really a web good? You see, the truth is there's generally excellent and poor in virtually any new engineering - social networks included. Nowadays on this system I'll argue that social networks are a real problem for individual communities, and if that continues in today's way we shall pay a expensive value because of it in the future. Presently, we're watching output drop as personnel are also busy texting friends and enjoying on Facebook while at the job to be of any actual price to a company's bottom line.

The billions of hours lost each fraction are hurting companies'gains and revenue, it also triggers difficulties with workflow, customer service, and mistakes. We're eliminating persons traveling as people effort to access their cultural networking web sites, deliver tweets, or texting while driving. Certainly, as a bicyclist, I am scared to ride anymore - too many close calls, and it seems those text messages tend to be more very important to people than my entire life as well as their particular safety. In fact, I found a fender sticker the other day, it study; "Honk if you love Jesus, Text if you intend to match him," and that about sums of that issue in a nut cover does not it?

Indeed, I could remember when I received my first text message, I thought it was rude, as I'd sent detail by detail instructions and details to a other link, and he delivered me right back a one-sentence email, I hadn't recognized it absolutely was a text delivered from his cell phone to my e-mail address. I was therefore deterred I ended my deal, and named another associate. Just later did I understand that he was only texting me together with his new technology - however, the shallowness of his review was the offer breaker, therefore I transferred on.

It amazes me often the number of people who wish to mention their thoughts about things they know nothing about. They critique, chastise, and display their ignorance at every turn. They error remarks produced by achieved individuals to suggest another thing since their attention amount is indeed low. Further, any attempt to improve them is merely "pearls to swine" as they don't get it as well as attention to understand. You see, they're so interested in notoriety and self-validation, that they work so quite difficult to advertise probably the most socially responsible and politically appropriate controversy, also if it is untrue or a white rinse of reality.

One of many biggest and scariest points I've seen is how persons who've performed nothing in the world actually inside their lives are active seeking to achieve buddies and figure that once they get plenty of buddies on the social network site, they have arrived. The thing is not many of those people are now friends, and a number of them are not even real. It becomes a whole lot worse while they run about complimenting people expecting to get more buddies and readers, and follow the others to be able to trust to acquire a reciprocal pal, or join someone else's group of influence. Everything has turn into a huge, phony, sick joke.

However, these folks sense they are now anything unique with lots of pictures of alleged buddies and supporters, but from what avail? Some who have gained a large number of friends by catch or crook been employed by quite difficult to have persons to "pal" them straight back by usage of fake praise. Certainly, they believe everybody needs pre-validation. They read one book such as for example "just how to get friends and effect persons" or get one psychology class in college and believe they could complement their way in to some body else's life. What they don't realize is the really reached persons don't treatment what someone else feels, really any kind of trite supplement is really a turn-off, and it's instantly seen for what it is and what it is value; nothing.

That's not to say that there is not profit social networking, therefore these players of the overall game, are not value nothing as all that data is certainly worth anything, and it is actually a huge revenue machine in the future, therefore let us examine the enterprize model and the problems moving forward shall we?

There is a current intriguing report in the summertime of 2012 which observed that over 10% of all Facebook accounts were fake - whoa, so they don't really obviously have a thousand users because they introduced in mid-October of 2012, they only have 900,000 and sure, while that is however quite a few, it entails that perhaps hundreds of anyone's outlined on the web "buddies" are non-existent, they are maybe not real. Not that anybody who "buddies" you on a cultural system is actually your friend anyway - see that point. Please study Bloomberg BusinessWeek article; "The Creating of a Million" by Ashlee Vance (October, 2012).

As I am speaking, nowadays Facebook introduced their earnings for Q3 2012 and it overcome the street's low-ball estimate by one-cent per share - large whoopy, skippy, but no one is apparently handling that it only makes $.42 off each person every month in promotion - but is that advertising really pulling for anyone advertisers? However Facebook should discover more ways to make money and we've noticed a variety of points such as giving gaming on the web where it is legitimate in the UK, and we have noticed rumors of entering the portable tech field with their own cell phone - that would be interesting.

Indeed, Facebook understands how important all that data that they have is, who does not right, isn't it exactly about Big Data today? There is a fascinating article in the LA Situations titled; "For Purchase: Your Information" by Brian Lazarus, and I'd also suggest reading; "Facebook Gains Two Major Advertisers'Help" by Shayndi Raice, Mike Ramsey, and Sam Schechner which mentioned the car business and the GM selection to prevent advertising on Facebook as it was not pulling for them. On Twitter some users having an considerable number of readers have now been compensated to speak up a Toyota Taurus, or Ford Cross Avoid earning 10s of tens and thousands of pounds frequently for only one tweet.

That appears foolish, and somewhat pathetic when you consider it, but if it performs for those companies and their Hollywood Celebrity of the month gets persons to the Ford dealership, effectively what the heck, if it operates; do it, correct? Facebook had was creating some $3 billion a year on promotion at the time of the middle of 2012 (Cite: Wall Block Record 5-2-2012 "The Huge Doubt Around Facebook" by Suzanna Vranica and Shayndi Raice). Still, only last month in September of 2012 an editorial in the WSJ observed "The Facebook Deficit" because the name which also observed that California anticipated that the Facebook IPO would be large and result in a $2.5 billion money tax revenue windfall helping shore up the budget, properly that didn't happen.

[tak4hir0]

Why Does Developing on Kubernetes Suck? Let me count the ways Published on 21 August 2019 Kubernetes has changed the way I operate software. Whole classes of production problems have disappeared–, arguably to be replaced by others. But such is the way of the world. All told I’m happier operating a microservices app today than I was before I started using Kubernetes. When I’m writing software, though, Kuberentes has only made things harder. In this post I want to walk through all of the problems I have encountered developing software on Kubernetes. Full disclosure: While I work on Tilt as part of my job, which we have designed to solve some of these problems, another part of my job is writing software that runs on Kubernetes. When there’s another tool that solves a problem better than Tilt, I’ll use that. So, how does developing on Kubernetes suck? Let me count the ways. Myriad Dev Environments Minikube, MicroK8s, Docker for Mac, KIND, the list kind of goes on. All of these are local Kubernetes environments. In other words: they’re Kubernetes, but on your laptop. Instead of having to go out to the network to talk to a big Kubernetes cluster (that might be interacting with production data) you can spin up a small cluster on your laptop to check things out. The problem comes when you want to run code/Kubernetes configs on multiple of these clusters because they each have their own… let’s call them quirks. They don’t behave identically to one another, or identically to a real Kubernetes cluster. I won’t enumerate these discrepancies here, but I’ll refer to this problem throughout this blog post when discussing thorny issues like networking and authentication. There’s no tool I’m aware of that solves these problems aside from just doing your development in a real Kubernetes cluster in the cloud, which is the way I prefer to work these days. If you’re in the market for a local dev cluster we recently published a guide to choosing a dev cluster to help make sense of all the options. Permissions/Authentication If you’re developing software on Kubernetes, you’re probably using Kubernetes in production. If you’re using Kubernetes in production, you probably have locked down authentication settings. For example, a common set up is to only allow your developers to access to create/edit objects in one namespace. To do this you need a bunch of things set up: A role A rolebinding A secret This works great if you’re using a “real” Kubernetes cluster, but as soon as you start using a local Kuberentes setup, things get weird. Remember all those local dev environments? Well turns out some of them handle RBAC very differently than you might expect. I ran into an issue where kubeadm had access control set to allow everything. As a result, I had false confidence going to prod that my settings actually restricted permissions, when in fact they didn’t. Granted, kubeadm-dind-cluster has since been deprecated, but it goes to show that not all Kubernetes clusters are created equal. I also ran in to another problem trying to reproduce the issue on Docker for Mac’s Kubernetes cluster where RBAC rules were not enforced. Testing things like NetworkPolicies is also fraught. NetworkPolicies don’t work at all on Docker for Mac or microk8s and require a special flag for Minikube. The troubles in networking land don’t end there. Network Debugging Network ingress is one of the most important things that Kubernetes does. Unfortunately, ingress is implemented differently by different cloud providers and is, as a result, very difficult to test. The different implementations also support different extensions, often configured with labels, which are definitely not portable between environments. I’m lucky enough to have access to a staging cluster to test ingress changes, but even then changes can take 30 minutes to take effect and can result in inscrutable error messages. If you’re on a local Kubernetes environment, you’re pretty much out of luck. Networking is my least favorite thing to work on in Kubernetes, and the area that I think still needs the most love. There are a couple tools that help out, however. One nice tool for at least seeing how your services are connected is Octant. Octant gives you a visual overview of all of your pods and which services they belong to. At least with Octant I can easily go from a piece of code to the way that is connected to the internet. For complex Kubernetes objects like ingresses that behave differently on different cloud platforms, Kubespy is an invaluable tool. Kubespy shows you what is happening under the hood when objects are created. For example, if I create a service it shows which pods at which IP addresses Kubespy will serve traffic to: kubespy trace svc test-frontend [ADDED v1/Service] default/test-frontend [ADDED v1/Endpoints] default/test-frontend ✅ Directs traffic to the following live Pods: - [Ready] test-frontend-f6d6ff44-b7jzd @ 192.168.1.1 Logging into a Container and Doing Stuff A common thing that every developer reaches for is SSH. Maybe in the future, SSH will be as anachronistic as the floppy disk icon, but for now, I want to log in to a container, poke around, see what the state is and maybe run some commands like strace or tcpdump. Kubernetes doesn’t make this easy. The workflow looks something like this: kubectl get pods Look for my pod name kubectl exec -it $podname -- /bin/bash Here’s where things get annoying. kubectl exec -it dan-test-75d7b88d8f-4p45c -- /bin/bash OCI runtime exec failed: exec failed: container_linux.go:345: starting container process caused "exec: \"/bin/bash\": stat /bin/bash: no such file or directory": unknown command terminated with exit code 126 What the heck is this? I know that in production I want my container images to be small (both for image push performance and security) but this is a bit much. Fine, let’s live in 1997. Just let me run strace. # strace /bin/sh: 1: strace: not found Ugh. It’s reasonable that this image doesn’t have strace, and kind of reasonable that it doesn’t have bash, but it highlights one of the Kubernetes best practices that makes local development hard: keep your images as small as possible. This is so annoying in dev. I don’t want to have to keep installing strace all afternoon as my container gets restarted. I also don’t want to add strace to my production image, for security reasons, and also because it would increase the image size I’d be pushing up and down to my registry, which would slow down remote cluster deploys. One of my favorite tools that solves this problem is Kubebox. Kubebox makes it easy to see all your pods and you just need to press ‘r’ to get a remote shell in to one of them. Anyways, large images aren’t a problem on local clusters, right? But I suppose if you really wanted to, you could put strace and bash on all of your development images–because large images aren’t a problem on local clusters, right? Pushing/pulling images Pushing bits around on your laptop should be super fast because there’s no need to go out to the network. Unfortunately, here’s where the myriad local Kubernetes setups rear their ugly head once again. Let’s talk through the happy path: Minikube and Docker for Mac. Both of these setups run a Docker daemon that you can talk to from your local laptop and from inside the Kubernetes cluster. That means that all you need to do to get an image into Kubernetes is to build it; your pod can “pull” it directly from your local registry, and doesn’t need to deal with moving data over the network. MicroK8s doesn’t ship with a in-cluster registry turned on by default, but it can easily be enabled with a flag. In contrast KIND is a whole other beast. It has a special command that you use to load images into the cluster, kind load. Unfortunately it is unbearably slow. $ time kind load docker-image golang:1.12 real 0m39.225s user 0m0.438s sys 0m2.159s This is because KIND copies in every layer of the image and only does very primitive content negotiation. What this means is that if you change just one file in the final 15 KB layer of your 1.5 GB image KIND can copy in the entire 1.5 GB image anyways. Fortunately the kind folks working on the KIND project have made a bunch of improvements to image loading recently. We’ve also released a proof of concept for running a registry in KIND which should help improve speeds further. If I’m going to be using a local development environment I tend to go with Docker for Mac or MicroK8s, though as I stated earlier, these days I prefer to do my development in a real cloud Kubernetes cluster. There are also great tools emerging in this space. Garden caches image layers in a remote registry, reducing what needs to be rebuilt by each developer. Tilt with live_update helps me bypass the need to push and pull images altogether so that’s what I use to solve this problem. Mounts/file Syncing Even if you can avoid going out to the internet when pushing an image, just building an image can take forever. Especially if you aren’t using multi stage builds, and especially if you are using special development images with extra dependencies. When compared to a hot reloading local JavaScript setup, even the fastest image build can be too slow. What I want to do is just sync a file up to my pod. Doing this by hand is relatively simple, but tedious: Plus if your container is restarted for any reason, like if your process crashes or the pod gets evicted, you lose all of your changes. There are tools like ksync, skaffold and Tilt that can help with this, though they take some investment to get set up. Logs/Observability/Events In dev, I want to tail the relevant logs so I can see what I’m doing. Kubernetes doesn’t make that easy. Each Kubernetes pod has its own log that I have to query individually, and each of these can have many containers. Naively, it’s easy to see the logs for just one pod (kubectl logs podname). However, to see an aggregate view, you need to know a lot about how your pods are organized, like which labels apply to which pods in which parts of your app so that you can run a command like kubectl logs -l app=myapp. Then there’s Kubernetes events, which you watch via an entirely separate command. This sucks because it’s in the event log that I’ll find important dev information like if my pod couldn’t be scheduled or the new image I pushed up can’t be exec’d. There’s a great set of observability tools I can use that help with this in production, but I don’t want to be running them locally. Sometimes I can’t afford the resources–my laptop is rather constrained. And while those tools are each excellent in their niche, I’d rather have one tool that makes it easy to do common tasks. In other words, I should always be able to start my debugging in one window. Some problems may be so unique or special that I end up going to other tools to resolve them, but I can’t be having to tab through twelve windows just to check for one problem. I explore this problem in a different blog post, and I think Tilt solves this well especially now that it includes Kubernetes events alongside pod logs. The aforementioned Kubebox and garden are two other great options. Conclusion While developing on Kubernetes still sucks, we’ve come a long way just in the past year. The biggest remaining hole that is begging for a solution is networking. If we want to empower developers to create end-to-end full stack microservices architectures we need to provide some way to get their hands dirty with networking. Until then that last push to production will always reveal hidden networking issues.

[webart-studio]

The Proper & Incorrect Approach to Use Templates

I’m an enormous fan of templates. They’re a necessary a part of any productive designer’s workflow they usually will also be actually useful in boosting your model’s id by means of better consistency and professionalism.

Mission administration templates are one such instance of templates that undoubtedly belong within the workflow of an internet designer. They free you from having to deal with tedious mission and time administration duties and, consequently, allow you to focus extra in your work.

I additionally actually like design snippets, mockups, and themes (like those you may discover in WDD’s Freebies). Whenever you use the identical sorts of design parts again and again, it is smart to have a dependable base of templates to tug from.

What I’m not significantly keen on—and also you shouldn’t be both—are design templates that take away all creativity and technique out of your course of.

The explanation I carry this up is as a result of I imagine there’s a proper method to make use of templates in net design, and a incorrect method.

  The Incorrect Approach to Use Templates in Internet Design

I just lately attended a WordCamp occasion to be taught extra about what’s taking place in WordPress and, particularly, what kind of traits I needs to be looking out for in net design.

There was one session I attended referred to as, “Quick Monitor Your Design Course of”. I used to be excited for it as I’m all about productiveness hacks that assist you to work much less whereas engaging in extra.

Nonetheless, I walked away from the session extremely disenchanted by what I heard; the speaker instructed the room of about 50 designers that they need to be constructing shopper web sites utilizing templates. That suggestion I had no difficulty with. I imagine that WordPress themes are an awesome time-saver for a lot of net designers—particularly in the event that they’re seeking to begin with a robust, responsive base that they’ll customise.

The issue, nonetheless, was in the remainder of the recommendation given. It principally went like this:

1. Discover a theme that matches your goal area of interest properly

For example, should you design web sites for actual property firms, buy a license for an actual property theme.

Be sure you’re very acquainted with the theme you select.

2. Determine the important thing pages that your typical shopper wants on their web site

Dwelling, About, and Contact pages are a given.

Much like how a theme developer may present a couple of web page layouts or design choices to select from, you’ll do the identical. You can use the templates out of your theme or design your individual. Then, create not more than two or three template choices for every web page.

3. Save all of your templates for future use

These are for nobody to see however you.

4. Signal a brand new shopper to your net design companies

Clarify to the shopper that you will construct the right web site for his or her enterprise. Have them signal the contract and give you any branding data or pictures you must use.

Then, use this restricted set of templates to construct each web site you’re employed to create. You continue to have to decide on which of the web page template choices make sense for every shopper and add customized content material to the pages. However that’s about it.

The purpose right here is to make as a lot cash as potential from every job.

5. Don’t interact with the shopper in regards to the net design

Somebody requested the speaker how he defined to purchasers that he was utilizing templates to construct their web sites. (Which is a legitimate concern.)

To this, he instructed them that the shopper didn’t should be concerned within the course of. Internet designers are the consultants they usually know greatest, so purchasers shouldn’t have any say in what goes into the web site and don’t must see it till the work is full.

My Two Cents on the Matter

At that time within the lecture, I raised my hand and introduced quite a lot of objections:

It’s a horrible observe to not contain the shopper of their web site mission. It could result in expensive rework and in addition has the potential to harm your corporation by means of destructive critiques; individuals love to speak about unhealthy experiences.

Whenever you restrict net design to a couple templated choices, you run the danger of making lookalike web sites—particularly should you take a distinct segment method to your corporation. This might damage your corporation if purchasers begin to discover that you simply’re not placing any time or effort into the work. Additionally, how will you anticipate to construct a formidable portfolio if each web site seems the identical?

This might additionally damage your purchasers’ companies if their guests notice there’s nothing distinctive to the positioning because it’s only a copycat of one other.

My enter was not well-received, however I’m hoping you possibly can recognize the logic right here.

  The Proper Approach to Use Templates in Internet Design

I’m not against utilizing templates in net design. Heck, I feel that should you don’t use templates in your corporation, you’re making an enormous mistake.

I perceive the need to wish to lower corners so you can also make a better markup in your web site tasks. All of us need to earn more money. However I don’t imagine that eradicating all technique and creativity, and offering purchasers with a canned web site is the answer. There are different methods to utilize templates and increase earnings within the course of.

Themes

Themes that pores and skin your complete web site are an awesome choice. You continue to must customise them and work on crafting search-optimized content material (written and visible) for the web site. However they’ll prevent lots of time.

Sectionals

Sectional templates are a great way to shortly replicate the identical design parts throughout a web site.

One other method to make use of them to your benefit is by turning them into wireframes. Use the naked bones of a sectional template to shortly bootstrap the construction of a web page on one other web site.

WordPress Template

There’s a multi-site administration device referred to as ManageWP that comes with a WordPress Template Builder.

In the event you construct web sites with WordPress, you need to use this to save lots of time with new installations. Merely create your template WordPress set up and add the plugins (and themes) you utilize usually in your shopper web sites.

Mission Administration Checklists and Templates

Maybe the easiest way to save lots of your self time is to simplify as a lot of your mission administration work as potential. (That’s the a part of working a contract design enterprise that you simply dislike probably the most anyway, proper?)

Create checklists for your entire net design and enterprise processes. Develop templates for communications you ship to purchasers, contracts for brand spanking new tasks, and directions you present to freelancers or different workforce members. Even templatize your invoicing.

  Abstract

There’s a distinction between adopting templates for the needs of optimizing your design workflow and adopting them so you possibly can keep away from doing any actual work. I feel that is what results in the supply of poor web sites and provides purchasers a solution to speak designers down in worth.

You’re a net designer and also you’re being paid to supply a inventive service. Whereas 100% of the weather you placed on a web site don’t should be handcrafted by you, you possibly can’t anticipate purchasers to pay you nicely if no thought or consideration was put into the event of their design.

  Supply hyperlink

source https://webart-studio.com/the-proper-incorrect-approach-to-use-templates/

[webbygraphic001]

The Right & Wrong Way to Use Templates

I’m a big fan of templates. They’re an essential part of any productive designer’s workflow and they can also be really helpful in boosting your brand’s identity through greater consistency and professionalism.

Project management templates are one such example of templates that definitely belong in the workflow of a web designer. They free you from having to handle tedious project and time management tasks and, consequently, enable you to focus more on your work.

I also really like design snippets, mockups, and themes (like the ones you might find in WDD’s Freebies). When you use the same kinds of design elements over and over, it makes sense to have a reliable base of templates to pull from.

What I’m not particularly fond of—and you shouldn’t be either—are design templates that remove all creativity and strategy from your process.

The reason I bring this up is because I believe there is a right way to use templates in web design, and a wrong way.

The Wrong Way to Use Templates in Web Design

I recently attended a WordCamp event to learn more about what’s happening in WordPress and, specifically, what sort of trends I should be on the lookout for in web design.

There was one session I attended called, “Fast Track Your Design Process”. I was excited for it as I’m all about productivity hacks that help you work less while accomplishing more.

However, I walked away from the session incredibly disappointed by what I heard; the speaker told the room of about 50 designers that they should be building client websites using templates. That suggestion I had no issue with. I believe that WordPress themes are a great time-saver for many web designers—especially if they’re looking to start with a strong, responsive base that they can customize.

The problem, however, was in the rest of the advice given. It basically went like this:

1. Find a theme that fits your target niche nicely

For instance, if you design websites for real estate companies, purchase a license for a real estate theme.

Make sure you’re very familiar with the theme you choose.

2. Identify the key pages that your typical client needs on their website

Home, About, and Contact pages are a given.

Similar to how a theme developer might provide a few page layouts or design options to choose from, you would do the same. You could use the templates from your theme or design your own. Then, create no more than two or three template options for each page.

3. Save all your templates for future use

These are for no one to see but you.

4. Sign a new client to your web design services

Explain to the client that you are going to build the perfect website for their business. Have them sign the contract and provide you with any branding information or images you need to use.

Then, use this limited set of templates to build every website you’re hired to create. You still have to choose which of the page template options make sense for each client and add personalized content to the pages. But that’s about it.

The goal here is to make as much money as possible from each job.

5. Don’t engage with the client about the web design

Someone asked the speaker how he explained to clients that he was using templates to build their websites. (Which is a valid concern.)

To this, he told them that the client didn’t need to be involved in the process. Web designers are the experts and they know best, so clients shouldn’t have any say in what goes into the website and don’t need to see it until the work is complete.

My Two Cents on the Matter

At that point in the lecture, I raised my hand and presented a number of objections:

It’s a terrible practice to not involve the client in their website project. It can lead to costly rework and also has the potential to hurt your business through negative reviews; people love to talk about bad experiences.

When you limit web design to a few templated options, you run the risk of creating lookalike websites—especially if you take a niche approach to your business. This could hurt your business if clients start to notice that you’re not putting any time or effort into the work. Also, how can you expect to build an impressive portfolio if every website looks the same?

This could also hurt your clients’ businesses if their visitors realize there’s nothing unique to the site since it’s just a copycat of another.

My input was not well-received, but I’m hoping you can appreciate the logic here.

The Right Way to Use Templates in Web Design

I’m not opposed to using templates in web design. Heck, I think that if you don’t use templates in your business, you’re making a huge mistake.

I understand the desire to want to cut corners so you can make a higher markup on your website projects. We all want to make more money. But I don’t believe that removing all strategy and creativity, and providing clients with a canned website is the solution. There are other ways to make use of templates and boost profits in the process.

Themes

Themes that skin your entire website are a great option. You still have to customize them and work on crafting search-optimized content (written and visual) for the website. But they’ll save you a lot of time.

Sectionals

Sectional templates are a good way to quickly replicate the same design elements across a website.

Another way to use them to your advantage is by turning them into wireframes. Use the bare bones of a sectional template to quickly bootstrap the structure of a page on another website.

WordPress Template

There is a multi-site management tool called ManageWP that comes with a WordPress Template Builder.

If you build websites with WordPress, you can use this to save time with new installations. Simply create your template WordPress install and add the plugins (and themes) you use often on your client websites.

Project Management Checklists and Templates

Perhaps the best way to save yourself time is to simplify as much of your project management work as possible. (That’s the part of running a freelance design business that you dislike the most anyway, right?)

Create checklists for all of your web design and business processes. Develop templates for communications you send to clients, contracts for new projects, and instructions you provide to freelancers or other team members. Even templatize your invoicing.

Summary

There is a difference between adopting templates for the purposes of optimizing your design workflow and adopting them so you can avoid doing any real work. I think this is what leads to the delivery of poor websites and gives clients a way to talk designers down in price.

You are a web designer and you’re being paid to provide a creative service. While 100% of the elements you put on a website don’t need to be handcrafted by you, you can’t expect clients to pay you well if no thought or consideration was put into the development of their design.

  Featured image by Fancycrave on Unsplash.

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Source from Webdesigner Depot http://bit.ly/2VB6s2q from Blogger http://bit.ly/2RFocul

[sheilalmartinia]

How to Develop a WordPress Plugin Using Webpack 3 & React (Part 1)

If you’ve been working with JavaScript in the last couple years you’ve probably heard of Webpack. It’s pretty essential in today’s JavaScript workflow and has taken the spot of other build tools like Grunt and Gulp. The WordPress core team is planning to switch to Webpack, so I thought it was high-time to see how Webpack could be integrated into a plugin development workflow. In this article, we’ll go over how to build a React plugin interface using Webpack and all (well, most of) the bells and whistles. I’ve released the starter plugin on Github so you can follow along with a live example. What is Webpack Anyway? Ok so what the heck is Webpack anyway? In short, Webpack is an asset bundler, which means it bundles your JavaScript, CSS, images and other assets together into one file. Wait, what? Why would you want this? Well the purpose of Webpack really boils down to the concept of code splitting and application structure. With ES2015, you can import assets and dependencies quite easily and with Webpack and the appropriate loader, you can even import CSS/Sass/Less and images with your JavaScript. For example, with the style and css loaders you can Source: https://managewp.org/articles/15694/how-to-develop-a-wordpress-plugin-using-webpack-3-react-part-1

from Willie Chiu's Blog https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2017/07/20/how-to-develop-a-wordpress-plugin-using-webpack-3-react-part-1/

[williechiu40]

How to Develop a WordPress Plugin Using Webpack 3 & React (Part 1)

If you’ve been working with JavaScript in the last couple years you’ve probably heard of Webpack. It’s pretty essential in today’s JavaScript workflow and has taken the spot of other build tools like Grunt and Gulp. The WordPress core team is planning to switch to Webpack, so I thought it was high-time to see how Webpack could be integrated into a plugin development workflow. In this article, we’ll go over how to build a React plugin interface using Webpack and all (well, most of) the bells and whistles. I’ve released the starter plugin on Github so you can follow along with a live example. What is Webpack Anyway? Ok so what the heck is Webpack anyway? In short, Webpack is an asset bundler, which means it bundles your JavaScript, CSS, images and other assets together into one file. Wait, what? Why would you want this? Well the purpose of Webpack really boils down to the concept of code splitting and application structure. With ES2015, you can import assets and dependencies quite easily and with Webpack and the appropriate loader, you can even import CSS/Sass/Less and images with your JavaScript. For example, with the style and css loaders you can from ManageWP.org https://managewp.org/articles/15694/how-to-develop-a-wordpress-plugin-using-webpack-3-react-part-1