#and we learned to code and we had a class dedicated to game development

[mistninja]

Let's see if I'm insane enough to actually make it playable

[evelynpr]

bakugou for the character ask game?

Truly the teenage boy, shonen deuteragonist, love interest coded, gay asshole, of all time.

My first impression - Woah I did not understand why people were so into this guy. Like I get it, he's a flawed and loud pretty boy, he gets character development, and probably gay, but seriously him??? His mouth is so fucking foul and he is so up his ass. - I was meh with this character, enjoyed him in fan content, but just did not get why people were sooo into this guy.

My impression now - I cried in "Light Fades To Rain". Twice. - My god his growth...his will, his persistence, and by god his love for Izuku is so ridiculous and powerful I just cannot help but admire the little shithead. - He is also a lot more to me than I expected, with the whole "foul mouth shit", "high expectations bullshit", "violent urges", and "dedicating your whole life and love to someone you love and admire" and that...that makes me feel quite conflicted.

Favorite thing about that character - The thing about Bakugou is that...you just cannot help but wish you had the same kind of persistence, strength, will, and power that he does. I love how all this is initially so shallow and selfish, then grows to wanting to be a better and truer hero. He really learns and changes and is just an unstoppable force of nature, it's genuinely incredible and beautiful to watch.

Least favorite thing - I wished that the overall writing did go harder in making him stop bad-mouthing people and...everything so much. You can tell he did grow to respect and care for people around him more, but by gods he is sooo bad at communicating his feelings right now. (tbf, he is so fucking young and traumatized) - Also, really please stop hitting people. I get a knee-jerk reaction to that kind of physical violence sometimes ngl.

Favorite line/scene - There are so many. I already mentioned his death in "Light Fades to Rain" so I'll mention a different one - Team Bakugou in Class A vs B was so goddamn good, for being a monumental milestone of his character. How much he trusted his teammates and put himself in danger to save others, winning in the end. No injuries, no failures, truly a perfect beautiful victory. How he also pushes Deku to keep getting better afterwards in his usual constipated-ass language too. Man I just love that battle to death.

Favorite interaction that character has with another - (me pulling out scenes that aren't bkdk centered here hahaha) - I fucking LOVED the Bakugou vs Ochako fight. It made me love Ochako so so much as a kid. I really wished we had a follow-up to that battle, and it genuinely changed my life. - I love how it really shows just how focused and rational he is in battle. How he truly respects his opponents, Ochako in this case, and the sports festival really establishes so much about him.

A character that I wish that character would interact with more - Speaking of which...OCHAKO VS BAKUGO 2 COME ONNNN - There is SO MUCH these two need to talk about. How to save people, who they want to save, who saved them, never underestimating each other, how they changed and grew. I just love these two characters to bits, that's why I need them to FIGHT AND TALK SO BADDDD - Additional: Also Toga (see my post on Toga right before this one lmao), Shoto (because I still don't really get their friendship but its hilarious, and I love Shoto)

Another character from another fandom that reminds me of that character - I legit cannot think of anything here...like for Toga...I am so sorry my brain is blanking T__T - It's hard to be a massive anger-issue filled, victory-focused, die for their lover (twice), amazing chef, all at once, kinda guy...you know?

A headcanon about that character - I am a believer in trans!fem Bakugo in the future. He's so ridiculously angry for some reason, voice always cracking, and just on-edge for some reason. Idk I just think its hilarious and satisfying if he transed his gender in the future and became happier and more comfortable.

A song that reminds of that character - I also have a Bkdk playlist in the making! Here's some bkg focused songs in character development order: - Boys will be Bugs, President Perfect, Top of my School, Oh No!, I'm Gonna Win, The Last of the Real Ones, Skyfall, Die For You, Set Fire to the Rain

An unpopular opinion about that character - Like Toga, he actually isn't possessive. I think he quite well understands and accepts that Izuku is a very loving person that many people are easily drawn to (I mean, he'd be a hypocrite if he didn't understand that). - He is protective instead of possessive. He keeps an eye out for anything and anyone who could possibly actually hurt Izuku, but he doesn't hold him back at all in hanging around with others, and when other people fall for Izuku either. - He is actually quite skinny, and doesn't have the big thick buff guy build. Those go to Izuku and Iida more imo.

Favorite picture - I never really thought of this much??? I love art of him being softer, more solemn, quiet and contemplative even. I guess I'll go pick out some favs right now...

Here they are! Hope you enjoy the post lmao

[jasonp01]

Bright Afternoons, Bright Futures: Afterschool at Yang Fan Academy in Pleasanton

Every parent knows that the hours after school are just as important as the time spent in the classroom. It’s during these moments that children continue to grow academically, socially, and emotionally. At Yang Fan Academy in Pleasanton, our After School Program is thoughtfully designed to support this critical time, offering a well-rounded and nurturing environment that blends academic success with creative exploration and personal development. We aim to make every afternoon a stepping stone toward a brighter, more successful future.

Why Choose Yang Fan Academy’s After School Program in Pleasanton? Selecting the right after school care means finding more than just a place for supervision. At Yang Fan Academy, we focus on a holistic approach that ensures your child’s academic, emotional, and social needs are met. Here's what makes our program stand out:

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2. Engaging Enrichment Activities At Yang Fan Academy, learning extends beyond homework. Our after school enrichment activities offer a diverse range of experiences designed to spark curiosity and foster new skills. These interactive, hands-on activities not only engage children’s minds but also stimulate creativity and critical thinking. Students can dive into exciting programs such as:

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4. Developing Social Skills and Emotional Intelligence At Yang Fan Academy, we know that after school time is crucial for social growth. Our program includes activities that promote teamwork, communication, and empathy through group projects, games, and team-building exercises. These experiences help children learn to collaborate, resolve conflicts, and develop important social skills that will benefit them throughout their lives.

By encouraging social interaction and cooperation, we help students develop emotional intelligence, build friendships, and enhance their leadership abilities. The Yang Fan Academy Difference: Preparing Students for Tomorrow In a rapidly evolving world, students need more than academic knowledge to thrive. At Yang Fan Academy, our after school program in Pleasanton combines academic enrichment with personal and social growth, providing students with the tools they need to succeed both now and in the future.

We offer a well-rounded approach to after school care, nurturing your child academically, emotionally, and socially. Whether it’s academic support, exploring new hobbies, or building lifelong friendships, our program is designed to ensure that every afternoon contributes to your child’s overall well-being and development.

Enroll in Yang Fan Academy’s After School Program Today! Don’t settle for ordinary after school care—give your child the opportunity to thrive with Yang Fan Academy’s after school enrichment program. With comprehensive academic support, engaging activities, and a caring community, your child will look forward to each day’s new adventures in learning and growth.

Join us at Yang Fan Academy in Pleasanton and see how our after school program can brighten your child’s afternoons while laying the foundation for their future success. Enroll today and watch your child blossom in an environment where their potential is nurtured and their future is bright!

Name :Yang Fan Academy

Address :4160 Hacienda Dr STE 100, Pleasanton, CA 94588, United States

Contact :+1 925-268-7798

Website : https://yfacademy.org/

[kosakashuntaro]

for some reason, i became obsessed with this irrelevant filler character from izumi tsubaki’s lesser known series, oresama teacher. he’s consistently forgotten by fans and ranked 2nd to last out of the student council members, but despite that, i still think he’s a great and well-written character. also, he’s super cute!

and so without futher ado— here’s my stupidly long lovemail/analysis of shuntaro kosaka. a pure 1.5k word ramble about my favorite boy!

kosaka first appears in chapter #43, introduced alongside the rest of the student council members. he’s in class 1-3, the same as yukioka komari. the first major scene we see him in is him having a bad relationship with fellow council member, kanon nonoguchi.

not gonna lie, i forgot this scene existed and i don’t like it since he touches her forcefully. it’s a setup for their relationship later on, though. at this point, kosaka and nonoguchi are both closed off and cold towards each other; aside from their animosity towards each other from their interactions, they have their own personal issues for not being good with interacting with others. nonoguchi has her problems with men stemming from childhood and kosaka just seems bad at understanding how to act properly with people in general.

kosaka’s main arc is the student festival arc, where he plays the villain, but honestly, he’s just cringy as fuck in it. i think it’s good in that it shows how damn extra he is, though-- imo, he’s the most realistically extra of the characters. he’s a 15 year old kid who thinks he’s smart just ‘cause he gets good test scores. of course he’s going to be that bitch who smiles sneakily and thinks of himself as the grandmaster of the chess game, even when his partner in crime, kawauchi, knew all along of his betrayal plan.

we don’t see much of his motivations or personality in the student festival arc as it focuses mainly on okegawa and kawauchi. all we know so far is that he’s smart, manipulative, and sneaky. seems like a typical bad guy.

until the last chapter of the arc, #51. for the first time, we see the previously cool (lol) and cunning kosaka shuntaro... nervously fretting over how to kneel in apology to his superior, miyabi hanabusa.

we learn that kosaka is obsessively reliant on instruction manuals, ever since his childhood. he’s ridiculously good at studying and always gets first place in tests at school. however, he can’t cope with unexpected changes at all. everything has to go exactly to plan or else he comes up with a different approach to completing the original plan, that isn’t always appropriate for the situation.

he’s perfectly confident in interacting with people-- that’s obvious enough throughout the student festival arc--, but he’s bad at interpreting things on the fly, once again, prone to saying things inappropriate to the time and place. kosaka has to do things in order, step-by-step, otherwise he can’t proceed.

a while back, there was a post that talked about him being autistic. to be honest, i never considered this earlier (as in a few years ago, when i first started liking him a lot). but reading back, he really is strongly coded as such, i think. so frankly, the reason i like him might be a more personal reason, but... anyway.

like with the other student council members, miyabi helps him relax and feel better, guiding him to be more carefree and open. i have mentioned this a few times, but i think it’s really wonderful that miyabi basically helped out a bunch of kids with mental issues when their problems might’ve looked small or stupid from the outside. this is also brought up in chapter #104 during the hayasaka arc, where mafuyu and hayasaka both contact him for information about miyabi. he basically says that miyabi got him to join the student council because he was worried about kosaka’s personality and wanted to stay near him for help. 

honestly, kosaka is probably the one who’s most grateful to miyabi (outside of nonoguchi?) simply because he recognizes his own issues. there’s a reason why he’s the only student council member whose face you can’t see during the scene where miyabi graduates; he’s the only one of the guys who cry.

kosaka’s problem is that he can’t cope with his plans going off at all, so miyabi sends him to prank mafuyu. even though he tries to get her by making many elaborate plans, he eventually learns to just attack without plan. it ends with him stuck in a ditch and miyabi unexpectedly pranking kosaka himself.

here we see kosaka’s first genuine smile. and it’s beautiful!!! he’s a sweetheart!!! i think that the story of kosaka could’ve worked even without the student festival arc, but that establishes him as an dramatic kid who’s super smart and cunning-- and here we see him just relax for once, and be truly happy.

after this, there aren’t any more kosaka focused chapters. however, he does appear once in a while, usually with the other student council members. (he’s in the very next chapter using yui’s equipment to cross the lake. but since he usually feeds the fish, they all come to him for food...)

kosaka's bad relationship with nonoguchi is reiterated in nonoguchi's arc, chapter #71 where she beats him up for saying that all girls want a prince. it's a stereotypical thing to say either way, but nonoguchi's response about "men wanting to be princelike is self-serving" is more due to her own issues rather than about kosaka in particular. anyway, this is just to highlight that at this point, they both still have their own problems and don't get along.

the next time we see him is during the school trip arc, where, although he’s still being far too overprepared by carrying too much luggage, he seems to be getting along with his class very well. kosaka organizes his class’s schedule and accommodates for changes on the fly (when his teacher wanted to stay longer to see the sea otters), even if it annoys him a bit. it’s an improvement! he’s able to assume a role where his pedantically organized personality is a benefit. mafuyu also notes that both he and ayabe have become more carefree and open with others, with kosaka becoming “the center of class 4″.

i think this chapter, #82, is also the first time kosaka talks about yukioka. since yukioka doesn’t talk to anyone aside from miyabi, he had never heard her voice despite being a close friend. there’s not really any significance to them being besties (does there need to be?), but it does show his sense of responsibility for others since he basically takes care of her. he has more scenes with yukioka in various arcs, mostly in the miyabi graduation arc where he helps protect yukioka from aki.

speaking of that arc, like the other student council members, he gets something precious to him stolen. in this case, it’s the books that he always reads. we find out that he’s actually surprisingly good at drawing from memory despite him believing he doesn’t know how to draw without instructions. this may be partially may be some juxtaposition of him truly being ‘creative’ even though his methods are so ‘academic/scientific’ (even though i don’t believe ‘drawing well’ is what ‘creativity’ is). in my opinion, this represents his progress in general. it’s probably not just art/drawing, but he’s actually gotten better at doing most things without manuals without realizing or being aware of it.

this idea is also expanded upon with the protection of yukioka i mentioned earlier. because kosaka doesn’t have his books, he doesn’t act so formal and is instead more forceful and ‘manly’, making it easier for him to communicate with classmates. by the way, kosaka’s actually popular with the girls in his class (shown in school trip arc 1-koma), but doesn’t realize it because he can’t understand things not directly stated. what a guy...

here is a short break to talk about kawauchi. i think their relationship is hilarious. from kawauchi getting him to dig holes to kawauchi stealing his math books... i feel really sorry for kosaka, but it’s so funny... he just can’t escape him. even in the very last student council saga arc, it was kawauchi behind the scenes all along...

really they’re two characters who are heavily associated with each other and yet... i don’t think kawauchi’s relationship with kosaka says anything about his personality since kosaka was such a one-bit character during the majority of the arc where they interacted (plus kawauchi is awful to everyone). all kawauchi did was give kosaka more trust issues and broke his phone. i feel kinda mean for saying this but it’s so funny how he caused kosaka to be absolutely terrified of delinquents.

honestly kosaka like... doesn’t have a reason to be associated with kawauchi beyond the student festival event. imo it’s just a way for tsubaki to make kosaka relevant or appear once in a while since the other character he’s associated with (yukioka) got a boyfriend and doesn’t appear as often (kawauchi’s common appearances is due to his surprising popularity with fans).

enough about kawauchi though, we’re finally at the end of this long and loving post. at the conclusion of the miyabi graduation arc, the very first conflict of kosaka shown is finally resolved: he’s made up with nonoguchi!

i really love this scene so much!!! i know it’s kinda just a set-up for the next joke, but tsubaki still dedicated over a page just to nonoguchi and kosaka, so it’s genuine to me! it’s so lovely to see that nonoguchi and kosaka have both resolved their own issues with the help of miyabi and the public morals club. they both acknowledge that they weren’t the best in the past, but now they can become friends... this is a relationship that’s been developing in the background of oresama teacher for over 80 chapters... it makes me so happy that tsubaki gave a resolution to it in the end. she truly does care about all her characters no matter how unpopular they are, and i love her for that.

(by the way, i just found out that this can badge released in the same year as the miyabi graduation arc. they’re so cute!)

the story of kosaka and the student council as a whole ends here. everyone’s finally improved, and they’re all happy... people say “oresama teacher has no plot”, but there’s so much to the story of the student council. if i can write so much about one minor character who rarely appears, i think there’s plenty of plot and plenty to say about the others.

that’s all i have to say on this topic for now.

actually, i started writing this back in 2019 but i forgot about it until recently. my thoughts haven’t changed, though... i hope this post shines some light on why i like kosaka and tsubaki so much. to be honest, though, i’d probably just say that he’s sooo cute and i wanna protect that sweet smile of his... my 174 cm tall son.

[save-the-spiral]

PLS PLS LIST THE SWAPS!! TELL ME ABOUT THE SIBLINGS AND ALSO HIFUMI BECAUSE I LOVE HIM (IF YOU WANT!) I will also send more questions in the morning too, excited to see what you’ve been working on!!

OK OK OK !!!!! AHH! So, before assigning talents, I swapped the pools, so for the first game, I use the talents from the second game, and vis versa! For some i listed gender, sexuality, or neurodivergencies, though this isn’t all of them, and I haven’t developed them all to the same level!

This is SO long. I didn’t even bother mentioning things like my plans for the killing games. (I have DR1 planned out in full, but only parts of DR2 and the v3 anime)

THANK YOU FOR THE ASK MY HEART SKIPPED A BEAT IN HAPPINESS WHEN I SAW I HAD NEW ASK NOTIFS!!

LIST:

Trigger Happy Havoc (first game)

Kyoko Kirigiri- Ultimate Luckster- Mastermind (: Sometimes lesbians can be evil okay! was trained as a detective like everyone in her family and didn’t get the ultimate :) she’s definitely not mad about that :) her luck cycle depends on how far she plans things ahead. her good luck is when she’s spontaneous! She hates when ‘normal’ people are accepted by ultimates.

Makoto Naegi- Photographer (Mostly wildlife and nature photography, with Sayaka helping him for some animal photography (: trans and bi <3 One of sayaka’s birds nests in his hair like all the time)

Kiyotaka Ishimaru- Ultimate Swordsman (AUTISTIC ICON, has trained in kendo since he was a kid, then was essentially given away to the Fujisaki clan by his very stressed dad. Semiverbal, rarely speaks.)

Chihiro Fujisaki- Ultimate Yakuza (Taka is her bodyguard! His family is in debt to hers, the Fujisaki clan is the most powerful in Japan. trans icon, of course, dates Sayaka! Very direct, though she’s far more delicate and polite when talking to taka, her best friend)

Sakura Oogami- Ultimate Nurse (Works as an EMT- her clan still is in martial arts, so she’s still very buff, she assists in injuries at the family dojo. Autistic Icon)

Asahina Aoi- Ultimate Gamer (ULTIMATE ADHD. streams and has a ton of fun, will ramble while breaking records, demigirl who loves her girlfriend sakura :)

Mukuro Ikusaba- Ultimate Chef (Works best with ‘cheap’ food, and making them taste good. a byproduct of growing up on the streets with junko, and junko being bored of the same old food they dug out of the trash. now works closely with junko for her teams’ nutritional needs! autistic and sapphic.)

Junko Enoshima- Ultimate Team Manager (there are SO many sports she can never get bored, and the professional scene is always changing! prefers coaching womens’ teams, because being an ultimate brings them more publicity and usually higher pay :)

Mondo Oowada- Ultimate Prince (OH MY BOY. trans adhd icon. now the crown prince of Novoselic, with a reagent in his place until he comes of age. His service dog Chuck is a maltese and an absolute sweetheart. Chihiro takes him under her wing to teach leadership. also dates taka later OF COURSE, though they’re poly and I may add more ppl to their relationship later.)

Celestia Ludenburg- Ultimate Musician (specializes in violin, most strings, though she can play any instrument. grew up poor, dedicated herself to an instrument and persona to cope)

Byakuya Togami- Ultimate Musician (Yep. two musicians. two catty trans gay icons about to throw down. they HATE each other and grew up as rivals. specialize in classical, they literally tore a professional orchestra full of grown adults apart trying to make them side with who was the best musician. they’re so good that they’re matched, and Hope’s Peak accepts them as one student and combined ultimate. they room together. they fight. Literally if one of them gets expelled, the other does too, so they’re STUCK. eventually they become literally inseparable and insufferable together like the WORST siblings. I love them.)

Sayaka Maizono- Breeder (animal handler) (Specializes in birds!!!!!! has songbirds on her shoulders all the time. will give unsettling animal facts without realizing they’re unsettling. sends her songbirds to serenade chihiro when they start dating <3)

Yasuhiro Hagakure- Gymnast (you see this tall goof who acts like an older brother to everyone and wonder HOW he’s a gymnast. he’s completely different in competitions, though still lighthearted. becomes a big brother figure to mukuro and junko especially <3 also trans bc i say so.)

Leon Kuwata- Traditional Dancer (he just. kinda hates it. it takes SO much work and effort but he takes to it naturally. his cousin kanon is NOT like in canon, instead she’s helpful. he’d literally rather be doing anything else. doesn’t know how to do anything like... basic either. can’t cook. cant do his own laundry. everything was dedicated to traditional japanese dancing before he attended HPA.)

Toko Fukawa- Engineer (writes schematics and is very good at it. gets VERY upset when her plans go wrong. her notes are orderly and perfect. host for their system!)

Syo- Mechanic (a factive of genocider syo, NOT an actual killer. she’s a protector mainly, and also is more adept at hands on skills when it comes to fixing things, her hands are less shaky. Her notes are a disaster and she does it to spite Toko.)

Hifumi Yamada- (???) (reserve course) Protagonist! My BOY. HIFUMI IS GOOD OKAY. He’s autistic and loves anime and gaming! he’s not particularly ultimate-leveled at them, or anything else! Attending Hope’s Peak as a reserve course student! At one point he joins the student council as a reserve course representative even if he’s only a freshman :) He’s also a moderator in Hina’s livestream chat, under the username of JusticeHammer, fastest ban hammer this side of the internet. He's internet friends with hina and sakura, and doesn’t realize Oh We Go To the same SCHOOL until he bumps into them. and realizes hina doesnt know what he looks like. but sakura does. its hilarious. he’s aroace, and during the year they’re locked in HPA, is in a queer platonic partnership with Hina and Sakura, while they’re dating each other. it’s great.)

Goodbye Despair! (second game)

Peko Pekoyama- Lucky student (ohohoh. her luck relies on her conviction. if she has doubts her bad luck strikes HARD. trans!, was taken in by Fuyuhiko’s family when she was a baby, grew up as just another kid in the family. They all expected Fuyu to go off to HPA on his own and then BOOM acceptance letter)

Fuyuhiko Kuzuryu- Programmer (He. gets so angry while coding. He has an array of rubber ducks to talk to and work through his coding issues with. trans of course. Very protective of Peko when people say she doesn’t have a ‘real’ ultimate. ADHD and Autistic)

Sonia Nevermind- Writer (Literary Girl) (Her family immigrated to Japan when she was young! She writes a lot of serial killer novels, murder mysteries and horror and all that! Trans and bi :)

Gundham Tanaka- Detective (YEAH my guy is a detective. still talks Like That. Trans and bi and he and Sonia were kinda-dating (t4t autistic power couple in the making) when things started happening. He spends some time with his cool older sister who he looks up to a LOT. He and Sonia talk through things together a lot, they both have those red string walls, one for murder cases, another for a fictional plot lmao.)

Mahiru Koizumi- Moral Compass (my GIRL. autistic. Her morals rely a lot on people taking responsibility and being reliable, and she ends up having to work through some biases she didn’t realize she had when she arrived at HPA. Is still protective of Hiyoko, though that protectiveness is spread a bit thinner to extend to the rest of the class.)

Hiyoko Saionji- Clairvoyant!!! (HI YES I COULD TALK ABOUT HER FOR DAYS. Has actual visions in dreams and when she suddenly faints, but doesn’t really realize they’re uhh Real Visions for a WHILE. uses her status as an ultimate clairvoyant to trick and bully kids when in school for a LONG time, though her homelife wasn’t great with her grandmother trying to find ways to make her visions more consistent. SHES ALSO 12 WHEN SHE JOINS THE 77TH CLASS. she’s just so advanced in academics and her ultimate is so interesting hope’s peak cant HELP but scout her early. she has SO many issues guys no one appreciates hiyoko enough, autistic gifted kid hiyoko my beloved.)

Akane Owari- Gambler (started gambling to help out her family and Got Good at it. is very very conscious of money and food like all the time. Runs the hope’s peak betting pools once she arrives. these ultimates bet on a lot of things. she ALWAYS wins. until she doesnt!!!)

Mikan Tsumiki- Martial Artist (ohhhh Mikan. Still anxious and clumsy (though not like THAT in canon) and literally no one looks at her and thinks Oh The ULTIMATE martial artist?? it isn’t until you see her in the ring that you understand. She started learning self defense as a kid because her (bad) parents essentially said she had to rely on and protect herself and no one else would help.)

Kazuichi Souda- Pop Idol (OH TRANS ICON? he’s nervous and paranoid about Everything still, though now it’s like. oh the entire world is always watching my every move this is Okay (: has the brightest neon album eras. he literally keeps up a like. weird chad persona when interacting with people because he’s masking how hard he’s constantly just internally screaming.)

Nagito Komaeda- Soldier (AHAHAH my mans got issues problems disorder he’s a messssss, this trans guy, this absolute gay. this boy leveled a city of thousands of people with his own hands and some bombs. Still has medical issues, but most of his like. treatments and medicine is hold hostage as long as he stays in line. believes the ends justify the means and anyone who dies to him is obviously weak, because look at him! he’s weak, but that doesn’t matter because he doesn’t have to be the strongest, he just has to be stronger than the weakest scum.)

Chiaki Nanami- Heir (OOF. Agender, uses any pronouns. Doesn’t really. enjoy being the heir. grew up with Byakuya in the same circles. she treats the economy and stock market and stuff like games. enjoys gaming but isn’t good at them. collects so many things. has halls full of collections. Her parents stopped controlling her once she was able to prove she had more money than them and could literally bankrupt them if she wanted.)

Hajime Hinata- Baseball Star (Chiaki’s best friend, his family was upper middle class until he hit it BIG as a baseball star. wants to do BIG things and wants to attend hope’s peak more than anything!! Doesn’t really think of baseball as his THING, just a means to an end! trans :)

Teruteru Hanamura- Biker Gang Leader (started with shaking down some jerks who didn’t pay their food and drink tabs at his mama’s restaurant. now he RUNS their tiny town. His siblings are essentially gang mascots, he works hard to keep them out of trouble (while bringing them to like. meetings where he ends up beating a dude almost to death. its fine). most of what he does it to get more money to keep the restaurant afloat and care for his mama with her health conditions.)

Nekomaru Nidai- Fashionista (the drama. the CHAOS. most people are like ohhh we can never understand this artistic genius when he’s literally just. vibing and has ADHD and a love for coffee. Works a lot on accessible clothing lines for disabled people! Also he and Kazuichi work together sometimes, Nekomaru is good at calming Kaz down and seeing like, the root of whatever problem and making it better. ALSO A TRANS ICON and just flaunts it.)

Imposter- In the hope’s peak days they are impersonating Ryota Mitarai, as a part of the 77th class. In the Killing Game they impersonate Mondo Oowada as the Ultimate Prince. They’re doin’ their best.

Ibuki Mioda- (???) (Izuru Kamakura) Protagonist! Gundham Tanaka’s older sister (though they’re in the same school year). Nonbinary and using just. an array of pronouns alongside she/her, and jokingly fights with gundham for neopronouns like MOM said it’s MY TURN on the rawrself pronouns. She attends the reserve course to stay at her brother’s side. She dresses loudly and acts even louder because !!! she wants to stand out!! in the middle of this drab reserve course hell!!  but when things go down, she wants to be someone, to be worthy of being her amazing brother’s big sister. so she accepts some offers.

NON-KILLING GAME:

Ryota Mitarai- Ultimate Analyst (stays in his room. He’s terrified of the outside world but fascinated by it. watches hope’s peak academy through security feeds, picking up on little details. he just wants to understand things but never looks at the big picture.)

Chisa Yukizome- Ultimate Boxer (Homeroom teacher!! She’s working really hard and believes in everyone! Some are intimidated by talent, but she’s never hurt anyone outside of the ring! Dating Kyosuke)

Juzo Sakakura- Ultimate Student Council President (Has anger issues, though his work at reigning them in assisted in becoming an Ultimate. Was responsible for security and the Hope’s Peak student council. Dating Kyosuke)

Kyosuke Munakata- Ultimate Housekeeper (Meticulous, works himself to the BONE even if he’s good enough to not have to do that. Is working on establishing another Hope’s Peak! Dating Chisa and Jozu!!!)

Seiko Kimura- Ultimate Blacksmith (GIVE MY GIRL KNIVES!! She’s an anxious gal, always wearing a facemask that filters the air in her forge because she has some respiratory problems. she prefers making more decorative pieces like an artist, but sometimes can create utilitarian pieces or tools to fit specific needs. Still a doormat)

Ruruka Ando- Ultimate Pharmacist (She constantly asks Seiko for new tools for her developments in medicine, saying its all for the advancement of humanity, so Seiko denying any request is SELFISH, though she never thinks to make anything for seiko’s health issues. Dating Izayoi. Specializes in medicine for mental health. Not Doing Great :)

Sonosuke Izayoi- Ultimate Confectioner (He loves sweets. LOVES them. Creates things that look plain, ordinary. but taste so GOOD you CRY and maybe ascend for a little bit. sometimes Ando makes cool new drugs to put in the sweets, who knows! It’s a mystery! He always has like. a huge refrigerated case of fresh cakes, and constantly has a lollipop in his own specialty recipe in his mouth.)

[wethepixies]

Welcome to part two of our interview series, pixies! Today, we’re presenting our interview with four of the flaptastic people who make this rewrite possible. They had a lot to say, so this post is rather long - keep reading to see the full interviews!

Our first two Game Creator interviews feature two of our beloved artists - Rachel and Ci.

How did you first find out about the WTP project, and what inspired you to start working as an artist?

Rachel: In a computer graphics class I took last semester, one of our projects reminded me and my friend of Pixie Hollow, so we were reminiscing about the game and I really wanted to see if there was a rewritten version of it. When I found WTP and saw they were accepting artist applications, I was super excited because I loved the game and was starting to get into animation at the time as well. I also just adore the process of game development in general, so I was thrilled to become a part of WTP.

Ci was introduced to the project by a friend who’s also a staff member!

What is your favorite part of your job as a WTP artist?

Rachel: My favorite part is being able to contribute my work to a bigger project. Seeing the art I worked on in the game is really exciting to me. Just knowing that the work you put in is helping to further the game is really cool. As for my favorite thing to work on, it’s really strange, but I enjoy creating the UI buttons and signs for different meadows or shops.They’re super small and no one really pays attention to them, but they’re also extremely necessary so I guess I just like to make them, haha. They don’t always take too long to make but I think they’re cute. Also, I’m especially excited for all the new meadows, as I really enjoy helping to restore the beautiful art for the meadows.

Check out this gorgeous sign that Rachel restored for one of our meadow teleporters!

Ci: My favorite piece of art that I’ve created for WTP was probably a background I restored for a general winter theme/season back when I first joined. It’s not being used right now, but it’s pretty and you’ll just have to take my word for it :’)

How long does it take for you to work on art for WTP, and how do you fit that in your schedule?

Rachel: The time it takes really depends on how much of the project we have completed already. Oftentimes we’ll be working collaboratively and finish what other people have started. So if we are working on something from scratch it can take quite a while, but sometimes it’s just a matter of adding finishing touches and compiling pieces together to create a finished product. And each task takes a different amount of time. For instance, resizing something small will take a few minutes, but creating an atlas for fairy clothing can take hours, especially when you need to restore an item from scratch. Either way, I think it’s still beneficial for us to take our time to create the best product we can. Personally, I don’t always get to work everyday, but when I do, I’ll spend hours because I like to finish tasks in one sitting if I can, although I can’t always haha.  I think that working in moderation is always a good idea as long as you’re getting your work done, and knowing we have so many fans really pushes me to get tasks done and do them well. As for fitting it into my schedule, because of quarantine, I definitely have a lot more time to work on WTP, but during the school semester I would have to plan out what I needed to get done and when I needed to do it in order make sure I could get all of my school projects and WTP work done on certain days in order to avoid as much stress as possible. 

Ci: I don’t have time to work on artwork daily, but I do try to stay on top of what other people are working on, so a small chunk of my day is dedicated to discord. Sometimes I’ll be busy for weeks and do a whole bunch of tasks afterwards in one go, and sometimes I try to take on smaller things (pre-corona I’d sometimes spend time between lectures because that’s often the only time I have!). Some tasks are 5 minute jobs, like UI, but others, like adding clothing, take a few hours. Backgrounds probably take me the longest. A couple hours for a few days, if I have time to work on them daily. They’re really fun when starting!! but after day 3 it’s quite the grind. I like to sleep on those, since there’s so much detail in the PH backgrounds that I’ll inevitably miss something.

Rachel, you mentioned atlases and spritesheets - can you explain what they are and how you use them?

Rachel: An atlas and spritesheet contains all of the different variations of a clothing item or anything you can change on the fairy. So for instance, the hair atlas has all of the different types of hair you can choose when creating your fairy packed into one single file. So in order to make one you have to create all the hair pieces, position them correctly on a fairy reference, export each hair image, and then combine them all onto the atlas file. Then a json file is also created to describe where each image is in the file in order to use it in the game. The spritesheet is similar and is basically a horizontal version of the atlas with all of the images that we use in CAF to scroll through whatever you’re changing.

Do you start the graphics by hand or via some digital web design program?

Rachel: I almost always use digital programs. Sometimes I’ll plan something out quickly on paper but most of the time I’ll use Photoshop. We also use DragonBones for animation.

Ci: All of the research we do is online, so it saves a couple of steps and retains image quality to just keep everything digital. I also don’t have a scanner :’)

And finally, what’s the most challenging piece of art that you’ve made for WTP?

Rachel: The most challenging piece that I’ve done for WTP was probably the hair atlas for when a player creates a fairy because it was the first project I was taking on. All the hair was made already, I just had to resize, reposition, and fix any pieces that were lower quality, and although it was daunting at first, once I started, I was able to get the hang of it (even if it took a few tries), and now I’m super happy I learned how to do it.

Ci: We were missing a whole area of the CAF background (the part that shows up when you’re picking a name) that got passed around for one or two months, and eventually I got to work on it. It was the closest to a custom piece of art that I’ve made for WTP; the middle was a giant blur when I got to it. My motivation to complete it was honestly just being able to get it off the to-do list forever, when I was done I posted a before and after to the staff chat (which I try not to do bc it’s not really productive) because I was so excited about it :’))

__________________

We had so much fun learning more about our artists’ jobs! Next up, we decided to sit down with WTP game developer and administrator Teresa!

How did you first find out about the WTP project, and what inspired you to start working as a developer? 

Teresa: A friend I made in the Pixie Hollow community said that her favorite mini game was Bubble Bounce, so I decided to make it for her. I had started prototyping and showing it around, and someone from WTP saw my work and invited me to join the team.

As we know, WTP is a voluntary project. How do you fit working on WTP into your schedule?

Teresa: I’m actually quite good at time management, and I’ve decided to make WTP a priority. That means that I can’t always say ‘yes’ to other things I want to do, but that’s ok.

What are some of the main things you look for when adding staff members?

Teresa: You need to be able to take criticism well and communicate effectively. A certain level of quality needs to be maintained to build a good game, and criticism sheds light on any blind spots you may have. If you aren’t communicating clearly and frequently, then your value to the team is very low – everyone needs to be on the same page so that work doesn’t get redone and wasted, and to keep an accurate development schedule. Being willing to devote more than a couple of hours a week is also a major plus.

How do you decide which parts of the game you should work on first?

Teresa: There’s this concept called the Minimum Viable Product. Basically, you just strip the project down to what is necessary and work out the kinks. Then you can add new features that enhance the gameplay.

What’s the most challenging issue you’ve faced while creating the game?

Teresa: There was a problem with the animation plugin that I was hoping would be fixed by the maintainers before the demo release. It was a really big deal, the game would be entirely unplayable. At the last minute, I had to dig into the plugins source code and figure it out myself. In the end, it wasn’t actually so difficult – but boy was it stressful. Really I would say that the biggest problems have stemmed from not having enough artists on the team! There have been multiple times where we had to delay updates because we didn’t have all of the assets ready for me to use in the game.

How do you go about fixing a game bug?

Teresa: Gather all the info I can from users experiencing the bug, and try to reproduce it. Just observing the behavior is often enough to figure out the problem. When it’s not, check the logs or step through with the debugger.

Have you ever worked on or made a game before WTP?

Teresa: I’ve worked a bit on some 3D open source game projects, never worked on the multiplayer parts before, though. I also make mods for games.

Lastly, what are your favorite and most rewarding parts of being a game developer?

Teresa: Pushing the boundaries of my knowledge and comfort zone, definitely. As a developer, I’ve learned a lot of new technologies and some new domains specifically for WTP. I also find being able to fix things that I don’t like about games very rewarding. Being an administrator has benefitted me as well. As an admin, I’ve had to cultivate skills in team leadership and project management.

__________________

Finally, we interviewed Lavender Merryheart, our sound designer.

First off, how did you first find out about the WTP project?

Lavender: I found WTP from a Youtube video, and played the demo. I was excited to be able to re-visit PH and when I saw the audio designer application, I wanted to help out however I could!

Are you remaking the music from scratch based on any remaining audio from sources like youtube?

Lavender: Both! We salvage what we can, and re-create what’s needed if. In the future, there will be some new, original music too! When we need a sound effect or music, we first check to see if there’s a good quality clip preserved of the original. It needs to be clear and without extra background sounds. If we can’t find any, then I will dissect the sound or song and try to figure out how it was made, then recreate it.

You mentioned that you make new sounds if needed, how do you go about making them?

Lavender: New sound effects are made by piecing different recordings together, such as the audio you hear when you click the talent orbs, which was re-made from the sounds of a heavy book shutting and wind chimes. If we need to remake a song, I make a new track by re-recording each instrument’s part on a midi keyboard. Then it will be edited it in Logic Pro X, using instruments and synths from the Kontakt audio library.

What’s the part of being an audio designer that you’re most excited about?

Lavender: I’m most excited about getting to write new music for the game! I can’t reveal to you what it’s going to be used for yet, but in the process for the last WTP track I wrote, I thought about how to represent the area it will be used for and what instruments and mood would suit it the best. It was a lot of fun to try to both express my style and also give it that Pixie-Hollow-sound!

Finally, how do you fit working on WTP into your schedule?

Lavender: I keep a to-do list and project notes to help organize what needs to be done, and work on WTP between class assignments. To refrain from burning out, I try to spread out my different tasks and work on a variety of things.

__________________

After we learned about what goes on behind the scenes on WTP, we wanted to learn a little bit about some future plans and hopes the staff have for the game. 

Art wise, what sorts of things will be designed from scratch in the future?

Rachel: Although we still have a long way to go before creating our own work as we have to replicate what was in the original game first, I believe that new clothing and hair might be designed from scratch in the future.

Ci: Right now, we’re still committed to restoring the game in its original form–this means that we try not to design anything from scratch. We’ve discussed the possibility of custom content in the future (items + clothing, pets, meadows, maybe even minigames?), and when the time comes, all of that will be built from scratch. That said, pertaining to the look and feel of the original pixie hollow will be a priority for those updates too.

What game feature from Pixie Hollow are you most excited to have?

Teresa: Personally, I am excited for the skill system and wilderness! We have some new ideas to try out, but I don’t want to spoil anything.

Do you plan to have seasonal differences and events, as well as competitions and activities?

Teresa: Yep! Can’t wait! We are already featuring player’s outfits in the shop catalogue, so that’s sort of a mini fashion spotlight, but there’s definitely more exciting things to come. Fashion spotlight was one of the most beloved competitions/events in the original Pixie Hollow!

In the future, will the game be available for mobile and/or consoles?

Teresa: You can already play WTP on mobile! At some point we will have options that allow the game to run smoother on mobile devices. Console versions won’t be a thing, though.

Is there anything that was in the original Pixie Hollow that you’d like to change in WTP?

Lavender: I would change the whisper noise it made when you got a message, it got a bit annoying. And it would be really neat if you could choose from a few different songs to have played in your fairy’s home depending on your mood! I had the ice themed house and have heard the music a few too many times!

Teresa: There are things I want to tweak, and fully plan to! We have already added a couple of small new things, such as the second sitting pose and featuring real player’s outfits in the shop catalogue. I hope everyone enjoys them!

The last thing we wanted to talk about is the staff’s personal feelings about WTP and about their jobs, as well as ask them about their inspiration.

Is there anything new that working on WTP has teached you?

Rachel: As an artist here I am definitely learning new technical skills and developing as an artist in general. Some examples of art skills I’ve been able to develop include creating atlases and spritesheets for fairy clothing and hair, getting familiar with DragonBones as I’d never used it for animation, and just gaining more experience in Photoshop. And I basically just learned all these things by trying them out and asking questions if I needed help.

Lavender: Through WTP I’ve learned more about creating sound effects, because when remaking the old sounds for WTP, I really have to think about what each one is made out of (for example, the pouch sound was re-created using a paper bag rustling, leaves crunching, and a bell synth).

How do you feel about the community growing so much in a short amount of time?

Teresa: I really didn’t expect it, and it has been a bit stressful, but I hope we are handling it well. I would never have imagined that a TikTok would be the reason either! Having more eyes on us makes me feel restless. We had to adapt the discord server to keep it safe and make information more accessible to new members.

What do you remember about Pixie Hollow? And did it change your life in any way?

Lavender: I joined right at the beginning, and loved how it really felt like you were stepping into a different, magical world. My favorite thing to do was decorating and creating/collecting items for my house, as well as the minigames and item crafting/ baking, I’m most excited to see these features again! Also, a good memory from the game I have is going to the summer pool party in the ballroom, and playing games in the tearoom with friends! The music in Pixie Hollow was one of my earliest inspirations for pursuing a career in film/game scoring. Currently I am studying for a degree in film/game scoring! I’m obsessed with fantasy games, nature, fairy tales, magic, and mythology, and I write music to try and illustrate the stories and have the listener feel like they’re visiting the scene. You can hear some of my original music on Spotify under the name June Westfield!

Rachel: I was so young that I have trouble remembering everything. I do remember sometimes getting on the phone with my friends and talking as we played together and explored meadows, which was really fun. I also really enjoyed completing tasks and playing the minigames. I have no idea why that was so fun to me, but I just liked getting achievements and beating my scores.  

Do you feel like some people may have unrealistic expectations for WTP? And do you think it can ever be as big as Pixie Hollow was?

Teresa: Yes, but I can’t blame them. So far I am the only developer to have actually worked on this game, so it’s a lot of pressure, but of course the players can’t know that. For some reason the things that everyone thinks will be the easiest to code are always the more difficult ones, funnily enough. For example, a flying mechanic like the original game is sort of complex, whereas adding new meadows is extremely simple. Do I think WTP will ever be as big as PH? Definitely not. Pixie Hollow had millions of players, Disney advertised it, and it had a full development team behind it. A lot of the original players will have moved on. I’m actually surprised that so many people have found us already!

Are there any artists that you look up to or are inspired by?

Rachel: I don’t have anyone specific in mind who I look up to, but I do watch a lot of cartoons and really admire animation and all of the work that goes into it. I get really inspired seeing different animated works and am super impressed by the entire process of it.

Ci: I used to actively make art outside of WTP and definitely had a whole list of people whose styles I looked up to, but now that I’ve moved away from that I mostly remember individual pieces. I had to dig some up for this question! loish, gawki, and Hethe Srodawa, are a few.

Lavender: Some composers that inspire me are Enya, Faun, Loreena McKennitt, and Secret Garden. They are all fantasy/new age genre artists that create enchanting music!

The WTP community is a great place to make friends! Is there a person in the staff that you’ve formed a strong friendship with?

Rachel: I’ve definitely become a lot closer with many of the staff members, whether it be looking up to certain people like our team leads, chatting with the other artists in DMs and helping each other out, or just having fun conversations with all the other staff members and sharing funny stories and pictures.

Teresa: Asteria is probably the best friend I’ve made at WTP, as we have talked the most. I have also met Kass in real life – she’s the sweetest! I love everyone on our team.

(Kass is one of our moderators - we’ll hear from her in the final interview post!)

And finally, What does working on a game that’s so loved by people mean to you?

Teresa:  It is so heartwarming to be a part of something that brings people joy and makes them nostalgic. Pixie Hollow’s fan base can make me a bit anxious at times. Sometimes a group of players will want one thing, and then another group wants the exact opposite and it can be hard to make a choice. There’s a lot of pressure in trying to stay true to the original game’s vision while also being fresh, but it drives me to deliver the best work I can. I put a lot of time into WTP, and have actually burnt out a few times already. Luckily, I love building things so much that it never lasts long.

________________

Next up in our interview series - our social media team and server moderators! Stay tuned to hear their answers to some of your questions.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

YOU GUYS I JUST THOUGHT OF THIS

I guarantee you'll be surprised by the consequences of the licensing deal for DOS, just as it's easier to get people to remember just one quote about programming, it would be more interested in an essay about why something isn't the problem, even though you know that free with just two exclamation points has a probability of. Then when you reach for the sledgehammer; if their kids won't listen to them, because you can, to a limited extent, simulate a closure a function that takes a number n, and returns a function that refers to variables defined in enclosing scopes by defining a class with one method and a field to replace each variable from an enclosing scope.1 The US Is Not Yet a Police State. Better Judgement Needed If the number of users and the problem is usually artificial and predetermined. There are two main kinds of error that get in the way you'd expect any subculture to be, in certain specific moments like your family, this month a fixed amount you need to simplify and clarify, and the threat to potential investors and they hope this will make it big is not simply to give them at least 20 years, and then at each point the way such a project would play out? You could do it than literally making a mark on the world.2 I'll come running.3 They make such great CEOs. First of all, for the most part they punt. For all its power, Silicon Valley is that you get discouraged when no one else at the time.

But there is also huge source of implicit tags that they ignore: the text within web links.4 It was more prestigious to be one of those things until you strike something. Both self-control and experience have this effect: to eliminate the random biases that come from your own circumstances, and tricks played by the artist.5 It's very common for startups to exist.6 But even in the mating dance, patents are part of the mob, stand as far away from it myself; I see it there on the page and quickly move on to the next step, whatever that is. Meanwhile the iPhone is selling better than ever. 4 million is starting to appear in the mainstream media came from. People's best friends are likely to be careful here to distinguish between them. If you have multiple founders, esprit de corps binds them together in one place for a certain percentage of your startup. There is more to be actively curious. Most CEOs delegate taste to a subordinate.7 The closest thing seemed to be synonymous with quiet, so I won't repeat it all here.

The nature of the application domain.8 Mean People Fail November 2014 It struck me recently how few of the startups we fund. Angels don't like publicity.9 That can be useful when it's a crappy version one made by a company called Y Combinator that said Y Combinator does seed funding for startups is way less than the measurement error. But there is no argument about that—at least in computational bottlenecks. And in the film industry, though producers may second-guess directors, the director controls most of what is now called VoIP, and it will take off. Instead of bubbling up from the bottom, by overpaying unions, the traditional news media, and the techniques I used may be applicable to ideas in general.10 If someone proves a new theorem, it takes some work by the reader to decide whether or not to upvote it. But because patent trolls don't make anything physical.11

They work well enough in everyday life.12 This site isn't lame. It's all evasion.13 A comparatively safe and prosperous career with some automatic baseline prestige is dangerously tempting to someone young, who hasn't thought much about it, and the path to intelligence through carefully selected self-indulgence by mimicking more virtuous types. Spend little. Someone like Bill Gates? In the last 20 years, grown into a monstrosity. I'm not writing here about Java which I have never seen any of ITA's code, but according to one of the causes of the increase in disagreement, there's a good chance the person at the next table could help you at all. Also, startups are an all-star team. I can solve that problem by stopping entirely. Wouldn't it start to seem lame?

It would be a good idea.14 I read most things I write out loud at least once a week, cooked for the first couple generations.15 I'm not saying it's correct, incidentally, but it happens surprisingly rarely. I've learned about VC while working on it for a couple years for another company for two years. The word boss is derived from a talk at Oscon 2004.16 I assumed I'd learn what in college.17 But also it will tell you to spend too much. The problem is not the one that is. Inexperienced angels often get cold feet.18

Even more important than others? File://localhost/home/patrick/Documents/programming/python projects/UlyssesRedux/corpora/unsorted/schlep. But after a while I learned the trick of speaking fast.19 Why wouldn't young professionals make lots of new things I want to reach users, you need colleagues to brainstorm with, to talk you out of stupid decisions, and to analyze based on what a few people think in our insular little Web 2.20 Fortunately if this does happen it will take a big bite out of your round. What difference did it make if other manufacturers could offer DOS too? One of the things I had to condense the power of compound growth. Then they're mystified to find that there are degrees of coolness. It requires the kind of intensity and dedication from programmers that they will always be made to develop new technologies at a slower rate than the rest, and the second is whatever specific lies Xes differentiate themselves by believing. This bites you twice: they get less done, but they need more help because life is so precarious for them. Unless they've tried not taking board seats and found their returns are lower, they're not drifting.

Programmers don't use launch-fast-and-so is an animal.21 But it is very hard for someone who publishes online.22 Not because starting one's own company seemed too ambitious, but because it didn't look like a car spinning its wheels. It's hard for them to change. Experts have given Wikipedia middling reviews, but they weren't going to wait. Wufoo seem to have any teeth, and the useful half is the payload. This is arguably a permissible tactic.

Most books on startups also seem to be joined together, but really the thesis is an optimistic one—that everyone should go and start a startup during college, but it was simpler than they thought. I do in proper essays. Because they personally liked it. Game We saw this happen so often that we made up a name for what I learned from this experiment is that if VCs are only doing it in the plainest words and you'll be free again.23 That's the worst thing about our software. Now the results seem inspired by the Scientologist principle that what's true is what's true for you. Also, the money might come in several tranches, the later ones subject to various conditions—though this is apparently more common in deals with lower-tier investors sometimes give offers with very short fuses, because they get their ideas? If you do that you raise too many expectations. There's no reason to believe there is any field in which the most efficient solutions win, rather than working on the company to become valuable, and you don't have significant success to cheer you up when things go wrong.24

Notes

That's a good nerd, just that if the statistics they use; if anything they could to help you even be tempted to do is adjust the weights till the 1920s to financing growth with the other hand, launching something small and traditional proprietors on the admissions committee knows the professors who wrote the recommendations. If you're doing. There were a property of the world will sooner or later.

And yet I think it's publication that makes curators and dealers use neutral-sounding language. Google and Facebook are driven by money, then you're being gratuitously troublesome. We walked with him for the next round.

People were more dependent on banks for capital for expansion.

That's not a remark about the idea upon have different time quanta. Since the remaining power of Democractic party machines, but since it was 10. The chief lit a cigarette.

Without the prospect of publication, the average Edwardian might well guess wrong.

In fact, for example I've deliberately avoided saying whether the 25 people have responded to this talk, so that you can't help associating it with the founders' salaries to the prevalence of systems of seniority. Moving large amounts of new stock. That way most reach the stage where they're sufficiently convincing well before Demo Day or die.

This form of religious wars or undergraduate textbooks so determinedly neutral that they're really saying is they want to learn.

This is an interesting sort of dress rehearsal for the first 40 employees, with the issues they have that glazed over look.

According to Sports Illustrated, the first duty of the anti-dilution protections.

Currently we do at least seem to understand technology because they could not process it.

Doing a rolling close usually prevents this. The liking you have to replace you. Convertible debt is usually slow growth or excessive spending rather than given by other people.

Investors are fine with funding nerds. Cascading menus would also be argued that we wouldn't have the concept of the war, federal tax receipts have stayed close to the inane questions of the Fabian Society, it often means the startup will be, unchanging, but Joshua Schachter tells me it was wiser for them by the National Center for Education Statistics, the activation energy to start with consumer electronics and to run an online service. Seeming like they worked together mostly at night.

Instead of making n constant, it is. I started using it out of their due diligence tends to happen fast, like good scientists, motivated less by financial rewards than by you based on respect for their judgement. If you're sufficiently good bet, why not turn your company into one? Which explains the astonished stories one always hears about VC while working on such an interview.

Com/spam. So if you're a YC startup you can do it to colleagues. Doh.

That's the difference between good and bad measurers. I get the money, then their incentives aren't aligned with some question-begging answer like it's inappropriate, while she likes getting attention in the nature of server-based applications, and how unbelievably annoying it is. That's probably too much to hope for, but they can't teach students how to deal with the other direction Y Combinator.

The downside is that there's more of the expert they send to look you over.

If he's bad at it he'll work very hard to pick a date, because the median case.

They're motivated by examples of how hard they work. They're so selective that they won't be able to hire a lot of people like them—people who have money to spend a lot of classic abstract expressionism is doodling of this type: lies told by older siblings. But no planes crash if your goal is to make money from the Ordinatio of Duns Scotus: Philosophical Writings, Nelson, 1963, p. Structurally the idea that they probably wouldn't be irrational.

They thought most programming would be to say for sure whether, e. Travel has the same investor to do it to them, but investors can get done before that. To get all that matters, just as he or she would be on demand, because universities are where a lot of startups will generally raise large amounts of our own, like a wave. So as a naturalist.

It's interesting to consider behaving the opposite. Which in turn forces Digg to respond with extreme countermeasures.

Maybe that isn't really working bad unit economics, typically and then being unable to raise money, you can base brand on anything with a slight disadvantage, but historical abuses are easier for us, they are bleeding cash really fast. Though in fact it may be underestimating VCs. 25. And I've never heard of many startups from Philadelphia.

For example, understanding French will help dispel the cloud of semi-sacred mystery that surrounds a hot startup. Those investors probably thought they'd been pretty clever by getting such a dangerous mistake to believe that successful founders still get rich will use this technique, you'll be well on your product, just harder.

Common Lisp for, but those are probably not do this right you'd have reached after lots of back and forth. This is isomorphic to the company's PR people worked hard to get a real partner. In fact since 2 1.

I'm not saying that's all prep schools is to give them sufficient activation energy for enterprise software.

[sharwareeshinde11-blog]

Future Of Data Science

What is data science?

Data science is a field that uses scientific method, process, algorithms and system to extract knowledge from data in various forms, structural, unstructured it is similar to data mining.

Data science is a concept to unify statistic, data analysis, machine learning and their related method in order to understand actual phenomena with data .It employs theory and techniques drawn from many field within the context of mathematics, statistics, information science and computer science

How to learn data science

Data science is a very practical field, and so it’s so important to apply theoretical knowledge that you have gathered. For example, when you learn starts, don’t just sit and read about it .see how it can be done with a programming language such as python, which a very popular language for beginners, find a data set and apply these concept on the data. Including other language like

1 linear algebra and calculus –for these refer to the book called advanced engineering mathematics by kreyszig. The various topics that you need to brush up your understanding in are hyper parameters, regularization function, cluster analyses are few topics under this domain and which is important for machine learning

2 vector calculus

3 Statistics—go on learning statistics on various sites like udacity, khan academy, courser. They provide detailed overview on this topic which is a vital topic under data science.

4 programming language---The most widely preferred open source statistical tools are ‘R’ and ‘Python’.

FOR R--start learning libraries like dplyr, tidyr, data table for data manipulation and ggplot2 for visualization which has the same syntax as R.in fact the visualization in ggplot2 is way better than that of matplotib

   Go to kaggle and download data sets so that you can practice the concept that you have studied and build project and put up on your Git profile  

How To Prepare for the Future of Data Science

There are many ways companies can and should prepare for the future of data science. These include creating a culture for using machine learning models and their output, standardize and digitize processes, experimenting with a cloud infrastructure solution, have an agile approach to data science projects and creating dedicated data science units. Being able to execute on some of these points will increase the likelihood of succeeding in a highly digitized world.

A Data Science Unit

In my previous role I was working as a data scientist for an insurance company. One of the smart moves they made was to create an analytics unit, which worked across company verticals.

This made it easier for us to reuse our skills and models on a variety of data sets. It was also a signal to the rest of the company that we had a focus on data science and that this was a prioritized issue. If a company has a certain size, creating a dedicated data science unit is definitely the right move to make.

Standardization

Standardization of processes is also important. This will make it easier to digitize and perhaps automate these processes in the future. Automation is a key driver for growth, making it much easier to scale. An added bonus is that the data collected from automated processes is usually a lot less messy and less error prone than data collected from manual processes. Since an important enabler of data science models is access to good data, this will help make the models better.

Adoption of Data Science                                  

There should also be a culture in the company for adopting the use of machine learning algorithms and using their output in business decisions. This is of course often easier said than done since many employees might fear that the algorithms are making them obsolete.

It is therefore critical that there be a strong focus on how employees can use their existing skill set alongside algorithms to make more high-level and tactical business decisions, as this combination of human and machine is likely to be the future of work in many occupations. It will probably be more than a few years before the machine learning algorithms are able to navigate alone and make superhuman decisions in an open world setting, meaning mass unemployment due to the rise of the machines is not a likely scenario in the near future.

Always Experiment

With new data being generated from IoT sources, it is important to explore new data sets and see how they can be used to augment your existing models. There is a constant flow of new data waiting to be discovered.

Perhaps including two new variables from an obscure data set into your model will increase the precision of the leads generating model by 5% — and perhaps not. The point is to always experiment and not be afraid to fail. Like all other scientific inquires, failed attempts abound, and the winners are those who keep on trying.

Create an environment that promotes experimentation and that tries to make incremental improvements to existing business processes. This will make it easier for data scientist to introduce new models and will also set the focus on the smaller improvements, which are a lot less risky than the larger grand visions. Remember, data science is still a lot like software development and the more complex the project becomes the more likely it is to fail.

Try building an app that your customers or suppliers can use to interact with your services. This will make it easier to gather relevant data. Create incentives to promote usage of the app which will increase the amount of data being generated. It is also imperative that the UX of the app be appealing and promotes use.

We might need to venture outside of our comfort zones to take on the opportunities and challenges that this digital gold brings. As the amount of data continues to grow, machine learning algorithms get smarter and our computational abilities improve, we will need to adapt. Hopefully, by creating a strong environment for using data science your company will be better prepared for what the future will bring.

Applications / Uses of Data Science

Using data science, companies have become intelligent enough to push & sell products as per customer’s purchasing power & interest. Here’s how they are ruling our hearts and minds:

Internet Search

When we speak of search, we think ‘Google’. Right? But there are many other search engines like Yahoo, Bing, Ask, AOL, Duckduckgo etc. All these search engines (including Google) make use of data science algorithms to deliver the best result for our searched query in fraction of seconds. Considering the fact that, Google processes more than 20 petabytes of data every day. Had there been no data science, Google wouldn’t have been the ‘Google’ we know today.

Digital Advertisements (Targeted Advertising and re-targeting)

If you thought Search would have been the biggest application of data science and machine learning, here is a challenger – the entire digital marketing spectrum. Starting from the display banners on various websites to the digital bill boards at the airports – almost all of them are decided by using data science algorithms.

This is the reason why digital ads have been able to get a lot higher CTR than traditional advertisements. They can be targeted based on users past behavior. 

Speech Recognition

Some of the best example of speech recognition products are Google Voice, Siri, Cortana etc. Using speech recognition feature, even if you are not in position to type a message, your life wouldn’t stop. Simply speak out the message and it will be converted to text. However, at times, you would realize, speech recognition doesn’t perform accurately.

Image Recognition

You upload your image with friends on Facebook and you start getting suggestions to tag your friends. This automatic tag suggestion feature uses face recognition algorithm. Similarly, while using whats app web, you scan a bar code in your web browser using your mobile phone. In addition, Google provides you the option to search for images by uploading them. It uses image recognition and provides related search results.

Gaming

EA Sports, Zynga, Sony, Nintendo, Activision-Blizzard have led gaming experience to the next level using data science. Games are now designed using machine learning algorithms which improve / upgrade themselves as the player moves up to a higher level. In motion gaming also, your opponent (computer) analyzes your previous moves and accordingly shapes up its game.

Fraud and Risk Detection

 One of the first applications of data science originated from Finance discipline. Companies were fed up of bad debts and losses every year. However, they had a lot of data which use to get collected during the initial paper work while sanctioning loans. They decided to bring in data science practices in order to rescue them out of losses. Over the years, banking companies learned to divide and conquer data via customer profiling, past expenditures and other essential variables to analyze the probabilities of risk and default. Moreover, it also helped them to push their banking products based on customer’s purchasing power

Airline Route Planning

Airline Industry across the world is known to bear heavy losses. Except a few airline service providers, companies are struggling to maintain their occupancy ratio and operating profits. With high rise in air fuel prices and need to offer heavy discounts to customers has further made the situation worse. It wasn’t for long when airlines companies started using data science to identify the strategic areas of improvements. Now using data science, the airline companies can:

1.   Predict flight delay

2.   Decide which class of airplanes to buy

3.   Whether to directly land at the destination, or take a halt in between (For example: A flight can have a direct route from New Delhi to New York. Alternatively, it can also choose to halt in any country.)

4.   Effectively drive customer loyalty programs

Southwest Airlines, Alaska Airlines are among the top companies who’ve embraced data science to bring changes in their way of working

Coming Up In Future

Though, not much has been reveled about them except the prototypes, and neither I know when they would be available for a common man’s disposal. Hence,  We need to wait and watch how far Google can become successful in their self driving cars project. 

Self Driving Cars

[admladvankiss1974-blog]

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[abbaroseville]

The Best Preschools in Chatswood

Preschools provide children with an early education experience. Unlike a traditional classroom setting, preschools allow children to engage in hands-on learning experiences. In addition, these environments also help to foster the development of social and emotional skills. Moreover, these experiences are designed to facilitate the development of important numeracy and literacy skills.

Playschools, also known as Playgroups, offer preschool education to children aged two to five. The best part is that the preschools in Chatswood are all about fun and games, while also helping to develop your child's cognitive and physical abilities. These facilities are also designed to promote self-confidence and to encourage independence.

There are more than a dozen preschools and kindergardens in Chatswood. Each facility offers a program that is designed to suit the needs and interests of your child. It is recommended that you do some research to find the most suited facility for your child. If you want to enroll your child in a pre-school that has a high quality of teaching, then Kookaburra Kindergarten Chatswood may be a great option for you. This preschool has a large playground as well as a dedicated room for each age group.

As for the size of the facilities, the Kookaburra Kindergarten boasts of a spacious outdoor play area, as well as an indoor area that's bright, clean, and modern. Additionally, the facility offers a nutritious meal plan and free onsite parking. Aside from the usual daycare offerings, the facility also features a dance class and a playgroup.

Considering that there are more than a dozen preschools in Chatswood, selecting the right one for your child can be a challenge. While it is true that most preschools offer a variety of programs, it is the programs that are designed to address the specific needs of your child that will have the greatest impact on their overall growth.

Of course, there are other factors that need to be considered, such as the number of children in a class. A good rule of thumb is that each preschool should have a qualified adult for every eight children. Furthermore, each preschool should have a Supervisor with an NVQ 3 qualification. Finally, the maximum number of children allowed in a session is limited to twenty-six, as per regulation 123(5) of the National Regulations.

On the other hand, the pre school Chatswood has an interesting curriculum, and many of the pedagogical techniques used are based on the Reggio Emilia preschool philosophies. Some of the more interesting and gimmicky programs include an augmented reality game, a sensory play activity, a science experiment, and a coding demonstration. However, the most impressive of all is the welcome program, which encourages new families to stay and learn while they get oriented to the preschool's philosophy and culture.

With the number of preschools in Chatswood, it's always a smart move to conduct a little research on the best ones. You can do so by looking into each facility's website and reading the reviews left by other parents.

Abbaroseville have been in the business of children for over 48 years. Family operated & owned and first established at our Crows Nest Centre in 1972 we have had the pleasure of teaching & educating children throughout their many milestones and have loved every moment of it, we really would not have it any-other way.

[your-happybouquetwombat-thi-blog]

On Your Marks, Get Set, GO!

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[princess-nope]

Love Emerges in a Galaxy Far, Far Away

The following is an essay I wrote back in 2016 for an art history class focused in women’s studies. The prompt of the essay was to compare a piece of media to one of the books we read and using it to define melodrama. I don’t expect many people to read this but it’s just something I thought I would share. I’m still very proud of this essay and re-reading it after so long reminded me why I love KOTOR and Carth Onasi so much. I hope you like it.

In all honesty I never truly knew what the term “melodrama” meant until this course. I’ve heard it at least a thousand times but tried to avoid using it in conversation to prevent from looking foolish. Learning about melodrama in class and conceptualizing it beyond the one-dimensional insult most people use it as has been for the better. Not only is melodrama not necessarily a bad thing, it’s present in almost all the things I enjoy to some extent. So as I wracked my mind for something to write about, I opted for my most current obsession, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. KOTOR is a Star Wars role-playing video game developed by BioWare and Lucas Arts released in 2003 that takes place 4,000 years before the original trilogy. However, because of the numerous characters and side quests it is impossible to write about it as a whole in one short essay. With that in mind I chose my favorite part of the game, Carth Onasi. In this paper I will analyze Carth Onasi as a character in the world of KOTOR by comparing his character traits and side quest with my working definition of melodrama.

Before I dive too deep into this paper I want to step back and properly introduce you to the character of Carth Onasi . KOTOR allows the player to be either male or female and provides romance options for both genders. When the opportunity is presented to me, I always try to play a female so I can truly become immersed in my gaming experience. It should also be noted that the player can play as a dark side or light side character based off of the decisions they make throughout the game; with this in mind my analysis will be based on the light side PC. Carth is the love interest for the female PC and is the first companion the player gets in the game. The player is encouraged to talk to him and throughout the game more information about his past and motivations for hanging out with the PC are revealed. He is very charismatic, charming and witty as well as a dedicated Republic soldier. Carth is a classic example of the “victim-hero” and comes from a tragic past that I will get into later. What is arguably the most interesting thing about him outside of his purpose in the game is the male gaming demographics’ reaction to him. I learned soon after beginning KOTOR that Carth is overwhelmingly hated by male players because he is “annoying, whiney and over emotional.” That sounds a lot like the definition of melodrama I got from my friends, I’m sensing a connection here.

With all of that in mind I will be working with Linda Williams’s concept of the melodramatic mode. How I interpret her concept lies in her five key features of melodrama which all in some way fit into Carth’s character and backstory. Her definition hit a chord in my brain and helped me wrap my head around what melodrama truly is. When asking my friends what they believed the term meant, they generally answered that it was a method of making things overly or unnecessarily emotional to get a reaction or move the plot forward. My boyfriend added that usually when something is melodramatic, the writer didn’t mean for it to be. However, I respectively disagree to an extent. It appears in KOTOR as it does in Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a scene or situation that forces the audience to empathize or sympathize with the characters. This makes Carth Onasi the best avatar for melodrama in KOTOR because objectively he is the only character that can share a  “happy ending” with the female PC through the means of a romantic relationship.

Video games are a bit different than literature or film in the sense that the player is directly involved in the story. In role-playing games especially the story progresses in a certain way based off of the player’s decisions. So it’s one thing for me to witness St. Clare’s death through the eyes of Tom, and totally another for me to be Tom. Though it can be argued that the player cannot physically feel and experience what the game avatar does, there is only one degree of separation instead of two or three. I am Tom because I made decisions as Tom, I am directly being affected by my choices and feeling all the pathos that come with those decisions. With the open character progression of KOTOR, I am experiencing this universe because the game is allowing me to make these decisions with little to no restriction. Therefore as the PC I am experiencing the adventure with Carth as myself, I am making the decisions I want to make and falling in love with Carth along the way.

Going back to Carth’s massive unpopularity in the male demographic Williams states, “suffering itself is a form of powerlessness that is coded feminine.” Carth is much like St. Clare in this sense, with St. Clare’s father describing his son as feminine and unfit to run the family plantation. Almost all of the PC’s companions have side quests that play out their own little melodramas, but they don’t seem to receive the same negative reaction. For the sake of argument my reaction to the male PC love interest Bastilla was negative, but for different reasons. Right off the bat the player’s first interaction involves her condescendingly expressing her ingratitude for her rescue. This immediately left a bad taste in my mouth for the character. Bastilla continues to deem herself superior and only after talking to her a lot does she get off her high horse and show some humanity. So do I dislike her because I find her too masculine? Of course not, I dislike her because she’s rude. Video games are notorious for being a boys club with few games including something for heterosexual women that isn’t a “game for girls.” Carth Onasi was specifically designed and written to be a companion for the PC, but a love interest for the female PC. Carth might have been given melodramatic tendencies to elicit a positive female response, but he was also given conventional good looks, cool clothes and a sense of humor.

Just as Williams uses Rambo as a masculine example of a character working in the melodramatic mode, Carth shares similar traits of “endur[ing] multiple indignities and pathetically suffer[ing]” in a way “that elicit audience empathy” even going as far as to also “begin his prolonged rescue-revenge.” Through player dialogue Carth tells the PC he had a wife and son who tragically died during the attack on his home planet. Before this he mentioned how his mentor, Saul, had left the Republic to join the Sith which was a huge betrayal to Carth. So with just this brief chain of dialogue Carth perfectly conforms to Williams’s description of a masculine character operating in the melodramatic mode. Saul, the villain of Carth’s story, directly attacked his home, a “space of innocence,” thus hitting the first key feature of melodrama. When playing KOTOR 2 it is possible to run into Carth again when he returns to Telos to get information from the new PC about the PC from the first game. He asks the new PC if they’re able to find the last PC to “simply tell her Carth Onasi is waiting for her.” Though it isn’t present in KOTOR Carth comes full circle and returns home to wait for his happy ending to return to him.

My take on Carth’s character appeal is that he appears to be the most relatable character. He is often times the “straight man” of the story and reacts to space magic like a normal person typically would. His role as a victim-hero in his own story is merely additional layers given to build a complete character. The second feature of melodrama is the virtue of a victim-hero. Carth suffers from the loss of his family and by this logic holds virtue. Carth can only gain his virtue by “purg[ing]…the taint of selfish ambition.” Carth’s “selfish ambition” is his desire to kill Saul and avenge his family. He states, “I know killing Saul won’t bring them back, and it won’t make me happy again… but I have to do it.” Carth is aware of the fault in his bloodlust for Saul but cannot overcome it. The PC can act as a voice of reason if the player chooses, but I allowed Carth to have his revenge therefore moving from pathos to action.

This leads to the third feature, or the “recognition of virtue” through a use of pathos and action. This concept correlates with arriving “too late” or “in the nick of time” and is applicable to Carth’s confrontation with Saul. Though the main antagonist of the game is on his way to kill the PC, Carth revels in his lust for revenge. Carth’s pathos finally moves to action that in turn helps the player recognize Carth’s virtue and the villainy of Saul. This final conflict gives a resolution to Carth’s story and allows him to move on through the game assisting the PC whole-heartedly.

What follows is the fourth feature, being “realism.” A more literal aspect of this feature comes in the form of Carth searching for his son, Dustil. When the player discovers Dustil is actually alive, Carth desperately tries to find him in a “search for something lost” that “ties [him] to the past.” The PC can no longer gain any meaningful information from Carth until this side quest is completed. Though avenging his family is important to Carth, it isn’t his character side quest but rather his relevancy to the overall story. Realism ties in with the final feature of melodrama, morality and the sense of “good and evil.” Dustil has joined the Sith and is a student at the Sith academy while Carth is Republic soldier. Star Wars has always been surrounded by the simple concept of good versus evil, light versus dark, the Rebels versus the Empire or the Republic versus the Sith. Visually Carth’s base costume is brightly colored where Dustil’s academy uniform is grey. The two contrast and visually embody their alignment. This is a goal Williams claims melodrama is constantly trying to achieve. Though the plot can tell the audience all they need to know, visuals are just as important and the concept of showing and not telling can add to the overall story. However, this final feature of melodrama isn’t complete until good triumphs over evil and a sense of morality is achieved. Carth redeems Dustil and proves to him why the Sith are evil therefore teaching Dustil morality. With this act Carth has totally become a well-rounded character operating in the melodramatic mode.

In conclusion my working definition of melodrama involves intense emotion, visual conflict, a sense of virtue and morality, and finally redemption. I strongly disagree with the concept that melodrama is always a negative thing or is only applicable to women. Carth Onasi is my favorite Star Wars character despite the fact that he isn’t canon in the cinematic universe. His entire characterization revolves around melodramatic tendencies but those tendencies are what give him depth and make him interesting. Experiencing KOTOR until the final boss fight with Carth by my side made the game fun and memorable for me. There were plenty of other quests and stories that are much more melodramatic, but they operate in a non-constructive way and are the reason I believe melodrama is used as a negative term. Carth’s character is with the PC from the very beginning; therefore being the first real character the player can interact with. That just adds more to the relationship he and the PC develop and becomes fulfilling in the end. The fact that Carth is despised by men makes me love him even more in all honesty. Carth Onasi was made for my demographic back in a time when women were rarely seen as “gamers.” Carth is emotional, virtuous, moral and the embodiment of good. I couldn’t ask for more in a video game companion.

[jijimtw2023]

Cover Letter for Johnson and Johnson Intership.

March 23, 2023

Johnson & Johnson New Brunswick, NJ

Dear Johnson & Johnson Team

I am writing in response to a summer internship opportunity I was informed about through my school's career advisor. This job posting interested me due to my background in the sciences and my love for coding and data collection. My biggest research interest is human genome research. In August 2020 I started going to Howard University for a BA in Biology and a Minor in Chemistry. During my time at school, I took many different classes of the biological sciences, such as plant biology, organic chemistry, and microbiology. My best course was genetics in which I was introduced to the study of the chemical composition and structure of the genetic material and its transmission and function in development and metabolism.

Even before I started college I’ve had experience with genetic research in a laboratory. My first lab was during high school when I took an advanced biotechnology class. There were many things I loved about that course, learning about the technologies used in a lab and all the possibilities with it. One experiment that we conducted in the course that stood out to me was where we took the blood PCR samples of students in the course and compared them to each other. We compared it to PCR samples from people outside the course to see different blood deficiencies or how you can predict diseases from said samples. The overall procedures and observations of that that we extrapolated were extremely interesting to me. My family has a long history of having sickle cell genes. It was always the case that if any of us wanted to have kids with another person that they’d check to make sure there wasn’t a high probability for the child to have sickle cell.

This summer research opportunity caught my eye due to the company Johnson and Johnson. When I went to college my original intention was to get into pharmaceuticals. I learned a lot about J n’J and many other companies similar to it. Not only have I heard many great things about the work culture at this company, I’ve heard about the types of projects worked on as well. The dedication you have to helping americans along with the development of global help is incredible. Especially the quick and effective response Johnson and Johnson had to the Covid -19 pandemic.

A special interest of mine is game development, during the past two summers, I have worked on indie games. Due to this special interest not only am I familiar with python, but also C#, Microsoft products, and Adobe products. I have a certification in photoshop. Both summers I was part of a five-member dev team, where I was the art lead for both of the teams. I managed and coordinated the color palette, art direction, game inspiration, and character design.

As I have yet to have an internship in research, what I hope to get out of this opportunity is my first foray into the professional world. Not only do I hope to learn more about data collection, but I also hope to get some in-house lab experience outside of an educational setting.

I desire to work in person, but I would also be elated to work remotely. The attached resume provides an overview of my education and experience. I would be happy to meet with you to discuss how my experiences may benefit your mission. If you want my information please feel free to contact me anytime via my mobile phone number (907) 306 4204 or my email address njimaduakor@gmail.com

Essay 3 - Job Application Package Resume

[mariajustinteriordesigns]

My Business During Corona + New Online Class - Coming Soon!

Hello friends, it’s so nice to sit here today with good tunes playing and my coffee nearby. I’m watching the ice rain (!) fall gently outside thinking, “Ok, the weather sucks, Corona is totally in “game-on” mode, so it’s the PERFECT time to improve a business and do what you’ve always wanted to do.”

Right? Oh yeah.

And this is exactly the truth. It’s time. There is no other time like the present, particularly with Corona, no vacations to plan or go on, no parties to attend or throw, holidays and birthdays are a bust, nothing to distract - you can’t even indulge in a little retail therapy… Yet there is a silver lining and it’s this: there is NO TIME LIKE NOW for figuring out what you want to be when you grow up or to level up your current business.

THERE IS NO DISTRACTION!

Yes, maybe the kids are homeschooling (my boy is only in school every other day for half a day), and you have a struggle getting time management down if you’re home with the children. I get that. I’m with you. Or perhaps you aren’t working as much and trying to make ends meet. Perhaps you ARE working but just damn sick of doing the same ole same ole. If that’s the case, maybe you have thought:

I SERIOUSLY NEED TO RUN A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS FROM HOME.

Well, have you thought that?

You can.

I’ve been working from home since 2005. No joke. I resigned from my corporate job, back then I was earning 75K a year as a project manager. I resigned and made $0 for the first 3 months. But I started my blog, decor8, and within a year, I was earning what I made in corporate, and by the second year, I was earning double that, and now it’s been 15 years working freelance, running primarily a home-based one-woman show, and I’m 100% certain I can sustain this until retirement and beyond. I will always be an entrepreneur.

Yes, there have been some minor (and a current major speed bump) along the way, but the major speed bump came after nearly 15 years during 2020. It took a GLOBAL PANDEMIC to disrupt me and my business. A pandemic.

If Corona hadn’t occurred, I’d still be running my business securely as I have been for 15 years which means that if I can do it, so can you. And after Corona, we all WILL if we get it together NOW. At the moment, I’ve decided to pivot a bit. I’m using this precious time to really think about what I love, what I miss, what I don’t miss, and what I need going forward to make me, and decor8, better.

Here is what I’ve decided so far:

1 / I need to make my business more digitally-focused (and fun!) again.

2 / I want to be in closer touch with my people (all of you) because it fuels my creativity and makes me happy.

3/ I will write my 5th book, a big coffee table book, part two of DECORATE.

4/ I must get back to teaching, online and in-person because I taught online from 2009-2018, and before that, part of my job in corporate was as a trainer for 7 years, so it’s just part of my DNA to teach.

5/ Create something from HOLLY magazine that makes me happy and has value to all of you.

6/ Eventually build something brand new that I’ve never done before to mix-in, just to keep me entertained and happy. Maybe a retail shop (yeah, I know - of all things).

7/ Once fairs start, attend only 4-5 each year vs. 10+

8/ Launch online classes again because they are the heart of my heart and always brought me the most light and happiness.

9/ Be less shy of video and start doing my own, more and more, evolving it into something greater.

10/ Not accept being called an Influencer anymore (especially by brands), cutting myself out of that market altogether, because I don’t like what it conveys. I don't want to influence or force anyone, I want to represent, guide, teach, be known as a tastemaker even… But not an influencer. I’m far beyond that in my career, with my experience, and at my age. I don’t want to dance or sing on TikTok.

So that’s my list.

What things have you decided for yourself and your business for 2021 and even, beyond?

And what is your list? Can you share it below?

Next, in line no. 8 above, I’m relaunching Blogging Your Way online classes under a new name: decor8 courses. Very simple and directly related to my brand. Blogging Your Way evolved throughout the years to include styling classes, photography lessons, Instagram training and so much more than traditional blogging. It makes sense to rebrand simply as decor8 courses because then I don’t have to stick to one topic.

I also decided to create a community around decor8 courses so that my students can always stay logged in months after the class is over and talk to each other, and receive regular drips of content from me. Students will also have lifetime access to the class, and when I update the class modules for future students, they get all of the updates for free because it’s included in their one-time payment when they originally enroll in the class.

This means I also dissolved bloggingyourway.com and I dropped WordPress where the class had been built by my husband, and drop the forum on that site that he had worked to develop over the years. It’s over and I’m fine with it and so is he. He left decor8 in 2018, he was a partner from 2009 until 2018, but he went his own way with his business and I went my way. He does a lot of work for interesting brands, like Skandinavisk, and I’m happy for him - because he is usually what he was trained in and what he’s best at for brands that need him. He’s an expert at extracting data and making sense of it and as a result, helping businesses to really grow and thrive. Working together indefinitely was never part of our plan, it just sorta happened based on the urgency of the moment. My classes were hugely popular and I needed help and he was here, he is technically gifted, and so he became the go-to for managing my teaching “platform”.

With him out of the business, I had to consider how to rebuild the classes because WordPress and multiple plug-ins and having regular conversations with plug-in developers, etc. just wasn’t my thing. I shopped around and found two sites that will make my teaching dreams come true again, but on platforms that I am able to maintain. I understand the technology and actually used to build websites back in the good old days of coding in HTML, but a lot of changed since then, and I haven’t kept up with site builds and maintenance in so long, and server management, etc. that I definitely had to find an easy solution for running the new class site.

When the next class goes live for enrollment, if you want to get your business back in shape, or make your current business stronger and better, you really need to invest in this class. I mean, it’s gonna be the bomb. It’s not much of an investment at $329, but for some of you, it may be… And this is why I kept the course price low - so everyone who wants in can get in and if you sign up for my mailing list, you can get it for $50 off the enrollment so it’s only $279 for you.

SUBSCRIBE FOR $50 OFF

It would be easy for me to charge over $1,000 for it, because the new class will be better than any I’ve ever taught online - fuller, richer, more dynamic, more guest experts, lifetime access, a lifetime community (and no, not a Facebook group!), and just better all around. But for $329 ($279 with the code) you can experience something quite fantastic and loaded with all the help that you need to take your blog, Instagram and newsletters to the next level because really, these are THE three core channels, the foundation, of any successful online business and that’s why I’m kicking off the new decor8 courses with a class dedicated to those topics.

SO my dear friends… that’s an update from my home office to you. Wishing you much love and support in these difficult times. I’m here for you (always) and once the class is live, I’ll let you know and you can enroll and then, we can be together for 5 weeks and ROCK YOUR BUSINESS.

Love,

Holly

Photos by Sincerely Media on Unsplash

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[dailynewswebsite]

Esports could be quietly spawning a whole new generation of problem gamblers

The brand new drawback playing? Parilov

Most giant sports activities occasions got here to an abrupt halt through the pandemic, however one class was not solely unaffected however loved accelerated progress: esports. Esports is the aggressive enjoying of video video games comparable to League of Legends, Fortnite and Fifa Soccer.

The audiences for the most important titles at the moment are huge. Fortnite alone has round 78 million month-to-month gamers {and professional} tournaments attract many tens of millions of on-line spectators. League of Legends World Championship attracted over 100 million viewers in 2019 with a peak of 44 million. As compared, the Wimbledon males’s last 2019 peaked at round 9 million viewers.

It’s not simply the scale of the viewers that’s completely different, it’s additionally their age. The typical tennis spectator is 61, whereas esports spectators are on common 26.

Main bookmakers comparable to PaddyPower, Guess365 and Betway, together with many area of interest operators, at the moment are providing bets on esports tournaments. Month-to-month esports betting revenues for UK operators rose 30-fold between March 2019 and March 2020, and by June they’d greater than doubled once more.

The worldwide esports betting market is anticipated to be price as much as $15 billion (£12 billion) this yr, in contrast with lower than US$6 billion in 2016. This explosive progress has been fuelled by internet marketing, which just about tripled throughout lockdown.

Esports Counter Strike world occasion in Moscow, September 2019. Roman Kosolapov

The hazard is that youthful persons are being drawn to gamble on esports. In 2019, 17% of esports gamblers had been aged 18-24. Normally, an increasing number of UK 16-34-year-olds are playing, and the common age of gamblers is lowering. The variety of drawback gamblers aged 11-16 has additionally quadrupled to greater than 50,000 in simply two years. This comes at a time when 93% of UK kids play video video games, averaging three hours a day and a rising quantity additionally observe skilled esports groups.

Learn extra: Digital Tour de France reveals how esports has come of age throughout lockdown

There may be scant analysis into whether or not esports gaming results in playing, however our examine in 2019 discovered kids closely engaged with tweets from esports bookmakers and their associates. And regulators can’t sustain. Through the latest Home of Lords inquiry into playing, Man Parker, chief govt of the Promoting Requirements Authority (ASA), admitted he finds it virtually not possible to trace and regulate on-line playing promoting.

Esports betting adverts and youngsters

Our analysis, sponsored by GambleAware and in collaboration with Ipsos MORI, the thinktank Demos and the College of Sussex, analysed 880,000 tweets from 417 UK-based accounts associated to playing operators. We checked out information from their 621,000 UK-based followers, and the 166,969 UK-based people who engaged with these tweets by commenting, liking or sharing them. We analysed tweets associated to each conventional sports activities and esports betting, with the latter making up a few tenth of the accounts studied.

We recognized three specific issues. First, folks following esport playing accounts are very younger. We discovered that 17% of followers had been beneath 16, and one other 69% had been aged 16-23. In different phrases, 85% of esports betting-account followers are beneath 24. The identical is true for these commenting on, liking or sharing these tweets: 28% had been beneath 16, and 66% had been aged 16-23.

Second, the promoting methods utilized by playing operators are considerably completely different from these used for conventional sports activities (with an older viewers). Slightly than getting folks to enroll or make impulsive gambles by providing “free bets”, “matched bets” or “sign-up bonuses”, esports betting seems to pay attention rather more on tweets which might be humorous, utilizing gifs, memes and esports insider-knowledge.

This content material doesn’t seem like a tough promote or an incitement to gamble. Kids won’t even realise it’s business content material designed to make them half with their cash, and may do little to withstand.

Humorous stuff can be extremely shareable. As these posts are circulated on social media, extra kids – who could have beforehand had little interest in playing – are inadvertently looped in. So whereas playing is prohibited for a lot of partaking with these adverts, with a minimal age of 18 within the UK, a optimistic picture is slowly and implicitly constructing at the back of their minds.

Third, when our researchers analysed a pattern of all of the tweets in depth, many appeared to contravene the UK’s CAP playing promoting code. We discovered esports playing tweets that used cartoons and animated characters, related themselves with youth tradition or featured esports stars beneath 25 years previous. All of this exercise breaches the code.

Different analysis has highlighted points with playing promoting probably interesting to kids, however our give attention to esports highlights a worrying development that has been beneath the radar of researchers and policymakers.

Subsequent steps

With the pandemic unlikely to vanish quickly, esports enjoying, following and betting will proceed to develop. We have to act now to cease social-media promoting turning kids’s gaming into playing.

After studying our analysis, the Playing Fee and ASA despatched all UK esports betting operators a reminder of the promoting guidelines, and printed a response to the findings declaring that many tweets had been from non-UK operators and due to this fact past the remit of the CAP code.

Nevertheless, we discovered that it’s doable in lots of circumstances for kids to click on by way of to non-UK websites and open accounts by saying they’re 18, highlighting a significant effectiveness subject with a UK-focused code in a world of worldwide social media. We additionally imagine that the ASA must name extra UK transgressors to account with sanctions for many who fail to conform.

In our view, the principles don’t adequately tackle the peculiarities of social-media advertising and marketing, the place humorous content material can rapidly and successfully make esports betting extra interesting to kids and normalise the hyperlink between well-liked video games and playing. An consciousness marketing campaign for folks can be wanted. Many mother and father may know that their kids are enjoying esports of their bedrooms or following skilled tournaments, however most are most likely unaware of the sturdy hyperlink with betting. Final however not least, we additionally want much more analysis.

Requested to remark, a spokesperson for the Betting and Gaming Council, which represents most operators within the UK betting trade, stated:

We’re dedicated to driving up requirements within the betting and gaming trade. It’s unlawful for anybody beneath 18 to guess with any of our members and we function strict age and identification measures to stop anybody underage accessing these merchandise.

We have now additionally taken additional steps to stop younger folks from seeing betting adverts. From October 1, the up to date trade code for socially accountable promoting signifies that all sponsored or paid-for adverts on engines like google should clarify the merchandise are just for these aged over 18, whereas YouTube customers might want to have age-verified accounts earlier than they will view betting adverts. BGC members may even need to ceaselessly put up accountable betting messages on their Twitter accounts.

We stay up for the federal government’s forthcoming playing overview, which we hope will result in a crackdown on black market operators who’ve little interest in safer playing or defending their prospects and don’t work to the identical accountable requirements as BGC members.

The examine on which this text relies was funded by GambleAware, a nationwide charity instructed by authorities to fee analysis into playing in Nice Britain. GambleAware is funded by way of contributions from the playing trade, however selections about what analysis to fund are made by the Accountable Playing Technique Board (renamed in 2019 to The Advisory Board for Safer Playing), an unbiased group that gives recommendation on playing coverage and analysis to authorities. In September 2016, the RGSB and GambleAware printed a Analysis Commissioning and Governance Process, which describes how analysis priorities are set and commissioned, in isolation from the playing trade.

from Growth News https://growthnews.in/esports-could-be-quietly-spawning-a-whole-new-generation-of-problem-gamblers/ via https://growthnews.in

[folorunshoayeni]

How to raise excellent and outstanding children

How to raise excellent and outstanding children

Children are a gift from God and we ought to do all in our power and ability to raise them to be very successful. Many do not know that what a child eventually become is a product of the home and the training they received while growing up especially when they are still very young.

If you’re blessed to have one or more of them, you should do all in your power and ability to make them successful and become better than you. In the past, even our uneducated parents sold their property to give their children a lasting legacy in education. They sold their land, clothes, farm produce etc.just to ensure their children get Western education. Today, we have so many professors, doctors, lawyers, business moguls, industrialists, engineers, etc. as products of the yesteryears sacrifices by their parents.

Before you count yourself out of this little piece, claiming you don’t have your own biological child, I believe God can give you yours. But if you adopt a child, this write up is also for you. In the end, it’s going to be about the lives you’ve touched and made to become responsible.

In what ways can we ensure that we raise godly and successful children?

1. Teach them the fear of God. The Bible says, teach a child in the way he should go and when he’s old, he’ll not depart from it- Proverbs 22:6.

2. We must ensure we pray for our children on a daily basis and teach them the fear of the Lord when they’re still very young. Their mind is like a blank paper; whatever we write there becomes permanent. Let them also see the attributes of what we “preach” in our life and ways. You don’t want to teach your children not to lie when you’re a pathological liar. Children learn faster from what they see around them than from what they hear us say. Therefore, the fundamental teaching starts with the word of God; that’s a lasting foundation for all other things you’re trying to build in them. Do not leave the training of your children to the Sunday School teachers. Learn to review the lessons with them at home. Teach them to memorize the Scripture. Buy them books in picture format that makes the Scripture come alive to them. Play videos on Bible characters to them and on morals. When they start reading the Bible in the early years, the word they read becomes their wisdom in the latter years.



3. Learn to pray for your children everyday. Before you scream and say it’s too tasking; let me share a brief on dedication to you. The mother of the popular John Wesley, Susanna Wesley, had 19 children and she spent one hour every week, praying for each child. No wonder she produced world shakers like John Wesley and Charles Wesley. 

When they see us pray, they’d learn to put their hope and trust in God when they grow up and we are not around anymore. Such children won’t commit suicide even when they’re passing through a challenge because they’ve learned to put their trust in God from childhood. 

In the morning devotions, teach them to pray and give them the opportunity to lead prayers too.

4. Give them sound and qualitative education. Do all in your power to educate your children formally and informally. Let them get all the informal education at home first before leaving for school to go get formal education. Teach them how to respect their elders, how to behave in the society, how to sit as girls, how to talk, how to eat. That may surprise you but if you’ve ever worked in a boarding school system, you’d see that lots of kids don’t have table manner. Teach them to take good care of their environment. When they’re getting older, teach them to sweep, mop the floor and clean their body. Teach them general rules of hygiene.

Concerning formal education, take them to good schools where they can excel on their own without any “support” during exams; do not take them to places where they’re involved in examination malpractice. When the children learn to write exams on their own without any form of assistance from their teachers, it’d build in them the spirit of independence and self reliance. When they get to higher institution, they’ll not be at the mercy of immoral lecturers who give marks for sex or for handouts. 

Do not enroll your children in expensive school you can’t afford. Don’t try to be like the “Joneses”; cut your cloth according to your size. I have seen so many parents who took their children to expensive schools they can’t afford, only to withdraw them eventually. It’s not ideal to be changing their schools all the time.

Help them in their assignments too. Get them moral and upright teachers for extra mural class if you can afford it but make sure you have a CCTV camera to monitor such lessons or make sure it’s an environment that’s open so your children don’t get molested.

I don’t encourage getting a nanny or home help for your little children; judging by what we see these days online on how wicked nannies maltreat innocent children. 

Let your children get a sound education and when it’s time to choose their course and career path, guide them from junior school. You should be praying for them on career choice. Study their strength and weakness. Expose them to different professions and guide them to choose the department they’ll be in high school. Do not force your child to be in science class if they have no aptitude and interest in science. Do not make their career a burden and a nightmare. Let them choose a course where they can excel and where their interest lie.

In teaching your children, let them make the study of mathematics and languages a priority. If they live in Nigeria for instance, let them practice mathematics daily and English language since English is our lingua franca and official language. Their textbooks are virtually in English.

When they get to higher institution, pay them regular and surprise visits. You may be shocked to know that when some children get to college, they turn to something else and jettison their old belief. We have heard of pastor’s children joining bad gang when they leave home and some girls take to prostitution. Some change the way they dress when in school. That’s the reason why we must ensure our children know why we teach them to do certain things and dress in certain ways so that it wouldn’t appear as if we forced a doctrine on them. Let them have their own conviction and not just church dogma.

5. Help them to discover their talents very early. Watch them when growing up to know their knack, bent and ingenuity. Discover their innate abilities and help them to develop and deploy them. “The gift of a man shall make a way for him”. 

Talent come in different forms; some are good with their legs and hands and they may be sport inclined. Some are good with subjects; some good with their mouth; singers, musicians, and orators. Some are good with their fingers; artists and creative people. Some are good at fixing electronics; some love dancing; some love taking care of sick people; some just like counselling and teaching. The list is endless. Help them discover their gifts and calling very early in life and let them start practising them on time. The earlier, the better. 

Tiger woods started playing golf at two. He was introduced to the game at that early stage by his father, Earl Woods. Same can be said of most successful athletes.  

No matter what talent they possess, let them not abandon formal education.

6. Teach them varied skills. Teach them self defense techniques. It doesn’t bite to learn how to get yourself out of trouble when attacked. Boxing, judo, taekwondo shouldn’t be seen as evil.

Teach them how to swim. They may need this survival strategy latter in life. Teach them coking skills. Girls shouldn’t be the only ones to learn this.Teach the boys too. In developed climes, we have lots of male chefs who make a living, cooking.

Teach them computer skills, data processing, coding, software development etc.

7.Teach them street sense. This is how to survive on the street. Teach your girls not to attend a party without your consent. Teach them not to accept a drink from people without checking up so they don’t get drugged and molested.Tell your boys to avoid evil company. Evil companionship leads to evil character.

When a stranger calls them on the street, tell them to keep walking. In a place like Nigeria, we have heard of people who answered strangers and they were kidnapped and used for money ritual.

8.Teach them time management skills. Let them know that a lost time can never be regained

9. Make them observe fasting sometimes as a form of spiritual exercise.

10.Teach them to choose their friends carefully. Get to know their friends and help them trim their association.

11.Let them learn how to play different musical instruments. A study has shown that children who learn music often do better in their academics than those who don’t.

12.Teach them different languages.You can teach them from your phone. Download a language app and let them have a global view of life. 

13.Teach them how to cross the road and how to apply wisdom on the street. 

14.When they’re matured and ready for marriage, lead them prayerfully. Guide them in the choice of a life partner. Do not force anyone on them. Let them marry who they love. Study and carry out a thorough investigation on the family they’re marrying into.Tell God to help them in their marriage.

After their marriage, pray for them and keep in touch to monitor how they do. I don’t mean intruding into their privacy. Pray for them constantly and trust God to take care of them.

So many things to teach these children about life. As long as we live, let us not stop teaching in one way or the other. When they’re married, we can even teach them by sending messages to them without necessarily visiting them. 

May God help us all in raising our “jewels” and “angels”.