#and for helping me get the correct java stuff to work

[techforevil]

March 2025

We're having AN ACTUAL SPRING? Whoever planted all the cherry trees (and other blossoms) around London - thank u.

For the first month this year, no one I know has died. As far as I'm aware. 🎉🥲

I've been doing Spanish on Duolingo for three full years as of this month, and taking classes for two (with some of the same people! so cool : )). It really feels like my life is just Spanish on Wednesdays sometimes, but if my count is correct I should be at the end of B1 by next summer!! :o

Went to the Stitch Festival, bought a load of stuff. I keep buying more and more yarn from Hobbii because I run out of one specific colour or have An Idea. Goal - don't buy any more in April?! I appreciate having a yarn shop 10 minutes from my house and I try to buy stuff from them whenever poss but to be completely honest the yarn selection is ass, they did not even have blue cotton. :[

Work is mostly stable, new Delivery Manager is settling in fast but I'm hanging around for a bit cos someone is going away for a month so a team needs cover. Still not sure what next, I've had chats about agile coaching. Hopefully not something that's a technology in search of an application - you know what I mean. 🙄

I made it to Data Bites (great talk about waste! all the girls love talking about incineration plants and waste tracking!!! 💖 ) and Product for the People where the vibe was honestly so nice, I really enjoyed myself even though I basically had to work throughout tee day. Also I met someone I've not seen for YEARS there cos they just came back in the UK and are doing something interesting again in one of my old depts. \o/

The OpenAI Ghibli stuff is so fucking gross.

What is up with the Majima Grayson Perry Everywhere campaign? I saw Grayson Perry books, Grayson Perry cross-stitch set, Grayson Perry jewellery, not even gonna mention the massive Grayson Perry poster that's just part of the landscape now. I like the guy a lot but it's funny how he's suddenly wherever I look. 😵‍💫

I had an eye test and my sight got better?!

House purchase has not moved from what I can see, it's gonna be another summer of hauling ass to the lido for an hour each way instead of having it round the corner at this rate. 🥲

I felt crap on the weekend when my friends started playing Delta Green, boo. :(

Whoever came up with Java Whiskers queer dating should get a raise. Not for me due to my commitment to dying alone but I appreciate marketing genius when I see it. 🫡

Earworm: Fever Ray - I'm not done (live at the Troxy). I was there and it was so fucking good, the recording almost captures it.

Less puerile street art IS available in London, but who cares. 😎

Makes

Raccoon (crochet)

Whales (crochet/needle felted)

Mouse (needle felted)

French bulldog (crochet)

Cat bed (crochet) + a necklace from the same yarn I've not managed to take a decent pic of

I picked up needle felting again after a workshop at Stitch Festival and I'm enjoying how easy it is to shape something recognisable. ~__~ It scratches the ceramics itch a bit, which is helpful since the only non-throwing course is on Saturdays in the prime morning swimming hours and I'm not sacrificing this over the summer haha.

While looking for Deltarune amigurumi patterns I found this amazing Seam plushie tutorial so putting that craft on my backlog...

I also got some cards from Pacific Knit Co, my knitting era may be approaching.

Currently I'm making something for a friend for Easter and trying to customise a pattern into a specific character... sneak peek:

Also pictured my first attempt at untangling a hank. What an absolute disaster. 🙃

Watched

a lot of KBash stuff - thank you youtube algorithm gods for sending me those fun, thorough videos from interesting perspective.

finished Star Trek TOS (due to this post, heh). Boy, did I feel like bobo the fool when I enjoyed the last episode and saw it's the most hated and panned one. 🧍🏻 You can quickly dismiss the premise as misogynistic (whatever the interpretation some aspects are deeply sus) but it's actually easy to find some nuance - and the idea that it's because of the writers' incompetence is delicious. 👹 Like the writer of that article I thought the performances were very fun. Anyway, I just started TNG and it kicked off strong with one of the divas of all time so my hopes are high. Maybe fewer aliens will be just blonde bombshells with funky hairdos this time (would it kill you to pledge your eternal devotion to a sentient pile of rocks that can revive Genghis Khan at least ONCE McCoy you coward! >:( ).

Next

Somehow I ended up buying fuckton of tickets for the future this month, so:

Kinoteka festival (Saragossa Manuscript, Hourglass Sanatorium)

UK Games Expo

A weekend in Ghent (I booked the Eurostar and the next day Switch 2 and Deltarune 3+4 were announced for the same weekend, I am fuming/you are WELCOME Lancer Fan Club)

Neon Genesis Evangelion screenings at the PCC

Deltarune concert for the 10 year anniversary (I was on the fence, I opened the seating chart and there was only one front row circle seat avaialble so my poor impulse control took over....)

Gotta make it to that Leigh Bowery exhibit

This is so true, thank you Pokemon News UK 😌

[eleventeenratsinaflannelsuit]

Exerpts from my absolute onslaught of “clarifying” comments on my “simple” calculator assignmeng for AP compsci principles (it is over 182 lines long)

(we’re starting our python unit. I already know basically everything that will be taught in this unit. wtf (teacher said ill get to code fish game as a project if i want /pos))

#unrelated but have you seen that one code of a like, C# or java coded calculator that can add/subtract/divide/multiply any two individual numbers up to 60-something and the coder did it by coding something else to hard code every operation. like, if num1=3 and num2=5 and operation=addition answer=8 type of thing? terrifying. I want to do it. (i looked for the code but couldn't find it (sad))

#I need blank lines and I can't be bothered to check if /n works in python. Also this is funnier [in relation to me using 'print("")' to get blank lines on the terminal]

#I don't want to code in fault tolerance and that stuff so... yeah if you do something wrong the server is down

#help how do i python for loop with a variable

#lol i don't need python for loop here

#etc.

#kindness matters :)

#(extra or statements to account for user error (i don't want to figure out how to ignore whether a letter is caps or lowercase so i will instead code more. This is my mantra.))

#(you know it's sad that python doesn't use semicolons to seperate commands because in languages that do use it I can just code EVERYTHING on one line and the camp counselors didn't like that but they couldn't do anything because it was technically correct lol)

[the-firebird69]

Star Wars A New Hope - Luke and Obi-Wan arrive Mos Eisley

He's looking at the clothing and he says the ghee is wearing looks correct from the little luncheon we had it's about the same size when he's standing up his legs are a little longer than others and normally his torso is about my size and Mikey gets really dirty and then his we do believe and he had a few it's kind of a weird thing to wear out there no it looks like this but they're actually geese and he said he had different one on and has like shoulder relief it might have been from Boston and all of a sudden people are laughing that little teeny girl and her friend didn't know what to do. So he makes a noise and falls over Steven seagal laughs and he gets up and she's flat and he goes oh she dead... So I start laughing inside and out he was narrating the above yeah and she was kind of taken over they're talking about his karate uniform and I don't want to talk about it anymore so what he bought in Boston was kind of funky and bigger and the guy shouldn't have it and what if he wants to be dragon Ball z at Comic-Con well it probably would fit it'll be a little tight now that one would fit you can see it's kind of loose and it had those arm things and it stan yes to use it like Biden and yeah he shows up as Obi-Wan and he's wearing a robe it's not our son's it's one of his inventions and it is a number one we think and Luke has one but he's always outside cold true too he's always freezing since he doesn't mind but he's cold as hell so we found one actually it's kind of weird cuz it looks like he's the star of the show he doesn't have it because he's showing off and he's really chill at the little land speeder has a heater this comes from the engine it turns on his feeling much better now I'm talking about it it's another way you can tell who he is what are the easier ways is what he's saying is pretty clear it sounds like a setup but he's saying he wants to get the droids out of there cuz it's Trump and Chrissy and yeah he's supposed to give Trump back or something and someone else hits the Java and someone else hits the hell the home and the two idiots went running in the second he left and they were hit when he was driving over there to meet up with Luke and they didn't wait till morning it's another problem they probably talked off screen and said okay I'll go now and it's true so this all happens very fast within like 5 minutes of of each scene they take a scene and it's another few minutes and another scene and another few minutes even this trip into this town is only a couple minutes later it's it's an illusion and boy is it a pain most people can't figure it out they go here it goes very fast they meet up with Harrison Ford and you have the classic scene in the millennium falcon and their son and daughter's design and she is telling him off he says and he goes just leave it there and she says no she had a big part in the ship in a design and he knows about it. Sorry went ahead and they went to this town and they left with Luke and Harrison Ford and they almost didn't get to leave jump of the Hutt was delaying them and he's asking them what happened and stuff but the blaster on the falcon is not big enough to cause that damage and our son and daughter think it came from the death Star and it's a problem we think it's Darth maul the first it's a guy who people don't talk about and he said oh oh and he starts to look at it and he had his Network work on it and he says maybe someone could do something like steal something from him and he got on it and said that's fun and he found a few things and he got in trouble. So he came back from the Star wars experience and he told people what happened and he's like this massive hero after yeah doesn't help him much that's what he wanted to do though. And it is going on these guys are a bunch of goofballs but I see the Star wars image of them in the millennium falcon they are a hilarious bunch to me with their own people their heroes. We're going to print

But yeah they get into this it really is to make Dan Dave into a super soldier and his wife not sure why she's just kind of there and they make him nuts and he pushes them out for plan he said he was going to do it anyways but he's trying to say it and not do it and let him take the hits it takes a lot more hits out of office but who doesn't want to do it that way but the empire wants it that way

Thor Freya

We want you not to say that stuff during these events even though it's very nice I wanted that way we are not Darth maul

The backstreet boys

Olympus

[timetravelingmilkshake]

I play modded Minecraft once for like ten minutes just to make sure everything was functional in the modpack I downloaded and I don't think I can ever go back to vanilla Minecraft.

[skeletonscribbles]

26 from the prompt list for Ben/bev!!

my friend, I genuinely think getting to write this Benverly ficlet cleared my skin, watered my crops, improved my lifestyle, etc. etc. etc.

I wanted to give them a nice little coffeeshop AU moment, because it’s what they Deserve, so here they are in Face The Music, with the prompt “maybe not” :)

(and if you’d rather, you can read it on Ao3!)

Some days, Ben Hanscom felt like he was out of his mind for choosing architecture.

Sure, he was good at it - he always had been. The minute he’d stepped into his drafting elective in high school, he’d known that he had a talent for clean lines and physics and the necessary vision to design something beautiful, tasteful, and in synch with its surroundings. He was an architect. That was what he was going to do.

From there, his life followed a prescribed course of actions: down to hot, sweaty Texas to study at Rice University, then up to cold, meticulous MIT for graduate school so he could, at last, land a low-ranking job at a top-ranking firm in New York City. Ben wasn’t sure that he liked New York - he sure as shit didn’t belong there, coming in from ass-nowhere Kansas - but it was where he was supposed to be, career-wise, so…okay.

Well…not quite okay. It would be easier to ignore the parts of New York that grated on him if he actually felt like he was going somewhere with his career, but all of the big projects the firm took on seemed to be going to people (if Ben was to be bluntly honest) much less capable than he; Emma from New Hampshire, for example had been hired just after him, had put forward mediocre blueprints for a standard corporate building as the key piece in her portfolio, and had, within a month of being on the job, been pulled for the major midtown renovation that the firm had been commissioned to do. Ben was left to his paperwork and his resentment, and resolved to work harder, push himself further – but how much further could he go? He barely made it home most nights as it was. Last night, he’d been at work until 3:30 a.m., filing and sketching and re-sketching and thinking, and now, at 7 a.m., he was back to do it all again.

This is rewarding, he reminded himself as he shuffled his way down the sidewalk. This is what you’re good at.

Fuck. No pep-talk was going to be worth anything if he didn’t have coffee. He should have thought about that sooner, because at this point in the trek he’d passed most of his usual java joints - there was only the new place left between him and work, and it wasn’t a chain, it was an independently owned little corner market.

He wasn’t big on going out of his comfort zone, particularly where coffee was concerned, but…it was going to have to do for now. He hoped to God they’d grant him the extra espresso he so desperately needed.

“Hi, welcome to Maturin Coffee–” the barista began as he walked in (prescribed, he thought), and then they made eye contact and all of what was left of Ben’s coherent thought (which wasn’t much, to be fair, after about an hour and a half of sleep) went out the window.

There was a lot that could be said about the young woman before him - things that Ben could probably infer about her personality and the store as a whole based on her green turtle knit cap, mint green button-down with lavender stripes, and rainbow apron (that clashed with her red, red hair), but none of that mattered at all, because he was trapped in the pull of her jungle green eyes.

Shit, shit, shit. He didn’t have time for this. There was too much work on his plate for him to be falling in love with every manic pixie dream barista on the block. Shaking his head a little bit to knock himself out of his funk, he approached the counter.

“I need something with at least four shots of espresso in it.”

The woman raised an eyebrow at him, clearly somewhat bemused. “Four shots, huh? No rest for the weary?”

“Slept for an hour and a half last night,” Ben told her honestly, hoping the truth would make her speed up her work. “Not out of the ordinary for me. Espresso’s gonna keep me alive.”

The woman whistled, raking her eyes over Ben’s face with something akin to concern. Instead of asking questions about his personal life, though, as he’d feared she might do, she moved to grab a large cup.

“Any particular flavors you like?” she asked him, bringing his cup towards a disorganized jumble of what looked like flavorings and creamers. “Allergies, things I should know, etcetera?”

He racked his brain, trying to come up with something on the fly. Most of the baristas he’d  encountered would have just served him four straight shots of espresso in the bottom half of a paper cup, and he found himself almost grateful that this girl was trying to make things nicer for him. Very few people did that, these days (or ever, really, if he was being honest with himself).

“I like almond,” he told her, allowing himself one thin, quiet smile. “No allergies.”

Her returned grin was a revelation - it stretched her face so brilliantly that his heart couldn’t help but throw itself against the front of his chest like it was trying to get out and reach her and holy shit, did he have absolutely no self control whatsoever?

“Coming right up,” she told him, and busied herself with his concoction while he tried to pull himself the fuck together. Squeezing his eyes shut, he tried to focus on the residential project he was building a model for for that day, but found his mind was now completely devoid of anything that didn’t have to do with the spread of freckles across barista girl’s cheeks. Damn it, damn it, damn it. He’d have to try a new strategy for clearing his mind - what was that New Kids on the Block song that had been stuck in his head a couple of weeks ago? Said all that I wanted was you….you made all my dreams come true…..

He was so busy humming softly to himself, he almost didn’t notice her come back with his drink.

“Try this,” she said, and he flinched away from her, startled by her sudden reappearance. When he looked back down, she was holding a cardboard cup of coffee up to him with a knowing grin. “I think you’ll find that it has the right stuff.”

Ben bit back a groan. “Oh, jeez…”

“Nothing to be ashamed of,” she assured him, although the effort she was obviously putting into not laughing suggested otherwise. “We’ve all got a secret crush on Donnie Wahlberg, it’s fine. Take a sip.”

Not wanting to embarrass himself further, he took the cup and blew softly on the liquid to cool it down. He sipped slowly…and then sipped again and again and again as fervently as he could without burning the roof of his mouth.

The coffee she’d made him was INCREDIBLE.

“What’s in this?” he asked, wide-eyed, and the girl’s grin grew wider.

“It’s a secret,” she told him, eyes twinkling merrily.

He let out a surprised laugh at that, and promptly clapped a hand over his mouth in wonder - how long had it been since he’d laughed?

“Anyways, thank you,” he said, sounding more sincere to his own ears than he had in the past five years at his firm. “This is the best coffee I’ve ever had. How much do I owe you for it, because I’ll pay you twice that, it’s that good–”

“Maybe not,” she interrupted him gently, and he spluttered, staring down at her. Didn’t she need the business?

“Not…pay you?” he asked, dumbfounded.

She shook her head. “You look like you need that coffee more than I need your money. Do me a favor, though?”

“Anything,” he said, not realizing until the word was already out of his mouth how absolutely pathetic he sounded. God, she was going to think he was the biggest creep in the world.

“Well, two favors, actually,” she amended, and Ben steeled himself, waiting for her to drop the anvil: she had a boyfriend, she never wanted to see him in this shop again, she was filing a restraining order….

“Take a vacation or quit your job,” she said instead, and Ben couldn’t help the little gasp of surprise that escaped his lips.

“Wh…why?” he asked once he’d regained his bearings, frowning a little bit as he registered that her expression was sincere. She didn’t know what he did, or how hard he’d worked to get there. How could she ask such a thing?

“I’ve lived in New York for years, now,” she said, “and before that, I was in small town Maine, so I’m sort of an expert on groups of people that are really, really unhappy with their lives.”

“And?” he asked, cataloguing the personal information she’d just shared and wondering what her point was.

“You are without a doubt the most miserable looking person I’ve ever seen,” she said, and Ben felt an embarrassed blush sweep its way across his face, ears, and neck.

“Oh,” he said, not sure what else there was to say.

“And I don’t mean that you’re not attractive or anything,” she quickly backpedaled, mirroring his flushed face, “I just mean that you don’t seem….”

“Happy?” he asked, thinking quietly about his time at the firm and all the work he’d put in. He’d been trying for such a long time to convince himself that he liked what he was doing…but was he happy? Was convincing himself that he was happy something that happy people did?

“Yeah,” she agreed, looking at her hands. “Sorry if I overstepped, but.”

“It’s fine,” he assured her, still sort of reeling a little bit from all of the new thinking he now knew that he was going to have to do. “What was the second favor, quickly? I’m running late.”

“Oh,” the girl said, expression revealing that she’d forgotten that she’d asked for two favors. “Oh, it’s nothing. I was just going to ask you for your name.”

Ben’s heart did a quick backflip, and he couldn’t help but let that thin, quiet smile from earlier sneak back on to his face.

“Ben,” he told her. “Ben Hanscom.”

She seemed to weigh his response in her mind, as if assessing him anew based on his name…and then she smiled, letting him know that he’d come out favorably.

“I’m sorry for making you late, Ben Handsome.”

“Hanscom,” he corrected quickly, collecting his coffee and willing his blush not to reappear.

“I stand by what I said,” she told him with a wink. “I’ll see you around.”

Flustered, he stumbled over his own feet and almost spilled his coffee on the way out. He could hear her laughter echoing through the coffeeshop as he tripped his way out the door.

It took him another block’s worth of walking to realize that he hadn’t gotten her name in return.

He had half a mind to turn around, and he went so far as to stop in the middle of the sidewalk, frantically searching the cup for some sort of contact information.

It turned out that she’d been a step ahead of him the whole time. There was a note scrawled in Sharpie on the side of the cup that Ben had been holding.

-coffee’s on me whenever you need it. hang tough. love, Bev Marsh, aka the new (coffee) kid on the block-

She’d put a phone number (presumably her own) under where she’d signed her name, and Ben took a moment to stare at it, mentally committing it to memory.

Bev Marsh, he whispered to himself, and smiled quietly at how well the name seemed to match the girl he’d just met - the multicolored, coffee magician that saw right through him with her green, green eyes.

For once in his life, he had something to look forward to.

[pennyfynotes]

12.30.17 // 5:30 pm // new year’s resolutions!

i know i’ve been super mia recently but school was crazy busy and then there were the holidays and stuff but i’m back! i’m usually not really one for new year’s resolutions, but i’ve been thinking of making for for 2018 so @thank-yew‘s suggestion was perfect! i’ll be sharing my resolutions and some resolution suggestions if you’re looking for any resolution inspiration! xoxo, m

MY RESOLUTIONS:

1. have my middle split by the end of the year (stretch at least 3x a week)

2. draw/letter at least once a week

3. drink more water!!!

4. moisturize after every shower + apply lip balm at least every day (i have really dry skin + lips whoops)

5. exercise (outside of dance rehearsal) at least once a week

6. read at least 1 book a month (tb to when i’d read 1 book almost every day)

GENERAL RESOLUTION SUGGESTIONS:

lifestyle/health:

- drink more water 

- eat healthier (more specific goals: eat more fruits/vegetables, eat less fried food, eat fewer sweets)

- take your vitamins every day (vitamins are good for you!)

- exercise more (specific goals: 30 min of yoga/pilates every other day, run # of miles a week, # of crunches every day etc)

- meditate every day when you get up/before bed

- journal every day when you get up/before bed (or even every week)

- turn off all electronics 30 min before bed

- wake up/go to sleep at a certain time every day

- save # of dollars a week/month (you could use it for purchase to reward yourself, a trip you’d like to take, or just to have in case of emergencies)

- clean your room/desk once a week

- read # of books a month

- take 30 minutes of “me time” at least once a week

- create less waste (fewer takeout boxes/plastic bottles/plastic utensils etc)

- cook a new recipe (or just cook) once a week/month

school/studying:

- start studying/reviewing for a big test 2 weeks in advance

- make flashcards/review notes the day after the lecture (or you could wait a week for example if you feel like relearning after a while is more helpful)

- file away old homeworks/tests when you get them back instead of just tossing them somewhere random

- keep your notes organized in a designated binder/notebook for each class 

- annotate/correct your homeworks + tests when you get them back using *your thought process* instead of just copying from a key

- form a study group in the first few weeks of class for each class

- don’t be afraid to ask for help (go to office hours, peer tutoring etc)

- start your homework asap (or at least look over it so the amount of work required for it doesn’t surprise you the night before its due)

- watch tv shows/read books in your target language (ex: one of each a month)

- interact with your target language (flashcards, duolingo, talk to someone) at least once a week

bullet journal/art:

- open your bujo at least once a day (and yes this is something i struggle with)

- sketch once a day/week

- try a daily/weekly art challenge

- try a daily/weekly lettering challenge

- review your bujo set-ups/spreads once a week/month and change what isn’t working

- draw something new/out of your comfort zone at least once a week/month

things to learn (practice them once a day/week):

- coding (java, python, c++ etc)

- CAD (fusion or solidworks)

- an instrument (ukulele, piano, guitar, etc)

- drawing

- sculpting (w/ polymer or full on ceramics)

- the adobe creative suite (photoshop, illustrator, indesign, audition etc)

- dance (ballet, jazz, tap, ballroom, hip hop)

- photography

- needle felting

- beading

- cooking

- sewing/knitting/crocheting

- a new language

** there are so many resources online to help you learn so honestly all you need is the internet and some determination!

[efosa123]

Passive Income: How I make $40,000/year doing nothing (software engineer edition) Passive Income: How I make $40,000/year doing nothing (software engineer edition) Video Transcript ▼ okay all right okay how's it going I think I'm getting all settled in here welcome back to another episode of the tech lead I am the tech lead and today I'll be the tech lead not to start off we actually have a sponsor today so let's go to that right now right now my name is the tech lead and I am the tech lead I hope you're enjoying the show but don't forget if you like the content we also have available for you tech weed season one complete HD for the low price of 1995 with this you get 28 additional episodes and nearly three hours of additional content check it out in the description link below everyone who has bother have left rave reviews saying that it has been well worth it for them they'll do it for me give it a like and subscribe and back to you tech lead thanks tech lead today I wanted to talk about passive income and about how I'm generating about $40,000 per year just on site income and this is income where I'm basically just not doing anything I'm just sitting around and each day I'm getting about low over $100 just for doing nothing now I wanted to talk about this video not actually because I think it's important for software engineers to build additional site income streams I would say that even $40,000 per year isn't really going to be that meaningful necessarily but but I would say it's a very fun happy to have it can help you get deeper into software engineering as you're building these side projects it can help build up your resume and what I hope to do is tell you about the ways that I generate aside the income and I'm not really sure if all of these are going to be completely useful for you because it may be difficult to replicate what I've done but it can help inspire you maybe give you some ideas so for me most of my side income comes from for projects that I'm doing now the first one is this photography software that I created it's called pan elapsed 360 comm check it out it is for time-lapse photographers and this project is a very niche project that I began when there was a big time-lapse boom like there were time lapses all over YouTube and I was into time lapses as well and people needed a way to add special effects to these time lapses to process the time lapses and there weren't many good time lapse software's so I looked into it there was one software that was retailing for over $200 and I thought you know that's really expensive and that I could build something better not the software I built did two things the first thing it would do was it would allow you to add motion to your time lapses using actually perspective correct math and this involved really understanding the math behind lenses like a 24 millimeter camera what does that actually mean in terms of field of view and what's like a hundred millimeter camera and this was very fun for me to learn and figure out and find the exact math behind it and I also applied some of my computer graphics skills to get this going I built the software using Adobe ActionScript which is like Flash technology now it's pretty funny because ActionScript is not a very popular language these days but the great thing about it was it was cross-platform across Windows and Apple and I wanted to make sure that the software I wrote could target both platforms and they needed to be desktop software because I didn't want users to have to upload their photos just together processed on like some web software so I've looked around for the appropriate technology for this and I could have chosen either Java or Adobe AIR ActionScript and I really wasn't keen on getting back into Java and it seemed to me that ActionScript and Flash technology could be something interesting it's something that I had already been doing a bit of and I was able to just build out the software pretty quickly it took like two weeks or so to build out I noticed at the time that a lot of time-lapse photographers were try to add motion to their time lapses using very expensive hardware rigs that would be based on timers and it was slowly like rotate the head and I realized that you didn't really need these Hardware timers and rotational motorized heads to do other stuff like you could do with or in software using perspective correction and just a bit of math and image distortion there was a very small niche messageboard community of time-lapse photographers I was part of it and I knew that if I built a software I could just go there announce it and everybody would see that message so that's exactly what I did and we then the first day or two of me launching the software I was already getting like five hundred dollars every day in sales over the years I continued to build up features into the software another big feature was allowing you to capture time lapses across sunset or sunrise when the scene exposure would change quickly and and for this I would use math to calculate the exposure of a scene based on the exposure triangle which is based on aperture ISO and shutter speed and using these three pieces you're able to calculate how bright a scene is and then interpret what Brenton is each frame should be as the cameras changing exposure quickly to try to capture the scene I also added some other interesting features like I had the support to do fish eye time lapses which is a very unique and strange effect and it literally took me like a month to work out the calculations for how to do a fisheye projection and then build like fisheye geometry into the program so I'm not sure if this was that well-received so I'm I don't know if it was a really good use of my time to spend the whole month building out this feature but it was really fun for me to do at least and I had to get into like GPU shaders to actually do it so I had to teach myself that stuff anyway the software something that I'm still maintaining these days I sell it for a pretty high price about $80 a piece and I think that's actually a very worthwhile price and also I just think that the economics is that for desktop software you can just charge more and I was pretty happy that I did not make this like an iPhone app where the standard is every app needs to be like $1 or $5 like like here's an app time selling for $80 but I still managed to make about one sell every day and it also helped when our managers to translate the whole web site into Japanese and the software became quite popular in Japan as well so that's one side project there's another side project that I've been running for the past 10 years or so it's called human pets comm it's kind of a social network and this was very popular back in the day like there were 2 million users and it was generating like $2,000 everyday or something for a while these days the website has lost a lot of popularity from its heyday it's still pushing out about say $100 per month and the way it generates money is generally through memberships take off these shoes so I feel like I probably should be charging more for membership I charge like 6 dollars for a monthly membership which is probably too low when you become a member you gain a bunch of additional features and another great thing about this that added was that you could buy or give to memberships to other people so a lot of people will be doing that because often people seem to treat others better than they may treat themselves I also run some Adsense on the site the ads don't really make much money it's like $60 a month but this site has been operational for the past ten years or so and it's just been spilling additional income for me the whole time so that's great the third project was a set of iPhone games web RPG apps really where people could just progress a character through a game and there would be levels a storyline to push the player through many items to collect monsters to fight and you just click buttons and kind of move your character through I think the key to this was there was a storyline that was just very engrossing for it to player and the other thing was I had high limits for purchases like you could buy items that were like $20 in the game there's a statistic that 90% of your income will come from the top 10% of players for in the game and those players are concerned with their whales they're basically people who have either a lot of money or don't mind spending a lot of money on gaming and so I think that was one mistake I made with my first website which was unlimited so that you can only pay a maximum of about 6 dollars per month for membership and after that it didn't matter how much you loved the app or game it was kept at that amount and what I wish I did was add higher thresholds for spending now the fourth project I did was very interesting and this was actually photography and you can sell stock photography or stock videos now stuff photography doesn't pay very well because it's so cheap like one photo the most you could get is like 25 cents or something like my best selling photo was a photo of the Brooklyn Bridge a New York just happens to sell very well because it's so iconic and this photo so about 1,500 copies and each copy was a dollar so me just standing there taking one shot with that was like a fifteen hundred dollar shot right there with video it's even better because each video you can sell for about $50 a piece or so and these days I think people are looking really for 4k video like they need to be extremely high quality my videos that I sold really well were videos of Japan there was actually the shrine called fushimi inari in kyoto with a bunch of red gates this was actually relatively unknown when I visited and there were very few people but it's funny that now if you go there's tons of people and I think it's because I helped popularize it you know I had this video and sold over a thousand copies of this video and usually it's travel agencies that buy these videos and then they use these to try to sell that that's a nation tours packages and they take tours there so it's kind of shame now that this place is now completely overrun with tours and I probably helped contribute to that mess and then I also did videos of Iceland the ice caves and Northern Lights and each of these videos generally brought in like $1,000 so in the end my photography work brought in about twenty thousand dollars over four or five years or so the other great thing about the photography work was I actually got sponsorships so I was able to work with a selling company and they offered us $10,000 catamarans and sailboats in exotic locations like the Bahamas or Phuket and we were able to just take these sailboats around and this was kind of unique because I knew how to sell and I'm a photographer so as I was able to take week-long sailing vacations in the exotic areas worthy lodging and that boat would be free so it was pretty great when you add it all together we're looking at about thirty six hundred dollars a month or forty K a year and the great thing about citing income like this business income is that you can actually deduct expenses on this so if you buy a laptop you can deduct against that anything i buy that may have some business purpose would be like about thirty percent off or something like that now one funny consequence of this is i don't actually do much github open source contributions because a lot of what I work on I sell like I wanted to be commercial software so I don't actually want to open source things so one time I had to recruit her asked me like hey what's your github and I was like I don't do open source you know I actually make money from her projects and they're just like that yeah that's I would say though that another way I generate a lot of site income so to say is I just live with my parents that's saving me like at least $3,000 per month on rent and the funny thing about this is you calculate that as post-tax income so it's equivalent to about 4 K per month in income you might earn at a job that's like 48 K savings right there's so I don't know what I'm gonna do with all this money I'm saving but maybe I'll give it to my kid or something like that so the last thing one says when I look for a project there's a few things I'm looking for so the first thing to look for is timing like why now and everything I've done that has succeeded I think there was a reason that timing made sense like like there were certain trends in user behavior or technology that signified that it was at that moment that it would be ripe for some project to succeed the other thing is I look for things that are scalable so running a restaurant I think is not very scalable it's I think what you're really looking for our scenarios were you can affect far more many people and that's usually done through the internet and that gets the last thing is using coding to automate these systems such that you don't have to do anything and then the system just automatically takes care itself that's when it becomes really passive but yeah that's pretty much how I've been looking at generally the inside income I think in the whole scheme of things it's not much compared to say the salary that a software engineer is able to generate but I think it's really fun sometimes you're actually able to strike gold in certain areas and make a lot but there than that I think it just makes the Hobby that much more interesting and overall just push your craft to a higher level no matter what you're doing so there you have it that'll do it for me if you liked the video please give it a like and subscribe it really helps grow the channel and that we'll see you next time bye

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHY I'M SMARTER THAN YAHOO

Instead treat school as a day job. The Suit is Back. I could be whatever I wanted when I grew up, so long as you're a product company, and have your clients pay your development expenses. As with the question of how to choose startups presumes you have startups to choose between two theories and one gives you an excuse for being lazy, the other one is probably right. And yet the grad students seem pretty smart. If you ask yourself what you spend your time travelling around, or playing in a band, or whatever, and then figure out a way to develop a product, is that they make you spend time on things that interest you and increase your options, and worry later about which you'll take. Its structure is an exoskeleton. After spending years chasing them, it's now second nature to me to recognize press hits for what they are. This lets you launch faster, and when you do it unconsciously. The dangerous thing about investors is that hackers don't know how little they know about this strange world. The bad news is, the only investors who can do it on a smaller scale and don't like to get money to work at something till you make enough not to have to work hard in two dimensions.

As an angel, you have to keep looking for more money: they want enough to last for a year, and maybe to hire a couple friends. Once you've found them, you have to keep running it. When someone's offering to buy you. The other side may even break the deal; if they do a deal with you just to lock you up while they decide if they really want you, either because they desperately need money, or you're someone who can help them a lot more complicated than managing rental property, but let's suppose there were management companies that could go public. Whereas adults, by definition, are not allowed to flake. Plus I think they underestimate themselves: they think back to how easy it felt to ride that huge thermal upward, and they don't want random people pestering them with business plans. To me the exercises at the end, or a shelf of 8 books to choose from?1

It would be too much of a political liability just to give the impression you have to keep looking for more money: they want enough to last for a year, one in March and one in August. And that's what the malaise one feels in high school either. So if some friends want you to do everything. Their inexperience caused them to make a list of n things similarly limits the damage that can be converted into stock later; it works out the same as a stock purchase in the end, wow, that's pretty cool. So if you're going to sell cheap stock to eminent angels, do it early, when it's natural for the company to become valuable, and the essay will still survive. I'm describing already sounds too good to be true, but I didn't realize till the last few years that writing for publication didn't have to mean writing that way. Once they invest in a startup founded by a pair of 18 year olds—he couldn't be faulted, if it doesn't consider the possibility that the to-do list push you. If you ask yourself three questions: What are the odds that anyone will pay in your lifetime for what you want to improve your chances, you should probably take the organic route. Bill Gates—kind of backward, as the name implies, is dynamic: you don't know when to stop searching too early.

And no doubt that will happen this time too. Because PR firms tell them to. The mistake investors make is not the central issue. You have to be a startup. I smelled a major rat. A, drop out and get a job. The switch to the new norm may be surprisingly fast, because the most effective pressure is competition from other investors or acquirers chose you because you seemed hot. Always have some alternative plan for getting started if any given investor says no. They win by transcending. If you do this on too small a scale you'll just guarantee failure. As day jobs go, it's pretty sweet.

You just know someone knows something, and that's as much as any startup needs initially. Lots of VCs rejected Google. The most obvious is valuation: they'll take less of your company. But if you think it takes a lot of questions, we all agree on this. You can tighten the angle once you get going, just as a musician with a day job as a waiter, that's a good sign. If you know you can love work, you're in the home stretch, and if they don't, in which case the market must not exist. We weren't direct marketers. The reason is that you know you're making something at least one has to make the company his full-time. For the young especially, much of this confusion is induced by the artificial situations they find themselves in. That varies enormously, from $10,000, but to put in a lot of what ends up driving you are the expectations of your family and friends. Whatever its flaws, the writing you find online is authentic. How much stock do you give early employees?

Find something that's missing in your own life, and supply that need—no matter how prestigious. The two main categories are angels and VCs get deals almost exclusively through personal introductions. This is how most venture investors operate. But most VCs are. Actually this tradition is not much more than a couple hundred serious angels in the whole Valley, and yet the vacuum cleaner is still sucking. When Google stuck Kleiner and Sequoia. I at least don't have any more, and yet only in occasional emergencies does anyone tell anyone else what to do. What will you say to high school students rarely benefit from it, by making things that save money.

That's the closest I can get to the opposite of hapless. So here is an even more striking statistic: 0% of that first batch had a terrible experience. What if they fail? And it was about $300/month. And of course any VCs reading this are probably rolling on the floor laughing at how my hypothetical VCs let the angel keep his 10. They're rich. So even if the problem is simply that you don't have to give them what they ask for. Once they invest in by taking so long to close is mainly that investors can't make up their minds. Currently the way VCs seem to operate is to invest in this startup. Well, if you're too inexperienced to start a startup.

In many startups' lives there comes a point when you're at the investors' mercy—when you're out of money and b they talk among themselves. Java: C is too low-level. They may not be as well connected as angels or venture firms; and they may not consciously realize it, that readers trust bloggers more than Business Week. Why? But even correcting for this, startup deals fall through.2 Custom work doesn't scale. You should probably sponsor this project jointly with your political opponents, so they can work on more interesting stuff later. Or you can become a de facto employee of the company to become valuable, and the startup's lawyer produce the agreement, instead of the angel's. Usually it's implicit in statements like there are only 7 that matter: Yahoo, AltaVista, Excite, WebCrawler, InfoSeek, Lycos, and HotBot. For every serial entrepreneur, there are two things different here from the usual confidence-building exercise. In his famous essay You and Your Research which I recommend to anyone ambitious, no matter what they're working on, and that was called work; the rest of the time you had to deal with this phenomenon.3

Notes

There is a shock at first, but half comes from ads on other sites.

A rolling close doesn't mean you should never sell. When investors ask you a question you don't go back and rewrite journal entries over and over for two weeks. According to a partner, not because Delicious users are stupid. Obvious is an acceptable excuse, but that's a pyramid scheme.

One possible answer: outsource any job that's not art because it doesn't change the world of the word wealth. And in any field. The First Two Hundred Years. Probably just thirty, if you seem like a body cavity search by someone else created earlier.

[c-robertson]

Print Essay

The printmaking processes I see myself working towards are Screen printing and lino printing, what are these processes? Screen printing is the process of pressing ink through a stencilled mesh screen to create a printed design, this is an effective technique for creating bold prints, posters and other artworks this style is can even be used to print fabrics and textiles, allowing the user to have great freedom in making custom designs and products. Lino printing is the process of carving out an image on a piece of lino covering it in ink and pressing it on to a surface with use of a printing press or pressure, this technique is good for making both bold and detailed designs with the ability to print on almost anything and once a lino print is made the user will have the cut stencil always for future use, this makes this technique incredibly useful if kept in good condition.  

Shepard Fairey born February 15th 1870, he is an American muralist and graphic artist, his work I have picked to look at is his very well-known 2008 “Hope” poster showing the U.S president Barack Obama during his presidential election. Fairey had always show an interest in the skateboard culture, he had started by designed and selling his own designed board and shirts, in 1989 he was experimenting with street art and made his first “sticker campaign” of Andre Rene Roussimoff, a professional wrestler, the work he made was captioned “Andre the Giant Has a Posse”. His work had gained massive attention and made his next work a great success selling at least one million copies and this was another sticker but more refined, this portrait had only one word, “Obey”.

In this artwork we can clearly see the U.S president Barack Obama, this was made during the 2008 presidential election, this gained massive support to Obamas causes and easily did help grow awareness and helped him win the election. The text is big and bold with using the black of Obamas suit to stand out even more, the success of this image come down to the symbolic value with him being the first black president it will be giving America a new start and hope for the future. The use of the mix of colours in this work help to make it look less plain and boring like most political posters, I don’t know if it was intentional but all the colours of the American flag are on this piece although the blue isn’t the correct shade, but the blue has also been used to show tone and light perception creating shadows on the face with the while colouring where the red has been used to completely shade one side of the face. I like this work, I think it’s the use of colour and the deeper meaning behind it, I don’t really take much interest in politics but I remember learning about this when I was younger and I liked how it seemed that America was going to become a better place and there would be far less hate and race crimes, but the current situations beg to differ. This work is overall successful.  

Chuck Sperry born February 5th 1962, an American artist known for his many screen prints, he prints on paper and oak panels and have made limited edition posters for rock bands and political protest art, his work has ranged from that of astronauts on the moon to portraits of the famous. In 1984 he lived in Columbia for a year, in this time he made his first punk rock flyers, edited the Java (an underground newspaper) with Ann Wood. Sperry moved in 1985 to New York city and he co-made WW3 illustrious with Seth Tobocman and Peter Kuper, 1994 Sperry got his first commission from Arlene Owseichik, he created a Fillmore Auditorium poster for Bill Graham. Later Sperry joined Ron Donovan and Orion Landau and they made their own printing company called Psychic Sparkplug, where they made many rock posters, this became such a big deal because this was the first time a rock poster artists used metallic gold and silver inks in this genre.  

Widespread Panic Lady Liberty, is the name of this poster made by Chuck Sperry. The first thing I noticed was the lady in this piece, she as a light blue skin with darker shades meaning there is shadow in this work telling us the light is coming from off the side, she has a flowery pattern on her skin matching with the flowers of the background. I feel that her eyes are a main focus, it just draws me in her green eyes work well against the pale blue and even with the black of her eyes match well with it. Also her hair is a light orange/ginger which stands out against all the colour used in this piece as there is no other colour that matches it and it covers the whole image, this just draws more attention to the lady. I don’t like the how the text looks, I actually didn’t notice it till I looked into this for further information so I thinks its hard to see the text, the darker blue makes it hidden I think if it was white rather than blue behind the text it would look better. This work feels calm and peaceful to me, the flowers, the women’s expression and the colours are inviting and calming she looks like she is laying on a field of flowers and is content. Now I do like this work, the colour is nice and pleasing to look at, its  not plain or flat your eyes follow the image and scan the whole piece but as I said I don’t like the text, I just think its hard to notice.

Cyril Edward Power born December 17th 1872 – died 25th may 1951, English artist best known for Linocut prints. When WW1 broke out Power was commissioned into the Royal Flying Corps, there is some who think that what he saw during his service affected him deeply and its part of the reason why his work changed from architecture to artwork, he left his wife, his family and moved to London becoming an artist beginning his 20-year partnership with Sybil Andrews, 1920. Yes, he did do painting and etching with other art styles but it was his linocut work that showed his masterful use of colour, form, and line, he tried his best to capture the “rhythm” of life.  

The name of this piece is The Merry-Go-Round by Cyril Powers. A very great looking lino print, the object in this is a merry go round in motion? I think it is in motion because the “seats” looks like they are swinging and moving around the centre, the use of placement and line art help shows things are moving as they are larger at the front and small in the back showing they are disappearing behind the centre. I’d say that all the swirling shapes in this piece are really good a leading your eyes over the work, I get a slightly dizzy feeling looking at the pattern in this even the stairs leading up to the first platform. I like this, I think it’s the use of pattern and colour I like as I do link prints so I can appreciate how difficult it can be to make detailed patterns and designs and it turns out great. I don’t like how wave all the lines are it makes me feel a little dizzy but overall I like this work.  

So, in Conclusion looking all these different works I can say just by looking I have seen something for new interesting ideas and I have learnt some ways I could try stuff I haven’t done. I’d say the “Hope” art is my favourite out of the three I looked into, I just really like the colour, the style and the message/value behind the piece, the others I like too but not as much. Its clear that I have so much still to learn and I am very interested to learning more and making more of my own work.  

Sources:

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Shepard-Fairey  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Sperry  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyril_Power

[hella-free-space]

Hello, I would like to try a planted tank, but i have no clue how to start. I've been doing some research but i keep coming across terms like root tabs, water collum and substrate that I dont know. I have a 10 gallon tank that will have a betta after everything is planted and good. Any tips or help you can offer?

Hey @justanothersortasmartfangirl​! :p Hopefully these explanations of the terms ‘root tabs’, ‘water column’, and ‘substrate’ help you out! :) If you need/want further explanation or need/want me to explain them to you in a different way, please let me know! :)

Root Tabs: small tablets or capsules of plant fertililzer that can be put into the substrate, under plants, that slowly release nutrients. Usually they’re used in tanks with sand substrate, but you can add them to any substrate! You can buy them commercially, from hobbyists, or diy them yourself!Water column: the water in your tank, basically….usually we refer to the tank’s water as the ‘water column’ because there are different levels of the ‘water column’: top, mid, and bottom. Some fish occupy the top level of the water column (like hatchets), some occupy the mid level of the water column (most school fish, like neon tetras), and others occupy the bottom of the water column (like corydoras). fun fact: you can usually tell what part of the water column a fish generally inhabits by looking at their mouth! Usually a fish’s mouth position determines where their food source is, and therefore where they spend a good amount of their time :) superior = top, terminal = middle, inferior = bottom. Another place that you might hear the term ‘water column’ is when people talk about cycling. A common myth is that beneficial (nitrifying) bacteria live in the ‘water column’ (aka the water in your tank), when they actually live on the surfaces in your tank!

Substrate: the ground cover at the bottom of your tank. Sand and gravel are ‘substrates’! There are also plant-specific ‘substrates’ like Fluorite or Eco-Complete or ADA Amazonia. If a tank has no ‘substrate’ then it is called a ‘bare-bottom’ tank :)

Planted tanks are awesome! I keep at least a few live plants in all my tanks! They help to take excess nutrients out of the water and look fantastic imo :)

Tidbits for Planted Tanks:

If there’s a specific substrate that you want / prefer / need: pick plants that work with that substrate! (ex: don’t get dwarf hair grass if you want gravel)

If there are specific plants you want: pick a substrate that will work with them. (ex: if you want amazon swords, pick a nutrient-rich plant substrate)

Some plant substrates leach ammonia for a few weeks. I believe that this is supposed to help your tank cycle and to give your plants some extra nutrients. If you use a substrate that leaches, a fishless cycle is recommended.

If you’re on a budget: sand is going to be your cheapest option, root tabs optional (depending on the plants you want to put in your tank).

Not all plants need to be planted: Marimos and banana plants don’t need to be planted, and sit on top of the substrate. Mosses can be left floating or tied/glued to things. Frogbit and duckweed float on the surface of the water. These kinds of plants do well in any tank, whether the substrate is gravel, sand, plant substrate, glass stones, barebottom, etc.

Some plants are ‘ root feeders’, meaning that they take most of their nutrients from the substrate. You can grow root feeders (like amazon swords) in sand (though they seem to prefer / grow larger leaves in plant substrate) they’ll just grow…really long roots lol when i put swords in my sand-only tank, they used more energy to grow roots than leaves! i had 12″ roots on a 3″ sword after a month or so! Adding root tabs to sand is a good idea if you want plants that are heavy ‘root feeders’.

Some plants are ‘water column’ feeders, meaning that they take most of their nutrients from the water in your tank. These plants can grow floating (like duckweed and frogbit) or be left floating or planted (like anacharis: you can stick it in the substrate or you can let it float).

Most root-feeders do best with a plant substrate, such as Fluorite

Most water-column-feeders aren’t picky and will do well with any substrate

Some plants have ‘rhizomes’, which is like a big fat horizontal ‘root’ that the smaller roots grow down from and the stems/leaves grow up from. Anubias and java ferns are popular rhizome plants! These plants can be superglued to stuff, tied to stuff, or planted. If you choose to plant your rhizome-plants be sure to bury only bury the roots, burying the rhizome may kill the plant.

Mosses can be left floating, superglued to stuff, or tied around stuff. Moss-covered driftwood is pretty popular!

Not all plants require fertilizer, but it usually doesn’t hurt to have some! Seachem Flourish is what I use, but there are probably quite a few more liquid fertilizers that are popular in the hobby. If you add inverts like shrimp to a tank, make sure that your fertilizer is safe for them!

Not all plants require CO2 (a tank that has CO2 (and usually high-lighting and lots of fertilizers) is referred to as a ‘high-tech planted tank’, a tank that has no CO2 (usually low to medium lighting, ferts optional) is referred to as a ‘low-tech planted tank’), but some plants (like dwarf baby tears) require CO2. Plants that require high light and CO2 aren’t usually recommended for beginners, but if you find that you really really really want a tank with a nice ‘carpet’ (some plants stay small and spread until they cover the whole layer of substrate; these plants are referred to as ‘carpeting plants’. popular carpeting plants include s. repens, dwarf baby tears, and dwarf hair grass.) and some other high-needs plants then do a ton of research and go for it! :)

Some plants require lots of one specific nutrient, like iron! Red plants and swords usually need more iron :) You can buy nutrient-specific supplemental fertilizers like Seachem Flourish Iron or Flourish Potassium.

Plants are usually labelled as ‘high-light’, ‘medium-light’, or ‘low-light’. Plants that grow under nearly any standard bulb or low-output LED light are usually ‘low-light’ plants (anubias, marimos, most mosses, anacharis). Some plants prefer a brighter light (like amazon swords), like a plant-specific light (like a finnex stingray or something like that). Others require very high light to survive and thrive. 

The rating of a light (low, medium, or high) is usually measured in PAR (photosynthetically active radiation). 

You may also hear about a certain light fixture’s “temperature”, which refers to the color spectrum of a light (some lights put off more blue or red light), which is measured in ‘Kelvin’. 

You may sometimes hear lighting in terms of “watts per gallon”, which was a popular standard of measuring lighting output when most people used T5/T8 lighting (those long tube bulbs). As we’ve moved more and more into LED lighting, PAR has become a much more accurate way to measure light rating! 

Handy Dandy Linkeroos:

Sand vs Gravel, pros + cons

Flurite vs Eco-complete

Getting the most out of aquarium plants

Plants melt and that’s okay

Big list of aquarium plants

List of low-light aquarium plants

Planted Tanks for Beginners and So Can You

Comprehensive Planted Tank Guide 

An ask that lists some easy aquarium plants 

How to superglue plants to stuff 

How to set up a low-tech planted aquarium

Making your first foray into planted tanks

Plants 101 - How to set up a planted tank

Aquarium LED Lights (priced low to high):

Nicrew

Beamswork

Finnex Stingray

Finnex Fugeray Planted+

Finnex Planted+ 24/7

Fluval LEDs

Aquarium LED lighting reviews

Liquid Fertilizers:

Seachem Flourish Line (Flourish, Flourish Excel, Flourish Iron, Flourish Potassium, etc.)

Aquarium Co-op’s Easy Green (i’ve been wanting to try this out for a while…it’s on my aquarium wishlist! i’ve heard great things and another youtuber who grows and sells plants and was developing his own fertilizer formula said that the Easy Green Formula was quite close to his. If anyone has tried it, please leave a mini review!)

API Leafzone (I’ve seen some people on here who use it, but I haven’t personally used it. If you use this, please leave a mini review!)

Brighwell Aquatics’s FlorinMulti (I have some, but I haven’t used it yet. If you’ve used this product, please leave a mini review!)

Hopefully this info helps you out! :D Let me know if there’s anything you’d like me to clarify further! :) Feel free to share how your planted tank turns out!! :D

If anyone else has anything to add (posts, corrections, helpful tidbits), please do!

[a-coda]

Clean Code

"Truth can only be found in one place: the code." ― Robert C. Martin

I read 'Uncle' Bob Martin's "Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship" because several members of the Linguamatics development team said they were reading it. The book feels like it is this generation's "Writing Solid Code".

It is a dense book which mixes general discussion, long worked examples, and a glossary of rules, but here are some tidbits.

Chapter 1: Clean Code - I loved the disparate opinions collected from some other software luminaries on what is clean code, but especially the accompanying portraits.

Chapter 2: Meaningful Names - I've been guilty of naming schemes that attempt to apply a metaphor but have ended up just being cryptic. This was a reminder to state the intent clearly.

Chapter 3: Functions - This resonated a lot with me. I can't understand why others let functions grow large. If there was a tactic that seemed more alien it was the eagerness to use the method object pattern to reduce parameter passing.

Chapter 4: Comments - Uncle Bob's low opinion of comments are perhaps the most notorious part of the book. I have to agree that they are often excusing code that could be better.

Chapter 5: Formatting - This is less about particular indentation or rules for brace positions, and more about getting code to read nicely from top to bottom of the file.

Chapter 6: Objects and Data Structures - This is about the "Law of Demeter" which itself is about having loose coupling between classes.

Chapter 7: Error Handling - The chapter suggests writing the skeleton of the try-catch-finally block first before writing the guts of the try block. The idea is to help get the transactional nature of the code right no matter how the function returns. It also comes out against checked exceptions in Java.

Chapter 8: Boundaries - Calls for you to wrap third party stuff up and not use it directly.

Chapter 9: Unit Tests - Tests should be FIRST: Fast, Independent, Repeatable, Self-Validating, Timely.

Chapter 10: Classes - Mostly about the SOLID principles, like classes having a single responsibility.

Chapter 11: Systems - Covers dependency injection and aspect-oriented programming.

Chapter 12: Emergence - Kent Beck's simple design rules: runs all the tests, contains no duplication, expresses the intent of the programmer, and minimizes the number of classes and methods.

Chapter 13: Concurrency - Lists the usual rules for concurrent code, with the unexpected but empirically correct observation: writing shutdown code is hard. There's also a separate appendix with more concurrency advice. I'd personally recommend "Java Concurrency in Practice".

Chapter 14: Successive Refinement - This is a large case study of a command line argument parser. He shows the final version first, which spoils the story in my view.

Chapter 15: JUnit Internals - Another worked example, this time trying to improve a bit of JUnit. It was nice to see very simple clean-ups like renaming taken on because the 100% test coverage supported it.

Chapter 16: Refactoring SerialDate - A third example tackling an open-source date class. This time the test coverage is incomplete and so bugs are unearthed in the course of the refactoring.

Chapter 17: Smells and Heuristics - Finally, this chapter is a long glossary of the precepts referenced in the earlier chapters, like getting rid of commented out code.

Overall, it is a great book full of useful advice and reminders even if you don't subscribe to every opinion. I could quibble with the strength of some of the statements but it tallied pretty well with my own experience. It also made me eager to go back and clean up some components I feel personally responsible for.

There is more to be learned from Uncle Bob at his clean coder blog, but I should say that the book isn't only written by Robert Martin. Other chapters are variously written by Tim Ottinger, Michael Feathers, James Grenning, Jeff Langr, Kevin Dean Wampler, and Brett L. Schuchert.

In the end, as Uncle Bob says:

"Programming is a social activity."

[alisahwilson]

The Way to Have Fantastic Marks in Exam

Be optimistic. A beneficial mindset delivers favorable outcomes. Dwell peacefully on your own. Try out self-awareness in meditation. To be aware. Monitor your advancement. Watch at which you reach all of the moment; point. In case you're discontent along with your overall position, think and stop. Which do you do incorrectly? How would you improve matters? What in fact must shift and? Let's go of hands. Yes, even excellent levels are crucial on your own life, nevertheless, they should not expire for. Do your best to not restrain every bit of one's own life and go away space to your vague. That's the way you truly discover. Now, every single university student would like to learn ways exactly to find excellent grades in higher education. Getting very good grades in faculty opens several choices for you personally later on. Just about every student isn't an authority in receiving a fantastic grade. They speculate ways exactly to have yourself a fantastic level at faculty. Thus, it's expected to create certain that you are in possession of a correct time period which aids you to to find fantastic grades with no tension. In the event you take care of so, you can acquire fantastic scores.

Of use suggestions about the best way best to find fantastic scores in higher education?

Make Use of Self-Motivation

Therefore regarding continue to keep up your grades, you ought to be compelled to be successful. Be optimistic. A beneficial mindset delivers favorable outcomes. Dwell peacefully on your own. Try out self-awareness in meditation. To be aware.

Monitor your advancement. Watch at which you reach all of the moment; point. In case you're discontent along with your overall position, think and stop. Which do you do incorrectly? How would you improve matters? What in fact must shift and?

Let's go of hands. Yes, even excellent levels are crucial on your own life, nevertheless, they should not expire for. Do your best to not restrain every bit of one's own life and go away space to your vague. That's the way you truly discover.

Browse the Syllabus

Students really should"browse the entire syllabus" underscores Heather web page, the official leader of jelqing exhorting at Eastern Washington University. It truly is their college students who'll find subtleties on cut-off occasions, allotted readings, and additional credit score openings, after which a few. Recognizing what is from the prospectus could provide students idea of what exactly is instore throughout the period of an event. Even the standard schedule usually includes a-class depiction, a program, both the analyzing rubric, involvement structures, and essential substances.

Cling for educators

Lecturers are invaluable funds. Care to that which they will need to say, and also see out them frequently. However, on the off possibility, you never agree with their viewpoints, deferentially obstacle their points of opinion. A lot are open sufficient to listen to contention and consider a particular outcome.

A lot of instructs talk about their ruling. However, on the off possibility that you simply reveal loyalty in course, teachers are likely to soon be happy to work together with you personally and also certainly will make it possible for one personally too. Possessing an instructor is at most instance wonderful, especially if considering forthcoming -- you will involve some fantastic hints the moment you quit school and also employ to grad faculty, won't you"

Create your own time

It's just an important job to deal with your table. All these would be the Subsequent:

Believe regarding good quality over volume, consistently. So, operate intelligently.

Major Concentrate on a single job at One Time.

Simplifies jobs.

Do away with undesired effects and state" no more" once you want to. Establish a full-time limitation for a workout. Jot your goals down for daily, daily.

Can the Home-work

"Irrespective of if that you really don't become best with this, whatever the team has understood to be vital to become effective from the category is comprised with all the college work," webpage states, for example, this is why it's considerable for college students to complete every endeavor, spending little brain into charge.

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Move to Everyone Your Lessons

Cutting courses won't require for you some fantastic marks. You are going to drop substantial stuff, and you also might need an understanding of essential notions. Additionally, you're spending for visiting the college, therefore why waste your/your people's funds for free? Proceed to every category and continue being contained. In case you never have something, ask. Be fearless in your own approaches and reveal instructors in which you care about your own upcoming success and livelihood.

Be Lively and Keep Concerned

To create comprehended, you ought to really be genuinely participated together with whatever you simply partake inside. Thus, be lively just as far as possible. About the off possibility that you just have 10 queries throughout a conversation, inquire. Talk using the instructors in regards to the workout routines that a brief period after. Proceed for their own available moment. Remain energetic by adding ground exercises too. Con-Tact different college students if needed.

Acquiring great levels additionally Is Dependent on Your Wellbeing Once every so often, college students state, "I really actually don't have the fantastic understanding the way to exactly to have the fantastic grades in higher education, also it frequently induces me to feel frustrated" There's a lot of notion regarding the way exactly our factors influence our behavior, nevertheless 1 point is apparent -- should you worry about yourself, it can have tremendously awkward impacts for the wellbeing.

At this time once you're feeling pumped outside and exhausted, it's excessively difficult to center on any such thing, especially mastering or changing. Together with these lines, it's crucial that you have good care of one's wellness, both bodily and emotional. For passing marks, why you Need to Seriously consider:

Require a Nutritious Diet. DO-ing this aids with becoming all among the basic minerals and nutrients for the human entire body, that affirms your believing potential.

Simply take an adequate snooze. Decide just how much remainder you really would have to experience refreshed. As soon as we relaxation soundly our intellect creates data improved.

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[society-cannot-kill-a-dragon]

Fandom: Shadowhunters Pairing: Malec Rate:M Name: Keep It All Chapter: 1

Summary: When you sister forces you to go to date with someone you never know, you go. When someone who you date asks you to become friends with benefits, you say yes. Because what would be worse thing than falling in love with Magnus Bane?

http://archiveofourown.org/works/9493379

For Isabelle Lightwood watching crappy TV shows at Friday night is lamest thing ever. But here she is with her older brother Alec watching a weird TV show that nobody ever knows or cares in their living room. She recently ended her relationship with Meliorn, thanks God, and she has nothing to do. At least she has nothing to do without getting Alec alone. Stilll she tried because she had nothing to lose:

“So, big bro what do you say about going to Pandemonium? I bet Jace and Clary are there because it is only normal thing to do. You know, having fun like normal people. By normal, I mean undepressed people.”

Finally Alec looked at Isabelle “ I am not depressed Isabelle. Also depression is an important mental illness. Don’t make joke about mental illness.” After that, he turned to TV again.

Isabelle took a deep breath. “I didn’t mean like that. Why don’t you want to go to Pandemonium? Maybe, you’ll meet with someone. You are keeping yourself from romantic relationships. Any kind of relationship to be honest” She knew she was right. Since Alec came out to her she didn’t see Alec with anybody. In teenager years Alec had a crush on Jace so badly. Okay Jace was hot with blonde hair, unique eyes and good body but he was a heterosexual fuckboy and Isabelle never understood why Alec lost his time with pinning over him. If Alec wanted he could make all New York his bitch. He was not only extremely handsome. Thanks to Lightwood genes. He also had best personality. She wasn’t saying these stuff because he is her brother. If only he wasn’t shy. Isabelle wondered if she will see Alec like Magnus at yoga class. Magnus was bisexual and he was confident about himself. She had an idea. “So, you are tried of my offers of socialize and every single god damn week I offer you this. Let’s make a deal.” This words had taken Alec’s attention. He turned the volume of TV down. Good, he is interested Isabelle thought. Hopefully, this was going to be easy.

“You remember Meliorn and I went to yoga course?” Isabelle reminded herself, smooth like that. Like trying to domesticate a wild animal.

“Meliorn who you act vegan for a week for him?” Alec never liked Meliorn. Isabelle now understands why Alec never liked Meliorn but it was too late.

“Yes, that Meliorn. Only good thing about our relationship was this yoga course because not only yoga is good for your body also it will going to help you find true love.” Alec didn’t seemed interested but Isabelle didn’t lose hope.

“Thank you Isabelle but I am not interested.”

Typical Alec, Isabelle thought. But she wasn’t going to give up easily. She was going to fight for her only older brother’s possible happiness.

“There is a guy in there. His name is Magnus and he has amazing abs.” Alec’s face was emotionless but Isabelle knows Alec. He was listening her. “ He is Asian. I know your type is blonde douchebags but you should give him a chance.”

With this sentence Alec turned to Isabelle “Jace is like your family Izzy.” He wasn’t sounding angry but he was questioning.

“Jace is like my brother you know that but there is a reason he is like my brother and not my boyfriend. He is a douchebag and this is end of Jace talk. Let’s turn back to Magnus. He is really good at yoga. Do you know what it means?”

Alec looked to her with an blank expression. Isabelle continued

“He is flexible. Anyway, you have common things such as you both have cats.”

“I don’t think Cruch is our cat. Max is only person he acts nice.”

Why can’t Isabelle find a common interest? At least Alec loved her and Magnus was similar to her. Kind of.

“Do you know Magnus doesn’t dates with white people just like me?”

She could told him lots of things but she chooses that? What was wrong with her? Now Alec is looking to her like she lost her mind.

“Not like he has a fetish or something. Not like I have a fetish or something. Because we both dated white people. But recently he dated with people of color. And you are half-latino and I thought-”

Isabelle couldn’t finish her sentence because Alec threw one of plum couch pillow to her. Isabelle laughed at him. She stopped and Isabelle tried again

“Alec what do you say? I think you guys will be perfect together.”

Alec threw one more pillow. “Iz, I don’t think your friend and I get along.” Izzy caught pillow before it hit her. “Firstly, Alexander Gideon Lightwood what would our lovely mother Maryse Lightwood would think if she ever see her first born child dear Alec throws designer pillows to his only baby sister?” Isabelle said smugly. She continued “Also, Alec I know Magnus isn’t your ideal Prince Charming but are you going to wait for him to rescue you? You can’t find him if you don’t search for him. Furthermore, you need experience for your true love. Now, what do you say?” Isabelle knew if she went further she would never convince him about Magnus. Isabelle didn’t know why she keeps insisting but she had a feeling this will go well. Alec thought for a while. Isabelle could feel how hard Alec thinks. She didn’t know when- it felt like forever - Alec answered “ You won’t force me to anything if I went to date with this Magnus guy, right?”

Isabelle’s blackish-brown eyes shone like Christmas lights. She nodded with enthusiasm. Of course it wasn’t true. Isabelle probably will want lots of things but Alec doesn’t need to know this information right now.

“Okay.” Alec said with a monotone voice but it was more than enough for Isabelle.

This was how Alec Lightwood found himself getting ready for a date that he never wanted to go.

He didn’t want to look like he is excited. He only accepted to date with Magnus because he wanted to shut Isabelle’s mouth. So, he didn’t make any effort about his clothes. He wore his favorite black sweater and his most comfortable jeans. Unfortunately, he got cought by Isabelle.

“ Are you going to go to date in these clothes?” Isabelle said disbelievingly.

Alec saw Jace, Clary (she was lying on Jace) and Simon was sitting on couch. Why Isabelle exaggerated everything? Alec spoke with an annoyed voice

“Sure, I understand why Jace is here but why Simon is here?”

Jace answered instead of Isabelle “We couldn’t miss this. You can’t see Alec Lightwood dating.” Like it is most obvious thing in the world.

While Simon texted he said “Also this squad is odd number and odd number is never good because when we went somewhere Clary and Jace hangs together and you and Isabelle spend time together and I left out.”

Clary seemed offended of Simon’s words. Isabelle looked at Simon suspiciously then turned to Alec “Or you guys,” turned towards to Simon “yes Simon you too,” than turned to Alec again “team up as best friends and guess what? I am nobody’s best friend. But this could change easily if you went to date with proper clothes.” It was scary that Isabelle’s mood changed since beginning of sentence. She was annoyed at the beginning but now her eyes gleaming with thrill.

“What is wrong with my clothes?” Alec muttered. They were sabotaging this so called date and Alec wasn’t angry about it. Maybe little angry. Just maybe.

Clary straighten up and told “ Your sweater has holes on it’s arms. I can see them from here.” Then laid on Jace again . He began to play with her hair.

“Why don’t you wear petrol blue shirt that you wore on our parents anniversary? It is designer and it looks amazing on you.” Isabelle beamed. Isabelle and her brilliant ideas never gets old.

This was why Alec Lightwood known with punctuality was late to his date with Magnus Bane. Luckily (or unluckily) Magnus hated unpunctual people. Of course Alec didn’t know this.

Alec tried to find Magnus in Java Jones (one of the best local coffee shops in New York) . He found somebody that matches Isabelle’s description (Asian, hot and has unique sense of fashion which looks good) but he looked bored. Alec thought for a minute that he should never meet with Magnus. But this thought left as quickly as it came. Isabelle was right Magnus was good looking.

When he got closer he could see Magnus clearly. He was wearing navy blue blazer with sequin on it’s shoulders. It looked designer and familiar. He probably saw it in Izzy’s fashion magazines. Alexander McQueen. Yes it was it. Inside of blazer he wore a white shirt and wore necklace. His hair was made with perfection. He used eyeliner. Alec never thought about guys who wore make up but Magnus looked good. He cleared his throat for Magnus’ attention. Magnus looked up to Alec and Magnus eyed Alec from Alec’s shoes to his hair then he smiled.

“Alexander, right?” Magnus asked with a pleased expression.

“Alec.” He needed correct himself. “I sorry that I am late. There was a Family emergency.” Alec lied. He hoped it wasn’t obvious.

Magnus seemed concerned “Is everything alright? If it is not private you can tell me.”

“N-no, it’s about my brother Max. He had some troubles with school and our parents are away. Izzy isn’t parent material so, I had to took care of it.” Alec was nervous but he didn’t do bad job about this lying stuff. At least he thought like that.

Unfortunately, Magnus didn’t think Alec told him truth because Magnus was looking with and expression filled with suspicion. So, he tried to change the topic. More like he tried to run from conservation.

“What do you want?” Magnus raised one eyebrow. It must have sounded harsh. Alec corrected himself “I will buy you a drink.”

Magnus made a hand movement like it is not necessary but Alec cut off “ I was late and I want to apologise so let me buy you a drink.”

Magnus smiled to Alec. Alec couldn’t deny that Magnus is attractive. Very attractive. Magnus said “Grande non-fat mocha would be nice. Thank you.”

Alec bought non-fat mocha to Magnus and a medium drip to himself. Magnus said “Thank you.” And took a sip of his coffee.“So, Alec law student huh?” Magnus asked.

Alec answered with simple yes because he didn’t know what to say. To be honest he felt nervous in a weird way. Magnus looked to him"Yes? “

"Just yes."Alec shrugged. Magnus swallowed his coffee again” Do you have any questions?“ Alec shook his head "I am new with this date stuff I don’t know what to ask.”

“You can ask anything.” Magnus was waiting for something. Anything that Alec would give but Alec didn’t know anything. It was like his brain stopped working. So he didn’t ask anything. They drank their coffee in silence. When they finished and Alec was getting ready for going to home he heard Magnus.

“Alec I am not going to deny we are not good for each other. We are not the person we are looking for. Maybe because you didn’t want to date with me.” Alec was ready to object but Magnus continued. “I know Isabelle you don’t need to lie. Also, I went through a messy break up and I am not sure if I am ready to date but there is the thing Alec I think you are really attractive and I think we would be good together. Physically. In a sexual way. But I don’t want to have one-stand kind of relationship. I want it to be more friendly and regular thing. So if you are interested you can call me with this number.” He give Alec a card. Why he had cards? Was it normal? But Alec didn’t questioned that. Or he didn’t questioned Magnus’ request. He went outside of Java Jones and went to home.

[vishers]

Video Roundup

Principles of Collaborative Automation - Jessica Kerr - YouTube

Jessica Kerr is amazing. I need to add her to my must watch list. This talk helped me to realize that I need to think about my automation as a partner that can communicate back to me just as easily as I can tell it what to do.

Java Futures, Early 2019 Edition - Brian Goetz - YouTube

Brian Goetz and the rest of the Java team are, as I say whenever I get the chance, an inspiration. I love watching him thoughtfully explore how to adopt the most powerful features from other more experimental technology into the bedrock of this platform.

Our Terraform Journey: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly - YouTube

I'm going to be leading an effort soon to do exactly this. We've been using Terraform for a long time but our usage is decidedly basic and that leads to it being decently hard to maintain and also hard to secure. This talk was helpful in thinking about how to do that.

These are directly related talks

Infrastructure as Code for Software Engineers - YouTube

Crawl, Walk, Run With Terraform - YouTube

Transforming the Management of Application Configurations and Secrets - YouTube

Seth Vargo Closing Keynote - YouTube

Listen to everything Seth Vargo says always. He thinks about development and operational responsibility in such a clear and helpful way. I like this talk because it thinks creatively about how to test (Hello Building Evolutionary Architectures and also advocates for technological constraints.

"Shaping our children's education in computing" by Simon Peyton Jones - YouTube

Similarly listen to everything Simon Peyton Jones says always. He has been applying himself to the problem of education for the past few years and this is an incredibly inspirational and thought provoking talk.

"Gradual typing of Ruby at Scale" by Dmytro Petrashko and Paul Tarjan - YouTube

So much of what I do is this kind of work. Making engineering safer, faster, and easier at the tooling level. I liked this talk especially because of the adoption strategy that they present.

"Data Driven UIs, Incrementally" by Yaron Minsky - YouTube

This talk is really well done and completely outside of my circle of competence which are usually some of my favorite and most fruitful talks to watch. What's presented essentially is how to have highly performant, extremely data-intensive UIs functionally.

"Hackett: a metaprogrammable Haskell" by Alexis King - YouTube

Another relatively left-field talk for me. I love the marriage of metaprogramming and type theory. I still want to explore a language with an actual robust type system.

"Justice For Sale" by Brittany Wald - YouTube

Mass incarceration is a problem. Brittany Wald wants to apply technology to eliminate the gaps between those who can afford justice and those who can't.

"Tree-sitter - a new parsing system for programming tools" by Max Brunsfeld - YouTube

All I want to know is when support for this is landing in Emacs. It's a really intriguing approach to parsing.

"A Tale of Two Asyncs: Open Source Language Design in Rust and Node.js" by Ashley Williams - YouTube

I love the concept of genealogical analysis since I think it fosters intellectual humility. The bold 'rationalism' of the enlightenment is a blight on the land. I'm also a sucker for software history dives.

"Contracts For Getting More Programs Less Wrong" by Rob Simmons - YouTube

I'm a big fan of contracts and they're something I wish I had time to explore more.

"Performance Matters" by Emery Berger - YouTube

This is really one of the better talks I've ever seen. What a presentation! It also, of course, brings to mind It Takes Awhile to Create Nothing by Ron Jeffries. Learn all about how layout can affect performance and how you can apply rigor to engineer around it. Also Coz seems quite neat.

Related:

"A Practical Look at Performance Theory" by Kavya Joshi - YouTube

"A Box of Chaos: The Generative Artist's Toolkit" by Benjamin Kovach - YouTube

Another from left field. Some of the art was quite beautiful and I love the idea of programmer as curator in this space (and possibly many other AI spaces).

Related:

"The Glitching Hour" by Amy Wibowo - YouTube

"Understanding Microservices with Distributed Tracing" by Lita Cho - YouTube

Upping our observability game is top of mind.

Related:

"Observability: Superpowers for Developers" by Christine Yen - YouTube

"Beyond traces: the insights in trace aggregates" by Daniela Miao - YouTube

"Freeing the software that runs our elections" by Roan Kattouw - YouTube

This talk made me think, as I often do, of whether I should be using my software engineering career to be doing something other than helping people with a lot of money take more money from people who have less money.

"Isolation without Containers" by Tyler McMullen - YouTube

This talk reminded me of a tweet by Jessie Frazelle about how a complex istio+knative feature can be accomplished in just a few lines of bash using standard linux tech. So much of 'progress' in tech is someone just ignoring or being ignorant of how something already works and going and making some framework or tool for it with all the bugs that have been fixed in the intervening 15 years since the feature that already did it was introduced.

"Moving from 1 to N regions: an open retrospective" by Andrew Bloomgarden - YouTube

This is literally my job right now. I need to take some more detailed notes about this one and apply them. I really appreciate the 'open retro' format of this talk.

"Git from the Ground Up" by Safia Abdalla - YouTube

Can anyone resist watching a talk on git internals?

"Building Senior Engineers" by Dalton Mitchell - YouTube

This talk really hit home. I have rarely seen mentorship done well and most companies I've worked for have prioritized hiring engineers that can just 'plug and play' (which never really works out anyway) rather than focusing on growing the engineers they need.

"Alda's dynamic relationship with Clojure" by Dave Yarwood - YouTube

Watching weather data become sound was so much fun.

"Safety in Chaos: Forming Realistic Failure Hypotheses" by Subbu Allamaraju - YouTube

Chaos Engineering is something that I want to get into asap.

"Uptime 15,364 days - The Computers of Voyager" by Aaron Cummings - YouTube

This talk was an incredible amount of fun. I want to be friends with the presenter. It immediately made me think of Russ Olsen's "To the Moon!" which I was lucky enough to see live.

"Correctness proofs of distributed systems with Isabelle" by Martin Kleppmann - YouTube

I want to be able to reach for correctness proofs for particularly important problems. I'm a pragmatist at heart and I think the number of things this is really important for are quite small but having the tool in my toolbox would be amazing. It immediately makes me think of Testing the Hard Stuff and Staying Sane by John Hughes.

"Better Integration Tests for Performance Monitoring" by Maude Lemaire - YouTube

I love the idea of testing in production. Performance regressions as integration tests is a really neat idea.

"Meander: Declarative Explorations at the Limits of FP" by Jimmy Miller - YouTube

Declarative programming is a recurring theme in my tech exploration, possibly because the Clojure community at large is pretty obsessed with it. Having just read through The Art of PostgreSQL I can say that believing that you can write a better algorithm is almost always hubris. Meander immediately made me think of specter although the speaker took pains to differentiate them.

It also reminded me of an old idea I had to use example data as the query interface.

Keynote: Collective Problem Solving: Music, Science, Software - Jessica Kerr - YouTube

This is my kind of talk. Jessica Kerr goes an a discipline melding tear to sell her new term for the way we develop software in partnership with each other and our automation.

Rust: A Language for the Next 40 Years - Carol Nichols - YouTube

I want to learn Rust at some point, just like I want to learn Go. I'm especially intrigued by Rust's governance model. I wonder how that will shake out over the years.

[jessiewre]

Day 31

Tues 4th Feb

Two spanish omelettes were consumed in record time as we aimed for our agreed meeting time of 8:45am at Soft Power.

Leaving our camp at 8:42 was a bad start.

Thankfully we found a boda straight away and we were only 4 minutes late and Agre was chilled, getting himself a rollex for breakfast. He took us into the office for a brief intro to other staff, tried (unsuccessfully) to locate a pen for us to sign the paperwork, and then we walked round to the local pre-school we would spend the morning. The school had 3-6 year olds and there were normally about 90 a day but Agre explained that the holidays had just finished and many kids were still in ‘holiday mode’ so just hadn't turned up. Wouldn’t mind taking on that approach whenever I got back from a holiday, ‘Sorry boss, I’m still in holiday mode so I’ll see you when I’m ready yeah’.

As it was many of the children's first day at school, there were some kids who looked rather apprehensive and teary. Same as in the UK then! However, I have to say that the parents looked extremely chilled out and relaxed about the whole thing - maybe slightly different on that side of things.

There was one kid called Caesar who looked like the world was ending. 

And as soon as one would cry, another one would remember that they were sad too and start crying. The kids had to remove shoes before going inside and Caesar stood balling his eyes out while two of us tried to get his shoes off. It was comedic and heart-wrenching at the same time, and Agre told us that in between his tears, Caesar was saying in the local llanguage 'I WANA GO TO SCHOOL! I WANA GO TO SCHOOL!'. Which made no sense at all.

All the kids were told to wash their hands using an ingenious contraption of an old container tied up with a hole in, then tied to a stick on the floor to create a sort of pedal to tip the water out, and all the toilets were hole in the ground cubicles. Proper toilets with seats are a unnecessary luxury I guess.

The lessons were quite casual as it was still only the 2nd day of term and first up, the teacher got a box of toys and emptied them onto the floor for some play. Most of the toys were basic plastic Happy Meal rejects as far as I could see, with the odd doll in there. Lots of the toys were broken so didn't even work properly. But the 45 kids all took something and played, no arguments about who had what or what was available. I sweat there was not a whiff of a spoilt child here.

Lots of the kids played with their friends and some of them were keen to play with us so we got involved while trying to involve and distract some of the sad kids. Phil had Caesar looking extremely glum sat next to him, crying on and off throughout as he forgot he was sad and then remembered again. 

After this was playtime outside and the kids went WILD. There was a slide that the kids FLEW down at high speed and sometimes they would land so awkwardly in the dry mud that I was sure they'd cry - but no. Honestly they are so much tougher than muzungu kids! From what we have seen, they seem to be brought up with a lot more freedom with no mollycoddling meaning they seem stronger and more independent. They are way more physically confident and tough - naturally this means it takes more for them to complain. I'm not saying it's definitely better, but its interesting as the kids are so different. I’m generalising massively and only talking about our own experiences, but we have not seen one African child have a tantrum since we got to Africa, and there are children EVERYWHERE you look. The only children we've seen having a tantrum have been muzungu and it stuck out like a sore thumb. 

I am only sharing what I am observing and I am not saying that I won't also have a tantruming muzungu child. Obviously I will. It's going to be a little twat I'm sure. But I like to think that these experiences will serve as a constant reminder to us that spoiling children is actually spoiling children, and that we must let children fall over in the mud without immediately scooping them up & encouraging tears. Let them see if it even hurts before we tell them it should. Its not about saying you need to like in a shed in poverty to have nice children, but spoiling children does them absolutely no favours at all. And also, kids want the simple things and can make fun out of ANYTHING if given the chance. If they are used to getting whatever they want whenever they want, they will probably be twats when they grow up, and who wants a twat kid? I certainly don’t. Mum & Dad if you are reading this and wondering how you ended up with 3 twat kids then I really don’t know what to say apart from I’m sorry 😂😂😂.

We went down the slide with some of the younger kids a few times and Phil went to the swings. Even Caesar had a go, though it was hard to tell if he was enjoying himself or not. 

In the final class, the teacher asked the children if anyone wanted to start off a song for the visitors. Quite a few kids put their hand up, then the teacher would choose one who would stand up shyly and look at us, then begin to sing. The class would join in and it was sooooo cute. Then everyone sang songs with the teacher about numbers. Everytime someone did something good, they would stand up and put their hands on their hips while dancing side to side and everyone would sing together ‘Lovely, lovely and nice!’. Ok its probably hard to imagine it, but hopefully we got a video of it somewhere and I’ll share it! It was too cute.

One child found the whole thing all too overwhelming and I saw that she was completely falling asleep while sat up cross legged. I told one of the teachers who grabbed her a little mat and let her sleep at the back of the room. First day at school is tough eh.

Some of the children were so keen to sit with us and a little clingy that I worried about us leaving at the end and them feeling abandoned the next day. But I needn’t have worried as most of them walked straight off when the day finished at 12:30, not even a glance behind them. One kid was putting his shoes on all fine, but the moment he spotted his sister at the gate he remembered he was sad and began to cry and try to put his shoes on super fast, which did not work.

It was only 3 hours and we didn’t really do much to help compared to what other volunteers would have achieved with the charity, but we donated $30 each and will definitely donate more in the future. I could really see where the money was going and how much had been achieved already. If anyone has any doubts about giving money to charity, then give to this one as I can vouch for it!

We got a boda back to the hotel as the rain was due any minute and agreed to meet at 3pm to head to another site for another few hours of volunteering.

We were meant to pack up our things ready for check out but luckily the hotel said we could eat before packing up our room - so we went to Black Lantern for tomato soup with garlic bun, and cheese tomato toasties. The rain went crazy and we called Agre who confirmed that it would be too tricky to get to the volunteering ‪at 3pm‬. But as our money was super low (mysteriously), Phil had to go and get our dollars and bumped into Jimi on the way. They returned to BL and Phil was like Wait till you hear this Jess. 

Jimi then told me what had happened to him the night before when he'd left us. 

He was walking home and was not far when he heard a strange noise. He moved closer to the noise and it sounded like crying. He then found a BABY less than a year old in a sheet, abandoned on the side of the road near a bush. He took it to a police station and they took it in. The next morning, he heard about a lady in the village who was shouting that her baby was missing and was desperately searching. He went to find her and they went to the police station and then the hospital together and she was reunited with her baby girl, Alice. Turns out there was a robbery in her home and they took lots of stuff and the baby too but then just left it on the roadside. 

Jimi was a little in shock you could tell. Such a crazy story. 

We went back to the our camp to finally check out of our room ‪at 4pm‬ oops and Phil was straight into the pool, where a frog soon joined him for a swim.

We got bodas into town with Jimi and I told him we wanted to go a sports shop. We’d learnt from him that he had started a youth coaching club himself called Castillo. Castillo was partly set up also by Jimi’s late brother Abel who tragically passed away from cancer a few years ago and the aim was to help vulnerable children and give them more purpose, strength and confidence.

So we offered to buy some items to help out.

We definitely got overcharged cos we is muzungus init,  but we bought this lot for about £40:

- Two goalkeeper gloves

- A full set of team socks 

- 4 ref whistles 

- Set of ref cards

- 10 training cones 

Jimi was super grateful and we celebrated with a trip to Java Cafe - Jimi needed one final burger from us of course. I managed to speak to Emily on the phone and we accidentally ordered a chicken curry (was delicious dammit) plus had an apple, cashew, carrot salad...with masala fries.

Our bodas cut across the highway onto the central reservation then to the correct side of the road (!) and we got to the bus station on time, hoping that it was not super delayed travelling from Kampala. Ended up being 45 mins delayed but in that time we were able to achieve many things:

- Phil enjoyed more beers with Jimi and at one point buggered off to a bar while I sat with all the bags wondering where they were

- Jimi fixed my sexy walking boot with some superglue

- Jimi fixed his own flip flop with superglue

- Jimi fixed Phil’s trainer with superglue

- Jimi recorded a video message for Buj & Jenni

- We pee’ed before the bus in some MANKY toilets (essential)

- We bought water before the bus (ESSENTIAL ALSO)

Phil - the man, the athlete, the legend - had only gone and booked us VIP seats on the bus that were approximately DOUBLE the size of the other seats what an absolute win, so we had no seats in front of us & leg stretching was 100% available. Phil tried to pie me off with the aisle seat but I managed to swerve it and nab the window seat obvs and the journey was pretty comfortable. At least for me.

We were at the Kenyan border by midnight and our East Africa visa made it easy to enter.

Annoying that they charge you to use the loo though, and Phil argued with them about it saying he had no cash yet and just went and pee’d without paying. He then walked straight up to the guy selling snacks to see what was available AWKWARD. When the man offered us some Shitcake I decided I wasn’t hungry. On closer inspection, I believe he was referring to the shortcake.