#loads of old newspapers archives you can find online

[i-didnt-do-1t]

My personal favourite story of Annie Kelly is that when the boys noticed she was at the rally they would not stop incessantly chanting and cheering her name until she went up to do a speech

Annie Kelly was dubbed the brick of all women and most faithful of the strikers because despite the fact she could’ve sold copies of the world and journal (as many other female newsies did because the boys weren’t willing to soak them) she didn’t!

And because the public were generally in support of the strike, she got a shit ton of customers because she wasn’t scabbing and they didn’t want to scab by buying copies of the world and journal!

[virtual-lara]

Tomb Raider and the brand have been around for over 23 years and any fan would appreciate that this is quite an achievement! But with this vast history comes items, tidbits or things that have become lost along the way. We have decided to create a list in a hope that someday, someone might be able to rediscover them!

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1) Lucozade 'Challenge Lara' Flash Game

This flash game was available to play on Larazade.com in 2001. Players could choose from a selection of equipment and clothing to race in. Lara's energy bar would deplete so players would have to pick up Larazade bottles to refill it. Players had the chance to win one of five Land Rovers or a chance to visit Croft Manor. Very few fansites offered this flash game as a download back in the day. If you'd like to learn more about the Lucozade sponsorship, click here.

2) Timex 'Race Against Time' Flash Game

Created by Snowball Interactive in conjunction with Timex, Eidos Interactive and IGN to promote the Timex feature in Tomb Raider Chronicles, this flash game had Lara defeat enemies with her Timex. The aim of the game was to 'help Lara save her manor before a bomb destroys it!'[1] There was a grand prize winner for so many weeks and 5 runners up. Prizes given were a copy of Tomb Raider Chronicles, a Sega Dreamcast and the choice of a Timex Gripclip or a Timex wrist watch. Sadly, this flash game could not be downloaded. You can still view the original website here however the game no longer loads. Or if you'd like to learn more about the Timex sponsorship, click here.

3) Tomb Raider: Legend Jeep 'Trail Raider' Flash Game

This little flash game could be played on Jeep's website back in 2006/07. Players had to control one of a couple of Jeep vehicles through a side scrolling level. There were 3 levels in total and the goal was to complete the 3 levels as quickly as possible. Once again, this flash game was not offered out as a download so it is another item lost in the history of 20 years of tomb raider. This mini game is not to be confused with 'Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life' Jeep game titled 'Trail of Life'. To read about this game or see more imagery, see here.

4) Lara Croft Tomb Raider Movie Land Rover Defender Mini Game

The only piece of information of its existence is from the old fansite trmovie.com. The link on the page led to the the tomb raider page on the Land Rover website but this is all we know. This game could be downloaded but few fansites at the time and no websites now offer this as a download.

5) TV Games

This includes the Sky Gamestar, the Tomb Raider Apocalypse series, Tomb Raider: The Reckoning and Tomb Raider Secret of The Sword. These titles were never made available for download online and was exclusive to the sponsors. As times have moved on and popularity with the series changed, these quirky games have been lost to time. It is hard to find media concerning these games although several websites at the time have screenshots. One standout fan site is World of Tomb Raider and you can find the links to these pages in their sidebar.

6) Lux Veritatis Website

Recently re-discovered by Tomb-of-Ash here. There is little to no history about this very well hidden sub website. There could be a number of reasons why this project was not expanded upon. The first image came from Aussie500's Photobucket. In February 2018, whilst looking around the web archive for the sub site, we came across a screensaver, which we believe was given out as a prize for completing the puzzles. Sadly there was nothing to tell us what the puzzles were. To read more, see here.

7) Gordonstoun Cinema Advert

Back in 2001, Gordonstoun created an advertisement with the help of former students Lara Croft and two female adventurers to promote the school. The 3 minute advertisement was shown in cinemas before the start of the Tomb Raider movie. Gordonstoun offered the advertisement for download on their website, however very few fansites covered this story and so very few sites offered it as a download. This one is lost. You can visit the original website here or read more about this at Croft Times here.

8) Playmates Talking Figure Prototype (And other Prototype Figures)

Like many figures, prototypes are made and taken to conventions to stir up interest in the new line. This product was complete with packaging but for some reason, never mass produced. It would have been interesting to know what Lara would have said as she was never too chatty in game. The Croft Times did publish some details which came from the Playmates website: 'Twelve-inch Realistic Talking Lara Croft figure. Highly detailed Lara Croft figure with authentic fabric fashion and rooted hair; the figure speaks hundreds of phrases from the Tomb Raider video game series. Available: July. Estimated Retail Price:$29.99'[2]. We don't think that there were hundreds of phrases - probably seven or eight. We know that the figure existed as a physical item, as it was shown at Toy Fair in New York on February 8th, 1999, where there are pictures of Nell McAndrew stood by it. As well as this talking figure, there were various figures, an arctic Lara with snow leopard, an all brown outfit Lara with snow leopard and an Area 51 diarama with alien. It would be interesting to one day find out where these are now.

9) Down Among the Dead Story

A seven-part story, written by Erica Wagner, the literary editor of The Times, to coincide with the release of the Core Design Times exclusive level. From our research, very few fansites followed this story, which is understandable as the story was only released in the UK newspaper, The Times, so only the first part seems to exist. We managed find pictures from various fans collections, and wrote up the first part. To see more, visit here.

10) Flatland Rover

Although not completely lost as a few files can be found through the website archive, this rather cool piece of history has become forgotten. In 1999, Eidos Interactive and Flatland Rover Online struck a deal and provided fans and users of the Flatland Rover software the tools needed to create Tomb Raider-esque levels that could be played in a 3DML browser. In return, Flatland Rover helped to promote 'Tomb Raider 3: The Lost Artefact'.

11) Lara Croft: Reflections

This mobile game was released free on the Apple App Store in December 2013 but only in New Zealand and Australia. There is very little of this game left, only the most dedicated of fans would have captured imagery, videos.

12) Shadow of the Tomb Raider - Path of the Stars Mini Flash Game

There has been a few other browser mini games that were created in promotion of something Tomb Raider that can no longer be played. But because of social media and fans being more connected, the basic images of them won't be lost forever. 'Path of the Stars' was created to tease 'Shadow of the Tomb Raider' but now after game release, the webpage is gone. Yes, it was simplistic but when it's gone, it's gone forever. You can't even go back in time to play it.

13) Tomb Raider (2018) Movie - Escape the Tomb Mini Flash Game

Another flash game that will be gone when support for Flash ends in 2020, well, actually the page is now non-existant. Whilst you can go back in time to play the game, it doesn't load correctly for at least one of the puzzles and therefore it cannot be completed. This means that its art is also gone.

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We are sure that there are a few things that we have missed from this list, maybe there's more to the Core Design's Anniversary edition that is yet to be uncovered, maybe there are more early/ beta game ideas for the franchise but what we've learnt from this is that we need to save everything that we can from our franchise's rich history. We'll leave the list open for any future inclusions.

[stone-man-warrior]

January 21: 2021: 2:57 pm:

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https://twitter.com/FoxNews/status/1352360845922217993

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There are 47 minutes of this interview somewhere.

Why is an “unaired” interview presented on Google/YouTube?

The answer is that the Google/YouTube pirates invaded, captured, killed, and replaced the Hollywood executives who had archived all of those wonderful old videos that are available on YouTube. They hijacked Hollywood, and posted all of the booty online.

But that is not what I want to say here with this post. All of that is important, but that Twitter Tweet from FOX news is more important to comment on right now.

The thing is, that Trump may be dead, he could have been killed the day he took office four years ago, and that would not change anything at all. The terror train keeps on rolling no matter what. So, it turns out that the front man only needs to be alive on a video presentation in order to lead the terror army. Any speaking engagements in person can be faked with use of SAG actors, heavy make-up, wardrobe and lighting.

I need to make reminder of a eye-witness occurrence of terror at Hwy 58 in Mohave California, near Edwards AFB that happened in 1997.

There is a gas station there, my daughter and I were on the way to my sisters funeral (another story, different terror there) and we stopped for fuel. I went inside to pay, when I came out, my daughter was gone. I heard her yell. from inside of a big yellow Big Rig Truck that was pulling away from the gas station. I retrieved my daughter. Then, the gas station attendant pointed out that a train was coming down the tracks that are across the street. The attendant was terrified of that train, so, I saw it, it was on the way, I looked, and there was a train of hundred freight cars, followed by offroad vehicles with bright lights on the along the train tracks. As the train passed by, I could hear the people who were in those freight cars shouting their names, numbers were shouted, help was what they wanted, and those offroad vehicles were there to pick up any body parts that may have fallen from the train on it’s journey northbound.

The gas station attendant advised that I should not be there.

I left with my daughter, who was kidnapped again at the new york. new york casino in Vegas, then another attempt to take her was made at the rest stop on the west bound side of Hwy 58 on the return trip from the terror funeral where my sister was not anywhere nearby, alive or dead.

Later, after returning home here on Jackpine where I had only lived for about a year at the time, I learned the same thing about the train tracks that go along Russell Road that I saw happen in Mohave in CA. The train was loaded with people in freight cars, all of them yelling about names and numbers as the train rolled by every night, and a group of off road vehicles followed with bright lights along the tracks to make sure that there were no body parts left on the track after the train rolled through.

Later, 2005, all of the railroad ties were replaced with new ones from south of Grants Pass all the way to Winston Oregon, and more. They did not just replace the bad or broken railroad ties, they replaces every last one.... hundreds of thousands of railroad ties were removed and replaced along that rail line. They were moving down Russell Road in 2005, and the project took a few years to complete for the whole length.

Every night, that train has been rolling through between midnight and one am for more than twenty four years almost without variance. That train used to be loaded with many rail cars, but now, is only a locomotive, with maybe two or three rail cars in tow. The train along Russell Road has not carried any weight since 2005. The few times that they did put some rail cars on the train was all for show, and there was such a show at about dawn, last week one day, when the train went south in the early morning with many cars in tow.

The train is the “Cart” used by the Trump/Benedict/Vatican terror pirate army.

The train has been rolling a long time, not just when Donald Trump was US President. The point is, that the Trump Train will keep on rolling, as it was way before he was granted a Twitter account in the POTUS position, but he never used the @POTUS account for Tweeting, he used @RealDonaldTrump instead. and the POTUS account only did a retweet of what the RealDonaldTrump account stated. Donald Trump and the Benedict Vatican have always been getting the message out to the terror army cells, with and without use of Twitter. Advertising, TV shows and commercials, newspapers, billboards... all of media has been used for making the marching orders that create the conditions that require an enormous locomotive to clear away the dead bodies after the slaughter.

He may be gone, he may even be dead, but the train will keep rolling until the end of time, or, until the Vatican is destroyed.

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4:10 pm:

I have two examples of Billboard advertising along highways to consider as terror command orders presented from Vatican/Britain leadership to the terror army in the field in the cities and towns of USA at time before there was an internet:

There was a very large campaign of signage in Southern California all through the 1970′s where the billboards said:

“I Found It”

A phone number was included on the signs, no other information was presented. There were hundreds of those signs, large and small, and the “I Found It” message was also within magazines and newspapers.

I don‘t claim to know the full extent of the command.

I do know that as a stupid kid, I called the number to see what the heck was being found. They asked personal questions, and someone came to the house from the “I Found It” HQ. That’s all I remember about “I Found It”. I know now that the signs were a tool for gathering necessary information that would locate a “Jesus” to capture, to nail to the mast, to catch wind, to move the boat forward, to find more Jesus’, to nail to the mast, to catch wind, to propel the Christian pirate ship forward, to find more Jesus’, to nail to the mast...

The other example is different kind of message. Is “Oliver North” presented on billboards along the I-15 in the California desert areas, and along I-40 into Arizona... probably other areas. That was at a time when stopping in Ludlow on the 40 was a real bad idea, super dangerous there, the danger at Ludlow is marked by a hotel made of giant Tee-Pee’s. The terror army see’s the Tee-Pee’s, and they know that the surrounding area is a terror friendly area, supplies, food, fuel, and a place to sleep are offered to migrant terror cells, while the US Citizen travelers are killed at such places. You need to know some magic words to say and have some magic markings on your vehicle to survive a stop in places like Ludlow.

The Oliver north sign:

“All of her north”

It means there is going to be a very large influx of terror soldiers from Canada arriving, those who are already in California are informed to protect, and supply the new incoming “All of Her north” when the arrive in the areas where the signs were presented along the freeway in the CA and AZ desert regions in around 1980-1983-ish.

That was the purpose for that SAG character known as “Oliver North”, a message to provide support for a large batch of freshly trained terror soldiers arriving from Canada, spoken through SAG advertising agencies from Hollywood high command, who are commanded from Vatican Choir High Command at Amp Guru, Music Industry.

My interpretation goes farther towards the east along the south side of USA, where it may prove that the terror army began a trek along the I-40 towards the east in the same way that the Interstate 5 was used to take over the entire west coast of USA, kill of all of the USA military, takeover and occupy the military and national guard bases, and gain control of all of the hospitals in preparation for a different phase of the pirating, the Corona Virus phase we have been experiencing this past year. Interstate 40, is a long, long, long, road.

We are doomed.

There is no one watching the baby, and Joe Biden is not going the save the day, he already was Vice President once, the same problems were happening then as are now. He only raped little girls, that was the extent of Joe Biden’s leadership, it will be the extent on this go around too.

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4:50 pm:

Let’s say there were some folks who read the “StoneMan Plan for stopping terrorism” from yesterday, but, they love their movie stars and musicians too much, but are OK with the other parts of The StoneMan Plan.

So, they go ahead and take out I O Downing, say “Fuck Johnson and everyone who looks and sounds like him...”

That’s a good start.

Then, they say “Fuck Santa”, and take out the Vatican.

That too, is a good start.

But the people are not going to take out SAG, they like music and movies too much to do that.

Well... that won’t work.

All that would happen, is SAG would then be empowered to continue with what they have already been doing while under the British and Vatican command.

SAG would then be High Command, they would make the decisions their own way about how to make the kill, and what targets to take.

SAG, basically, is a nation without a country, seeking some land, to call home, and raise a flag... but they did that already when that US SAG Jack was flown at the WH and at US Congress, and at all of the state governors offices. That thing that looks like a US Flag with the gold trim around it, is a SAG Jack, they are flying those everywhere.

So, you cannot take out the terrorism without taking all three of the components, and, that other fourth one that so little is known about, the Afterswords.

Vatican

Britain Government

Screen Actor Guild

and that other thing called Afterswords...

all need to be wiped off of the face of the Earth permanently.

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5:14 pm:

If you read this account then you learned of The Jim Dunlop.

You probably did not take that seriously, and that is a shame.

The Jim Dunlop, revue...

The Jim Dunlop, on the surface, appears to be the humble maker of the vast majority of the worlds guitar picks, and is the maker of the Cry Baby Wah since 1965.

The Jim Dunlop, in reality, is “Mr. Tracy” from the Thunderbird’s children puppet show on TV... not the actor but as representation for terror take over of the world with use of a children’s television show to send out the command orders.

Volcano Island, is the “Triangular Prism” where “Amp Guru” is at. Amp Guru is still a bit of a mystery, but so far, Amp Guru is the place, and the men at the highest command levels, of he highest order of leaders at the Vatican, and that highest level is the Vatican Choir, because “music moves the mortal soul” ~Don McLean from “Bye-Bye Ms. American Pie”.

So, The Jim Dunlop is a culmination of all of the Christian Pirate Admirals of all time, all of the Pope’s throughout history are The Jim Dunlop. The Pope’s change from time to time, but The Jim Dunlop, is always The Jim Dunlop.

The Jim Dunlop is likely to have been preceded by Davey Jones, captain of The Flying Dutchman, who was in The Jim Dunlop position before there were electronics at the Vatican Choir.

“A rose by any other name, is still a rose” ~unknown

The Jim Dunlop is Captain of The Flying V.

But he is also Admiral of the Christian Pirate Fleet.

If you read this entire account, then you read about the guitar and the pick, and why the two are symbolic as an Ax wielded by the Christian Pirates. (is better to think of a blade, rather than Ax). You learned that in between the guitar and the guitar player, is the guitar pick.

The guitar pick is the tool that is used for playing the instrument.

It is said that the guitar players soul resides in the pick that is used for playing the instrument, and that is why The Jim Dunlop takes control of all of the guitar picks on earth. The music you hear from the guitar is coming from the guitar players heart and mind, through the soul (I prefer the Chi for that) and into the strings through the hand of the guitar player, applied to the pick, to make the vibes that make the music that moves the listener, that comes out of the guitar.

There is much magic in the pick wielded by a guitar player. The guitar player can make you dance, or sing, or be angry, or cry, can make you happy or sad, and he can change your feelings between those extremes all within five minutes, many times over, so, yes, there is a great deal of magic that resides in a guitar pick when used by a skilled guitar player.

It is said that if you take the hand of a guitar player, you gain all of the skills the guitar player posses. It is not necessary to remove the guitar players hand for that, just take it.

Then, there is the Cry Baby Wah. That is also made by The Jim Dunlop. The Cry Baby Wah, is a symbolic thing that covers a lot of ground, it is there to protect The Jim Dunlop and the Flying V pirate ship that he Captains, and the fleet of pirate ships of the Vatican Choir.

When someone begins to make a cry for help, the Cry Baby Wah is the thing that controls those people who make a cry for help... it’s the sound made by all of the Jesus’ as they are clinging for life on the mast of the ship.

All is symbolic, and that explanation is much of the symbolism of the Jim Dunlop, the guitar, the Flying V pirates ship, the Vatican Choir, the Cry Baby Wah, the Guitar pick, the guitar player, the Ax, the blade, Jesus’, and the fleet of Vatican Choir Ships that sail on the Holy See, in search of land, riches, slaves, and power.

I suspect Davey Jones was a violinist. Perhaps skilled with a cello as well.

The guitar is a mid-range instrument, but is also a bass.

The whole band is involved with this symbolism. I only mention the guitar here.

The Christians lie like a rug. They cover a lot of ground, are casual, and are very good at what they do, while looking like a nice place to step on solid ground.

==========

One of many interpretations of “The Flying V” is like this:

It’s a pirate ship, could be any kind of ship, boat, airplane, big rig truck, motorhome, or individual terror soldier pirate, or the cell of which they are crew.

The Pope’s Pointy Hat, turned upside down, is on decent, on attack, has an attitude such that everything is turned around with use of the hat, and the ship on decent from above, through air, through the wind... the wind in the sail that moves the boat.

That is one of many interpretations of symbolism associated with why the Flying is called the Flying V.

Another part of that same interpretation needs this phrase to understand:

“The meek shall inherit the Earth”

So, on decent of attack, one of the primary targets for the past fifty years are people, mostly men, who are very healthy and strong with V shape to them, wide shoulders, lean, and narrow at the waste, such as is the shape of US Military service persons. There are no people who are immune to the affect of nitrous oxide gas mixtures, that stuff is “The Great Equalizer” (there is too much musical equipment symbolism for one guy with hijacked internet to explore with Equalizer) and is useful for overpowering those V shaped strong healthy people, especially when the gas is accompanied by a small platoon of Patti Gurdy’s from YouTube. There is no army on earth who can defend against a small platoon of Patti Gurdy’s who are armed with nitrous oxide at the US navy port who are there to attack the V shaped men of the US military.

Patti is very skilled with a unique instrument, is not available in stores, makes some of the most beautiful music ever, with a handle that turns around, and around.

If you understand the Gurdy, then you can understand why it is also said that in USA, they kill you with cotton.

There is another story that is told about things that are hard to get.

The Gurdy is one of those kinds of things. For stuff that is very cool, or useful, stuff that is a lot like a Tesla Roadster, they made some, but you can‘t get one, those kinds of things.

The story about the Gurdy, is that there is only one guy who knows how to make them, he lives in a cave in the Himalaya’s, and only makes three Gurdy’s annually, one of which, is defective, so the story is told.

(The Land of Misfit Toys shows up on Decoder Ring RADAR)

The full name of the instrument is a “Hurdy Gurdy”, works the same as a “Hertz Donut” in a stampede.

(Frequency Response Modulation Unit shows up on Decoder Ring RADAR)

(”I want to be a Dentist” shows up, on Decoder Ring RADAR)

Russian Mother of all Hoaxes takes over from there, in this symbolism of the guitar terror report.

Saturday Night Live shows up:

“Cheeseburger, cheeseburger... Coke... No! Pepsi! No! Coke!... FRY!”

Fish goes into a blender... it’s all fucked up after that.

Fryer Tuck and Sheriff John were waiting in the next room the whole time for Patti to say: “FRY!” and the Sheriff arranges the Coke in the room for the dis-honorable discharge, while Patti gets washes up in the restroom.

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7:18 pm:

At Waikiki Beach, there is a Hawaii 5-O Police Kioske.

At 5:00 pm, every night, the prostitutes come out from a narrow alley there across the street from 5-O, wearing 5″ clear glass pumps, for the past fifty years.

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7:26 pm:

In 1981 I went to Hawaii for the first time. Three islands.

I was invited to Pearl Harbor, was young and naive, stupid naive.

There were seven or eight shady looking characters in a very small recreation room pretending to play a game of pool, on a pool table, worn out green felt on it, some cues, in hand and on the wall rack, not much more was in the recreation room other than that, it was dimly lit.

Kavika, is the name of a young man I met while surfing, invited me to the base, so I went there. Kavika did not seem to like that those guys were there in the recreation room, and took off down a hallway, I followed, he said there was a party in the room, some girls, music, some fun, so, he says I have to take off my shoes to go inside, then he goes in, closes the door and locks it, he took my shoes with him.

I messed around with door and it opened, there was nothing in the room, it was a private barracks room, small apartment studio one room w/kitchenette, there was a sliding door open and the drapes were blowing around in the breeze.

Kavika stole my shoes, and ran out of the back door of the barrack that he took me to where there was supposed to be a party.

I looked all over the place, did not find Kavika or my shoes. Instead, I could see that all of the barracks were empty, nothing in any of them, after I went from the hallway, through the door, into the empty studio size room, and outside through the sliding door. From there, I could see many of the sliding doors of many similar rooms, all of them were empty, no furniture, no people, no US navy at the Pearl Harbor Barracks in 1981.

I went to the Pearl Harbor Memorial while in Honolulu. It was weird.

There are a lot of stories to tell about all three visits to Hawaii I have made.

International Market Place is especially disturbing, is a kill zone, with many small passages and very little visibility when you get into the middle of it, with tons of colorful, very cool gifts there all hanging from the individual vendors displays they have.

There is a waterfall I have written about before on this account, I forget what it’s it’s called, but there was a group of men with machine guns shooting the people who went for a swim at the bottom of the very tall and narrow water fall, in a very tall and narrow canyon. I had to run between the bullets to save my children who were clinging to the side of the canyon wall trying to take cover from the people at the top who were shooting at them. It was about 2002 wShen that happened.

Similar story at the Hawaii Grand Canyon on Kauai in 1981.

And a different kind of tourist attack at Molokini Crater Snorkel Boat Adventure, where if you stay in the water, maybe you will be OK, but if you snorkel your self over to the island part and step on the ground there at Molokini, they say: “The floor is Lava” and the pirates who are moored at the other side, come to the ridge and start shooting. I survived that, and they sent a boat to chase the snorkel boat I was on out of the crater. Was 1993 that time. The snorkel adventure boat driver had told all of the passenger snorkelers not to go swim over to the island that Molokini crater is made of, but I am not someone who is easily told what to do, so, I went over there, there was something to look at,.. I think it was turtles on the beach there, I wanted to see them.

I had to fight someone under the boat, it was glass bottom boat and a video was taken of the underwater fight through the boat bottom by another passenger.

Maybe it will show up on YouTube.

I think my former spouse arranged that I would be killed that that day at Molokini, and it did not work. She seemed upset about that.

At Wiamea bay, my family all swam with about a hundred giant sea turtles, and that was a highlight of my lifetime that day, no problems that I can recall there. north shore though, was a problem, so was that road that leads from Honolulu to the other side of the island in 2002.

Lot’s of stories of real terror, not one single person to tell about any of it.

The Christian terror associated with a vacation to Hawaii, is such that if a US Citizen goes there, then returns home, the whole terror army will assume that the citizen was killed in Hawaii, because no one survives a trip there anymore, instead, a terror soldier from Hawaii comes back to the home of the citizen who took vacation on the Hawaiian islands. The terror army themselves won‘t believe that a US Citizen made it out of there alive.

Some nsa security people could learn much from this guy by the name of Scott, a YouTube personality on the Big Island, Apua Hawaii Tours, is hard core SDA terror pedophile elementary school Virgin Hunter pirate, he did a lot of Volcano eruption commentary, while the Oregon local authorities were convincing federal fools that he was me, for a long time, maybe still are doing that. The fools need to do their own research, they have weaponized against the people they are supposed to protect, insist on being fooled all of the time.

no help has come, there are no helpful people anywhere in Oregon, all the way to California, to Washington State, to Hawaii, to Arizona, to Nevada, Idaho, or Colorado... no help anywhere. In Colorado, there is some mile high terror there, underground, subterranean, like Grants Pass and Medford is. Entire neighborhoods are built on top of giant subterranean terror installations, and that “new airport” with that blue horse statue, has a killing mechanism that washes large groups of people down a drain with a sudden rush of a wall of water, inside of the airport.

“USA: The nation that kills itself.”

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Local Update: 9:27 pm:

A walk to the mailbox was cold. Weather condtions are about the same as last night, slightly higher than last night cloudy translucent overcast sky.

The sound I would expect to hear from a Joe Biden Bobblehead doll on the run from the corner where the trashcans usually are at, towards the north on Jackpine happened as I became in visual range of the Chapman County Courts Terror Cell while I looked for terror soldiers in my creek. All of the creeks have some water in them now as of this month.

There is a traffic sound that seeems as if it is from the freeway, however my assessment is that there is a large group of Les Schwabb terror cell members at the Sportsman's Park, a very nice shooting sports range about five miles away across the freeway from the North Valley High School. They are making a lot of creepy wind sounds, in a few words I would describe that as “the sound of a cold wind off the water of Lake Huron”. The sound is stationary, it does not travel the freeway as it traffic sounds should travel.

There were some distant dog barking going on to the north east, and that was accompanied by a very brief sound that a baby makes when they cry, coming from Freeberg or maybe Sparacino terror cells.

The sound of a Jeep Cherokee 1996 model 5.0 stuck in the mud about three miles north east could be heard as it gained some traction and proceded towards the south, moaning the whole way.

The camara on the log at the Monroe's near my gate is not there, has moved somewhere else, but the telescope remains pointed at my gate.

Vert tiny details have changed at Monroe's since my last walk, there is no signs of any more offensive brush clearing, there are only a few pieces of bamboo left there along the fence line, was nice there as a visual barrier, is mostly all gone.

Myers is a little darker in their exterior lighting. Freeberg has the holliday festive lights on again and they are in the shape and colors such that it looks like a circus tent in the dark the way the lights are arranged at the garage, and the white lights are making a drapery sort of vibe along the road, maybe Scott Draper of Club northwest/Grants Pass Chamber of Commerce is there,  is the vibe I get from Freebergs tonight.

Dietricks are showing signs of life there, an additional front porch light is turned on.

Chapman's are showing signs of the strangers there again.

There are lights on at Chartrand's unit B, that has been the new normal for about three months or so. Previous normal was no lights on inside the house at Chartrand unit B for about five years.

Two pieces of mail today, something from health insurance (is useless, have to pay, there are no choices) and my mortgage bill.

That is all.

(This entry written in external software text editor)

=========================================

10:40 pm:

(I have a new font as a result of using the external text editor)

When I went outside, by the time I reached my gate, the burning sensation internal in my leg from my hip to my foot on the right side became intense, and is still burning inside my leg, and the rash on my shin is very painful and worsening.

=================================

11:13 pm:

Time Warp Terror can be identified with generic, statically placed, uniform items such as these microphone examples. The microphones seem to stay the same for too long. The reality is that so much of the news we see was all pre arranged, filmed long ago, and details such as microphone choices needed to be made uniform to stay constant all of the time in order for the Vatican terror pirate plan to work by fooling everyone with old video.

Gone are the days of that cube shaped boxy looking network TV microphone logo that we used to see all crowded around those who do the talking, now, it’s all done with the styling of an Apple Computer where there is no more uniqueness, no access ports, all is clean and Vatican Grade Sterile to make the Time Warp Terror work. The old videos must easily and seamlessly blend in among the new ones that get inserted into the time line of the time warp.

Three examples of generic, timeless microphones at a news event. These kinds of details, including the podiums should be studied in the recent and old news stories to make some comparisons about timing. How can we determine the actual dates of filming of events when all of the background items are intentionally made generic, featureless?

The venue of the Biden inauguration seems to have been intentionally crafted, designed specifically to support Time Warp Vatican Terror well into the future.

For all we know, the Trump inauguration could have possibly been filmed on the same day as the Biden inauguration, and only seem as though there was four years passed between the two events. There is nothing at that place that can be dated for either one of the two latest inaugural events to accurately say when they were filmed, and unless you were actually there, you, or anyone can not really know that the events took place at all. The weather could help identify if the events were actually filmed that day, but the meteorologist TV weather reporters are all SAG, and, SAG controls all of the media where distant weather conditions can be found.

You have to be in two places at the same time, ten years apart to know what really happened anywhere on earth these days.

=============================================

11:54 pm:

G.W. Grainger Catalogue:

G.W. Grainger Catalogue w/911 commission report cover:

There is no 911 Commission Report.

There are only fake news media representations of what they want us to believe is contained within the report.

Inside of every copy of the official 911 Commission Report is access to purchase some florescent lighting, a capacitor for your HVAC unit, you can get some heavy duty door locks in there, lots of different kinds of cardboard boxes, pens, poster board, paint.... every kind of nut and bolt ever made is available with a copy of the Official 911 Commission Report, but there is no mention of terrorists armed with poison gas, SAG pyrotechnics experts, or digital video editing software anywhere inside of the official report. What’s more, is the official 911 Commission Report contains absolutely no mention of Muslims armed with box cutters, or anything about a tower or an airplane, because it’s a G.W. Grainger Catalogue, all rebranded on the cover, only. You could build out a mobile phone network with what is available in the 911 Commission Report, but you won’t ever learn why the WTC fell down.

===============================

1-22-2021: 12:19 am:

The terror bastards went bowling, sort of.

It’s a “7-11 split”.

The two big towers are the 11, and of course WTC-7 gets a lot of attention.

Seven, eleven split.

In terror circles going back into 1970′s and beyond, the Pope is said to be a “Crocodile Pope”, because he cry’s crocodile tears.

“Do unto others, then split” was made popular by the terror pirates themselves, so they could find some of their comrades with the statements like “Do Unto Others Then Split”.

They made coat patches so they know who is on the same team.

Crocodile Pope Patch:

The G.W. Grainger Catalogue is where the screw is available.

For real.

“7-11 Split” was the theme.

It was all a distraction only, so they could take the Pentagon while everyone is worried about new york.

[septic-muse]

Awesome Sites and Links for Writers - Information and Data

I found a post earlier that had some great resources, but it was way to long to be very rebloggable. I’m splitting the post up in sections

The original is here.

If you’re the original poster and want me to take this down, let me know!

All these links work.

RefDesk – it has an enormous collection of reference materials, searchable databases and other great resources that can’t be found anywhere else. It’s great to use when you need to find something and check your facts.

Bib Me – it makes it easy to create citations, build bibliographies and acknowledge other people’s work. This is definitely something that academics will love. It’s basically a bibliography generator that automatically fills in a works cited page in MLA, APA, Chicago or Turbian formats.

Internet Public Library – this online library is full of resources that are free for anyone to use, from newspaper and magazine articles to special collections.

The Library of Congress – if you’re looking for primary documents and information, the Library of Congress is a great place to start. It has millions of items in its archives, many of which are accessible right from the website.

Social Security Administration: Popular Baby Names – is the most accurate list of popular names from 1879 to the present. If your character is from America and you need a name for them, this gives you a accurate list of names, just pick the state or decade that your character is from.

WebMD – is a handy medical database loaded with information. It’s not a substitute for a doctor, but can give you a lot of good information on diseases, symptoms, treatments, etc.

MedlinePlus – is the National Institutes of Health’s Web site that contains information about diseases, conditions, and wellness issues in language you can understand. It also offers reliable, up-to-date health information, anytime, anywhere, for free.  You can use the site to learn about the latest treatments, look up information on a drug or supplement, find out the meanings of words, or view medical videos or illustrations. You can also get links to the latest medical research on your topic or find out about clinical trials on a disease or condition.

Mayo Clinic –  is a nonprofit medical practice and medical research group.

World Health Organization (WHO) – is a specialized agency of the United Nations that is concerned with international public health. Its current priorities include communicable diseases, in particular HIV/AIDS, Ebola, malaria and tuberculosis; the mitigation of the effects of non-communicable diseases; sexual and reproductive health, development, and ageing; nutrition, food security and healthy eating; occupational health; substance abuse; and driving the development of reporting, publications, and networking.

Google Scholar – is an online, freely accessible search engine that lets users look for both physical and digital copies of articles. It searches a wide variety of sources, including academic publishers, universities, and preprint depositories and so on. While Google Scholar does search for print and online scholarly information, it is important to understand that the resource is not a database.

The Old Farmer’s Almanac – this classic almanac offers yearly information on astronomical events, weather conditions and forecasts, recipes, and gardening tips.

State Health Facts – Kaiser Family Foundation provides this database, full of health facts on a state-by-state basis that address everything from medicare to women’s health.

U.S. Census Bureau – you can learn more about the trends and demographics of America with information drawn from the Census Bureau’s online site.

Wikipedia – this shouldn’t be used as your sole source, but it can be a great way to get basic information and find out where to look for additional references.

Finding Data on the Internet – a great website that list links that can tell you where you can find the inflation rate, crime statistics, and other data.

[amarketingautomation]

How to Use Archived Versions of Websites for SEO Troubleshooting

In 2001, a nonprofit named the Internet Archive launched a new tool called the Wayback Machine on the URL: archive.org.

The mission of the Internet Archive was to build a digital library of the Internet’s history, much the same way paper copies of newspapers are saved in perpetuity.

Because webpages are constantly changing, the Wayback Machine crawlers frequently visit and cache pages for the archive.

Their goal was to make this content available for future generations of researchers, historians, and scholars. But this data is just as valuable to marketers and SEO professionals.

Whenever I am working on a project that involves a steep change in traffic either for my core site or a competitors, one of the first places I will look the cached pages before and after the changes in traffic.

Even if you aren’t doing forensic analysis on a site, just having access to a site’s changelog can be a valuable tool.

You can find old content or even recall a promotion that was run in the previous year.

Troubleshooting with the Wayback Machine

Much like looking at a live website, the cached pages will have all the information available that might explain a shift in traffic.

The entire website, with all HTML included, is contained within the cache, which makes it fairly simple to identify obvious structural or technical changes.

In comparing the differences between a before and after image of my site or a competitor’s, I look for issues with:

On-page meta.

Internal linking.

Image usages.

And even any dynamic portions of the page that might have been added or removed.

Here are the steps to use the Wayback Machine for troubleshooting.

1. Put your URL into the search box of Archive.org

This does not need to be a homepage. It can be any URL on the site.

2. Choose a date where you believe the code may have changed

Note the color coding of the dates:

Red means there was an error.

Green indicates a redirect happens.

Blue means there was a good cache of the page.

You may have to continue picking dates and then digging through each version until you find something interesting worth looking at further.

For larger sites, you will find that homepages are cached multiple times per day while other sites will only be cached a few times per year

3. The cached page from archive.org will load in your browser like any website except that it will have a header from Archive.org

Look for obvious changes in structure and content that may have lead to a change in search visibility.

4. Open the source code of the page and search for:

Title

Description

Robots

Canonicals

JavaScript

5. Compare anything that is different from the current site and analyze causal or correlative relationships

No detail is too small to be investigated. Look at things like cross-links, words used on pages, and even for evidence that a site may have been hacked during a particular time period.

You should even look at the specific language in any calls to action as a change here might impact conversions even if traffic now is higher than the time of the Wayback Machine’s cache.

Robots File Troubleshooting

The Wayback Machine even retains snapshots of robots.txt files so if there was a change in crawling permissions the evidence is readily available.

This feature has been amazingly useful for me when sites seem to have dropped out of the index mysteriously with no obvious penalty, spam attack, or a presently visible issue with a robots.txt file.

To find the robots file history just drop the robots URL into the search box like this

After that choose a date and then do a diff analysis between the current robots file. There are a number of free tools online which allow for comparisons between two different sets of text.

Backlink Research

An additional less obvious use case for the Wayback Machine is to identify how competitors may have built backlinks in the past.

Using a tool like Ahrefs I have looked at the “lost” links of a website and then put them into the Wayback Machine to see how they used to link to a target website.

A natural link shouldn’t really get “lost” and this is a great way to see why the links might have disappeared.

Gray Hat Uses

Aside from these incredibly useful ways to use the Wayback Machine to troubleshoot SEO issues, there are also some seedier ways that some use this data.

For those that are building private blog networks (PBNs) for backlink purposes, the archived site is a great way to restore the content of a recently purchased expired domain.

The restored site is then filled with links to other sites in the network.

Affiliates

One other way, again from the darker side of things, that people have used this restored content is to turn it into an affiliate site for that category.

For example, if someone bought an expired domain for a bank, they would restore the content and then place CTAs all over the site to fill out a mortgage form.

The customer might think they were getting in touch with a bank. However, in reality, their contact info is being auctioned off to a variety of mortgage brokers.

Not to end on a dark note, there is one final amazing way to use the Wayback Machine and it is the one intended by the creators of the site.

This is the archive of everything on the web, and if someone was researching Amazon’s atmospheric growth over the last two decades through the progression of their website, this is where they would find an image of what Amazon’s early and every subsequent homepage looked like.

Shady use cases aside, the Wayback Machine is one of the best free tools you can have in your digital marketing arsenal. There is simply no other tool that has 18 years of history of nearly every website in the world.

More Resources:

Image Credits

All screenshots taken by author, May 2019

Source link

from Marketing Automation and Digital Marketing Blog http://amarketingautomation.com/how-to-use-archived-versions-of-websites-for-seo-troubleshooting/

[templified]

Best WordPress Retro Themes TopNotch Themes | Templified

New Post has been published on https://templified.com/best-wordpress-retro-themes/

Best WordPress Retro Themes TopNotch Themes

Here they are, a great collection of amazing retro WordPress themes in an old-school, vintage style.  Retro themes are as popular as ever, because sometimes, you just want to have a look and feel of a bygone era.  These themes have all the cool style and layouts that really remind you of a different era.  These themes are good for any sort of website that needs a retro style look and each one is both affordable and flexible.  If you’ve got a magazine that needs a really cool vintage look, these themes are pretty great.  hey, speaking of vintage, maybe you’ve got a brick-and-mortar antique shop of vintage clothing store?  We’ve got eCommerce enabled themes to, so you can get your online presence out there with ease.  Aw yeah!

Gray Lady Gray

  Gray Lady Gray is a completely responsive, retro or vintage inspired WordPress theme that is modern, simple, monochromatic, minimalist and beautiful.  Gray Lady Gray offers a fully loaded back-end dashboard to make customizations incredibly simple to execute.  This template allows you to use images in the background, switch colors with a few clicks and even adjust the header to a custom look.  Gray Lady Gray is a full featured theme, but it isn’t bogged down by a lot of extraneous information that takes away from the content, putting it squarely in the forefront of your website.   The template is completely responsive, so it will look incredible on every kind of mobile device, resizing itself on the fly to fit whatever screen your readers use to view it.  Supports a wide variety of browsers, like Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera.  The blog can display excerpts or full content and your typography will look stunning, because of the hundreds of Google fonts that work well to create a vintage, retro, even antique feel.  Page layout options include full width, left or right sidebar and more.  Gray Lady Gray could be a fine addition to your website, eince it’s so flexible and attractive.

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Sky

  Sky floats above the pack in evocative, old-world style and its sense of whimsy is sure to leave your visitors surprised and refreshed. Sky is unique in the way it’s homepage operates, loading all of your content seamlessly using ajax. This means that no matter how many pages you have in the “slider,” your initial page load speed will be lightning fast as each page is only loaded when it is displayed.

Demo Get Hosting

Baylie

  Baylie is a fantastic theme from ThemeTrust, a once page design with style and a simple to customize interface that has enough options to keep you happy.  I’ve personally used some of ThemeTrust’s templates and they’re simple enough to understand, straightforward to get the site set up looking like the demo and they’re responsive and fast too, so SEO workd pretty well with these themes.  ThemTrust offers filterable portfolios, a WPML compatible design, so you can translate this template into any language.  Theme options, as we mentioned, are straightforward.  There’s localization support, column shortcodes, video support and you can use one of the hundreds of google webfonts.

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Blogo

  Blogo is a stylish WordPress Theme designed for creative bloggers. It’s also suitable for Portfolio, Multimedia or Personal websites.  I really love the fun layout and design in this template.  This is absolutely perfect it you’re running a craft shop and it’s got loads of social networking tools built right in.  Could be a great parental blog too.

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Pure Retro

  Pure Retro is a portfolio theme for WordPress with a little bit of hipster, country charm and a whole bunch of amazing features.  This web template was built with photographers and videographers in mind, but web design companies and, frankly, anyone who wants a fun portfolio with a retro style, will benefit greatly from a well thought out design like this one.  This theme is fully responsive, looks amazing and loads true on every browser and every screen size.  That’s what responsiveness is all about.  You’ll have this template up and loaded quickly, because it’s got well documented help files and the process of installation and creating a custom look is intuitive and well thought out.  Pure Retro might be the only retro portfolio you need.  Typography can be changed out too and the color scheme is currently based in Earth tones, but that can also be swapped out to fit your design concept and branding.

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Extinct

  Extinct is a retro style WordPress Portfolio theme, handcrafted with delicate care to live up to the expectations of a descerning crowd, whether you’re a creative agency, a graphic designer, an ad agency or a toymaker.  This theme will work for a wide variety of businesses, really.  Extinct incorporates a lot of stylish design elements that give it a retro or vintage feel that give it a homey feel and a really DIY or handcrafted vibe.  The makers of this theme, LiveMesh, studied a lot of retro designs to come up with this one, blending a lot of wonderful elements together.

The unique and attractive blog is designed to power any sort of business venture and it can be used as a portfolio too, or other content generation ideas you have can work.  Extinct offers up several unique post types, this theme is completely responsive, and the vintage design will be ideal for any website that wants to create a feel of time past.  There are plenty of shortcodes that will allow you to embed a multiple column portfolio or a blog archive summary on any page or post.  There are also advanced WordPress widgets here to list recent blog posts or posts of a certain category.

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Color Room

  Color Room is a fun, spectacular looking parallax WordPress template for a design studio or a personal portfolio website.  This theme has a distinct looking, throwback feel to it, making your content the star of the show.  Color room has slick, showy CSS3 animation and nice looking jQuery effects too.  The retro style is unique and the valid, completely debugged HTML5 code helps the site load in a flash, which helps with SEO.  If you’re tired of having a boring, completely pedestrian WordPress theme and you’re looking for something that is ground breaking, maybe Color Room is the proper choice for your next website?  PSD files, extensive documentation and demo content…they’re all included.  Plus, this theme offers amazing support to help you out of any jams you might find yourself in during the process of installing and customizing your website.  Color Room supports multiple languages too.

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Tensor

  Powerful site template designed in a clean and minimalistic style. This template is very flexible, easy for customizing and well documented, approaches for personal and professional use. Tensor has been coded in HTML5 & CSS3 and jQuery. It has a solid flexible responsive layout that scales from 320px to 1170px width all Bootstrap features. This very easy to use, adaptable, beautiful, well-built and fresh WooCommerce ready WordPress theme permits you to contact buyers, grow your small business, administer delivery and product stock, promote brand new merchandise and market old goods and more.

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  Old Car

  Old Car is a retro inspired blog theme with a nice looking ‘Pinterest style’ grid layout.  If you intend to create an on-line newspaper, you might seek a delightful and professional grid-layout theme like Old Car, because these themes are created to permit you to publish a wide selection of subject material in a suitably organized way and a manner that is very, very easy to navigate. I mean look at this thing, the information is all right there, highly visual and simple to navigate.  And it’s all got a cool looking retro style, which a lot of people really seem to enjoy.

With Old Car, you are given an excellent, very well ordered method to show your content.  That’s what WordPress grid themes are all about.  What kind of content would look best with Old Car?  Well, that’s up to you, because it’s going to look great no matter what on any device, since this theme is perfectly responsive.  For a relatively new theme, Old Car is a great way to achieve that retro look that’s so popular and trendy today.

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Fox

  The Fox WordPress theme has a great, funky retro style perfect for creatives looking to showcase their work. The theme focuses on featuring your portfolio and connects to Dribble to display your latest shots.  HTML5 and CSS3 mean that this theme has the newest and best coding for a fast and responsive site that is also incredibly customizable.  This attractive, convenient to use, well-built, versatile and trendy WordPress theme helps you manage shipping and your stock, expand your small business, market fresh products, contact potential customers and sell existing goods and a lot more.

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Retro

  Retro Premium WordPress Theme is a combination of a strong period-style design and powerful admin panel. Retro offers full control over site color scheme as well as 5 predefined skins, the fancy Revolution Slider, custom portfolio & testimonials post types, various shortcodes, custom widgets…

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Hipster

  Introducing Hipster WordPress, the perfect responsive WordPress theme for any personal or business website brought to you by ThemeForest authors Beantown Design and Fialovy. Hipster’s fully responsive design looks great no matter what device you’re viewing it on, desktop, tablet, mobile phone, etc. Customize your site with the extensive options panel using over 30 backgrounds patterns, full screen rotating background images, and 2 page layout styles (stretched or boxed). Check out the custom mobile menu that was created for small screens! Hipster is full of premium plugins to build your dream website, tons of page layouts, and oh ya.. did we mention the awesome retro style design?!

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The Artist

  The Artist is a clean, well made and visually stunning retro inspired WordPress portfolio theme that has been around for a while, but remains a very popular choice on ThemeForest.  This awesome vintage or retro portfolio theme that really avoids the trap of being boring or passe. The Artist is very clean, sleek and modern, despite having an overall retro inspired design. It’s a fine balancing act, but The Artist pulls it off with ease.  With the admin panel and page builder in this theme, you can discover unlimited possibilities of what the theme can do. Moreover, responsive feature is applied as well. Now, you or your clients can explore your amazing works through phone or tablet easily.

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Boutique

  Boutique is a retro style theme that gives you the ability to run your own WordPress based online storefront. Boutique was designed to use some of the most popular eCommerce plugins available,  like WooCommerce, and it allows you to use your favorite system without any conflicts.  The shop sets up quickly and easily, allowing you to sell just about anything you can imagine.  handbags, clothes, shoes, electronic gadgets, make-up…you name it.  If you have an antique store, this would be perfect too!  If you have a brick and mortar store, Boutique could be a perfect complement to your retro oriented business.

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[biofunmy]

Tech Products We Tried And Loved In 2018

As tech and business reporters at BuzzFeed News, we love consuming stuff. This year, our obsessions weren’t limited to the buzziest new gadgets (we recommend LAST year’s iPhone, and the Facebook Portal is conspicuously absent from this list). We were also into all sorts of new apps, fun social media accounts, productivity hacks, and even just ways to…disconnect from technology. (Reading books! Doing jigsaw puzzles!) And yes, we also enjoyed weed vape pens.

Here are all the things that the BuzzFeed Tech and Business team tried this year and wholeheartedly recommends.

1.

Customizing my PopSockets to show my cats’ faces — $15 each

I don’t need to go into all the ways that PopSockets greatly improve your life; my colleague Katie has already done that, naming it as her favorite tech thing of 2017 and talking about it nonstop all of last year. (I should know. I sit next to her in the BuzzFeed newsroom.)

Long story short, Katie convinced me too, but I took it a step even further by customizing my PopSockets with my cats’ faces. This is an easy thing. You basically take a picture of your beloved pet (or pets), photoshop out the background, and head over to the PopSocket “customizer” page. A pair cost me only $30. And you can switch out the design by popping off the top, so both Laser Beam and Vivienne get play on my phone.

Yes, this is something I show off to people at parties, frequently and obnoxiously. But now you can be that person too! Also, I’m planning to get a friend of ours a customized PopSocket with the face of his girlfriend on it as a prank Christmas gift. It’s gonna be great.

—Davey Alba

I don’t get why people like PopSockets. They are extremely uncool and bulky. Since I have a deep-seated fear of developing iPhone claw hand and a long history of dropping my phone and shattering screens (my claim to fame is that Bella Hadid and I go to the same screen repair place), I needed to find something that allowed me to hold my phone with my fingers but wasn’t totally lame. I noticed that my friend’s cool German mom was using a sleek iPhone strap at dinner one night, and I ordered one on Amazon for $2.50 less than a standard PopSocket. It lays completely flat and is the perfect size for my middle and ring finger. While I hear that PopSockets constantly break, my sturdy phone strap has never failed me. One time, a stranger on the subway asked me where I got it! I am a trendsetter.

—Maggie Schultz

The thing everyone asks me when I wear my computer glasses is: Do those things work? Well, if by “work,” you mean, “Do they make me look smart and cool?” — then yes. They work great. Do they actually do anything to protect my eyes from blue light? Idk, the science is fuzzy here.

I’ve been blessed with perfect vision, and I don’t need prescription glasses of any kind. But I’ve also been cursed with looking great in glasses! What’s a gal like me to do? Wearing fake glasses with no prescription is embarrassing; it’s something a mall emo teen would do. Computer glasses allow me all the glory of wearing “real” glasses without any visual impairment requirements!

The only downside is they have a slight blue tint, which makes them look different from actual glasses. But it’s probably not that noticeable, so I’m able to walk around looking like a certified genius while still maintaining my idiot lifestyle.

There are fancier versions of these glasses, and maybe those lenses actually do a better job of protecting your eyes. But I was in the market for something cheap, and Amazon had lots of styles under $25. I got a second pair for about $15 in pink plastic frames as well.

—Katie Notopoulos

4.

Dosist pen — $40–$100 on Eaze (availability based on local state law)

I’m 46 and, frankly, I don’t want to get too high. Or arrested. Or smoke dope that’s been treated with something I use to drive my Honda. I don’t want to get blasted or brain-hammered. I have shit to do! But every once in a while I do like to, you know, take the edge off of life?

This is why I like the Dosist pen vape. It’s a self-contained oil vaporizer that delivers a measured dose of THC and CBD as you inhale, and then vibrates to let you know to stop. There are various “formulas” with different THC to CBD ratios, and other terpenes, designed to deliver specific types of highs. (I like Bliss.) It’s also reusable. When empty, you can bring it back to a store that sells them for a $5 deposit. Plus it’s available from various on-demand delivery services, such as Eaze, so you can have it at your door within about 10 minutes of deciding you need to, uh, unwind. Not bad!

—Mat Honan

5.

Infinite content feeds that aren’t social media — various prices

2018 was the year I embraced the continuous scroll and the back catalogue. Long live the podcast feed, the extended playlist, and the audiobook. There were too many moments in 2017 when I was browsing Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram and asked myself, “What am I doing here? How have two hours passed? Is this why I can’t finish a book?” or exclaimed, “Holyshiteverythingissobad!” I was receding-hairline-deep in inane and stressful content, a condition that only encouraged stress and self-loathing. I needed a change.

So did I really listen to two years’ worth of Who? Weekly, a gossip podcast about C-list celebrities? The alternative was reading more Twitter takes about how and why the Russia investigation wound torturously on, so you fucking bet I did! Did I stream Abba’s entire discography on Spotify? It distracted me from the hellfires shrouding my apartment in ash, so I sure did! Was listening to 37 hours of The Brothers Karamazov‘s intellectual Russian family drama better than clicking on three gay thirst trap accounts in a row? YES.

—Blake Montgomery

Tabs. I tend to have a lot of them. As of writing this, I have 67 open across six windows, and many I don’t even remember clicking. There’s that big New York Times exposé on Donald Trump’s tax schemes, which I got halfway through before I was probably distracted by something dumb and meaningless on Twitter. There’s a friend’s 10,000-word essay I promised myself I’d read eventually. And there are three tabs of stale Twitter feeds I forgot to exit out of.

Tabs are the most obvious byproduct of my internet attention deficit disorder, the online exoskeletons of things my addled mind was interested in for about 10 minutes until a new shiny notification fluttered across my screen. Compared to others, my problem is probably mild. A colleague, whom I’ll leave unnamed, confided to me the other day that he had 2,193 tabs that he’s archived with an online tool. [Editor’s note: BuzzFeed News does NOT endorse Ryan’s tab strategy; it will slow your computer to a crawl.]

I have yet to download a tab manager — it’d probably just feed my habit — but I have found something else to cope with my issue. Audm, an iPhone app, streams audio read aloud by professional narrators of longform articles from outlets including the Atlantic, the New Yorker, and BuzzFeed News. Priced comparably with a newspaper or magazine subscription at $7.99 a month, Audm is perfect for long commutes and vacation road trips. Stories, of which there are more than 1,000 on the app, run anywhere from 15 minutes to 2 hours, and they sound exactly like a well-done audiobook. The content is also surprisingly fresh, with releases timed to magazine publication dates or within a few days of a story appearing online.

While the app is buggy (it takes a full minute to load and crashes about three times before I can get a working stream), it’s worth the wait. It’s transformed my morning train rides from a constant refreshing of Twitter, email, and Slack to one where I’m able to catch up on a subject I actually wanted to read about, a distraction from the distractions. And the best part is, when I get to work, I’m finally able to X out of one those tabs that I forgot about a few months ago.

—Ryan Mac

7.

@_personals_ Instagram

I spend way too many nights scrolling through Instagram until I finally fall asleep. Some of my favorite posts are the ads on @_personals_, an Instagram-based dating community for queers. The account is inspired by old-school newspaper personals, and it’s so damn good.

The way it works: The small group running the account holds an open call for ad submissions and asks for a $5 donation. Throughout that month, the account posts the ads, including a cute emoji and the submitter’s Instagram handle so interested people can get in touch.

Here’s a sampling of the ads:

“Androfemme lesbian boy-child seeks co-collaborator in all things to eventually farm sheep, write books, & build a house with.”

“22/aries/tiny faggy nb boy iso non-monog partners for crafts & crafty fucking”

“25,enby femme. Half puppy half little. Bottom bitch. Lives to please but bratty & will make you earn it. Ask my mami. I’m worth it.”

“Wry & romantic, reserved (not timid) femme into questioning, clumsily cooking with patient people, & song. Actual tragic for musos, gentle tradies, & enthusiastic nerds.”

And all of this was posted just in the last week! I was introduced to this account to expand my dating options. But now I mainly read this account for the prose.

—Leticia Miranda

For the last few months, my world has been dark. It started when Apple added a new feature in the latest version of its Mac operating system that switches all menus and other parts of the user interface to blacks and grays. This makes it easier to look at your computer at night or in a dark room without squinting. Eventually I got so used to the look that all bright colors on any screen made my eyes hurt.

Fortunately, more and more tech companies seem to be building a “Dark Mode” into their products, and I’ve since switched to it on all the apps I use the most: on Instapaper to catch up on my reading, on Twitter when I’m scrolling through my timeline for hours, on the Kindle app to read books, on YouTube, and on Reddit, which added it earlier this year. Last week, I installed Dark Reader, a Chrome extension that makes all web pages dark by default, and a dark theme for Chrome that makes the browser’s tabs jet black.

Most of us can’t help being chained to our screens for unhealthy amounts of time each day, but turning on dark mode wherever possible is a tiny luxury we should all indulge in.

—Pranav Dixit

9.

Headspace — $95.88/year subscription

For most of my life, hearing people talk about meditation would conjure up New Age visions of crossed legs and om-ing and marathon stretches of Nirvana-achieving trances. From afar, it seemed like an activity that required endless hours of devotion — more like a way of life than a healthy hobby. So to say I was extremely skeptical of app-based meditation would’ve been an understatement. At worst, it sounded like a scam; at best, a bastardization of a sacred kind of ritual.

I was wrong. A friend introduced me to Headspace after a conversation we had about productivity — specifically, how I’d found it nearly impossible to focus and structure my days without jumping haphazardly from tab to tab in my browser. And how I’d end even my best days feeling frazzled, detached, and legitimately unsure of what I’d just accomplished. On their advice, I bought myself a year’s subscription in order to incentivize actually creating a routine. I chose the Basics tutorial and tried a couple of five-minute sessions.

Unsurprisingly for a mindfulness app, the introduction to meditation is very calming and gentle. I learned that I’d been mostly wrong about the entire practice — devoting just 10 or 20 minutes a day (or whenever you have some downtime) can pay dividends quickly and improve focus. And the app — despite some corny animations — is full of guided, unguided, and semi-guided sessions that you can tailor to your day (helping to fall asleep, unwinding at the end of the day, focus before or after a workout, or just taking a breather).

I’m still no guru and I’ll admit I’ve struggled to sit down with Headspace reliably every day. But when I do, it’s immediately satisfying and is maybe the only thing on my phone that makes me feel good. The app-based part, of which I’d been so skeptical, is actually the part I find most essential in that it helps me take a few minutes for myself during random bits of downtime. It’s technology that introduces a little friction and reflection into my life, and for that I’m thankful.

—Charlie Warzel

10.

/remind command in Slack

You can set a bot to remind you of anything by just typing a command. It’s like having a personal assistant in the future, and it’s great for someone like me, who never leverages to-do lists or calendars to their full potential. You can set these reminders hours, days, or even weeks in advance by just typing a command. So for example, if I know I need to mail something when I get to work but am afraid I’ll forget to take it out of my backpack, I just set a Slack reminder for about 10 minutes after I expect to arrive at the office, and it reminds me to do it!

—Caroline O’Donovan

11.

Cutting the cord — Savings: $125.79/month

I can’t believe how long I let my cable company pump cash from my bank account. The last time I got a bill from Spectrum was in March. It was $208.26 for a “Triple Play” bundle: allegedly “fast and reliable” internet, cable (with HBO and DVR), and a fucking landline that I never even bothered to get a phone for. This package, according to a dubious customer service rep, was inexplicably cheaper than just ordering internet and cable separately without the unused landline, and it was the lowest price they could offer me, a customer of 10 years. Shit, right? The point had clearly arrived in my life when I had to decide whether I was willing to pay $2,499.12 a year to mindlessly flip through a-hundred-something channels when I was too bored to do anything else. But lame habits die hard, and it was comforting to know that I could always pull up some channel playing Friends reruns at the end of a long day. After painstakingly convincing my husband that he’d still have access to his precious, vital, life-sustaining ESPN through any number of streaming services, we made the irreversible leap to the land of the cordless, and my GOD, it has been wonderful.

We rebuilt our media habitat like this:

– An internet-only account on Verizon for $42.48 per month

– The cheapest Sling TV subscription (it has my essentials like CNN, Comedy Central, HGTV, BBC America for those great animal series, and TBS for Friends reruns, as well as ESPN for hubby) for $25 per month, and it came with a free Roku

– An HBO Now account that’s $14.99 per month

We also got a digital antenna for $14.99 plus tax, a one-time cost. There’s less content, but there hasn’t been a microsecond when I thought, Man, there’s not enough to watch. In fact, I might even say the quality of my media consumption has slightly improved since we cut the cord, as there are fewer channels that lure me into hours of accidental, regretful viewing. My programming has become more intentional. And the Roku universe is full of apps for free content like YouTube (and, ahem, BuzzFeed) and PBS Kids for my toddler. The free Roku Channel also has a boatload of free movies — not new releases, but stuff like Brooklyn, The Fighter, Spaceballs, and Braveheart: things you might have previously watched on DVD.

So I went from paying $208.26 per month to veg out with my TV to paying $82.47 to veg out with my TV. I am a step closer to entertainment enlightenment, my friends. As for the math: I’m saving $125.79 a month; which adds up to $1,509.48 per year! I intend on taking my family on a low-key getaway with this money, which is definitely going to be more memorable than 200 hours of MTV. I know people will ask “But what about DVR?” (it’s an extra $5 a month on Sling) and “Won’t all the streaming services you get to replace cable add up?” (it depends entirely on what you need, but a lot of my friends who have cable are ALSO paying for HBO or Netflix or Hulu already, so we’re possibly all oversubscribed). If there are cable-only programs that really add value to your life, then by all means, keep the cord and stay happy — I’ve just found that isn’t the case for me.

It’s possible that one day we’ll all be so dependent on cordless services that they will find ways to force customers to subscribe to bloated media packages. But for now, what’s not to love?

—Venessa Wong

12.

Buying last year’s model iPhone X (256GB edition) – $710

This year, I decided to switch from my Android back to an iPhone. I fly a lot to visit my parents in the Philippines, so I loved the cheap, convenient international coverage my Pixel’s Google’s Project Fi offered me ($10 per 1GB of data plus $20 for unlimited calls and texts!). But I missed the easy compatibility of the iPhone with other gadgets in my home, like my finicky Vizio soundbar.

But another difficult decision awaited me because 2018 was the year when choosing an iPhone became confusing as hell. The new iPhone XR’s upgrades were minimal compared to last year’s X, but the phone got wildly more expensive. So I got a used iPhone X (for a great deal, I might add) on the website Swappa.

My colleague Nicole Nguyen convinced me to make this call in her (excellent) iPhone XR review. Basically, a used iPhone X checks all the boxes in terms of positive qualities: It’s small-hand-friendly, has a super high-res screen, extra zoom, portrait mode, and is less than $1,000 to boot.

And hey, I was glad to hear some year-end 2018 news that aligns well with my choice: In November, Google renamed Project Fi to “Google Fi,” and announced that it would soon support a lot more phones, including my iPhone X. Huzzah!

—Davey Alba

13.

@girlshredclips Instagram

Back when I was a little girl living in the middle of nowhere and roaming around my rural town (population: 125) on my skateboard, I couldn’t have imagined that there were other girls who liked skating as much as I did. Anything I ever found online or in Thrasher magazine featured boys. Yes, there was occasionally Elissa Streamer, generally considered to be the first woman skater to go pro, and there were always bikini babes… but I couldn’t relate much to Ms. Streamer (more badass than I could ever hope to be), and I certainly was not a bikini babe. I never saw another skater like me (which is maybe not a surprise, considering how rarely I saw other people at all back then).

Now I’m a grown woman in a big city and skating less often than I used to, but my heart skips a beat anytime a post from @girlshredclips, @meowskateboards, or @skatelikeagirlsfbay pops up on my Instagram feed. Holy shit, these girls can shred.

Some are just little kids, some are my age, some are moms. Although they all skate better than me, I can see myself in them — past, present, and future — and it delights me to think that skater girls growing up in 2018 have plenty of relatable examples to keep in mind whenever some dude tells them that they’re posers. Yes, the internet can be a facilitator of chaos; Instagram and the other social media platforms can sometimes make you feel like you have a garbage life. But lady skater Instagram accounts bring me joy every day. (Pro tip: Unfollow people who make you feel bad about yourself; follow a few women who shred instead.)

—Samantha Oltman

When I go to a bar, I want to be able to hang out with friends and just, you know, talk to them at a normal human volume. But many food and drink establishments are so dang loud that you end up gesturing at, instead of conversing with, people. That’s why I am very into the free Soundprint app, which is only available for iOS but also has a website version. Soundprint publishes a list of quiet places in major cities, including New York, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Las Vegas.

The Soundprint app shows you an average noise rating in decibels of the restaurants, bars, and coffee shops near you. The app calculates the rating based on “SoundCheck” submissions from users who allow the app to access their iPhone’s microphone to measure how loud the environment is. According to the app, a red rating (over 81 decibels) means a place is so loud that long exposure can cause hearing loss — and there are over a dozen establishments within a square mile of our office that fit that profile! Anyway, if you, like me, are a grumpy curmudgeon, this app is great if you want to find a quiet place to chat.

—Nicole Nguyen

The best thing to happen to my cat in 2018 was Mousr, a small, wheeled, AI robo-mouse he has embraced in a Milo and Otis kind of way — if Otis was a cat toy and Milo was a cat hellbent on its destruction. This is in no way an exaggeration. My cat has developed an almost pathological addiction to “Mr. Roboto,” which uses a small array of cameras, a “time-of-flight” sensor, and some other whiz-bang tech to convince him that it’s an actual mouse. Watching my cat playing with Mousr is like watching one of those slow-motion YouTube videos of cheetahs surprise-attacking gazelles. My cat talks to Mousr — with those same sinister chattering, chirping cat-sounds that typically signal imminent murder. My cat drags Mr. Roboto off its charging station when it’s recharging. This has become such a problem that we recently moved the charging station to the top of an armoire. The other night we heard a small crash downstairs. A few minutes later, our cat came upstairs proudly dragging Mr. Roboto by one of its custom tail attachments. He mewled at us until I pulled out a phone and fired up the app, which allows for both autonomous (wander, wall-hugger, and stationary) and remote control modes. Then he stalked, captured, and mercilessly beat the absolute shit out of it (donkey kick!). Happy kitty. Mousr retails for $149, which is outrageously expensive for a cat toy. But we are probably going to invest in one anyway (ours is a loaner); frankly, I’m not sure there’s any other option. My cat would kill me.

—John Paczkowski

Instagram is by far the app I am most addicted to — sometimes I’ll be scrolling through it, close the app, look around, and mechanically reopen it like some kind of zombie. I have the timer set to 20 minutes, which means I get the alert that it’s time to stop basically every day, sometimes even first thing in the morning! But even though the pop-up message usually makes me stick my tongue out at my phone and roll my eyes, it does break the spell and remind me to do something more useful with my time, like practice Italian on Duolingo. It’s not a cure-all, but it’s a nudge in the right direction in a world where software is almost always nudging you in the wrong direction.

—Caroline O’Donovan

17.

Sonos One — $199 (currently on sale for $179)

You move into an apartment and you get a couch, kitchenware, your bed. But after all those basics are set? An essential upgrade is filling your home with sound. In the continuing hellscape year that was 2018, there was one thing I realized could shift my mood in a small but significant way: playing whatever jam I was currently obsessed with on my Sonos One.

Sure, you can just blast your fave song loudly on your laptop, which I used to do. But then I decided I was going to be the grown-ass 30-year-old woman I am and splurged on a nice-sounding speaker. I went with Sonos because it’s the wireless speaker brand that’s widely known for high-quality sound. Against the wishes of my boyfriend, I bought a Sonos One, a speaker that integrates with voice assistants like Amazon’s Alexa. My boyfriend is freaked out by the idea of an always-on mic listening for a wake word. When I brought the Sonos home, I left the mic deactivated for weeks after setting it up — but I liked to know the option to use Alexa was there if I wanted it.

Then one day… I turned it on. I didn’t tell my boyfriend, I just set up the Sonos One with Alexa when he wasn’t around, and started talking to her. Whenever he came by, I pretended I was still committed to a life lived free of voice commands. But eventually, when we were talking about some song, I just blurted out: “Alexa. Play [song].”

Look, that first reveal wasn’t pleasant, but now my boyfriend has totally come around and yells at Alexa too. “What’s the weather?” “What time is it?” “Play [podcast].” My best troll is commanding Alexa to read an excerpt of an Atavist story he wrote a few years back out loud. He narrated it, so his voice comes through the speakers; you’ve never seen anyone shout, “Alexa, STOP!” so fast.

There are times when the speaker conks out and refuses to respond to me, but you know what? It’s a lot more fun having the thing in my apartment than not. And yeah, to a certain extent, my boyfriend and I have both warmed up to having a voice-activated gadget. The Sonos One is the first and last one I’ll be getting for my home, though. I promise, Joseph.

—Davey Alba

Hosted by Jane Marie, The Dream dives into the multilevel-marketing schemes that have overrun social media. MLMs like Herbalife, Mary Kay, and Amway have been around for a while, but a whole slew of weird new female-friendly ones that sell essential oils or athletic leggings have popped up recently. I’m fascinated by the role the internet has played in their explosion. The podcast talks to people who have been burned and lost money from these schemes. It also dives into the history of how MLMs came to be so popular over the last 50 years, and how the government has failed to rein them in. My favorite episodes are when a producer signs up for a cosmetic MLM and we get to see the details of just how it tricks the sellers into buying the product, losing money outright, and selling within a closed system.

—Katie Notopoulos

19.

2013 MacBook Pro — around $500 on eBay

I’m a sucker for shiny new gadgets, but my favorite piece of tech this year was my five-year-old MacBook Pro. It’s a late 2013 model with a 13-inch display and middling innards, and it’s been the workhorse I have relied on for everything from live-blogging Apple events to reporting from remote corners of the country.

OK, so it’s got some spots across the screen. The battery only runs about five hours before it needs to be plugged in. The spaces between the keys are grubby from the time I spilled tea into the keyboard and never quite managed to get the stains out completely (I let the laptop dry and it still worked like a champ!). And one of the speaker grills is bent from the time I banged it on my bed when I was annoyed with someone on the internet.

But I wouldn’t trade this for anything else, not even for one of Apple’s modern laptops that are thinner, lighter, sexier, pricier, and full of frills like a Touch Bar that nobody asked for or keyboards that can be destroyed by a single speck of dust.

As long as I can stream Netflix and browse the web without Chrome grinding to a halt, my old Macbook Pro is all I need.

—Pranav Dixit

Biking to work is awesome. You don’t have to be face-to-armpit against complete strangers on the bus. You get a little work out. It’s good for the environment, too! What’s not awesome is how dangerous biking on crowded city streets are. I was constantly yelling, “HEY, AHGGHBLERGH” after getting cut off by drivers or pummeled by Uber/Lyft passengers that don’t look over their shoulders before opening the car door.

That is, until I got this rad bell (lol, yes — a RAD BELL) called Spurcycle. It was a birthday gift, which I highly recommend, because at $49, it’s certainly pricier than other bike bells. I like this bell because it’s really small, but it rings very loudly, for an absurdly long time. If you don’t believe me, believe the thousands of people that backed this on Kickstarter in 2013, because they too were into loud little bike bells.

The ring isn’t obnoxious, like a car alarm. It’s nice, and using it is a really lovely way to tell cars, pedestrians, and ride-hail passengers “I’M HERE!!” without having to shout “I’M HERE!!”

—Nicole Nguyen

21.

Shortcut to creating a new Google Doc

I can’t believe I didn’t know about this until just recently, until after I saw someone tweet about it. As someone who primarily works in Google Docs — I use it for all my note-taking and writing — I open new docs all the time!

The shortcut lets you skip all the usual clicks required to open a new doc. Instead, you just type this URL: http://bit.ly/2VnNPmb. But even that’s not really convenient enough. So I dragged it onto my bookmarks bar, and now I have a handy button right in the middle of my browser for NEW DOC.

—Katie Notopoulos

22.

Wireless charging pad — $4

I got my wireless charger in the most discount scenario possible: on a Sunday evening as the Black Friday weekend sales entered their desperate final hours, in a Neiman Marcus outlet store where everything was 40% off, fished out of a giant bin of extra, extra discounted garbage positioned near the registers. It was four levels deep into an Inception-style discount world, it’s some no-brand piece of suspiciously light and hollow junk, and it ended up costing like four bucks. It was the best thing I bought in 2018.

The reason why is pretty simple: The first time you just put your phone down on the table and watch it begin charging — without any plugging in or fiddling around with a cable — is a legitimately magical experience. It’s one of those moments when a thing finally works the way you always wanted it to work, even if you didn’t know you wanted it to work that way. Think of the first time you experienced a real touchscreen phone — i.e., the first time you played with an iPhone — or the first time you put in your AirPods and experienced headphones the correct way.

It’s not a coincidence that both those examples were Apple products — while the company doesn’t tend to be the first to market with a new technology, it’s typically the first to bring a good version to market. There were crappy touchscreen Nokias years before the iPhone, and Bluetooth headphones have been a thing since those dorky headsets people were wearing in the early 2000s. They were all junk, and then Apple made the Correct Thing.

Maybe that’s what’s going on with wireless chargers now, because hardly anybody seems to be using them, despite them being pretty good. Apple seems to have completely screwed up in its attempts to launch its own extremely fancy one (and maybe given up entirely?) and the result is that the market lacks a certain halo of Apple approval and encouragement. But don’t let that stop you! Even my $4 piece of crap is *fantastic*, and everyone should have a wireless charging pad sitting on their desk at work and their bedside table at home.

Start by buying the cheapest one possible to get a feel for how they work; because they don’t need to pay the Apple tax levied on anything with a Lightning connector, they’re wildly cheap — cheaper than all but the cheapest regular iPhone charging cables. Here’s a probably-perfectly-fine Anker wireless charger for $12 — the same price as a six-foot Lightning cable from Amazon Basics. What are you waiting for? You have nothing to lose but your chains.

—Tom Gara

23.

Band Memes on Instagram

If you’ve read this far, I’m going to go ahead and guess you might have been not the coolest person in your high school (no offense). Perhaps you were even like me and played in the middle school or high school band — if so, these memes will be very relatable. I have found myself strangely overjoyed to find extremely niche relatable memes that are mostly made by and for high school students, but that I, an adult, can enjoy as well. This year, I joined an adult community concert band, and I’ve been so happy to play the bassoon in a group setting again. It also gives me an excuse to revive “playing in band” as part of my Personal Brand. And as part of my Personal Brand, I deserve to enjoy these wholesome memes.

—Katie Notopoulos

I love Apple’s AirPods wireless earbuds. I think they’re among the company’s best products and a reminder that Apple still has the chops to inspire that “sense of childlike wonder” that Steve Jobs used to talk about. Problem is, I no longer use them. For whatever reason — my overly large head, my poorly designed auricles, a shitty external auditory meatus — I have difficulty keeping my AirPods in my ears, or getting the type of fit that delivers good sound. I do not have this problem with Master & Dynamic’s MW07 True Wireless Earphones. They have detachable “Silicone Fit Wings,” which slot them securely into my outer ear, and they sound fucking fantastic. In fact, they are by far the best-sounding buds I’ve used. And they’d better be because they cost $299 (double Airpods’ $149). This is perhaps because they feature “custom 10mm high-performance Beryllium drivers,” are cloaked in “handcrafted acetate,” and come with a hefty stainless steel charging case (14 hours of additional charge) that might break a toe were you to drop it on one. I don’t need or care about any of those things. But as a big-headed, recovering audiophile, I am happy to pay for them if it means my earbuds will stay in my ears and reliably play “Master of Puppets” into them with solid sonic accuracy.

—John Paczkowski

In August, my wife, my dog, and I spent a weekend with friends in a rental cabin in New York’s Hudson River Valley. We planned on hiking the whole time, so of course it rained for two days straight. The options inside were limited to books, conversation, and wine — good enough for the Greeks, but not for me. I ransacked the cabinets. Scrabble, been there. Monopoly, done that. Then, at the back of the bottom shelf, I spied it: a jigsaw puzzle. And not any jigsaw puzzle, but a 1,000-piece warhorse from the bad boys at Ravensburger. When completed, “The Sanctuary of Knowledge” depicts an old couple reading by the fire in a cavernous Baroque library as fairies fly around them. (I took the fairies to be a metaphor for the magic of reading.) I’m like any other tech-addled thirtysomething (i.e., delayed gratification averse) but something about this wee old couple and their whimsical retirement made me want to dump the box out and get to work. So I did! — to the polite ambivalence of my friends.

I didn’t finish it. I got about a quarter of the way there and then we had to leave. But those few hours I spent matching shades of brown for the inlays on the vaulted shelves felt, I don’t know, therapeutic? Meditative? Purposeful? The puzzle didn’t come with an app or a leaderboard; it didn’t want to know anything about me or my friends; it couldn’t tell me the weather. Instead, it drew my mind and my fingers into a soothing little loop, never popping up with notifications, never leading me to other puzzles that secretly advocate for fascism, always with a discrete ending in sight. Good for me! I thought at the time, the completion of one-fourth of a moderately challenging puzzle was proof that there was still some gray matter left between the internet-sized holes in my brain. Bully for puzzles!

I ordered “The Sanctuary of Knowledge” on the car ride home. I’m saving it for a rainy day.

—Joseph Bernstein

Sahred From Source link Business

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Photo Restoration Can Be Used When You Convert Yearbook To Digital

By Matthew Hamilton

People from all walks of life appreciate many kinds of captured memories. They keep the images taken for sentimental value. A business in photo restoration would be appreciated very much. It can be a small pocket photo or a huge family portrait or even long-lost family and friends. Besides that, you can dabble and convert yearbook to digital for potential clients. Putting something into its original state requires careful handling and proper knowledge. Photographs differ because of the time they were taken, the equipment used to take them and the material or type of paper used to print them on. From the beginning of taking photos, different materials have been used. Varying according to different companies which provided the service. Events in past and present in people s lives can be happy or sad. All of them are somehow captured. Weddings, children s birthdays, a trip to another country and many others. They are all dear. Whatever the photograph is about if the owner needs restoring, they want to find a reliable, trusted studio for the services. Most people would need this service at some point in life. It is how the service best handles their individual cases that matter. An image may have faded, creased or with a piece missing. The process to fix images physically is not a new one. Paintings are restored in the same manner. When antiques are discovered they are restored and maintained by painting over the scratches. Using a paintbrush a steady hand and great skill is used to do this kind of work. The right equipment is needed for the job. A computer would need special software to be loaded for editing and making them clearer. Market research is essential for any business. The availability of the market to be enough this may be done online as well. Setup a website where customers can access the service from anywhere in the country. This may be an overwhelming approach, enough qualified and experienced staff must be hired. An easy payment method provided for the clients. Photograph archive businesses need to constantly maintain the material. They may be government facilities or private individuals. Bulk editing may be needed due to the high volumes of the archives. On modern restoration, different computer software is used. The image can be captured or uploaded to the computer. The software has different functions which refine and overlook the damage creating a newer looking photograph. The systems are upgraded to more effective in the work done. The same software is also used in motion pictures. Where damaged videos are replayed to remove the damaged part or zoom in the unfocussed clip. Not only old materials are repaired, New ones that were taken using poor equipment can also be saved. In these services manipulations on images may also be done. This would be editing different or photo. To make suitable images for a website or advertising. It is the same software used to alter or enhance photos as needed. Magazines or newspaper editor may need a picture for a cover story to be restored.

About the Author:

Get useful tips on how to convert yearbook to digital version by visiting our official website now. All the step by step instructions appear here at https://ift.tt/2MWOPF4.

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Collecto, Distraction Free, Minimal WordPress Blog Theme | Templified

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Collecto, Distraction Free, Minimal WordPress Blog Theme

Hey there everybody, this theme is called Collecto and it’s a simple, minimalistic WordPress blog theme that’s a perfect portal for your high quality WordPress magazine.  Simple layout, user-friendly features, minimalist design, that’s a lot of what you need to create an amazing website.

Single pages are made to impress. Your featured image and post title are displayed first. When people scroll down to read your opinion piece, the side columns on the left – author name and bio – and the right – previous and next posts – follow them.If you want a website with a modern, contemporary style, Collecto does the trick.  This minimalist portfolio theme for WordPress is the perfect combination of simple and elegant, modern and timeless classic.

Onanma.  This website really takes advantage of the simple look, the elegant layout and the crystal clear typography that Collecto offers.  The opening image is strong and I really love the masonry grid layout that shows after you begin to scroll down the page.  It’s a nice effect and it perfectly shows off your content, making navigation incredibly visual and fun.

Another theme that uses Collecto is MonachopsisMag.  This is an online ‘zine, and they’re constantly accepting submissions for upcoming magazines.  The use of Collecto really makes sense, it helps form a professional, user-friendly magazine for any purpose.  In general, the layout if very similar to the Onanma magazine above.

There’s not much there just yet, but I’m sure Vincent is going to have something incredible to look at very soon.  For more photograper’s portfolio themes, try our collection.

Collecto is a WordPress theme that was inspired by glossy magazines and journals. That’s right, I’m talking about the printed material. Polygon from Ghostbusters famously said that print is dead, that’s anything but the case when it comes to digital journals or online periodicals. They are bigger and better than ever and this is one of the finest, most unique minimal style Journal themes that I have seen come along in the last few years.

Collecto is a highly customizable theme, it gives you every feature that you could possibly want to build a professional online magazine that can stand up against anyone in the business. This theme is great for home journals, blogs, lifestyle magazines and a whole lot more.

In terms of features, few magazine themes or Journal themes give you more than this one does. Collecto has a unique style that makes it particularly engaging, ensuring that your readers have a fantastic experience every time they visit your site and making it all the more likely that they will come back looking for more. That’s because this theme delivers a fantastic user experience to everyone who visits. Even on handheld devices, this template displays properly, lose it fast and gives everyone a chance to see what you have to say.

If you’d like to have a look at our full collection of Journal themes, check out this collection. We have gathered up quite a number of the absolute best themes for journals, hopefully you can find one that you truly love. Finding the right theme is a bit of a challenge, that’s why we have selected so many different themes that you can choose from. Hopefully, one of them will be the perfect fit for your needs. In the meantime, good luck in your search for the right WordPress theme for your online Journal.

The Collecto WordPress theme is truly One of a Kind. This magazine inspired template is great for lifestyle blogs, travel magazines and other modern sites that want a truly unique style without compromising quality or features to get the job done.

For ambitious webmasters who want a vigorous set of tools that even the most finicky user will love, this even tempered and glowing WordPress theme is a bright and literate way to frame all of your content. It doesn’t matter if you’re making creative posts, posting magazine articles or even selling products, collecto is an entertaining advertisement for all of your posts and projects. The mere sight of the Collecto WordPress theme will make for many zealous supporters. The Verdant and amusing style is never abrasive, but always amusing. Collecto is one of those themes that no one will complain about, no matter what type of content you’re creating. Collecto is perfectly responsive, it pours the features on when you think that there can’t be any more to add. This lean and mean looking template is dynamic and delightful on all devices, thanks to that responsive design.

If you’re looking for an old-fashioned, worthless, you’d better look elsewhere. Collecto is the type of theme that works great for all sorts of websites. I’ve seen this theme used as a travel magazine, a lifestyle blogging template and even a personal Blog theme, and the magazine inspired style is rightfully considered one of the best on the market. There is an incredible eye for detail, this theme is elastic and attractive, clean and minimal and it wants to help raise the level of your website.

If in the rare event that Collecto is not an ideal WordPress theme for your needs, we’ve assembled many WordPress theme collections that could be of use to you. If you identify one that you love, please let us know. We do our very best to include only the best of WordPress themes, the themes that offer the most features, incredible style and dedicated support. These themes can help you develop an Authority website to rival any in your niche. You’ll Delight in all of the features for these templates and I’m sure that if you take a look at our collections, you’re going to find something that you absolutely adore. Will be back with plenty more WordPress themes in the very near future and we will continuously add to these collections.

Simple and clean, crisp and clear, bright eyed and bushy tailed, that’s what Collecto is all about.  Don’t believe me?  Read on, dear reader.  Minimalist, simple to use, feature packed, that is exactly what the Collecto WordPress theme brings to the table. Having a clean, contemporary and minimalist design, Collecto is perfect for a myriad of sites, from traveling sites to lifestyle sites, personal blogs to recipe websites. This Collecto theme has all of it. Constructed with a myriad of bloggers in your mind, Collecto is nicely crafted, adaptive, nicely designed and exceptionally user friendly. Themes Kingdom did not neglect to bring the attributes in , it is packed with stuff to help engage your viewers and keep them coming back for more. On top of that, you do not have to be a professional programmer to produce this theme look just how you want it to look. Collecto includes a drag and drop page builder so it’s possible to craft pages and articles visually, which appears to be the quickest way to generate a truly custom look for your website. Fonts, colours and designs can be altered when you need and your articles will still look great.

Collecto is completely responsive, it is enjoyable to work with for both reader and webmaster alike because the navigation is really straightforward and intuitive. Premium assistance and loads of instruction are included and it is quite simple to begin with. Social networking integration helps your visitors find the articles and socialize also, and it is always a great bonus. With Collecto, there is no limit to what you could do and you are likely to find it easy and enjoyable to produce more content and locate more readers.

Collecto is a new grid based, newspaper inspired WordPress theme. BESPOKE, ELEGANT, AND MINIMAL, COLLECTO MARRIES EDITORIAL JOY WTIH CONTEMPORARY AESTHETICS.

The dynamic grid system lets your sticky posts to take up two columns. Collecto is entirely responsive, which means yours content will fit like a glove on any screen size.

Single pages are made to impress. Your featured image and post title are diplayed first. When people scroll down to read your opinion piece, the side columns on the left – author name and bio – and the right – previous and next posts – follow them.

Collecto comes with a tucked away sidebar which fluidly expands from the screen’s left edge. This way people can focus on the real content without unnecessary distractions.

Show off your work in a contemporary newspaper style. The archive page for portfolio displays your work in a grid. Open any item and you’ll see a minimalist page, which supports and focuses readers onto your work.

Choose the colors you like best for the theme. You can alter the header, text, links, logo, and background color.

Bring your business closer to your niche audience and set the right mood with all the typographic customization options Collecto has to offer.

And, probably more stuff too, but that’s for later.  Whatcha thinking about Collecto?  Solid?  Poor?  Somewhere in between?  Let us know in the comments.

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Collecto, Distraction Free, Minimal WordPress Blog Theme | Templified

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Collecto, Distraction Free, Minimal WordPress Blog Theme

Hey there everybody, this theme is called Collecto and it’s a simple, minimalistic WordPress blog theme that’s a perfect portal for your high quality WordPress magazine.  Simple layout, user-friendly features, minimalist design, that’s a lot of what you need to create an amazing website.

Single pages are made to impress. Your featured image and post title are displayed first. When people scroll down to read your opinion piece, the side columns on the left – author name and bio – and the right – previous and next posts – follow them.If you want a website with a modern, contemporary style, Collecto does the trick.  This minimalist portfolio theme for WordPress is the perfect combination of simple and elegant, modern and timeless classic.

Onanma.  This website really takes advantage of the simple look, the elegant layout and the crystal clear typography that Collecto offers.  The opening image is strong and I really love the masonry grid layout that shows after you begin to scroll down the page.  It’s a nice effect and it perfectly shows off your content, making navigation incredibly visual and fun.

Another theme that uses Collecto is MonachopsisMag.  This is an online ‘zine, and they’re constantly accepting submissions for upcoming magazines.  The use of Collecto really makes sense, it helps form a professional, user-friendly magazine for any purpose.  In general, the layout if very similar to the Onanma magazine above.

There’s not much there just yet, but I’m sure Vincent is going to have something incredible to look at very soon.  For more photograper’s portfolio themes, try our collection.

Collecto is a WordPress theme that was inspired by glossy magazines and journals. That’s right, I’m talking about the printed material. Polygon from Ghostbusters famously said that print is dead, that’s anything but the case when it comes to digital journals or online periodicals. They are bigger and better than ever and this is one of the finest, most unique minimal style Journal themes that I have seen come along in the last few years.

Collecto is a highly customizable theme, it gives you every feature that you could possibly want to build a professional online magazine that can stand up against anyone in the business. This theme is great for home journals, blogs, lifestyle magazines and a whole lot more.

In terms of features, few magazine themes or Journal themes give you more than this one does. Collecto has a unique style that makes it particularly engaging, ensuring that your readers have a fantastic experience every time they visit your site and making it all the more likely that they will come back looking for more. That’s because this theme delivers a fantastic user experience to everyone who visits. Even on handheld devices, this template displays properly, lose it fast and gives everyone a chance to see what you have to say.

If you’d like to have a look at our full collection of Journal themes, check out this collection. We have gathered up quite a number of the absolute best themes for journals, hopefully you can find one that you truly love. Finding the right theme is a bit of a challenge, that’s why we have selected so many different themes that you can choose from. Hopefully, one of them will be the perfect fit for your needs. In the meantime, good luck in your search for the right WordPress theme for your online Journal.

The Collecto WordPress theme is truly One of a Kind. This magazine inspired template is great for lifestyle blogs, travel magazines and other modern sites that want a truly unique style without compromising quality or features to get the job done.

For ambitious webmasters who want a vigorous set of tools that even the most finicky user will love, this even tempered and glowing WordPress theme is a bright and literate way to frame all of your content. It doesn’t matter if you’re making creative posts, posting magazine articles or even selling products, collecto is an entertaining advertisement for all of your posts and projects. The mere sight of the Collecto WordPress theme will make for many zealous supporters. The Verdant and amusing style is never abrasive, but always amusing. Collecto is one of those themes that no one will complain about, no matter what type of content you’re creating. Collecto is perfectly responsive, it pours the features on when you think that there can’t be any more to add. This lean and mean looking template is dynamic and delightful on all devices, thanks to that responsive design.

If you’re looking for an old-fashioned, worthless, you’d better look elsewhere. Collecto is the type of theme that works great for all sorts of websites. I’ve seen this theme used as a travel magazine, a lifestyle blogging template and even a personal Blog theme, and the magazine inspired style is rightfully considered one of the best on the market. There is an incredible eye for detail, this theme is elastic and attractive, clean and minimal and it wants to help raise the level of your website.

If in the rare event that Collecto is not an ideal WordPress theme for your needs, we’ve assembled many WordPress theme collections that could be of use to you. If you identify one that you love, please let us know. We do our very best to include only the best of WordPress themes, the themes that offer the most features, incredible style and dedicated support. These themes can help you develop an Authority website to rival any in your niche. You’ll Delight in all of the features for these templates and I’m sure that if you take a look at our collections, you’re going to find something that you absolutely adore. Will be back with plenty more WordPress themes in the very near future and we will continuously add to these collections.

Simple and clean, crisp and clear, bright eyed and bushy tailed, that’s what Collecto is all about.  Don’t believe me?  Read on, dear reader.  Minimalist, simple to use, feature packed, that is exactly what the Collecto WordPress theme brings to the table. Having a clean, contemporary and minimalist design, Collecto is perfect for a myriad of sites, from traveling sites to lifestyle sites, personal blogs to recipe websites. This Collecto theme has all of it. Constructed with a myriad of bloggers in your mind, Collecto is nicely crafted, adaptive, nicely designed and exceptionally user friendly. Themes Kingdom did not neglect to bring the attributes in , it is packed with stuff to help engage your viewers and keep them coming back for more. On top of that, you do not have to be a professional programmer to produce this theme look just how you want it to look. Collecto includes a drag and drop page builder so it’s possible to craft pages and articles visually, which appears to be the quickest way to generate a truly custom look for your website. Fonts, colours and designs can be altered when you need and your articles will still look great.

Collecto is completely responsive, it is enjoyable to work with for both reader and webmaster alike because the navigation is really straightforward and intuitive. Premium assistance and loads of instruction are included and it is quite simple to begin with. Social networking integration helps your visitors find the articles and socialize also, and it is always a great bonus. With Collecto, there is no limit to what you could do and you are likely to find it easy and enjoyable to produce more content and locate more readers.

Collecto is a new grid based, newspaper inspired WordPress theme. BESPOKE, ELEGANT, AND MINIMAL, COLLECTO MARRIES EDITORIAL JOY WTIH CONTEMPORARY AESTHETICS.

The dynamic grid system lets your sticky posts to take up two columns. Collecto is entirely responsive, which means yours content will fit like a glove on any screen size.

Single pages are made to impress. Your featured image and post title are diplayed first. When people scroll down to read your opinion piece, the side columns on the left – author name and bio – and the right – previous and next posts – follow them.

Collecto comes with a tucked away sidebar which fluidly expands from the screen’s left edge. This way people can focus on the real content without unnecessary distractions.

Show off your work in a contemporary newspaper style. The archive page for portfolio displays your work in a grid. Open any item and you’ll see a minimalist page, which supports and focuses readers onto your work.

Choose the colors you like best for the theme. You can alter the header, text, links, logo, and background color.

Bring your business closer to your niche audience and set the right mood with all the typographic customization options Collecto has to offer.

And, probably more stuff too, but that’s for later.  Whatcha thinking about Collecto?  Solid?  Poor?  Somewhere in between?  Let us know in the comments.

Demo Get Hosting