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dominicvail · 7 years

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Dunno if you've ever talked about/answered this, but may I ask what you use to make your beautiful gifs?! I'm about to pull my hair out trying to prep my sets for "Densi-mber" so that they all actually move like they're supposed to without looking like completely awful quality. (I obviously do not want to take away from the amazing work you do, but yearn to make them as pretty-ful as you do!) BTW --- all your comments on every episode totally crack me up ! Love em!

I use photoshop CS5 portable, an old crappy version that honestly doesn’t have all the working features, but it does the job just fine (i got a copy of it off my friend who was doing gameart design in uni, lol).

As for the gifs themselves, i’m not sure what you mean by looking awful quality, but here’s a few things i normally consider (i apologize if this gets super wordy, i’m not great at explaining things and some of this involves a lot of nonsensical numbers);

1) If you mean how your gifs look uploaded onto tumblr, the sizes of the gifs in pixels make a massive difference on how a set looks once uploaded. Tumblr’s image layout is 540px across, and gifs will only look their optimum quality if they are exactly 540px across the entire picture window. If your gif is 450 across, tumblr will stretch it to be 540 and the quality will visibly diminish. Likewise, if your gif is 600px, tumblr will shrink it and it will also diminish it’s quality on your dash. If you have more than one gif in a line, your set still needs to come to 540px together, each gif needs to be 268px wide to display at the optimum quality. Three gifs in a row needs two sized at 177px and the third 178px to come up to 540px across, any pixel number that doesn’t add up to 540 total will make tumblr adjust the gif size and it will corrupt the gif quality.

One single gif (a 540px one designed to sit on it’s own) can be up to 3mb large, anything bigger and it won’t play). If you have two 268px gifs next to each other, they also cannot exceed the 3mb limit, each gif can be whatever mb size you want, but together they cannot exceed the 3mb.

(if that made zero sense to anybody, i suggest google image searching ‘tumblr image dimensions’ b/c people have made visual guides).

2) Colouring on your gifs makes a massive difference, and this show is /awful/ to colour. I have 4 different types of colouring for opps alone because the lighting is different from every filming angle in the room. I can’t really go into specifics literally just because i don’t have specific examples, but in general, having it too bright pixelates darkened areas horribly, sometimes it’s better to just make a gif look super shadowy by keeping dark parts dark than it is to brighten it so much it looks like a pixel storm. The higher quality screencaps you have to make gifs from, the more you can brighten them/edit them in general before they become pixelated, over-colouring low quality content next to never ends well. (but i do all this on photoshop, idk how to colour using anything else). If you’re using PS, i recommend finding a ps resources blog, downloading a couple of psd’s that people have made for free use that you like and learning how they work from those. I started off using free ones and once i’d figured out what did what I made up my own ones.

3) what do you use to get screencaps for your gifs?? I personally use UMplayer because it’s the only program i found that will automatically take gif quality screencaps from DVD’s (supposedly vlc and kmplayer will also do this for people, but it never worked on my laptop when i tried, so umplayer it is). I just play the scene in the window while i set the program to cap it enough times a second as it plays, so that when i gif from the caps, the movement isn’t choppy, even if you craft the perfect colouring and sharpening and timing when making the gif, if you don’t have enough screencaps per second of footage, it’s still going to be choppy.

4) But also, some scenes just aren’t very giffable? Like, i really want to gif that scene where Eric calls Nell ‘Nellverine’ but when the camera is on his face as he says it, he’s in motion the entire time, if what you want to gif doesn't have a single screencap that’s not blurry, your gif is just gonna be a blur. Can’t really fix that, i mean, maybe people super amazing at giffing can, but i’ve never managed it.

5) sharpening. I personally like definition on my gifs, so i tend to sharpen a lot, but some people prefer smooth gifs, it’s each to their own. But, also, very low quality screencaps will not sharpen, they will only make the gif grainy. The higher pixel size your individual caps are, the more you can afford to sharpen, but it is literally on a case by case basis, i will sharpen 2 different scenes from one episode differently depending on how it looks, it’s entirely personal judgement/taste tbh, but attempting to sharpen something that is tiny in quality will only make it look worse.

6) frame speed. I am a lazy ass who will only set my frames at 0.1 or 0.2 depending on a scene because they’re presets and i don’t have to take the time to type in speeds like 0.18 or something equally fiddly, but you have to judge what works best for the gif you’re making. Conversation scenes i normally set at 0.2 but like, action scenes i normally set at 0.1. But that’s not a solid rule, it’s just my personal norm.

7) there are specific dimensions for gifsets that look more attractive on this site, if i’m doing say, an 8 gif set 2x2, i will make my gifs 268x180px, which is about what i think looks best on this format. Personally anything shorter than 170px high in that situation looks a little weird (unless you’re deliberately trying to do a panorama type gif).

anyway that’s all i could think of from the top of my head (and also probably too detailed of an explanation, i do that a lot i’m sorry), but i think those are probably what things that will most of the time disrupt gifs. And thank you!!!! but feel free to ask anything, i’m not a graphc making how-to hoarder, i don’t understand people refusing to help other people making them under the guise of creator secrets? It just seems weird and like a weird form of gatekeeping to me, the more the merrier right? So i’m open to trying to help anytime :D

#text #i'm so bad at explaining things #tho i can't give anybody my psd's b/c i have no clue how the hell to do that anyway #plus i adapt them every use so it'd be moot #mashmaiden

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aikungfu · 4 years

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Editor’s Note: The following blog is a special guest post by a recent graduate of Berkeley BAIR’s AI4ALL summer program for high school students.

AI4ALL is a nonprofit dedicated to increasing diversity and inclusion in AI education, research, development, and policy.

The idea for AI4ALL began in early 2015 with Prof. Olga Russakovsky, then a Stanford University Ph.D. student, AI researcher Prof. Fei-Fei Li, and Rick Sommer – Executive Director of Stanford Pre-Collegiate Studies. They founded SAILORS as a summer outreach program for high school girls to learn about human-centered AI, which later became AI4ALL. In 2016, Prof. Anca Dragan started the Berkeley/BAIR AI4ALL camp, geared towards high school students from underserved communities.

Before I Started the Program

When I discovered AI4ALL during the spring semester, I was curious to learn more. I knew that AI had the potential to change everything and that it was something I’d love to be a part of. To prepare for the program, I read up on the BAIR faculty and checked out the BAIR student profiles. I watched Stuart Russell’s TED talk “3 principles for creating safer AI.” The people were all so highly accomplished. And their ideas seemed either super technical, or at the other end of the spectrum, they sounded more like topics from the philosophy department than the EECS department. I realized I had no idea what to expect but decided just to give it a try and get started.

The First Day

After logging into my first day of AI4ALL on Zoom, I was pleasantly surprised by the number of eager and welcoming faces. Among them were Tim Hurt, Eva Chao, Rachel Walsh, Ben Frazier, and Maya Maliviya. They were all there to help us feel comfortable and succeed!

We started off with a quick ice-breaker introduction activity. This particularly resonated with me because it wasn’t like the typical type you’d have on the first day of school. Instead, we were divided into virtual breakout rooms and asked to find as many similarities among our peers as possible. The program was already off to a great start! Within just a few minutes, I learned that five other people in the room have a sibling, have taken chemistry, like pizza, and had a quarantine haircut just like me! It was a great way to encourage collaboration and bonding.

Next, we were joined by BAIR lab professor Anca Dragan for a talk about AI. The presentation was hard to forget because of her passion, her curiosity, and the depth of her knowledge. Anca kickstarted the talk by explaining some examples of AI in real life. This was already so useful because it immediately cleared up the misconceptions about AI. In addition, it allowed everyone to have common, shared learning and not feel excluded if they didn’t know as much about AI before starting the program.

Another element of Anca’s presentation that stood out was her description of an AI game. The game is simple: a robot is positioned in a grid and gains points for reaching gems and loses points for falling in fire pits. Anca walked us through the AI “backstory” of the game. The robot’s goal is to maximize the points earned. As the game’s allotted time decreases, the robot takes less cautious paths (ex: avoiding fire pits) and places its primary focus on gaining points. We learned that this idea of optimization is a core part of all AI systems.

By the end of the day, we were immersed in a Python notebook while conversing with peers in a Breakout Room. AI4ALL equipped us with Python notebooks through Google Colab so we would all be on the same page when talking about code. I really enjoyed this part of the program because it was open-ended and the material was presented in such a clean and convenient fashion. As I read through the content and completed the coding exercises, I couldn’t help but also notice the amusing GIFs embedded here and there! What a memorable way to begin learning AI!

Midway Through the Program

Early on Day 3 of the 4 day AI4ALL program, I began to really understand the significance of AI. Through the eye-opening lecture presentations and discussions, I realized that AI really is everywhere! It’s in our YouTube recommendations, Spotify algorithms, Google Maps, and robotic surgery equipment. That range of applications is part of what makes AI so promising. AI really can be for everyone, whether you’re a developer or a user — it’s not limited to people with mad coding skills. Once I got acquainted with the basics of the subject, I began to see how almost any idea can be reshaped with AI.

I also learned that AI is often different from the way it’s presented in the media. Almost everyone is familiar with the idea of robots taking over jobs, but that isn’t necessarily what will happen. AI still has a long way to go before it will truly “take over the world,” as hypothesized. AI is a work in progress. Like its creators, it has biases. It can unintentionally discriminate. It has adversaries and struggles to find insights with incomplete data. Still, AI has the power to change basic aspects of our world. This is why it is so important to have people from as many backgrounds as possible involved in AI. Introducing people from many different backgrounds into the field allows for a better range of ideas and can help reduce the number of missed “red flags” that might later have a big impact on the lives of real people.

By the End of the Program…

The last two days of AI4ALL sped by in a blur. I couldn’t help but notice how well the program was organized. There was a balanced combination of lectures, discussion, and individual work time for coding and collaborating. I also loved how the content at the end of the program reinforced the content from the start. That aspect of the program’s structure made it so much easier to ask questions, remember ideas, and apply to future activities.

I particularly saw this idea of reinforcement demonstrated in Professor Kamalika Chaduri’s presentation about AI adversaries. She explained how AI algorithms could be manipulated so that an image correctly identified with 50% confidence as a panda would then identify the same image with 90% confidence as a gibbon. On the previous day, Professor Jacob Steinhardt explained how images that appeared similar to the human eye can be tweaked to disrupt AI’s algorithm. In another example, Kamalika described how image pixels could be stored as training data in the form of vectors. This idea built off of Tim Hurt’s earlier point that training data is a result of an input being translated into computer language (e.g. a vector $x$), and then mapped to a label output ($y$).

After most of the lectures were done, we began working on our group projects. We were divided into five groups, with each group under the instruction of a Berkeley Ph.D. student. I chose to be in the “Overcooked” group, which was with first-year EECS student Micah Carroll. Micah walked us through the game he’s been using in his research, called Overcooked-AI. Simply put, Overcooked-AI is all about getting the most number of onion soups delivered while cooking in a cramped kitchen.

Once again, we used Colab Notebooks to learn and experiment with the game’s code. Micah patiently took us through the basics of imitation learning, reinforcement learning, decision trees, and graph fitting/displays. He was so open to questions and never hesitated to help! The hours we spent together breezed by, and soon enough I found myself crafting up a final presentation recapping all that I learned. Time really passes when you’re enjoying and learning.

Final Thoughts

In less than a week, the AI4ALL program has shaped my view of AI and my learning process. The lectures, advice panels, and project groups came together to make an unforgettable experience. Beyond learning what AI is and how it works, I now realize that everyone has the potential to explore AI. All you have to do is start. And so, the next time you hear someone say “AI will change the world, but who will change AI?”, you can say with confidence “we will!”

Thank you so much to everyone who made AI4ALL possible!

from The Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research Blog https://ift.tt/3g7CnAQ via A.I .Kung Fu

#Blogger

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kevinmoyer · 6 years

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Layer Iron-On With Cricut Maker & EasyPress – St. Patrick’s Day T-shirt

Let’s layer iron-on with Cricut Maker and Cricut EasyPress to make this darling St. Patrick’s Day rainbow t-shirt that says “I Don’t Need Luck, I Have Jesus!” I’m so in love with the bright colors!

I Don’t Need Luck, I Have Jesus – Christian St. Patrick’s Day T-shirt

I get questions a lot about layering iron-on. It’s actually pretty easy if you follow a few simple rules!

Layering Iron-On Rules

You CAN layer Cricut Everyday Iron-On on top of more Everyday Iron-On, which is what we did in this project

You CAN layer glitter iron-on on top of Everyday Iron-On

You CAN NOT layer Everyday Iron-On on top of glitter iron-on

Protect the base layers with left over protective film, or a cheese cloth (like you’d use for ironing) – I show you this in the following video!

Layering Iron-On – Rainbow T-shirt With Cricut Maker and Easy Press

Supplies For Rainbow St. Patrick’s Day T-shirt with Cricut EasyPress

Cricut Maker

Standard Mat

Neon Sampler Everyday Iron-On (pink, yellow, orange)

Apple Green Everyday Iron-On

Blue Everyday Iron-On

White T-shirt

EasyPress 2

EasyPress Mat

Clear 18″ Ruler

Weeding Tool

Optional: Bright Pad

Design Space

Gather Iron-On T-shirt Materials

Watch Cricut Maker Video Tutorial

Do you prefer watching a video tutorial to reading a tutorial? Me too! I have you covered with my YouTube channel.

youtube

Subscribe To My YouTube Channel

I share new videos every week on YouTube to help you learn how to use your Cricut! I’d love for you to come craft with me.

Subscribe to Kim Byers on YouTube

How To Make St. Patrick’s Day Rainbow T-Shirt

Design Space – open my project in Cricut Design Space, and modify your colors and size to fit your t-shirt.

Cut & Weed – send each cut to the mat, remembering to mirror image each. Using the Bright Pad if you have difficulty seeing the lines, weed each element.

Easy Press – checking the Cricut Easy Press Guide, set the machine to the temperature best for your fabric and iron-on. Follow recommended heating time, flip and heat back. Test edges and if ready, peel away backers while still warm. (IF YOU WANT TO WATCH ME LAYER IRON-ON, I walk through it step-by-step in my video.)

Measure, Cut, Weed – St. Patrick’s Day T-shirt

Easy Press St. Patrick’s Day T-shirt

More Cricut Craft Ideas

Unicorn T-shirt For St. Patrick’s Day With Cricut

DIY T-shirt Idea – Shine Bright

Proud To Be An American Graphic T-shirt

Raised On Jesus and Sweet Tea T-shirt

As always, I hope you’re inspired to craft, bake, create and celebrate!

This post contains affiliate links, which means if you purchase something through this post I will earn a small fee from the retailer at absolutely no cost to you. They pay me for bringing you to them and I use it to keep the craft room stocked and the coffee pot working! Don’t worry. All content, ideas, photography and opinions are that of my own and I’d have it no other way!

How To Layer Iron-On With Cricut Maker & Easy Press seen first on The Celebration Shoppe

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Cricut. The opinions and text are all mine.

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The post Layer Iron-On With Cricut Maker & EasyPress – St. Patrick’s Day T-shirt appeared first on The Celebration Shoppe.

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thepromometrovista-blog · 7 years

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Socializing Your Company: Social Media B2C Marketing Strategies for 2017

If you’re lucky enough to run a Business to Consumer (B2C) Company, you’re lucky enough to develop personalized social media B2C marketing strategies. Daunting? A little.

But does this allow for creative expression? Absolutely.

Social media B2C marketing strategies are your company’s legitimate excuse to execute your creative vices. Unlike B2B marketing, where you have to align your language to industry expectations, B2C marketing allows you to speak directly to your customer.

Social media was designed to showcase the personality behind a brand– the “who” behind your business. It is the only marketing avenue that is designed by your consumers, for your consumers and for their interests. Use it to find the customers that share yours!

Once you have found the social media platform that works best for your niche, you can conquer your market online.

Not sure where to start? The chart below, from AddThis.com, breaks down the strengths of each platform pretty well.

No matter your platform of choice, it is your social media manager’s job to ensure engagement that will not only prompt interest but relay the “who” of your company.

How do they achieve this goal? We reached out to 11 industry experts for their social media B2C marketing strategies. Here is what they had to say:

1. Put content first.

Thomas Jelneck, President and CEO of

On Target Web Solutions, Inc.

“Very important consideration: you have to pay to play. If a business is particularly visual, I’d probably gravitate toward investing more money and time on Instagram. Attractive photos and useful and engaging hashtags can help increase visibility on individual posts for Instagram.

The greatest success that we have seen is content creation. Infographics and videos offer compelling content. A well thought out editorial calendar and content plan can help yield leads over time.”

For example: Physicians Weight Loss has to make their content stand out on social media. By using similar fonts and colors, they make their images brand-unified. Each image is also careful designed to represent healthy living, the realization of weight loss goals and messages of inspiration.

2. Show off what your company is doing.

Zac Halloran, Founder of

Twill

“We always put being authentic first. You have to connect with your customers and readers, so be real – just like they are.

For Twill, where every product purchased, another is given to a local friend in need, we thrive on authentic content. Our content on Instagram and Snapchat shows our live drop-offs of blankets to local organizations in our community, so customers really see how they are helping give back.”

3. Make your customers want to buy your product.

Marvin Beckmann, Social Marketing Expert

Which platform is best for conversions? Instagram? Twitter? Facebook? According to Beckmann, the answer to this question depends entirely on your target consumer.

“Generally speaking, Facebook Ads is still the way to go for B2B. By gathering Pixel data with Facebook ads you can also reach People more effective on Instagram with your ads.

[For B2C] by using influencer marketing strategies, conversions will rise. A recommendation from another human being (maybe even one we admire) has a higher priority for the human brain than a normal picture ad. These type of ads work well on Instagram and Snapchat for the B2C market if presented in a natural and personal environment, but if done right can also work well for companies.”

For example: Dollar Shave Club reached out to YouTuber Matt Stonie, who has over 2 Million subscribers to his channel, talk about their product in the beginning of his “50 Donut Challenge” video.

4. Invite your customer in on your business.

Albizu Garcia, CEO and Co-Founder of

GAIN

“Co-creation is not about trying to come up with the cleverest marketing tactic. It’s about your brand and your customers creating value together. For example, collaborating with your fans during your creative process, or product ideation phase, is an excellent way to reduce risk when bringing new ideas to market.”

By now we have all seen Lay’s million dollar “Do Us a Flavor” contest. Not only do these semi-regular competitions promote interaction directly from customers. They give even more customers the opportunity to voice their opinions by buying and reviewing a flavor.

Engage with customers long before you launch a new product or service. These collaborative marketing tactics are great fuel for meaningful interactions with the people who matter most – your consumers.

5. Get followers by creating conversations.

Matt Hensler, Founder of Hensler

Integrated Marketing

“Social media is a great starting point for consumers to be acknowledged, but it is always best for businesses to take customer questions or concerns to a private conversation – whether that is a direct message, email or phone call. Twitter is a great customer service tool, especially for larger brands that have constant needs for customer interactions… Engagement is the #1 technique to convert their followers.”

Norah by Earth is a specialized dog shampoo that uses Twitter to reach out to other dog lovers: rescues, therapy dogs, and even international dogs. By commenting on other users’ posts, Norah by Earth creates a stronger presence online, and their customers take notice!

6. Build an interactive community.

Michael Johnston, Group Sales and Strategy Manager from

Schrole Group

“We use social media for increasing the amount of teaching candidates that go through our system to our schools.

We did this by creating an open community for teachers to reach out to each other. Through research you we were told that most international teachers teaching around the world felt isolated….so we created a community on Facebook that they could then use. It is helpful to us because it gives us a pretty large distribution when we do need to market to teachers.

Also it allows us to slowly help our teachers learn about the new ways that recruitment can work, we can show them that they do not have to pay massive recruitment fees, attend job fairs, etc.”

7. Create an RSVP event.

Sarah Nelson, Senior Account Manager from

StayListed

“Hosting events are the quickest way to convert clients from social media.

Events can be really simple. For example; a pet market would create a Facebook event titled “Celebrate Your Best Furrriend”, “National Cat Day”, “Doggie Nutrition Extravaganza”. They would notate small discounts in the event… 5% off dog food, etc. And promote the event by sharing it, tweeting it, etc.

There are a couple reasons why this method works. • Events share easily across social media. If someone shows interest in an event, it gets posted to their wall and seen by others. They also come up on friends, and friends of friends, event feeds. The person who showed interest doesn’t need to manually share anything. • People actually do want to share events. No one wants to go to an event on their own. Even if it’s something as simple as going to a store to take advantage of a sale.”

8. Take customers behind the scenes.

Slisha Kankariya, Coufounder of

Four Mine

“We use social media to provide behind the scenes looks at how our jewelry is crafted, how our company is growing and sneak peeks into how our company is growing and adding more products. This enables a customer to feel connected to the company on a more personal level, and connect on a personal level beyond what the traditional marketing can do. It also helps real people on our team connect with real customers.”

9. Turn incentives into subscriptions.

Vanessa Penagos- Pino, Director of Content and Inbound Marketing for

1800PetMeds

“Drive traffic to a dedicated landing page offering a discount or option to sign up and win something can help in gaining leads from these channels. Doing so also allows marketers to capture additional information about their prospects and most importantly, market to these leads later on.”

For example: Daniel’s Lawn Service used shareable content (i.e. cute puppy photo) and paired that content with a clear incentive. They found a cute way to offer their customers a discount for leaving a review.

10. Repurpose reviews as content.

Victor Clarke, owner of

Clarke, Inc.

“If you have a good testimonial from a customer, put the video on Facebook. Get online testimonials on your Twitter page because they are likely to be one of the things prospects who are checking you out will find. Instead of telling people how great your business is, let your customers do it.” For example: La Carraia Gelato, an Italian company opening their first location in the U.S., shared their positive Italian reviews on their Orlando Facebook page. Now, every new follower will know how highly their gelato is rated by their Italian customers.

11. Reach your demographic through video.

Howie Zisser, Digital Marketing Associate from

Matchnode

“The best B2C technique is using paid social promotion for videos. Videos help the consumer connect to the brand and help them form an identity and relationship with the brand. Videos can be used to create Facebook Custom Audiences based on those who watched 75%+ of the video. Then using that audience, you can retarget those people with additional information and value.”

For example:

Purina partnered with Buzzfeed to promote healthy dieting and taking on the responsibilities of having a dog. Their video does two things: 1. It promotes their product. 2. It helps them reinforce the way they define their brand – a company that loves dogs and promotes their proper care.

Bottom line?

When developing your social B2C social media marketing strategies for 2017, make sure the “who” of your company is consistently and accurately represented. Also, whenever possible, involve your customers in the content, the reviews and in the incentives you offer. Get your customers involved and you will see your engagement and your conversion numbers rise!

Remember, what you say is who you are. Get socializing! Or, contact us if you need help. We are an expert web design company that also offers direct mail printing, graphic design and custom banners and signs!

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dudesterbrewing · 7 years

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Sunday Morning Stout by Weyerbacher

BREWERY: Weyerbacher

BEER: Sunday Morning Stout

STYLE: Imperial Barrel Aged Stout with Coffee

ABV: 12.7%

Malts: Not listed

Hops: Not listed

______________________________________________________

FROM THE BREWERY:

“Weyerbacher Brewing was founded in 1995 in a livery stable in downtown Easton, Pennsylvania. What began as a daydream in an avid homebrewer’s head has grown to the craft brewery that you know and love.

While trying to find our niche in the sea of craft that existed, we decided to explore BIG beers that would set us apart from the others. It was then, after brewing beers including Blithering Idiot and Merry Monks, our path in this industry became clear – making big, full-flavored, high quality brews.

From our humble beginnings in the livery stable to our approximately 30,000 square foot facility, we have always looked to push the envelope of taste experiences, obliterate style guidelines and have a blast while we’re at it!”

Sunday Morning Stout by Weyerbacher

______________________________________________________

INTRO

I know what you’re thinking – “does this guy drink anything but barrel-aged stouts…?” And to that, I’d reply “sometimes!” But when there are so many intriguing options on the market now, I might as well indulge. For my taste at the moment, I seem to enjoy the beers that have taken some time to mellow as opposed to the bottled-fresh IPAs, but my tastes change quite often. This quest for aged beers has lead me to a number of very unique breweries, but very few compare to Weyerbacher of Easton, Pennsylvania.

I use to live in Manhattan and make the drive through central PA on the way back home to visit friends and family. After the umpteenth time passing through, I realized that I should probably check out what breweries are on the way to make use of the 5 hour trip – and BOOM. Little did I know, I was driving RIGHT by Weyerbacher for all of these trips (probably a good thing for my wallet) and had no clue. Once it was on my radar (after falling in love with their Merry Monks), I stopped in and picked up a treasure chest of goodies – with a four pack of Sunday Morning Stout included. I drank one immediately, and left the rest in the cellar until today when I caught a glimpse of them when I was in the basement, and here we are.

Sunday Morning Stout by Weyerbacher

THE BEER

My wife picked out the super sweet glass coffee mug that matched the beer, so even though it isn’t the best stout glass, I had to use it. The scent upon popping the top was surprisingly mild for the flavor the beer packs – mainly stray coffee aroma and roasted malt. The pour is thin (compared to Kentucky Breakfast Stout), yet the head is creamy. A dreamy, deep tan hue arrives in the foam and lures you into the glass. Game over.

The first taste is of delicious stout with a coffee nose, followed by a rush of bourbon drenched satisfaction. It quite literally is like drinking a coffee in the morning, a stout at lunch, and a whiskey in the evening…in each drink. How the flavors layer is quite nice, with none of them outcompeting the others. That simple fact shouldn’t be understated – its quite easy for a stout to lean coffee or to lean bourbon/oak, but to remain balanced with all the flavor playing a role – it speaks to Weyerbacher’s ability to craft big beers with big flavor and still preserve the delicate nuances of the style.

As the beer warms, the alcohol becomes a little more vocal in the aftertaste, converting the oak bourbon flavor to a whiskey neat situation. Depending on your affinity to whiskey, you might want to serve this freshly refrigerated (for those opposed to a dance with a devils cut) or at a mild 55F (for those who know the dance well). If you’re not sure, open it cold and let it warm while sipping it along the way…at 12.7%, the sips pack a punch.

Sunday Morning Stout by Weyerbacher

CLOSING THOUGHTS and WHERE TO BUY

Sunday Morning Stout is a barrel-aged stout I can recommend without reservation. It has a surprisingly thin body for such a boisterous stout (both in flavors and in ABV). It does a great job walking the tightrope of an edgy style variant while also playing by the rules. If you’re in the Central/Eastern PA area, I heavily encourage you to stop in the Easton area and checking this place out – they have an amazing selection of unique, BIGbeers that are worth collecting/hording for a year or so. Hopefully I can get back up there soon and get some better photos for an official Brewery Visit in the near future.

Pepe Nero was a pleasant surprise for me – a beer that I had never heard of, I happened to find a 5 year vintage that had been maintained in (implied) responsible conditions. The result was an incredible beer experience that I personally think was brought about by the significant aging of this beer. The mellowing and melding of the sometimes intense Belgian and pepper flavor had harmonized perfectly. I look forward to hunting down additional years of this beer and comparing them to the few I’ve got remaining in the cellar. Keep an eye out for a Cellar Talk piece on this beer, as well as other Goose Island gems like the Bourbon County Stout.

RATING: 97/100

96 on BeerAdvocate (World Class)

4.18 on Untappd

Sunday Morning Stout by Weyerbacher

#IFTTT #WordPress #HomeBrewedDude

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webbygraphic001 · 7 years

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12 Essential Free Sketch Plugins

As Sketch 44 exits beta, we take a look at one of Sketch’s best features: the huge selection of open source plugins.

The Sketch community is wildly supportive and you can find tons of amazing plugins that’ll radically improve your workflow. In this post I’ll cover the 12 best Sketch plugins that every designer should have.

1. Sketch Measure

Sketch Measure helps designers organize and outline their work for developers, project managers, and other team members.

But this is also incredibly useful to lone wolves who design & code all of their projects. With the Measure plugin you can outline elements showing specific width/height dimensions to get proper measurements at a glance.

This includes all page elements like buttons, text, icons, and even major parts of the artboard.

With Sketch Measure you can even export pages into HTML/CSS with page styles in-tact. Granted there are Adobe tools that can do this too. But having all this functionality right in Sketch makes your job that much easier.

2. InVision Craft

A while back the InVision team announced a new plugin Craft. But this is more like a suite of plugins where you get tons of extra features and shortcuts.

One example is the Data plugin which lets designers pull text/data straight from public APIs on the web. This way you can auto populate your app with real content & images on the fly.

InVision developers are constantly updating Craft with new plugin features to make this even more valuable to designers. And did I mention this is totally free?

So far Craft has 6 major plugin features, all of which are worth adding into your design workflow.

Freehand – realtime collaboration in Sketch

Prototype – dynamic high-fidelity prototyping

Sync – instant syncing between InVision prototypes & Sketch

Data – pull real data from the web into your Sketch mockup

Library – design assets in the cloud shareable with your entire team

Duplicate – lightning-fast UI cloning

Take a look at the Craft homepage and see what you think. Once you try it you’ll never want to go back.

3. Sketch Toolbox

Every Sketch user should know about the Sketch Toolbox. It’s an exquisite plugin manager that just makes installing/customizing your plugins a lot easier.

With this Toolbox you can browse through hundreds of Sketch plugins and choose which ones you want to install. You just click what you want and it’ll automatically download to your computer, ready to use.

And the Sketch Toolbox auto-updates plugins to keep them running smoothly.

Technically this is still in beta and it’s always receiving new updates on GitHub. But I think it’s solid enough to use in a production workflow. In fact, I’d argue a good Sketch workflow wouldn’t be complete without this incredible plugin manager.

4. Export Assets

One of the most detailed tasks of a designer is allocating resources and sharing them with developers. All the little icons, graphics, background patterns, these all need to be exported (usually by hand).

The Export Assets plugin makes this process a breeze. Just note this plug is made specifically for mobile apps where designers need to export Android/iOS interface assets. This includes retina assets for @2x and @3x screen sizes.

I haven’t seen any features related to retina web design, but you can check out the Sketch Exporter plugin too. It’s currently in beta and it’s meant to be an improved version of the original.

5. Content Generator

The Craft plugin I mentioned earlier offers content generation. But you may want something a bit simpler like this Content Generator by Timur Carpeev.

With this installed you can auto-populate multiple Sketch elements at once with related data such as:

User avatars

First & last names

Dummy paragraph text

Custom strings(geos, prices, CC card numbers, etc)

All content is pulled from open source databases like Unsplash and Uinames so you can use this on multiple projects, commercial or otherwise.

6. Looper

Photoshop has its own Actions panel where you can automate repeated actions. Sketch doesn’t have a panel like this but it does have the Looper plugin which is completely free and super easy to learn.

This is most useful for creating repeating patterns that take over the entire page. Graphic designers may find more use for this plugin than web designers, but it can save a lot of time looping through repetitive scaling/duplication tasks.

Take a peek at the Looper homepage to see what it can do. It may not be useful for everyone, but for those who can use it you’ll find yourself saving a lot of time.

7. Sketch Iconfont

Web designers love icon fonts. Great icons make UI design a lot easier and font files are generally smaller than images.

The Sketch Iconfont plugin is a complete management suite for storing, sorting, and pulling icon fonts right into Sketch. By default the plugin comes empty so you’ll need to download icon fonts locally to use them.

But this grants you complete access to work with any icon fonts you find online. There’s actually a font bundle pack made specifically for this plugin if you’re looking to fill up your iconfont folder quickly. And you can always scour the web for more as time goes on.

I absolutely recommend grabbing a copy of this plugin. Icon fonts are here to stay and they’re invaluable to modern websites.

8. Style Inventory

Whenever you start a new Sketch file you either have to re-make styles from scratch, or you need to copy/paste styles from previous mockups.

With the Style Inventory plugin you can bypass all this extra work. Just a few clicks imports all your previous styles right into your new Sketch document for easy access.

These styles include colors, text styles, and symbols, along with layer styles for certain elements.

This plugin is rarely updated but I do recommend it for merging similar mockups. You might also try the Sketch Palettes plugin for saving & importing color schemes.

9. Pixel Perfecter

Every digital designer prides themselves on pixel-perfect mockups. This task isn’t hard but it does require every design element to be perfectly aligned with the grid leaving no overlaps or imperfections.

If you ever want to check your work before exporting you can run Pixel Perfecter. This very small plugin checks all your file assets to see if any pixels overflow the traditional X/Y coordinate positions creating imperfect pixels.

Note this won’t automatically fix these offset pixel values. It’ll just find the layer(s) causing issues and highlight them so you can go in and fix them yourself. Still it saves a lot of time checking each layer manually.

10. Dynamic Button

The original dynamic button plugin was somewhat abandoned in 2015, but the newer Dynamic Button plugin is even better and compatible with Sketch 3.5+.

It automatically adds padding and button styles onto any text layer you create, and the padding is dynamic so it updates regardless of text size. This is wildly helpful for UI designers who are constantly making changes to their mockups.

This can also be used for mobile apps where buttons generally follow a fixed size/ratio. It’s not the most glamorous Sketch plugin but it does its task well.

11. Compo

If you want a button generator along with some extra features then the Compo plugin is worth testing.

Compo’s creator got the idea after using the Dynamic Button plugin for a while, eventually wanting something a little quicker. Compo auto-generates the proper button size and text size to match your exact specifications. One click and you have a working Sketch component that’s automatically sized & positioned properly.

Normally when you create a button and change the text it’ll only affect the text layer. So the underlying button would be too small. Compo automatically resizes the button and the text as if they’re one element.

You can find tons of demos on the GitHub repo along with some user guides for getting started.

12. CSSketch

Last but certainly not least is the CSSketch plugin. This is most useful for designer+developer combos who want direct access to CSS code for all the styles they create.

Any page you design can be run through this plugin to export a full stylesheet with all assets accounted for. But since this is automated you can’t expect A++ quality code.

I still prefer to code my CSS by hand, but this plugin at least offers a starting point for non-technical designers or developers who want to save a bit of time.

540+ High-Quality Vintage Illustrations – Flowers, Nautical, and More! – only $24!

Source from Webdesigner Depot http://ift.tt/2qrvCTL from Blogger http://ift.tt/2pKVA60

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metrovista-blog · 7 years

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Socializing Your Company: Social Media B2C Marketing Strategies for 2017

If you’re lucky enough to run a Business to Consumer (B2C) Company, you’re lucky enough to develop personalized social media B2C marketing strategies. Daunting? A little.

But does this allow for creative expression? Absolutely.

Once you have found the social media platform that works best for your niche, you can conquer your market online.

Not sure where to start? The chart below, from AddThis.com, breaks down the strengths of each platform pretty well.

No matter your platform of choice, it is your social media manager’s job to ensure engagement that will not only prompt interest but relay the “who” of your company.

How do they achieve this goal? We reached out to 11 industry experts for their social media B2C marketing strategies. Here is what they had to say:

1. Put content first. Thomas Jelneck, President and CEO of On Target Web Solutions, Inc.

The greatest success that we have seen is content creation. Infographics and videos offer compelling content. A well thought out editorial calendar and content plan can help yield leads over time.”

2. Show off what your company is doing. Zac Halloran, Founder of Twill

“We always put being authentic first. You have to connect with your customers and readers, so be real – just like they are.

3. Make your customers want to buy your product. Marvin Beckmann, Social Marketing Expert

Which platform is best for conversions? Instagram? Twitter? Facebook? According to Beckmann, the answer to this question depends entirely on your target consumer.

“Generally speaking, Facebook Ads is still the way to go for B2B. By gathering Pixel data with Facebook ads you can also reach People more effective on Instagram with your ads.

For example: Dollar Shave Club reached out to YouTuber Matt Stonie, who has over 2 Million subscribers to his channel, talk about their product in the beginning of his “50 Donut Challenge” video.

youtube

4. Invite your customer in on your business. Albizu Garcia, CEO and Co-Founder of GAIN

5. Get followers by creating conversations. Matt Hensler, Founder of Hensler Integrated Marketing

6. Build an interactive community. Michael Johnston, Group Sales and Strategy Manager from Schrole Group

“We use social media for increasing the amount of teaching candidates that go through our system to our schools.

Also it allows us to slowly help our teachers learn about the new ways that recruitment can work, we can show them that they do not have to pay massive recruitment fees, attend job fairs, etc.”

7. Create an RSVP event. Sarah Nelson, Senior Account Manager from StayListed

“Hosting events are the quickest way to convert clients from social media.

8. Take customers behind the scenes. Slisha Kankariya, Coufounder of Four Mine

9. Turn incentives into subscriptions. Vanessa Penagos- Pino, Director of Content and Inbound Marketing for 1800PetMeds

10. Repurpose reviews as content. Victor Clarke, owner of Clarke, Inc.

11. Reach your demographic through video. Howie Zisser, Digital Marketing Associate from Matchnode

youtube

For example:

Bottom line?

Socializing Your Company: Social Media B2C Marketing Strategies for 2017 was originally published on Metrovista Blog

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puppies-of-the-flame-blog · 8 years

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ProfitBuilder 2.0 Report

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Getting My ProfitBuilder To Work

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Rumored Buzz on WP Profit Builder 2 Review

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dudesterbrewing · 7 years

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From blog.DudesterBrewing.com: Beer for Thought – Vol. 10 – Sunday Morning Stout by Weyerbacher Brewing

Sunday Morning Stout by Weyerbacher

BREWERY: Weyerbacher

BEER: Sunday Morning Stout

STYLE: Imperial Barrel Aged Stout with Coffee

ABV: 12.7%

Malts: Not listed

Hops: Not listed

______________________________________________________

FROM THE BREWERY:

Sunday Morning Stout by Weyerbacher

______________________________________________________

INTRO

Sunday Morning Stout by Weyerbacher

THE BEER

Sunday Morning Stout by Weyerbacher

CLOSING THOUGHTS and WHERE TO BUY

RATING: 97/100

96 on BeerAdvocate (World Class)

4.18 on Untappd

Sunday Morning Stout by Weyerbacher

from WordPress http://ift.tt/2qAxRnQ via IFTTT

#IFTTT #WordPress #DudesterBrewing

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