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jollydreamerarbiter · 4 years

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Free Pdf To Word Converters For Mac

How To Convert A Pdf To Word Document Mac Free

Convert Pdf To Word Free Software Mac

Oct 15,2019 • Filed to: Mac Tutorials

The PDF Converter free version is an easy-to-use tool that allows a PDF document to be converted to a fully editable PowerPoint Mac 2008/2011 pptx presentation- preserving the original layout of. This free online PDF to DOC converter allows you to save a PDF file as an editable document in Microsoft Word DOC format, ensuring better quality than many other converters. Click the UPLOAD FILES button and select up to 20 PDF files you wish to convert. Wait for the conversion process to finish. Top 5 PDF to Word Converter for Mac 1. PDFelement is widely used by professionals in multiple industries such as architects, designers, writers, developers, HR executives, accountants, and many more. In fact, PDFelement is useful for any scenario where documents are processed and PDF is the primary vehicle to disseminate written information.

When it comes to change PDF to Word format, users might search from the internet and try to convert PDF to Word online. If so, you might get bad result and take risk on your file itself. The online PDF to Word converter tool might produce low quality output, have limitations on file size, what even worse is that it cannot protect your file security. If you want a fast, secure and productive way to convert PDF to Word on Mac (macOS 10.15 Catalina), just read on to get the answer.

Method 1. The Easiest and Professional Way to Convert PDF to Word on Mac

PDFelement Pro - The Best Way to Save PDF to Word Document

PDFelement Pro is an all-in-one PDF editor and converter. It can help you convert PDF to Word and many other file formats without losing the original layout. The built-in OCR feature enables you to convert scanned PDF to Word and other format without hassle. And you can convert multiple PDF files to Word at high speed.

Why Choose This PDF to Word Converter:

Convert PDF to Word, Excel, PPT, EPUB, RTF, and images format with original format.

Batch convert PDF files into Word and other format in high speed.

You can convert scanned PDF with the advanced OCR feature.

You can easily modify texts, images and pages in a PDF.

Easily markup PDF and annotate PDF with sticky note and hand-drawing shapes.

If you want to create PDF from other types of file, you can also rely on this smart tool.

Its secure function lets you to protect your PDF file with password, watermark or signature.

Easy Steps for Converting PDF to Word on Mac (10.15 Catalina included)

PDFelement Pro for Mac is fully compatible with Mac OS X 10.7 or later, including the latest macOS 10.13 High Sierra. There are more amazing features for you to explore. Below is a step-by-step guide for converting PDF to Word document on Mac computer. And you can also convert PDF to Excel and other formats. For Windows users, you can download PDFelement Pro to convert PDF to Word on Windows PC.

Step 1. Launch PDFelement Pro for Mac

After you've downloaded and installed this Mac PDF to Word converter, launch it. On the primary window, choose 'Convert PDF' from the menu to open the PDF convertion window.

Step 2. Transfer PDF to Word

Click the 'Convert' menu and select the output format as 'To Word'.Finally, click 'Convert' to turn PDF into Word. You can also customize the page range and add more files for PDF to Word conversion.

Step 3. Convert Scanned PDF to Word

If you file is image-based scanned PDF, you can turn on 'OCR' feature under the 'Edit' tap. And then click 'Convert' to change scanned PDF into Word format.

Step 4. Edit PDF before Converting (Optional)

If you want to make some changes on your PDF before converting it into Word document, you can click 'Open File' on the primary window to import your PDF. Then click 'Edit' button on the top toolbar to modify the texts and images in the PDF. To edit pages, you can choose the corresponding options 'Pages' .

If you'd like to annotate your PDF, you can click the 'Comment' button and get options for adding sticky note, text box, drawing lines/shapes and highlight. Finally click 'Save' to confirm your changes.

Method 2. Save PDF as Word Document on Mac Using iSkysoft PDF Converter for Mac

To simply convert PDF into Word on Mac, I recommend iSkysoft PDF Converter Pro for Mac, which is a simple PDF to Word Converter Mac (10.15 Catalina included) program for someone who is facing the problem of converting PDF files to formats like Word, Excel, PPT, Text, and more for better editing, saving, etc.

Why Choose This Mac PDF to Word Converter:

This Mac PDF to Word converter can convert standard and encrypted PDF files to Word (.doc and .docx).

It can convert PDF to Word and other formats without losing the original style and format.

And you can use it to do batch conversion or convert only specified PDF pages.

It comes with OCR technology which saves image-based scanned PDF to Word and other formats.

Steps to Get PDF to Word on Mac

Step 1. Run the Program and Load PDF Files

Open this Mac PDF to Word application from 'Application' folder after you have installed it. And import the PDF files you want to convert to Word format. You may drag and drop one or several PDF files to the interface of the program. Alternatively, you can go to 'File > Add PDF Files' to select the PDF files and import them to the program.

Note: You may import up to 200 PDF files to the program. If you want to add or replace some text, and make some other editing before the conversion, you can go to the guides on how to extract image from PDF, delete page from PDF, and so on. If you want to insert or modify some text before the conversion, you can follow the guide on how to edit PDF files on Mac.

Step 2. Choose the Page Range and Output Format

Click on the PDF file to highlight it, and you will see a gear icon show up. Click on the 'Gear' icon to open the output settings window. In the 'Page Range' column, you can customize the pages you want. You may specify the Page Range to convert partial PDF pages to Word pages. And then choose 'Word' format as the output format prior to convert PDF on your iMac or Macbook.

Step 3. Start to Extract PDF to Word

Click the 'Convert' button to start the conversion. When it is done, you'll get a message. Click 'OK' to open it with Microsoft Word (if available) to make sure everything is converted correctly.

Method 3: How to Convert PDF to Word on Mac Using Automator

How To Convert A Pdf To Word Document Mac Free

First, you need to know that Automator is actually part of Mac OS X. Below are the simple steps that one follows in order to convert their PDF files to editable word document on MAC using Automator.

Step 1. Open the Application folder on your Mac gadget and double click the tiny silver robot icon to launch Automator. Then a dialogue window appears that requires that you make a work flow.

Step 2. Just below the action menu, on the first column; locate and click the 'Files and Folders' button. You are then required to click and drag 'Ask For Finder Items' from the second column and drop it to the workflow segment situated at the right-hand side of the window.

Step 3. You will then refer back to the first column and click on the 'PDFs' button. From the second column, this time you will drag 'Extract PDF Text' and drop it under 'Ask For Finder Items' on the workflow panel. On this process you will be able to see some options that you can set. For a converted text file that retains its original text formatting, you will choose the 'Rich Text' option.

Step 4. Finally save your work flow. Press Command – S and then provide a suitable name then click on the save button to conclude this process.

Step 5. Now start using Automator through the workflow process you have created to convert your PDF files to word. It is as simple of just finding and selecting the PDF file that you need converted and let the Automator do the rest of the job for you.

Pros:

It is part of the Mac OS X, users can access its valuable services directly.

Cons:

It is messy – the rich text option only ensures that the converted file retains its original format of text and not the overall layout of the document.

Method 4: How to Convert PDF to Word on Mac Online

You can use some websites to convert PDF to Word. We will now discuss about how to turn PDF into Word using freepdfconvert. So let’s get started.

Step 1: The first thing is to visit the website of freepdfconvert.com. After entering into the website, you see the primary page like below.

Step 2: You see that there are many buttons like 'PDF Converter', PDF to Word' etc. As you have to convert PDF to Word, click on the 'PDF to Word' button.

Step 3: Now you see a button named 'Select File'. By tapping on the button, you can browse for the PDF file that you need to convert.

Step 4: Once you select the PDF file, hit the OK button of your browsing box. You see the PDF file named 'TriFold Coffe & Muffin….' has been uploaded to the website for further conversion. Now you will have to hit the 'Convert' tab for start converting. It will take some time depending on the file’s size to complete the conversion for PDF to Word.

Step 5: Once the conversion is complete, you will see a new button named 'Downlaod'. By tapping on the button, you can go for downloading, deleting or saving to Google Docs as per your wish. By downloading the file, you are getting a Word file of your PDF file.

PDF to Word Online Converter

You can also opt to convert PDF to word on Mac online by using other online tools, below are 3 of the most common online PDF to word converters.

1. ZamZar PDF to Word Converter

Convert Pdf To Word Free Software Mac

ZamZar is a online PDF to Word converter that can actually convert your PDF file to a number of other file formats like PPT, xlsx and many more. Just start by selecting the PDF file or URL of its location – > Choose the format – > Then key in your email address so that you can receive the converted version of the file – > finally click on convert button.

Pros:

No need to download.

Easy to use.

Cons:

It takes a long time for batch files, it can only convert one PDF file at a time.

It requires the user to have an email address.

2. Online PDF-Converter

This is among the best PDF to Word converter online service that anyone can use. It is quite popular generally because f its versatility and ease of use. When you open the online2pdf.com website, select the PDF files you need converted (up to 20 files), select the desired output format (Word), and finally click on the convert button.

Pros:

Allows up to a maximum of 20 PDF files.

It is easy to use as well as edit the PDF files.

Cons:

You can only access this resource online, basically you can never do much without the internet connection.

3. PDF to Word Converter

pdftowordconverter.net is such an excellent website to consider for your online PDF to word conversion needs. Quite an easy to use resource as compared to the ZamZar option, as it only includes two simple steps. First, you will have to choose the PDF file – >then hit the convert button, and download the converted file to your Mac device.

Pros:

Very easy to use.

It is no fee.

Cons:

It is quite slow as it can only covert a single PDF file at an instance.

Method 5: Turn PDF into Word Using Google Docs

You may have already known that Google Docs has the functionality of creating as well as editing Doc files. Now you will be amazed to know that with Google Docs, you can also convert PDF into Doc file. The good news is that the service of converting PDF into Word is totally free of cost. So you can expect a good service of PDF conversion from the internet giant Google with their Google Docs. Another good thing is that the Doc file that is created or converted by Google Docs is compatible with cross platforms, so you can use the converted file on Mac, Windows, and Linux etc. Not only that, popular mobile platform Android also supports the Doc format.

Now learn the process of Google Docs to convert PDF into Doc. You should know that you will not be able to convert as Word, but Doc is also considered as one type of Word document.

As it is totally free to convert, you only need an updated browser along with a Google account (@gmail.com).

Step 1: First of all, visit Google Docs and login. As you know that one Google account is applicable for all the Google’s products, so if you have a Gmail account, you can login with that for Google Docs.

Step 2: You will have to tap on the tiny upload icon that is located next to the button of 'CREATE'.

Step 3: Now from the browsing option, go for the PDF file that you would like to convert.

Step 4: After that, in the 'Upload Settings' panel, check the option named 'Convert text from uploaded PDF and image files' along with other two options.

Step 5: Now by choosing the 'File' option, go for the button 'Download as' where from you can download the PDF file as Doc file. This Doc file will be compatible for cross platforms.

Method 6: Turn PDF into Word Using Adobe Acrobat

Using Adobe Acrobat, you can convert PDF to Word too. Here are the processes that you will have to follow in order to achieve the conversion.

Step 1: Open a PDF file that you will convert Word.

Step 2: On the top menu bar, go for 'File' option.

Step 3: From the drop down menu, you will have to go for 'Save As Other…'.

Step 4: Then go to :Microsoft Word' and after that it will show Word Document.

Step 5: Pressing on 'Word Document', it will show you paths for saving the PDF file as Word. Set the path and press Ok. It will be saved as Word file.

iSkysoft PDF Creator - Convert Word to PDF on Mac with PDF Creator for Mac

iSkysoft PDF Creator for Mac is an easy-to-use yet quality Word to PDF converter. With it, you can convert unlimited Microsoft Office files including DOC, DOCX, XLS， XLSX， PPT, and PPTX to PDF. It comes with many wonderful features:

Key Features:

Convert Word, Excel, and PowerPoint to PDF easily and quickly.

Create high-quality PDF with high resolutions and 100% original formatting.

Import unlimited Word files and convert to PDFs at once.

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pwbi · 5 years

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Build-A-World #1

Recently I got the opportunity to DM for a D&D club at my University, and with that comes time to develop a campaign. I figured it would make a lot of sense to document the process and use it as a sort of guide on how I approach making a setting for a game.

Prior to session one I talked with my players and decided to run a game with heavy combat, some roleplay, and little intrigue. I mention this now because some of my design will revolve around what I am trying to provide to my players.

With a little under a week of prep time, I made a few simple plot hooks and developed a town as the parties home base.

With time limitations on coming up with a general plot and content for session 1, I opted to go for a dungeon crawl campaign with a town as a home base.

Making a Town

The first thing I want to know when making an area is what kind of things/people the party are likely to come upon. Since I’m not doing anything extravagant, this is mainly the demographics of this town. I decided this town would be at the edge of a mountain range, so I decided the majority of people in the town are Dwarves, with a number of humans/halflings and a small minority (<10%) of elves.

Quick note: The reason I make demographics is so that can guide the creation of important local figures. If you make up arbitrary %’s you can even use a d20 or percentile dice to determine what race a particular NPC is.

This town also needs a name, so I went onto the discord for some ideas, so credit to kittychat47 on Discord for naming this town Nicsama

Major Features

Since this town is supposed to be a home base, I want to cover all the basics of things that my players might want to get, so I decided that the town has a Church, Inn, Blacksmith, General Store, and Alchemy Shop. I left out things like a Jeweler or Magic Shops on purpose. I dont want to restrict players early on, but leaving room to make PCs work to find/use/sell certain items can be a good plothook.

Since I know these are notable features of the town, I want to have pre-made NPCs running each. Using the demographics from earlier, I came up with 3 Dwarves, a human, a halfling, and an elf as notable NPCs for the buildings from earlier.

I also need to know how this town is run, so I decided the town is led by a Dwarf.

The Adventure

We have the basics of what I need to know about the town for the purpose of running a first game, so now I need a plot hook and some encounters. Since we have major features of the town, it makes sense to tie a plot hook to that. We have a Church, so maybe there is a rat problem in the basement. Pretty straightforward.

From here, we can create a couple different ways to lead the PCs to this. If the players wander around the town, they could see an elderly priest asking a town guard if they can send anyone to help. If they go to the Church they could hear rats or a priest could mention it, and if they go to another major business an NPC could mention it there. Creating multiple plot hooks like this is a way to gently guide PCs towards an adventure without railroading much.

Now for the encounters of this adventure, since the hook was rats in the Church basement, that makes it pretty easy to narrow down my options for encounters. I made lower difficulty encounters out of giant rats and Rat Swarms, and then to keep things interesting I put 2 Shadows in one of these encounters to up the difficulty a little bit.

At this point I have enough content for a ~1.5 hour session, depending on how smoothly everything goes. But because I want this campaign to be a sort of dungeon crawl, I made a ‘boss’ encounter of a few Wererat’s styled after Italian Mobsters who would run through a hole in the wall to deeper underground areas.

The Result

I put this all in a google doc as notes, and the end result looks like this:

I will continue adding onto this as time goes on, but for now this is all I need to prepare for the first session.

The session itself ran pretty smoothly after a bit of awkwardness in direction and starting roleplay for the players, but by the end everyone at the table was in to it. The session was a little shorter than I expected it to be, none of the PCs needed Strength so the Shadows didn’t slow them down much, and they got a lot of use out of AoE spell damage that would hit multiple swarms at the same time. Not entirely unexpected since I had gone low on encounter difficulty compared to what I normally do, but something to keep in mind for the future.

As the players get deeper into this campaign I will be doing more to flesh out the overarching world as it relates to the adventure, competing factions that might be interested in the players, Pantheons of gods, designing traps, creating more difficult/elaborate combat encounters, etc.

But for now? We have a town, we have some NPCs, and we have all we needed to run a session 1.

#dnd #d&d #Dungeons and Dragons #d&d 5e #dnd5e #running a game #Build A World #dming #how to dm #Probably-Worldbuilding-RPG-Ideas

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taylorroger-s · 5 years

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heartsick.

a/n my first (kinda) deaky fic!! IT’S A LOVE TRIANGLE LADS!!! i just kinda needed to write this? it has been a work in progress since february and i haven’t found the push to finish it until recently when i looked through my google docs and started finishing some wips. this is wild as hell man. kinda sad i cut it off right before THAT japan trip tho… part two anyone??

masterlist here!

people who asked to be tagged: @jd-johndeacon-or-jackdaniels @johndeaconsgf @cowparsleys

warnings : angst, curse words, some partying, briefest suggestion of infidelity, the whole shebang. 9.1k words baby

enjoy :)

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john had always loved your smile. the way your eyes crinkled at the edges and your dimples showed. the hint of white teeth behind your plush lips. he would walk heaven and earth just to make you happy.

now you were smiling that beautiful smile, but it wasn’t for him. it was for your newly minted fiancé.

you had met john the first day of secondary school. you were placed in the same french class, seated diagonal to him. the first time you heard his voice was about an hour into the lesson when the teacher said something you couldn’t remember, and deaky muttered a dirty comment. you snorted out of laughter, drawing his attention. when your eyes met his, john knew he was a goner.

from that day onward, the two of you were ingrained in each other’s lives. from birthdays to holidays, sickness and health, he was there for you as you were for him. it took it an almost ridiculous amount of time for him to realize his feelings for you.

the kicker was that he couldn’t tell if you felt the same. you were almost inhumanly hard to read, with a devilish grin and sharp wit. you treated most with the same cool attitude, same suave confidence that drove him insane. it didn’t help that you were also devastatingly attractive.

every time you showed interest in him his heart would race and cheeks flush, stumbling over his words to find a response somehow as witty as you. you were unafraid of eye contact, able to make deaky crazy with just a smirk and eyebrow raise.

for years, john had convinced himself that you were harboring feelings for him just as he was for you. it might have been true, you were always quite affectionate towards him and particular, giving you an unproportional amount of attention when around other people. but sometimes that would flip, and you would ignore him all together for hours. that didn’t stop him from twisting each bit of witty banter into a sign that you were in to him. only you knew your true feelings, but that didn’t stop deaky from speculating. from what he could tell, you were also horribly oblivious and most likely didn’t have a single inkling of his feelings.

despite this, your friendship was still good and sincere. john could put away his feelings to keep that alive, tiptoeing around the idea of being something more.

through either a strain of luck or misfortune you ended up going to the same university, growing even closer through shared classes and drunken nights. by then, deaky’s feelings had only intensified, while yours stayed a closely guarded secret. who knows? maybe you did have feelings for him. you sure as hell wouldn’t admit anything, and neither would john. so the two of you stayed in that limbo for ages.

until john joined queen. your world and, by association, his flipped upside down because of a certain blond haired drummer.

his first official queen gig. july 2nd, 1971. it was a college gig in surrey, and the first time deaky introduced you to his bandmates. he had joined the band in february of that year, but hadn’t let you meet his new bandmates quite yet. when the day finally came, you dressed up much more than you would for a typical rock concert. when you rolled up to deaky’s flat, john swore that his jaw hit the floor.

distressed leather jacket and tight black skinny jeans, with a low cut, patterned tank top. you wore high heeled, stained white combat books and silver stud earrings. your smoked out eyeliner just added to your addicting mystique, as did your blood red lipstick. compared to you, deaky looked like a broke college student, which he was. you looked even more like a rockstar than he did. john could barely believe his luck when you ran up and gave him a big hug, confessing how excited you were for him. it assured deaky that you were still his.

right?

you chatted excitedly during the ride about one of your various passions while he stayed quiet. it wasn’t like he was bored, quite the opposite actually. deaky could listen to you talk for hours and hours. he adored the way your voice changed pitch as you got more excited, the way you acted out your thoughts animatedly with your hands, and that goddamn smile you would offer him after pausing for breath. your eyes would show that rare glimmer of emotion. and it was all for him.

once you reached the venue, john was having second thoughts. he didn’t want to share you with everyone, which he was embarrassed to admit. he knew that the magnetic nature of his bandmates would draw you away from him, which was almost debilitatingly terrifying. he wouldn’t be able to stand growing apart from you. so he devised a small scheme to hold off the inevitable.

“hey y/n? how about you stay out here. i can meet you backstage after. i think it would be better to experience it from the crowd.” your face fell slightly. you were excited to be part of the behind the scenes experience of a rock band, it was one of the few things you had yet to do. but you understood his concern. it made your heart flutter just a bit. you gave him a quick embrace and kiss on the cheek before going off to find some alcohol.

he breathed a sigh of relief as he watched you weave your way in between the crowd. he still had you to himself, even if it was just until the end of the gig. shoving down his feelings, deaky made his way to the backstage space where his bandmates were lounging around, going through their pre-show rituals.

roger was sitting on a drum case, a cigarette hanging precariously from his lips. his thin fingers tapped away on his thighs, cycling through the drum patterns he had memorized. brian sipped from a half empty beer bottle, eyes trained on the ceiling. freddie was hunched over a mirror, fluffing his hair with a frown on his face.

freddie turned to john, looking at his outfit with lips twisted in a look of disapproval. freddie was dressed quite extravagantly, while deaky had opted for a simple t-shirt and jeans.

“dear god deaky, what are you wearing?” john frowned, looking down at his outfit and then back up to freddie.

“uhh, clothes?”

“oh no, that won’t do.” he shook his shoulder length curls, waving a black nailed hand at deaky’s gig attire.

“please tell me why it won’t.”

“it’s so… plain. we’re queen for god’s sake! we have to look the part!” freddie waved his hands dramatically, showing off his tight leather jumpsuit, one leg in white and the other in black. his dark eyes were lined with smoky eyeliner, making his strong features pop even more. deaky just had his hair brushed, wearing a ‘the who’ shirt and bell bottoms.

john had to admit, he looked quite plain compared to the rest of the band. brian was wearing a sequined black top with batwing sleeves, and tight leather trousers. roger opted for an open floral blazer, with zebra stripe patterned trousers for no discernible reason. john looked more like a concert goer than a rockstar. but he wasn’t about to back down.

“i’m alright with the plain then.”

“one day… i will change your mind, mark my words.” freddie said with a mischievous grin. john just rolled his eyes, trying to suppress a smile. though he had only been a part of the group for a few months, they already felt like brothers to him.

deaky walked over to his bass, resting it on his lap. he absentmindedly plucked away to a random beat, letting the music cycle through him and calm him down. his eyes fluttered shut. he fell back on a memory to soothe his nerves. he thought of you, sitting with your head on his shoulder as he strummed softly on his bass. he could almost feel your hair tickling his cheek as you shifted to sit up and look at him.

“that’s beautiful.” you had said, toying with the ends of deaky’s long hair. your chin was rested on his shoulder, nose just barely touching his jawline.

“think it has potential.” your closeness drowned out any rational thought he could scrape up, but each brush of your skin against his brought him back to earth. you were a drug that sent him reeling with his head in the clouds, heart pounding at every sly look and smile. he was far, far gone for you.

“that’s some grade a bullshit john.” you pulled his hand from the bass and laced your fingers with his, tracing small circles on the back of his palm. that was his favorite memory of you. you were so relaxed and peaceful, which made him feel the same. it was always the last thing he thought of before he ever had to confront a crowd.

“you alright deaks?” roger asked, pulling john back from his memory into the gritty reality of the cramped backstage in that tiny pub. he nodded, taking off the strap of the bass and resting it against the arm of his chair. roger offered him his cigarette and deaky gave him a gracious smile, taking a long drag before blowing the smoke out through his mouth and nose. after a couple more puffs, they got the signal that it was time. john took one last pull before stubbing the cigarette out and picking up his bass. here goes nothing.

the small main room was packed, people standing shoulder to shoulder to watch them play. it was flat out electrifying. they cheered raucously as brian strummed the opening note of liar, freddie joining with vocals not long after. john scrunched his eyebrows in concentration during his solo, skilled fingers rapidly plucking away at the four strings of his bass guitar. after his part ended, he looked up, searching the crowd for you.

after just a moment, he caught a glimpse of you near the center of the crowd, dancing and singing along wildly. your face almost immediately brightened when you caught him watching, and you shot him a bright smile with some enthusiastic thumbs up. it made john’s heart swell, and he returned your smile. soon freddie’s iconic line “mama i’m gonna be your slave” and deaky rushed to his side to sing the “all day long” line.

every time he sang, he locked eyes with you, which gave him just enough confidence to sing in front of the crowd, especially since he had always considered himself a bad singer. you had always vehemently disagreed, saying that you absolutely loved john’s singing voice, but he couldn’t really tell if you were humoring him or not. for the record, you weren’t.

but only one song later, when john had nothing to play, he looked back at you, hoping to see you smile one more time. but you weren’t focused on him. you were focused on the drummer right behind him. deaky whipped his head around, stomach twisting when he saw the look in roger’s eyes. one that he had seen during practices whenever he would bring along a groupie. a lustful, dangerous look now aimed entirely at you from across the cramped stage, you being barely close enough for roger to see you with full clarity (he had atrocious eyesight). and you seemed to be returning his coy smile, even grinning and breaking his gaze when roger gave you a cheeky wink. john was so busy looking between the two of you that he almost missed his cue. this was going to be a long evening.

the rest of the show passed in a blur, one filled with sly glances and flirtatious gestures from across the room. but they weren’t for john, on the contrary. they were all for roger, who you were basically eye-fucking from the crowd. and he was certainly enjoying it. deaky was decidedly not. he could feel the regret pooling in his gut. you were just too irresistible to deny, and when you begged to go to his first gig, he couldn’t say no.

but now you were completely enamored by that blond casanova, one of john’s closest friends. that was when he knew that it was the beginning of the end. he could feel you slipping through his fingers. and it was absolutely terrifying. you had been by his side for so long, that a world without you next to him was unfathomable.

after the show, you came straight to deaky, almost jumping into his arms. he let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding in, placing a hand on the back of your head to hold you close. that was the same position you had been in after your highschool boyfriend broke your heart, or when your grandma died. deaky had held you close and let you weep into his jacket, whispering soothing words.

“deaks! you did so amazing!” you pulled back a little, placing a hand on his cheek. he melted into your touch, consciously aware of the goofy grin he must be sporting. you had such an intoxicating effect on him.

“i’m very proud of you, don’t you forget it.” your thumb slowly moved back and forth across the skin of his cheek, leaving a trail of warmth in your wake. john pulled you closer, wrapping his arms around your back. he wanted to drink in that moment for as long as possible. but he felt you start to back up, and he knew exactly why. because over his shoulder came a cloud of cigarette smoke and expensive shampoo fragrance, and john let you go, even though it felt like you were being ripped away instead.

roger clapped john on the back, startling him. deaky looked over his shoulder and saw roger looking you up and down with a dangerous look in his eyes. he glanced between the two of you for a few moments, heart rate steadily increasing as time went on.

“you must be y/n, i’m roger, the drummer.” he took your hand, raised it to his lips and placed a soft kiss on the back of your palm. you were frozen in shock for a moment before responding.

“nice to meet you roger.”

“so you’re not a myth?”

“what’s that’s supposed to mean hm?”

“well, john always talks about you like you are some sort of goddess. we didn’t believe him for a long while, but now that you’re standing here? he certainly wasn’t exaggerating.” roger looked you up and down, wetting his lips with the tip of his tongue. you smiled, genuinely smiled at his words. john had never seen you so instantly smitten. roger had you, you of all people, in the palm of his hand.

“well aren’t you a flatterer.” you gave him a sly smile, giving roger a quick once over and a cocky eyebrow raise. deaky felt his heart crack just a little more. the two of you were so charismatic and confident that it was almost unfair. two people that bewitching should be forbidden from flirting with each other, in john’s opinion.

“only with gorgeous women.” john’s stomach flipped and churned, and he felt lightheaded. seeing you so clearly enamored with his best friend sent deaky reeling. he and roger had always had a special connection being the two youngest members of queen. they were extremely close, and roger was john’s best friend second only to you. john couldn’t imagine having both you and roger separate from him. it would break his heart.

while deaky was silently spiraling, roger had taken a step closer to you, nudging john just a little bit further away. as if he was no longer inhabiting his body, john took another step back, though every cell in his body was screaming to take you by the hand and head to his flat for one of your impromptu movie nights. but it was too late, even though john had yet to accept it.

after a few more minutes of lip bites and silver-tongued words, freddie waltzed over, announced there was an after party at the nearby pub, and pulled john to his side for the walk, leaving you next to roger. the door swung open as the small posse walked out, high on post-show adrenaline. john was standing in front of you, harnessing all of his willpower that wasn’t swept away by the cool summer night to not look over his shoulder, because he knew he wouldn’t like what he saw.

from what he could hear over freddie’s rapid story about some debaucherous party in his uni days, you and roger were pulling each other in ever so slightly as the seconds passed. every time he heard your airy laughter deaky could practically see the gorgeous smile that would adorn your features, the way your eyes would crinkle at the edges as the conversation drew on.

soon enough, they reached the pub, all primed and ready to get drunk in celebration of their first queen gig together. that would surely take the edge off of john’s steadily growing headache at roger and yours closeness. when he turned around, what he saw made him want to down at least three tequila shots to purge it from his mind.

you were bundled up in roger’s plush fur coat, despite the mild temperature. his arm was slung dangerously low across your back, nimble fingers tracing circles along your hip bone as you strode through the pub’s creaky wooden doors. you were laughing at something he said, a painted nail trailing down his chest. it was almost like no one was in the room.

what really hurt deaky’s heart was your myriad of traditions the two of you shared on every night out ever since his eighteenth birthday, that you had decided to ignore. one shot of cheap tequila, then a gin and tonic for the both of you. but while john was walking toward you with two shot glasses in hand, you were leaning into roger heavily while he whispered something in your ear, a glass of whiskey and a cigarette in one of his hands, the other on your thigh.

before you could see the hurt in his eyes, john turned, downed the shots, and walked towards the dance floor, determined to forget your awe-struck eyes as you looked up at roger. and it was just his luck that the song playing was “how deep is your love” one of your’s and deaky’s favorite songs to dance together. yet by some cruel twist of fate, he was alone, shuffling to the beat while stealing brief glances at you whenever possible.

two gin and tonics later, he had nearly forgotten about you and roger just across the bar as he bobbed his head to the music, sipping his drink every now and then. he was so distracted by the music that he barely noticed a tug on his long wavy hair, a habit you had picked up to draw his attention since he was a good few inches taller than you. it was clear to see you were a little tipsy by how heavily you were leaning against the bar, one hand gripping deaky’s bicep.

“deaks, i’m gonna head. it was a long night, and i really need some… rest. but i can’t tell you enough how proud i am of you okay? you are an amazing best friend and i am so happy for you. good night johnny-boy.” your words were a little too airy for his liking, and as he bid you goodbye, he could see why.

wrapped in rogers fur coat, you smiled as the drummer whispered something in your ear. john nearly dropped his drink, but instead stood back and stared as you left the bar under roger's spell. he could feel you slipping away, into the embrace of his best friend and bandmate.

that was the beginning of the end.

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“whatcha thinkin bout deaks?”

“huh?” john mumbled, eyes closed as your fingers slipped in between his wavy hair, forming a long braid against his back. he always loved when you played with his hair. it calmed him down immensely, which was desperately needed. he had tried to ignore that you were at queen’s recording sessions more often than not, cooly ignoring him- or at least in john’s mind - in favor of watching roger.

he could only hold on to the sick, twisted hope that you would see roger’s youthful promiscuity and let him go, sending things back to how it was before. but john was kidding himself. it felt like he had been from the start.

“you seem a little… distracted,” you mused, resting your head on his shoulder as your gaze shifted to the quiet tv program inching by on your beat up box telly. there was a stillness in the air, sharp and cool, sticking to your skin.

“‘m busy, that’s all. band is getting more popular, starting ideas for an album,” he murmured after a minute or two, placing his head against yours as an olive branch to break the alien tension surrounding the room. john couldn’t get the image of you in roger’s coat from his eyes, a smile he knew so well etched on your lips.

“that’s amazing john. i am not kidding when i say queen might be the greatest band ever conceived.” he just laughed, nudging your shoulder playfully. the same old pattern reborn once more.

“even more than the bee gees? marvin gaye?”

“okay, maybe not gaye,”

“you wound me, love.” you just smiled, slowly untangling yourself from the pile of blankets, tip-toeing over to the record player tucked in your bookshelf. john shifted to watch as you flipped through the impressive vinyl collection filling the empty shelves. you quickly turned once the needle was gently placed on your chosen song, holding out a hand to deaky with an eyebrow raised. after a few seconds, the song started playing, and john matched your soft smile.

listen baby, ain’t no mountain high

ain’t no valley low, ain’t no river wide enough baby

he pulled you gently into his arms, with one hand in the center of your back, the other gripping yours so tightly as if he was holding on for dear life. you either didn’t notice his desperate hold or declined to mention it. you just kept on whispering the words, slowly swaying back and forth to the relaxed beginning of the song.

‘cause baby there ain’t no mountain high enough

ain’t no valley low enough

john drew back, twirling you along with the rising tempo. your smile only grew, growing more goofy as your dancing continued. he could barely register the music, focused solely on the feel of your warm hand against his, the sweet scent you carried everywhere you went. you giggled at his dance moves, mirroring the exaggerated slow dance

ain’t no river wide enough

to keep me from getting to you babe

without warning, john dipped you, fingers intertwined. a beat passed as he simply looked at you, eyes scanning your face hungrily as if he would never see you again. you were so close, his warm breath tickled your cheek. your heart skipped a beat, and he could only hold tight as the song spiraled to its end. you cleared your throat and flicked your gaze from him to the record player. getting the hint, he slowly, deliberately lifted you back up onto steady feet.

deaky watched as you hurried to the record player. he could feel his stomach drop to his feet at your quick change in posture. did he make a mistake? did he overstep his boundaries? with each hypothetical his doubt and anxiety rose, rooted to one spot, incapable of moving while your back was turned. you cleared your throat, head lifting with you still facing the records.

“you should…”

“yeah, see you later then?”

“goodnight johnny-boy”

“goodnight”

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deaky was on his knees in the crowded backstage, various screws and wires around him as his deft fingers worked on adjusting his amp, making sure that everything was just right for the last show of their very first american tour. there were supposed to be more, but brian contracted hepatitis so the tour was cut short.

may eleventh, 1974, just under three years after john’s first queen gig, and your first time meeting the band. meeting roger. things had continued as he had expected. you at every gig, on rogers arm whenever free, often disappearing and returned some time later looking noticeably disheveled. time had made the pain less sharp, but the ache was still there. the ache for you to be by his side instead of roger’s.

john missed being close to you. they were across the atlantic ocean, muscling through long rehearsals and, as the evening before played out, two gigs in one day. in his distraction, a sharp edge scraped his thumb, drawing a thin line of blood that glistened under the lights. he muttered a soft curse, considering wiping the blood on his pants before hearing freddie’s voice in his head. “go change deaky, we can’t have you drawing too much attention!” john smiled to himself at the thought, winding his way through the faceless crew, searching for the dressing room. once he reached the door and reached for the handle, a noise came from the door that caused him to draw back his hand as if the handle was a thousand degrees.

it was a name. roger’s name. high and giggly, and certainly not in your voice. deaky wanted to throw up. he knew it. roger was like a brother to him but he couldn’t shake the wave of anger that coursed through his veins. john expected this to happen, though he knew it was wrong- so very wrong- to think the worst of his bandmate. your tear stained face filled his mind’s eye, bringing with it crippling waves of guilt. he didn’t want to get involved, it was your business. but goddammit john wanted you to see the truth.

his internal debate was cut short when you rounded the corner, absolutely stopping any brain activity in its tracks. you weren’t supposed to be there. they were in new york for god sakes, and you weren’t supposed to be there. his internal monologue snapped back into action, keenly aware of the activities most likely occurring behind that closed door.

“deaks!!! i’ve missed you! how has america been?” john barely registered the action as you threw your arms around him, squeezing him tight. every muscle in his body was tense with anger, guilt, sadness, that squishy feeling your presence always brought him. you loosened your grip after noticing his lack of reciprocation, but john quickly moved to pull you close, burying his face in your hair.

“missed you too love.” you drew back, bright smile on your face. but your focus was clearly no longer on john, eyes scanning the hallway behind him for a certain someone. a certain someone who deaky suspected wasn’t being as faithful as you.

“hey where’s rog?”

“he’s uhh… look, love, i think he might be with someone else right now. through that door. i’m so sorry. i’m here for you.” he had to force the words out. they scorched his tongue and hung in the air like thick, harsh smog. his heart dropped as your eyes widened, hands coming up to cover your mouth. some sick part of john was almost joyful at the prospect of your relationship with roger ending. you would certainly come to him for comfort, you would hang out more, and then his highschool fantasy would finally play out.

right?

“are you… but… john…” the way your voice wavered hammered a crack in his heart. a sharp stinging picked at his guilty cheer, slowly dragging him down to earth. this wasn’t anything to be excited about.

“i’m so sorry love.” deaky stepped forward, arms open to embrace you, but your hand went up to stop him. your other hand was clutched tight to your chest. it was dead silent in your small section of the corridor, save for your irregular breaths and deaky’s heavy ones. your gaze was focused on the crack at the bottom of the door, breath hitching as your bright eyes followed another shadow. there weren't many words he could discern through the dressing room door, but that uncertainty only made the doubt worse. what could have caused the sudden quiet?

“don’t. i need to see him. right. now.” your spine straightened and you held your chin high. though you still sounded shaky, john could tell that your temper was about to boil over.

“alright, i’m right here if you need me. that menace doesn’t know what you can do.” he watched your expression as you took a shuddering breath, slowly lifting your eyes from the floor. tears clung to the corners of your lashes, stubbornly refusing to fall. deaky reached out a tentative hand, and you waited a moment before taking it. your shoulders relaxed as his fingers intertwined with yours, and john felt his heart swell just a little. maybe there was hope for him yet.

“thank you john, i mean it. you are the only thing i can depend on, apparently.” your weary tone made his hand squeeze tighter. deaky brought your clasped hands up and pressed a soft kiss to the back of your hand. the soft smile that appeared on your lips gave him another boost. you were strong enough to not be broken by roger, and even if you were hurt, john would be there to hold you. with another deep breath, you reached for the door knob and pushed the door open, ready to see what john had been anticipating.

both of you were wrong.

freddie fucking mercury stood in front of a sitting roger, eye pencil in hand. they were both laughing, freddie clearly mocking some critic or interviewer he encountered. freddie stepped back, taking hold of roger’s chin as he admired his handiwork.

“gorgeous rog, our dear y/n won’t be able to keep her eyes off you.” freddie had a mischievous smirk, everything clicking together as john surveyed the scene. roger’s eyes widened, and he turned towards the doorway where you stood. the fear drained from your eyes and was replaced with anger. anger reserved specifically for john. you dropped his hand, curling it into a fist by your side.

“love! what are you doing here?” roger immediately hopped off his stool, racing to sweep you off your feet with an excited squeak from you. he held you in the air for a moment before placing you back down, making sure to pepper your skin with feather light kisses while he waited for an answer.

“freddie flew me out here for the rest of the tour…”

“something wrong love?” roger asked, genuine concern in his soft voice. deaky’s guilt was mounting by the second, manifesting as a dense weight collecting in the pit of his stomach. oh lord. he really messed up now. the look of seething contempt on your face was enough to make his entire world crumble.

he fucked up. he really, truly fucked up. john's growing fixation on yours and roger's relationship was driving you farther away. in that moment, he felt something break. your trust.

"nope, just waiting for a fascinating discussion with our dear john here. i love you little drummer boy." roger grinned, leaning down to capture your lips in a passionate kiss. he seemed over the moon just to have you by his side, gazing at you with a childlike wonder. and john selfishly doubted that devotion. though an outsider would shrug off this fumble and move on, the dynamic that formed since you had met roger wrote this severance in stone.

roger wasn’t oblivious as john assumed when it came to your relationship with deaky. he noticed that john was in love with you, even if you couldn’t see it. so once the drummer picked up on your scorching glare, and john’s palpable guilt, his heart broke as well. there was no need for him to say the words. roger wasn’t mad, just disappointed that deaky would think so low of him.

“mind if i listen in on this fascinating discussion my love?”

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you decidedly avoided john until the gig began, and roger followed suit. deaky was wracked with guilt, stumbling through the show. his fingers slipped across the strings without much reason, causing fred to occasionally shoot a glance to get him back on track. the drums seemed a bit… louder than usual, aggressively perfect timing contrasting with john’s fumbling performance. the crowd didn’t seem to mind, but the band members were far from alright.

after the show, things weren’t much better. brian tried to catch deaky on their way off, presumably to give him an earful about their “god awful performance john, good lord” but he slammed the door to the bathroom shut and locked it before he had to face anymore reckoning. freddie was the next to demand an answer, taking the slightly more conservative route of screaming “pull that shit again or so help me god of rock and roll, i will break every…” and so on.

you didn’t bless john with your presence, but your absence spoke wonders. roger didn’t show up in front of the bathroom door either. once deaky crept out a vague amount of time later, the boys were far from calm, but there was no longer a threat of being burnt alive from their anger. the energy in the dressing room was horribly tense. brian and freddie seemed clueless to the reason for roger’s anger, both just focused on the show.

“wanna give us an explanation deaky?” brian muttered, leaning against a wall where multiple mirrors stood. john could see himself reflected in one of the smudged surfaces, brown eyes dark with a storm of emotions. roger was reflected in another, sitting with his elbows on his knees on a beat up couch. his face was a stony mask; completely unreadable.

“well uh… roger and,” john attempted to explain, but couldn’t seem to grasp the right words. each time he reached for something cohesive, it slipped through his fingers and he was left at square one. while deaky struggled with his words, freddie was getting impatient.

“i cannot deal with this sober. you two stay here and work out your fucking problems. better now than tomorrow morning. we’ll be at that bar across the street.” freddie declared, grabbing brian by the arm and pulling him out the door to mumbled protest. freddie silenced him with a loud hush sound, pushing brian out the door and slamming it behind him.

“so uh…” john started off, still not able to look roger in the eyes. instead, he focused on the reflection, dingy fluorescents shiny on roger’s dirty blond hair. but he didn’t seem angry. his body language spoke more of defeat and disheartenment. somehow, that hurt worse than your harsh words.

“look, i’m not mad. just disappointed that you think i would ever do that to her. i know she’s your best friend, but i love her and i would never hurt her like that,” roger was so sincere, locking eyes with john through the mirror. disappointment was certainly a word to describe the look in his eyes, along with sadness and just a hint of guilt. roger was guilty because as a younger student, there was a bit of infidelity present, and there was some weight to john’s concern. but he had grown, and he really loved you.

“i know, and i’m so sorry. you’re also one of my best friends, and i just got ahead of myself because…” john ran a hand through his long hair, gearing up for a confession of what he had known for years, but never had the strength to say out loud.

“you love her too. i know. i can’t and won’t try to change your mind, because i get it. and yeah, i haven’t known her nearly as long as you, but i love her so much,” roger’s voice cracked at the end, sending a similar crack through john’s heart. roger leaned back on the couch, a distinctly sad smile on his face. this was really all deaky had ever wanted for you. someone who loved you unconditionally, and just wanted you to be happy. someone who would never hurt you. john desperately wanted to be that person for you. but that ship might have sailed.

“yeah… i- i do. but now i think she wants nothing to do with me.” now it was john’s turn to break. losing you would hurt him irreparably, but maybe it would be the best for you. he wanted you to be happy more than anything. however, john’s selfish side yearned to tether you to him and never let go.

“just give her time, i’ll talk to her. you still are her best friend, she’ll forgive you.” roger felt weird to be comforting john when he was the one hurt. and it really hurt. because one: you were hurting, two: john, one of his best friends, caused it, and three: said best friend though he was capable of cheating so blatantly in such a serious relationship. roger watched deaky in the mirror as the moment stretched on, mind buzzing with all the events of the day.

“time… i think she still might be mad at me for breaking her calculator when we were seventeen, what if she never forgives me? because oh boy, she loves you, and i don’t know if she could let this all go…” john began to pace, messing with his hair even more. his gaze was unfocused, eyes sweeping back and forth across the room as he tried to gather his thoughts into some cohesive train.

“well, i forgive you. this tour won’t get any easier if we are at each other’s throats.” john nearly slumped to the ground in relief. he wouldn’t be able to stand losing two friends. roger got up from the couch, walking over to deaky. without hesitation, he folded him into a hug, clapping john on the back. conversation over, friend forgiven, and now you were the only uncertainty in deaky’s life.

“now come on, let’s go find y/n and head to the bar. after today’s gig, i need a strong drink or two.” roger sounded relieved and ready to move on from the days events, and john was all for it. but he knew that you would be in no mood to see him, and that would definitely put a damper on the evening. truthfully? he wanted to sleep. sleep, and forget the entire day preferably.

“you go on ahead, i don’t think she wants to see me right now.” john muttered, roger’s hand on his shoulder after stepping back.

“alright, take care deaks.”

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true to deaky’s word, you were not quick to forgive. it took six months for a major step towards healing took place at their “night at the rainbow” shows in late november, where roger infamously trashed his drumset on stage.

you had decided to accompany them for the uk and american legs of the sheer heart attack tour, so there had been a handful of shows you were present during where deaky was soundly ignored. he did an alright job of ignoring you, no matter how much it pained him. he had adopted freddie’s flair for the dramatic clothing wise by that point. roger was always ready to go all out, and you were almost always up for helping him get ready. john had walked in on you two in compromising positions multiple times, which definitely didn’t help your frosty attitude towards deaky.

but at the rainbow theater those nights, something was off between you and roger. from what he could hear, there was some wild misunderstanding before the first show, resulting in a major shouting match while the rest of the band waited outside the dressing room. some time later, you stormed out, leaving roger alone inside. freddie glared at john aggressively until he got the message to follow you and fix his mistakes.

deaky found you right in the wings of the stage, sitting on a spare amplifier while the roadies were doing a soundcheck. your shoulders were slumped forward, eyes trained on the dust streaked stage while chaos whirled around you. the sad eye of the storm.

“i know you’re there johnny-boy. and no, i don’t want to talk.” his heart unconsciously skipped a beat when you used his nickname, before plummeting back to earth from the gravity of the situation. you sounded more hurt than angry, and as to why deaky didn’t know. but he had waited so long for a chance at reconciliation, and this was the best chance he had gotten in ages. he wasn’t about to let it slip by.

“that’s alright. i’ll wait.” john took a seat on a box just a few feet behind you, crossing one leg over the other while he waited. he knew you long enough to understand that you would immediately clam up when interrogated. so he waited, letting you relax into his presence. after five straight minutes of silence, you finally spoke.

“he can be so stupid sometimes. all i wanted was to know how long he would be gone tonight, and he just snapped. i know you guys are under a lot of stress, but he was the one who asked me to come. i just want to spend time with him.” you sounded so defeated, but john couldn’t be more excited that you finally decided to really talk with him.

“yeah, he can be a real arse.” you chuckled to yourself at his response, lifting your eyes from the floor to focus more on the stage lights and various instruments being towed around.

“you could say that again. but… he really loves you. i’m sure you’ll be alright.” deaky had to force the words out, no matter how deeply he knew them to be true. he still was crazy about you, and jealousy ripped through his body when you mentioned roger.

“thanks for listening john. i know things have been a little… iffy between us. maybe a lot iffy. and don’t take this as forgiveness. but i miss my best friend. i am not ready to let your mistrust go just yet, but consider this… progress.” john’s heart swelled at your… well… acceptance of his mistake.

“i’ll take anything at this point.” you laughed lightly at his words, going quiet again right after. the moment was over. progress was certainly made, but the conversation just made john miss you more. that evening, roger trashed his drum set, fuming as he walked offstage when the show was done. you were there waiting for him and the two of you made up. the next day, things were essentially back to the way before the rainbow theater. but you would actually talk to john now. you would laugh at his jokes, tease him; progress.

things weren’t truly, totally, alright between the two of you until the very last show of the american leg, right before they went on stage. after the show, things were a little up in the air.

but before, everything became perfectly mended. john was getting ready in the dressing room, in the back of a venue in seattle he did not know the name of. the rest of the boys were there, goofing off as usual. brian was taking photos of roger posing with ridiculous faces, occasionally calling out directions for how he should look. roger was just laughing, fluffing his hair in front of a tall standing mirror.

john sat on a low sofa pushed against one of the cracked brick walls, you sitting on the other side. there was a tense silence in your side of the room, both you and john doing anything to ignore each other’s presence. they were heading to japan the next day, which means you were heading back home to the uk, and the boys weren’t going to be back until may.

john fell back to his pre-performance memory of you and him. without even knowing it, his gaze shifted to you. just as beautiful as ever. he could almost feel the soft brush of your hair against his cheek, the comforting weight of your hand in his. your whispered words from that day prickled his skin, sending a brief shiver down his spine.

“something you need from me, john?” you caught john staring at you with a wistful look in his eye, breaking his gaze almost immediately after making eye contact. you focused instead on the soft curls of his brown hair until he responded.

“just… antsy i guess.” john wouldn’t look at you once caught, glancing down to his fidgeting hands, freddie preening in front of the mirror, brian fiddling with his camera. he wanted to avoid a potential blowout, no matter how nice it felt to casually talk with you.

“you’re gonna do great. you always do great johnny.” he still couldn’t face you, but the sincerity of your words eased his spirit. no matter how much time passed without speaking, you would always find each other. and deaky was pretty sure he had found you once more.

“well i have my best friends here, i can’t in good conscience give less than my best.” john spoke as casually as possible, gathering the courage to finally look you in the eye. what he saw almost made him melt. you were looking at him with a soft smile that made his world right itself and revolve around you.

“you’re a good man deaky. and i forgive you. truthfully, i’m sorry as well.” a beat passed before you scooted closer to him, tension slowly building in the shrinking space between you. it was broken by you surging forward and wrapping your arms around john’s neck, inhaling his scent with deep, calming breaths. he fell stiff for a moment before embracing you back, almost shedding a tear as he tightened his grip little by little. the room fell away and it was just you and deaky.

“never apologize to me, love. i’m just glad to have you back.” john whispered breathily against your neck, closing his eyes for one long moment before he felt you soften your hold and pull back, stolen from the moment by roger taking a seat on your other side. he couldn’t help but feel a pang of disappointment of rejection, but the feel of you in his arms chased away the worries he might have clung to before the show began.

“so you two have finally made up?” roger said, wrapping an arm around your shoulder. you leaned into him, resting a hand on his chest through the open vest he wore. the peaceful, dopey grin john had fell just a tad, but for the moment, just for a moment, he was content.

“i think we have, my love.” you responded lazily, pressing a kiss to the underside of roger’s jaw. that was john’s que to leave. he playfully ruffle your hair just like he once did to you as a teen, then reluctantly got up, walking over to where freddie fussed over his leather jumpsuit and shimmering wristlet.

after just a few minutes of having freddie fuss over john’s appearance, the band was called to the stage. you followed them to the door, giving roger a deep kiss and the rest of the band tight hugs. you whispered faintly in deaky’s ear before pulling away, to which he responded by just squeezing you tighter. he heard roger cough, and slowly released his grip around your waist.

“i’m very proud of you, don’t you forget it.” you smiled after john released you, somehow feeling bold enough to place a hand on his cheek. for a second, a river of unspoken words flowed from him to you, deflected smoothly by your emotional walls. john sighed, taking your wrist between his calloused fingers. he squeezed your hand, then let it fall to your side.

“never. i’ll see you soon.” he waved on his way out the door, sneaking one look over his shoulder just before turning the corner and being rewarded with roger kissing you in one last goodbye. splendid.

that show might have been the jewel in the crown of sheer heart attack’s american tour. john and roger were shockingly in sync, brian’s solos sounded better than ever, and freddie’s voice was clearer than it had been in weeks. they hit their groove, and the crowd could feel it too. their undeniable energy just raised the band’s spirits, and their last songs were met with cheers for an encore. after jailhouse rock, the second to last song, john was poised to start playing “god save the queen” until brian caught his eye and mouthed an agressive “NO.” note taken, but john shot him a questioning glance. with a huff, brian strode over to deaky, taking him by the upper arm and pulling him to the far side of the stage.

“what the fuck brian?” john angrily whispered, yanking his arm back once they were on the other side of roger’s drum kit. speaking of roger, he was standing by freddie in the center of the stage. you were standing clear across on the other side of the stage, mouthing a similar “what the fuck?” towards john, who just shrugged and looked confused. he was very, very confused.

“just shut up. you might want to hold on to something.” brian mumbled, clutching his red special a little tighter. deaky was about to bite back until freddie cut him off.

“before we go lovies, roger has a little something to say. so pretty boy, the stage is yours.” freddie spoke plainly, a teasing lilt to his words. he wriggled his eyebrows at roger, who simply swiped the microphone and stuck his tongue out at the singer. freddie retaliated by blowing a kiss and prancing over to where john and brian stood.

“fred, what the-”

“oh just be quiet and listen. our boy has a lot on his mind.” freddie cooed, still not dropping his playful tone. john was understandably agitated, while brian just stood to the side with the smallest of smiles on his lips. something was going on. just before john was able to demand clarification, roger piped up and handed john an answer on a golden platter.

“hey lads, so you know me, of course. who doesn’t?” roger joked with the crowd, sending a ripple of laughter throughout the ranks of their adoring fans. john was slow to catch on, still glaring at freddie and brian at equal intervals. both astutely ignored him, smiling at roger speaking downstage.

“but i’d like to introduce you to someone very special to me. y/n, can you come one out here?” uh oh. it all clicked for john. he knew what was happening, he knew what roger was going to ask. he knew what your answer would be. john knew that he was extremely close to running offstage and throwing up. but life had other plans, and life’s name was roger. he surged on, smile brighter than the sun as you slowly stepped onto the stage.

“this is y/n, my gorgeous, intelligent girlfriend,” roger spoke to the crowd, before turning his attention to a highly confused you. a wall of glass rose up between john and you; he could only stand by as roger got down on one knee in front of their cheering fans, all going ballistic at the prospect of what was happening to their idol, right before their eyes.

“honey, dearest, angel, my love. i was such a mess when we met. university student, head full of dreams and too much shampoo. but john brought you to his very first show with us and from then on, i knew it was over for me,” roger talked directly to you, the room falling away until everyone could only watch one of the most important moments of your life. your hands went up to cover your mouth, tears visible in the corners of your eyes. roger seemed a little worse for wear as well, blinking rapidly to keep tears from falling. john wanted to wake up from this terrible nightmare, but there was no stopping what was already in motion.

“you are the light in my life, my rock, and i don’t know how i survived that long without you. i am so ridiculously, embarrassingly in love with you y/n. and there is no one i would rather share my future with,” roger reached into his back pocket and pulled out a small, blue velvet box. with one smooth motion, he flicked it open, letting the burning stage lights glint off of simple diamond ring. your happy tears finally spilled over, and roger’s soft smile brightened as he spoke his final words.

“so, would you please accept this ring and, oh, i don’t know… marry me?” you nodded rapidly before he even finished talking. roger started to stand, but you ran into his arms, sinking to the ground with your arms desperately wrapped around each other. the microphone rolled away from the happy couple, squealing with feedback before a roadie came and swooped it up.

john could barely stand as he watched you hold out a shaking hand to roger. he slid the elegant ring onto your finger, smiling all the way. you pulled him in for a deep kiss, nearly toppling roger over with your excitement. once you pulled back from him, john was nearly in tears himself. he had a tragically perfect view of your tearstained face. and there sat the biggest and brightest smile in the room, one john would march heaven and earth to see.

except that moment. he wanted to give into every selfish desire and break your heart so you would never want to see roger ever again. but he couldn’t. he just couldn’t. john loved you way too much to ruin your moment. roger’s proposal was something his good heart refused to ruin. but that smile.

that goddamn smile.

⋰⋱⋰⋱⋰⋱⋰⋱⋰⋱⋰⋱⋰⋱⋰⋱⋰⋱

first “deaky” fic (team deaks or team rog??) so yeah. hope y’all enjoyed. i actually liked writing from the boy’s perspectives. lmk if you’re down for a part two ;))))

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otomack14079184-blog · 5 years

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Free M4a To MP3 Converter

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businesssetupindubai4-blog · 5 years

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Essential IT Infrastructure for a Small Business Setup

If you're reading this, you are in the process of taking your business from an idea you've talked to a few people about to something to make some serious money from.

What I'll cover will give you all the essential knowledge to cover at least 5 employees. This setup will run and run, and when you finally hire an IT person, they'll be able to take over effortlessly (and possibly question whether they're really needed).

Laptops and Desktops

First you need to decide between a desktop and a laptop. I would strongly advise on a laptop, as this gives you the portability you might need, and you don't have to plug anything aside from the charger in. Simple and straightforward.

Internet Connection

The first thing you'll need to make your system work is an internet connection. It can be through a mobile, cable, or ADSL. All are great, when used appropriately, but you need to choose one to start with.

For any office of ten or less people, you will be very comfortable with an ADSL connection from whoever the cheapest and best reviewed provider in your area is. You'll want to ask for a static IP when you set it up, and be adamant that you need one. Right now, it's not important, but it might be down the line and it'll save you time later on. Some services will charge a little more for this, so I suggest shopping around.

In terms of speed, the speed that's quoted on advertisements (for example 20Mb) is how fast you can get stuff from the Internet, and is mainly what we're concerned with at this point. Uploading will generally be a much smaller number, perhaps 512kbps, but generally the amount of traffic you'll be sending back to the internet is minimal.

You should look for bandwidth caps: some service providers will either restrict your speed, or cut off your connection all together when you've downloaded too many files from the Internet. This is less common now, but important to ask about.

Email, Calendaring, and Contacts

A lot has changed over the last six years, with the focus being to move away from having a mail server all of your own, to using one managed by someone else (also known as 'moving to the cloud').

There are only really two players in this field: Google, and Microsoft.

A lot of IT consultancies will push you towards a Microsoft Small Business Server, which whilst it can appear attractive is very expensive both up front, and in the long term when you move away from it. I cannot advise you enough to stay clear of this product.

If you're still stuck on the idea of Microsoft, most IT consultancies will be delighted to offer you a hosted Exchange server, but at its cheapest, this will be 100% more expensive than the next offering, which provides everything hosted Exchange does, and more.

The key innovator in this area has been Google: initially, they launched their incredibly popular Gmail product, which popularized the idea of threaded conversations and a lot of space for free. This, coupled with unobtrusive advertising and a clean interface took them to being probably the biggest provider of email today.

Office Suite and Note Taking

Office Suite

If you've opted for Google Apps, you've already got your office suite set up: it doesn't have every feature of either iWork or Microsoft Office, but it has so many that for free, there's very little point in going further initially. It has capability for word processing, spreadsheets, slideshows, drawings, and very neat data collection tables (useful for emailing a questionnaire, or posting one to a website).

But let's say you need more: you're trying to produce a very complex layout for a flyer, or you have a fiendish spreadsheet that Google Docs just can't quite handle. Microsoft has very carefully written its office suite for Macs, and it works very well. Apple has its competitor platform, iWork, which for an extra charge ties in very neatly with iWork on your iPhone or iPad if you get one. You can buy Microsoft Office for Mac (traditionally Microsoft awards odd years to Apple and even to Windows) from anywhere else that sells software, or you can buy iWork from the App Store on your Mac. The advantage of the App Store approach is that you'll have it installed and ready in a few minutes. For Pages, Numbers, and Keynote the total is £42, but each application is purchased individually for £13.99. Office for Mac runs to around £150 or so, and you'll need to use a DVD drive to install it.

Any files that you create should be saved somewhere that's backed up, for example your Dropbox (keep reading... ).

Note Taking

Note taking is useful. Synchronised note taking across Mac, Windows, iPhone, and Android a web browser-based client is even more useful. The chosen product in this category is Evernote, which for free gives you a generous account, and if you upload a photo (of a business card, for example) you can later find that picture by searching for text in it. You can share notebooks with other people, which is excellent for building a shared repository of information. These notebooks can also be shared to anyone on the Internet, although this is completely at your discretion.

Evernote will let you encrypt pieces of text, so it's very useful for saving passwords to. Select the text, right-click, and choose encrypt.

Evernote is also an excellent place to store your documentation.

Shared Storage

So now you have your Internet connection, your computer, and you're able to send people emails, you'll probably find you want a space to store your files.

My first recommendation for a startup will always be Dropbox. Dropbox is a small piece of software that runs on your computer, and watches a special folder, called Dropbox. It's available for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, iPhone, Android and Windows Mobile. Every time you add a file to that folder, or make a change to it, that file or those changes are written back to the central Dropbox servers.

A free account will give you 2GB of space, and will keep any changes you make to a file for the last 30 days, turning it into your personal time machine for everything stored in there. If you delete a file you can restore it immediately.

Additionally, you can have a shared folder with someone, which means that the folder on your computer you've shared with them is a mirror image of the same folder on theirs. You can see when they're working on a file, and vice versa. As soon as they save changes, these changes are replicated across to your computer.

Finally, there is a special folder in your Dropbox, called Public. Anything you put in here can be shared with someone else by emailing them a link to the file. This is an excellent alternative to emailing large attachments, or using FTP servers (fantastic for artwork files, for example).

If you pay Dropbox, they'll give you more than 2GB, and instead of saving changes to your files for the last 30 days, they'll save them forever, which can be useful if you need to show a chain of work.

For a more serious, server-like approach to file serving, I suggest buying a Synology disk station. Synology make incredibly user-friendly self-contained servers that can hum quietly to themselves in the corner of a room without anyone noticing. They have support for something called RAID, which means that if a disk fails, you can just slide out the broken one and replace it with a new one. They have built-in virus scanning for peace-of-mind (although you do have to enable it), and can function as a web server if you ever need to.

Remember when you buy a Synology, you need to buy the hard drives separately: you don't have to buy enough to fill your device at once, but you do need to buy at least one to be able to use it business setup in dubai.

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mumofadaofficial-blog · 6 years

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C Sections - The ‘Easy’ way out

Firstly, what I have titled this is bullshit :)

Secondly, no matter what way you give birth to your child whether it be naturally, assisted, c-section etc you are amazing for doing so. Not only have you grown that tiny human with your own body, you then bring he/she into the world in whatever way possible or necessary at that time - so fucking well done you!

My mum told me from the start that every pregnancy and birth has its own story - and that is so very true. No two are the same and each and everyone should be celebrated for the greatness that it is.

My personal experience was via an emergency c-section and I want to share that with you.

From day one I had it all planned out, I wanted a water birth and I wanted it all to be as natural as possible. Id seen on one born, various videos and pictures on the internet of that special moment when a mother holds their child for the first time, I wanted that and the closeness that came with it. Unfortunately, having to be induced and the aftermath that followed that obviously wasn’t the way my story was meant to go.

When you get told you need to have a section your all systems go, your ready for it, you just want your baby out and safe. You and anything else in the world suddenly have no importance anymore and all you want is to hear those little baby cries.

I remember signing a consent form that I never read, I don’t remember getting undressed and putting a gown on so god knows who did that and I remember going into theatre where they were talking me through things and getting me prepped for surgery.

I don’t know what they said to me, I really wasn’t listening. All I can remember asking again and again is where Nath was and why wasn’t he in there. (Of corse, like the movies he was getting all scrubbed up - dishy).

It was that moment sat on the edge of the table that the panic set in, you suddenly feel very alone in a room full of people. I became scared of what was happening and the thought that I was about to undergo the first major surgery I’d ever had. Jesus Christ, I’ve only ever broke my little finger before and thats when I was about 8, so this was big time. I was told to curve myself over a cushion whilst they injected my spine, then immediately laid down on the table, and asked to lift my legs - couldn’t do it, job done. Thankfully Nath had come in by then and I felt more relaxed like I could cope with what was going on.

When it was all underway I can remember saying to Nathan that it felt like the doctor was making a pizza with my stomach 😂 He thought I was high! It’s the oddest thing, to be able to feel that someone is doing something, but to have no sensation whatsoever. Within about 15 minutes of entering the room, Ada was born. I then had to be sewn up which took about three times as long as the birth! Also, absolutely mortified that it isn’t like one born every minute where you have a gown covering your modesty. Nothing modest about realising afterwards that the doctors have just been staring at your vagina for the past half hour or so and it definitely wasn’t covered up. (I mean they probably wasn’t looking at it at all, but you know what I mean).

I was took into a side room afterward for recovery where they fitted a catheter, what amazing things those are! Don’t even know you need a wee and that things filling itself up! Definitely don’t get confused with catheter and cannula when talking afterwards…done that far too many times and got some strange looks! It was then that the mum guilt started to set in, not only was I worried about Ada, I felt like I had failed her. Everything had been planned so perfectly in my mind of how I wanted it to go, and I felt like I had failed to deliver that to myself and my child. I felt like I wasn’t capable of giving birth, so someone else had to intervene and do it for me. (I realise now that I was stupid to think that and I did what I needed to as a mother, but I’m sure a lot of people who have had a section will understand where I am coming from). I’ve since seen a meme that said ‘I had an epidural, then I had a c-section, then I bottle fed, and now I’m sitting here at the playground wondering what all the guilt was about because my kid is just as weird as yours’ Oh so true!!

Then the time comes when you’ve managed to get some movement and feeling back into your legs and you have to stand up. Now I was told ’Stand with your legs, don’t push with your arms and don’t pull on your tummy muscles’ Easier fucking said than done Susan! (I don’t think her name was Susan, but it fits) You’ve just had your stomach muscles and womb sliced through, but just use your legs that also have no strength because there definitely a bit numb still but your desperate to get up and see your baby.

Now when that aesthetic starts to wear off, I am not going to sugar coat it, its fucking painful. Your fully aware of whats going on down there even when you just breath, god forbid you need to sneeze or cough! I think I definitely got up and about too soon, I was dizzy and lightheaded and felt like the blood had drained out of me when I got back into bed after seeing Ada. And I happily accepted any drug they wanted to give me, I couldn’t tell you what they were but they helped, so thanks for that part Susan.

The first night was a bit of a blur with how I was feeling because of everything else that was going on but I know simple things, like moving in bed and trying to sit up was hard work. I was given medication throughout the night by a midwife, who informed me I had been given some sort of super ibuprofen up my bum whilst on the operating table 😂 - which apparently I consented too but I had no idea, good work doc, didn’t even realise.

The following day I decided I needed to have a shower and sort my life out, all whilst Nathan was doing a great job of whizzing me around the hospital backwards in a wheelchair because we hadn’t quite got the hang of it going forward. Thankfully there was a seat in the shower, I’d never of had the strength to be able to stand for that length of time. It’s at times like that when you realise how much you take for granted being able to do everyday things. I remember sitting there and crying out of frustration, feeling like a massive, naked, deflated beach ball. Good job Nathan loves me because no one should have to see that haha. He washed my hair, washed me and then helped me up and got me dry. Graphic bit coming up…sorry. SO for anyone who ends up having a c section, make sure you take your pad and fresh knickers into the bathroom with you. I am saying this after learning a lesson, I did not, and was most shocked and mortified when it looked like Satan had released himself all over the bathroom floor. Nathan was pretty shocked too, he ran and got a midwife - apparently its all normal! So relax 😅

Something else that comes with c-sections…knee high compression socks. Now if your by yourself, you better ask for help. There is no way whatsoever that you will get them bad boys on single handedly after that op, Nath had to pretty much choke slam me into mine. Also, really not the best fashion accessory when its 30 something degrees outside…I think mine lasted about two days!

And then comes the dreaded day, the first poo 😳 Id been taking iron pills, three a day. To try and counteract the affect that they have on you I’d been given lactulose. Nothing was happening, I think probably 5 days past and then the urge came! I remember sitting on that toilet and wanting to push but there isn’t a single thing in your body thats gonna let you do that, so you just sit and wait, like your waiting for fucking Christmas. That was no bloody Christmas let me tell you, black poop! Straight on google to check I wasn’t dying…turns out, just the iron tablets 😂

Totally never realised you have to have injections after a c section either, absolutely fine when the midwives are doing it for you, then you get discharged…AND YOU HAVE TO DO IT YOURSELF! Theres something really hard about trying to give yourself an injection in your stomach, id have to psych myself up about ten times before id actually get it done.

Before I was discharged I had a lady come and do some exercises with me, and show me the correct way to cough e.g. holding your stomach. All fine as you know when your going to cough, but a sneeze! Oh lord, they just pop up out of nowhere, no preparation, nothing. I sneezed unexpectedly one night and was convinced I had split my stomach open, obvs Dr. Nathan checked the situation out for me - just being a drama queen as usual!

You are also told ‘Don’t do too much, and don’t lift anything heavier than a kettle for 6 weeks’ Pretty sure Ada came out weighing more than a kettle so that was that one buggered! I definitely used to do too much around the house, washing etc, but you know about it afterwards. I think for a good few weeks I just ached continuously, Getting off the sofa, sitting up in bed, walking upstairs could all be pretty hard work somedays.

Bleeding, who knew you could survive after losing so much blood. And just when you think it’s stopped, BOOM, guess who’s back, back again! Another thing I googled to see if I was dying, I wasn’t, and good old google informed me that everyone is different but it can last for a few months on and off, GREAT! What a glam life us mums have.

Personally I am gutted that I won’t experience a natural birth, the chances of me having another baby is currently slim to none and even then I would book in for a c-section because I am too scared of what could happen after Ada.

I think the point of this is to be mindful of what you say to someone, e.g. the easy way out, too posh to push etc. Not everyone has a choice, the ideal birth they have created in their mind has been taken away from them, some people won’t ever get the chance to experience a natural birth, a contraction, that first hold. Some people might opt to have a c-section, and that is totally fine! We all have to do what is best for us and has our Childs best interest at heart.

So whatever choice you make or have to make, do it for you and your baby - fuck what everyone else says, this is your story, not theirs.

Amy x

#mumblog #mumblogger #family #mumlife #blog #bloggers #mumbloggers #nicubaby #csection #emergencycsection #awareness

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queen-scribbles · 6 years

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Something Simple

Art trade fic from a few months back for @commander-sarah I found it in my google docs today and realized I hadn’t posted it yet. It’s post-trilogy Shenko fluff, so that just had to be rectified.

---

Today had been hard. Good, but hard.

“Hey, K?” Miranda began, not even bothering to open her eyes as she slouched down on the sofa until she could rest her feet on the coffee table.

“Yeah?” The sofa shifted as Kaidan sat next to her.

“Next time I suggest having friends over the same day I have PT, please slap me.” She wiggled her toes, feeling the sparks of lingering pain in her bad leg. “I love Ash and Garrus, but that was... pushing it a little.”

Kaidan chuckled. “They wear you out, Shepard?”

“Nah, Trish wore me out in fuckin’ PT,” Miranda corrected around a yawn. “They just sealed the deal.”

“Losing that much at Skyllian Five would be exhausting,” he said teasingly.

She opened one eye to glare at him, but it lacked heat. “You didn’t make out much better than I did, Alenko. You don’t really have room to talk.”

“But I did make out better,” Kaidan smirked in amusement. “So there is a little room to talk.” He reached over and tucked Miranda’s hair behind her ear before it could slide in her eyes. “But I will remind you next time.”

“Thanks. I think it’s partially this place,” she mused. “It’s a great apartment, but it feels kinda... small when we have company. So then I worry about being in the way with having my leg up and that’s tiring after a while.”

“So what’s your ideal place, then?” Kaidan asked idly, slipping his hand into hers and interlacing their fingers.

“Bigger than this, smaller than your parents’ orchard,” Miranda said after a moment’s thought. “We don’t need that much space. I don’t know what I’d do with it, honestly,” she admitted, free hand playing with her necklace. “I grew up a military brat, I’m used to small quarters. But something with enough space for me to leave out my guns when I’m working on them”--a meaningful look toward the footlockers wedged in the corner behind the Christmas tree--”multiple bedrooms in case of company. A nice kitchen, so you can make me more of your Canadian delicacies,” she teased.

“Wow, so, you want the whole deal, M?” he deadpanned. “House, dog...” he briefly lifted heir joined hands. “Ring.”

“If it’s you offering, then, yeah,” Miranda nodded. “I do.”

“And if I was, what kind would you want?” he probed, sitting back on the couch and absently rubbing his thumb over her knuckles.

“Which one?” she asked, amused.

“You just did house, so.. both of the others, I guess.”

“Lots of dogs, all kinds of dogs,” Miranda smiled. “We could just go clear out some shelter, adopt every dog they have, and I’d be happy. As for ring... nothing fancy, that’s for sure. Stones are too likely to snag on shit, so just a band of some sort.” She fought the urge to smirk at his expression; focused and earnest, clearly making mental notes. “Something simple.”

“Simple, right.” Kaidan nodded. “Makes sense.” He yawned. “Damn, you got me doing it too.”

“Maybe it’s time for bed,” Miranda said glibly, making no move to get off the couch.

“Maybe it is,” Kaidan agreed easily. He kissed the back of her hand before letting go and pushed to his feet. “C’mon. It’ll be more comfortable than the couch.”

Miranda just grunted at him. He was right and she knew it, but right now she was plenty comfortable where she was.

“Oh, it’s snowing,” Kaidan commented, glancing toward the window.

Miranda swiveled to look, but her angle was wrong from the couch. “K, if you’re lying to get me up off the couch, I’m making you sleep on the floor.”

“Swear to God, Shepard,” he promised.

Miranda let out a sigh and levered herself upright, almost toppling as she tried to balance on just her good leg. She very deliberately ignored the crutches leaning against the wall and hobble-hopped until she could see out the window. It was indeed snowing. “Hope that sticks around til Tuesday.”

“Pretty sure it will,” Kaidan said, watching the fluffy white flakes drifting from the sky. “This is the kind that sticks around once it builds up, and the weather’s supposed to stay chilly between now and then.” He shot her an amused look. “You want a white Christmas, M?”

“Hell yeah, I do,” she laughed, watching the snow. “It’s my first one, I wanna hit all the fuckin’ cliches from Earth vids we can.”

“Duly noted,” Kaidan grinned. “Now, I believe you said something about bed?”

“I did,” Miranda laughed, and followed him down the hall.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Kaidan’s prediction proved correct; the snow did stick around for Christmas. Enough so, in fact, to make their neighborhood picturesque as a greeting card. Miranda was thrilled, which Kaidan promptly teased her for. She was too excited to care, curled up on the sofa in a snuggly warm sweater and mismatched Christmasy socks, her one concession to ‘holiday spirit’ wardrobe-wise.

“You can tease me later, Alenko,” she laughed, whacking the couch cushion next to her. “Sit your ass down and let’s do presents.”

Kaidan chuckled as he complied. “Impatient, are we, M?”

“Abso-fucking-lutely.” Miranda grinned. “I got you the best present ever and I wanna see you open it.”

“Oh, well, we’ll see about that,” he ribbed, something serious yet mischievous in his eyes.

She almost called him on it, but the opted to instead reach over and snag the small box with his present from under the Christmas tree. “Merry Christmas, K,” she said, grinning like a kid in a candy store as she handed it over.

Kaidan was half-smiling even before he had the clumsily-done wrapping stripped off. It turned into a full smile of flat-out astonishment when he saw the small metallic case. “Alright, Shepard, who did you threaten or blackmail or whatever to get this?”

“That’s hurtful,” Miranda said with a laugh, miming a hand over her heart as she watched him pull the slim black omnitool band from its resting place. “I just reminded a couple of Saronis Applications board members of the part we both played in saving the Citadel a few years back and the damn galaxy far more recently, pointed out it would probably boost sales even more to say one of the Spectres used their latest tech, and there ya go.”

“You were diplomatic for me?” Kaidan smirked. “I’m touched.” He secured the omnitool to his wrist and tapped it to life, glancing admiringly over the readouts before closing it down. “It looks great, M. Now.” He reached down next to his side of the couch and pulled up a box, both larger and better wrapped than her gift had been. “Your turn.”

“Already trying to outdo me?” she teased, tucking back her hair before tugging on the vibrant red ribbon tied around the box. “This is almost a work of art, K. You get to wrap all the birthday present from here on out.”

“Only if you buy all the birthday presents from here on out,” he countered with a smile that belied his nervously fidgeting hands.

“Deal,” Miranda agreed promptly, tugging away the wrapping paper. She could handle brightly lit and noisy stores so he wouldn’t have to if he would handle the wrapping so she didn’t have to. She carefully opened the box-

And found another box, just as neatly wrapped as the first one. She narrowed her eyes at Kaidan. “You bastard.”

“That would sound a lot more intimidating if you weren’t laughing,” Kaidan said, grin plastered across his face. “Keep going.”

Inside that box, there was another box. Miranda balled up the paper and threw it at him before opening that box. To find another box. “Kaidan-!”

“Just one more, I promise,” he cut her off.

Miranda gave a long-suffering sigh and very dramatically opened the last box. Inside was another box. Only this one was small, velvet, and instantly recognizable. Miranda’s head snapped up and she raised an eyebrow at Kaidan. “Really?”

He nodded, grinning wide. “Really.”

“You wanna shackle yourself to this hot mess forever?” she joked, gesturing at herself and wiggling the toes of her bad foot for emphasis.

“Longer,” Kaidan said, still grinning as he reached over at took the box from her. He flicked it open to reveal--as requested--a simple platinum band, gleaming against its red velvet cushion. “Miranda, will you-”

“Yes.”

“Dammit, will you let me finish the question, Shepard?” he laughed.

“Sorry.” Miranda’s voice lacked any hint of an apology. She folded her hands in her lap and shot him a mischievously expectant look. “Ask away, Major.”

“Miranda, will you marry me?”

“Oh, hell yes!” she said fervently, pulling him into a fierce and passionate kiss before even giving him a chance to slide the ring on her finger, a fact he rectified when they broke apart for air. “‘Bout damn time,” Miranda teased softly.

“Oh, hush, you,” Kaidan laughed, and kissed her again.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

“So,” Miranda began, after several more minutes of making out that almost landed them on the floor at least twice. “For Ash’s party tonight... do we tell people, or just wait from them to notice on their own?” She held out her hand, looking at the ring again.

“Oh, definitely option B,” Kaidan said, capturing her hand to press a kiss against her palm. “It’ll be more fun that way. And we have observant friends; the cat’ll be out of the bag pretty quick.”

“I like the way you think,” she chuckled, tracing his jawline with her fingers. “I might kiss you for that.”

“Hang on, I have to check with my fiancée,” Kaidan deadpanned, barely holding back another grin. “Should make sure it’s alright with her before I kiss a war hero.”

“I think it’s okay,” Miranda whispered, moving in for the promised kiss. “Very okay.” She linked her hands against the back of his neck, the cool metal of her ring making both of them grin.

Kaidan had very clearly won this Christmas, Miranda conceded to herself as she kissed her fiance breathless, but that was alright. There was always next year.

And all the years after it.

#queens fic #art trade #miranda shepard #kaidan alenko #mass effect

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clothworship-blog · 6 years

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Outsource In Your Wedding Business: The Complete Guide

You have a great deal of things on your plate as a wedding entrepreneur. Wouldn't it be decent to recover a portion of your time? When you redistribute and delegate undertakings, it liberates you up to work on the CEO level assignments inside your efficient acquiring more business or vital getting ready for the following quarter. It likewise enables you to really have a real existence, one loaded up with less pressure and less work. Sounds really incredible isn't that right?

A great deal of wedding entrepreneurs think there is nothing they can re-appropriate so I've aggregated a rundown of 100 things that you can re-appropriate in your wedding business. Take your pick and begin! The development of your business, and the protection of your mental soundness, relies upon it.

Outsource In Your Wedding Business_ The Complete Guide Save

Try not to need to peruse every one of the 100 things to re-appropriate in your wedding business at this moment? Download each of the 100 things to re-appropriate wedding photographer in Delhi as a PDF by tapping the catch beneath!

1. Organizing Blog Posts

In case you're similar to me you adore composing blog entries, however designing them can be tedious and monotonous. Having somebody take your Google Docs and configuration them into blog entries on your site for you can spare you a bundle of time that you can be spending on different things.

2. Planning Social Media

Sorting out and planning the majority of your posts crosswise over different online life stages can be an overwhelming and disappointing assignment. Discovering somebody to choose pictures, find and utilize the best hashtags, compose posts, and after that booking them for you in a device like Smarterqueue or Tailwind can be a genuine distinct advantage!

3. Invoicing

Conveying solicitations is a standout amongst the most exhausting assignments with regards to maintaining a business yet a standout amongst the most critical (without solicitations you won't get paid!). Realizing that somebody is over this for you is very useful and it implies that you can invest more energy doing the things that you cherish in your business!

4. Sending Proposals

Similarly as with sending solicitations, sending recommendations can be tedious, so why not re-appropriate this assignment to another person so you can continue chipping away at getting new customers?

5. Duty Preparation and Filing

Getting ready and recording your charges can be distressing and moderate and it can make you need to shout. Re-appropriating it can support your productivity and benefit by opening up a great deal of your important time. This was one of my total most loved things to re-appropriate and get off of my plate and the intriguing thing is, I'm sparing more cash on my assessments since I'm letting a professional handle it.

6. Noting Calls

It may not appear it but rather noting calls and checking phone messages can finish up taking up hours of your time, time that you could be spent on paying customers.

7. Customer Gifting

I cherish sending blessings be that as it may, likewise with most entrepreneurs, I don't have a ton of time to look for the ideal blessing, bundle it, and go to the mail station to send. Regardless of whether you shop on the web, it can spare a great deal of time having another person go on Amazon and sort out a blessing to be sent to a customer

8. Picture Culling

Having another person experience and winnow your pictures may not sound incredible to everybody but rather it can have another pair of eyes taking a gander at your work and choosing what needs to go. Additionally, experiencing those pictures and be unfathomably dull and take up a great deal of your time so it might merit redistributing the procedure.

9. Making Content Calendar

Making content is excessively critical however it's frequently difficult to realize what to present and when on post it. Re-appropriating a substance date-book to somebody can be important for your business, particularly if that individual is better at arranging and more sorted out than you!

10. Sending Anniversary Cards To Clients

Need to remain best of psyche with past customers and energize more referrals? An incredible method to do that is to send your past customers a first commemoration card to help them to remember the amount they delighted in working with you and wish them well. This is straightforward, simple to re-appropriate, and truly affects referrals.

11. Connecting with Vendors To Build Referral Relationships

In case you're similar to most wedding experts, seller connections are imperative. You can have an associate make a rundown of new merchants to get and keep together with ones you definitely know by connecting with them via web-based networking media and resharing their posts.

12. Video Editing

In the event that you make recordings in your business you realize it very well may be tedious to alter them. This is an ideal errand to redistribute in light of the fact that it liberates you up to accomplish progressively critical assignments in your business. This is particularly valid in case you're a videographer!

13. Search engine optimization

Chipping away at SEO is going to help you get found in scan when couples are searching for merchants BUT you don't should be the individual to take a shot at it. Truth be told, you most likely shouldn't be the individual to deal with it. There are some basic SEO botches that wedding experts make yet when you work with a SEO master, you can stay away from them and make SEO work for you.

14. Refreshing Your Website With New Images and Testimonials

Does your site have your best in class pictures and tributes? This sort of site support is anything but difficult to disregard and it's something a remote helper can improve the situation you so you don't need to stress over it.

15. Asking for Testimonials

Do you have tributes from your best customers? Is it true that you are getting tributes that move for you? Why not have a VA catch up with your customers and demand them for you? All things considered, tributes are a vital instrument!

16. Site Maintenance

Site upkeep is something regularly gets tossed to the wayside yet it's vital to ensure things keep on running easily. All things considered, it's the primary thing your potential customers see!

17. Making Timelines

In candid wedding photography organizer, you realize that making courses of events is an amazingly tedious errand. What amount of time would you get back on the off chance that you gave that off to another person? What amount of effect on developing your business would you be able to have with that time?

18. Communicating On Social Media

Online networking is only that, social, so it's insufficient to post and not associate. You could have somebody collaborate for your benefit every day and advise you of anything you have to react to by and by.

19. Instagram Hashtag Research

How vital would you say you are with your Instagram promoting? Hashtags are a key piece of any Instagram advertising technique and you could without much of a stretch re-appropriate hashtag inquire about so you're capitalizing on every single post.

20. Wedding Fair Support

It's difficult to man a wedding reasonable stall alone so why not make it less demanding yourself and have an associate help you? This opens you up to almost certainly have significantly more discussions with intrigued couples!

21. Making Your Email Opt In Offer

In the event that you need to begin utilizing email promoting, you need an email select in offer. You can record voice notes and have an aide decipher that into a downloadable PDF that will lure individuals to agree to accept your email list

22. Setting Up Your Email Opt In Form

In case you're going to utilize email promoting, you need an email showcasing supplier to make the structure and give the select in offer once somebody buys in. You could redistribute the set up of this in your email advertising instrument whether that be or something different!

23. Checking Your Voicemail

You don't need to be the one checking your phone message. You can have another person do that and give you notes on that activities that you have to take. Simple peasy!

24. Making Forms

You presumably need an assortment of structures in your wedding business from your contact structure, to your customer consumption structure, to an additional subtleties wedding subtleties structure. You don't need to be the one to make those structures and giving this off saves your time for progressively essential errands.

#best candid wedding photographer #wedding photographer in Delhi #candid wedding photography

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stoweboyd · 6 years

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Slack and the Future of Work Platforms

Dom Nicastro asked me (and some other market watchers) about the recent acquisition of Atlassian's HipChat and Stride by Slack, and that's been published at CMSWire. Nicastro picked some of the things I said, but I thought I'd share my full comments, and add a new topic at the end, regarding Slack's unique opportunity as a work platform, more than as a work chat product.

Nicastro asked for my thoughts on July 31:

Nicastro: Obviously there was the big shakeup with Atlassian bowing to Slack and selling their collaboration tools.

Did this move surprise you? Why? Why not?

Boyd: I was surprised that Atlassian had approached Slack in the way they did, but not surprised that HipChat and Stride were losing in the head-to-head competition with Slack.

Nicastro: Do you expect Atlassian users to just make the move to Slack or is it an opportunity for Teams to swoop in and steal some of them?

Boyd: My bet is that users of the Atlassian tools who had not already defected to alternative solutions will use the time before the tools are shut down to evaluate all the options. Slack has the opportunity to build some export/import bridgework, or to offer Atlassian users some discounts. But ultimately I bet the users will move to Slack, Microsoft Teams, Facebook Workplace, and other alternatives in about the same proportions as others in the marketplace do, with perhaps a slight lean in the direction of Slack. But remember, they could have defected to Slack a month ago if they liked Slack so much.

Nicastro: What does this mean for practitioners as they entertain a central hub for collaboration in their enterprises? Is it a Slack vs. Teams world? Or is that something manufactured by people like me who like big headlines?

Boyd: Yes, Atlassian surrendering to Slack is the final battle of one war, but the bigger war is still going: Slack versus Microsoft Teams. And Microsoft has 150 million business users for Office 365, and it has the inside track on converting those to Teams users.

My prediction is that Slack needs to line up with an internet giant to out-market Microsoft, so an acquisition by Google or Amazon is predictable. However, Slack is an unusual case: it has grown very quickly, and is the market-defining product for work chat. So the company is likely to go it alone until its growth slows. Honestly, though, the fit with Google's G-Suite is compelling, and would be a good use of $10 billion.

Nicastro: What do large organizations need out of enterprise collaboration tools today? What's most important?

Boyd: Work chat is the hot, high growth element of the larger domain of work technologies. That's used best for small teams that communicate frequently to coordinate work. There are well known issues with scaling work chat to effectively support the communications and coordination at scale larger than teams, however, a great proportion of work is the work of small teams.

Other tools are also critical. Email is still the default mechanism to communicate with those we do not work with as teammates. Task, work, and project management tools -- like Asana, Trello (acquired by Atlassian), Basecamp, Smartsheet, and many others -- are also in broad use in the enterprise. And of course, companies stil rely on documents, even if they don't get printed out as much anymore, so tools like Google Drive (with Docs, Sheets, and Slides), Dropbox and Dropbox Paper, and Microsoft Office 365 (Word, Powerpoint, and Excel) -- which used to be called 'productivity' tools -- are still essential. Note that Google and Microsoft are big players in this last category, 'productivity tools', and Slack has no horse in that race, as yet. Also, Microsoft and Google both have task management offerings, which Slack has opted to simply integrate with all comers.

Nicastro: Who right now has the most compelling story out there to offer these things?

Boyd: Slack has the best pure play work chat story, Microsoft (trailed by Google pretty aggressively) have the best work technology suites, ranging from email to 'productivity'.

Nicastro: What advice would you give practitioners/orgs in the digital workplace looking at this news and wondering what's best for them in their enterprises -- in other words, what should we be using to collaborate -- what are some good steps they can take to help themselves figure out what's best?

Boyd: That's a huge question. I don't think there is a one-size-fits-all answer. A 20,000 person law firm with offices in three countries has very different needs from a 300 person design firm in one city, and again different from a 50 person software company with a largely remote workforce.

I'd suggest any company start with a simple assessment: what is the center of gravity in the company's work activities? Is it project coordination with many external clients, like the design firm might be? Start by getting a good work/project management platfom established, and accept the inevitability of email-based communications. Is it internal communication by small teams? Start with work chat, and then decide what secondary considers matter to help pick the right work chat solution. I bet the law firm is document-centric, and relies on a solution like Sharepoint of Google Drive, so the obvious option is to pick one of those first, and adopt the other tools in the suite.

Nicastro: Anything else I didn't ask you'd like to add, feel free!

Boyd: One last observation: There is an interesting trend that is gaining steam, which I call 'work processing'. A new generation of document-centered tools -- like Quip, Notion.io, Slite, Nuclino, and others -- support shared documents with styled text, embedded objects (tables, videos, images), tasks and checklists, and social affordances: threaded comments, internal notifications, and messaging. In this approach documents are not just dumb files with styled text, sitting in a cloud file system. Instead of relying on work chat communications, which are only structured by channels and search, work processing relies on a system of documents to structure company information and discourse. This can also be integrated with work chat, or may include work chat internally. A trend to keep an eye on!

We covered a lot of ground, but the heart of our discussion was largely inward-looking, focused on the conventional idea of internal ‘collaboration’: a company's employees communicating, coordinating, and cooperating among themselves, principally.

However, companies are being rapidly remade, as hierarchies are being eroded by the tectonic changes in the economy, and as companies move toward increasingly autonomous teams operating horizontally, and increasingly working with ‘outsiders’ on company operations. The adaptations to an accelerating marketplace require companies to become more agile and flexible, to work more closely with customers, partners, and suppliers, and to pull diverse, distributed task forces together to innovate and deliver greater value to customers.

This has major ramifications across the enterprise -- on leadership, operating principles, decision-making, and, well, everything. But pertaining to Slack and the role of work technologies this means a new set of requirements.

Instead of simply supporting communications with the company, work chat and related tools will have to support increasingly critical multiorganizational use. When all involved are using the same technologies -- say Slack -- the cross-company integration is relatively straightforward, and might involve a cross-authentication between the two companies’ Slack accounts.

However, when company A wants to coordinate work with company B, and they are using different tools -- say Slack and Teams, for example -- things become more complex. There would have to be a common protocol between vendors of work chat solutions for that to work, or at least a one-to-one agreement between Slack and Microsoft. (Or not: we could have a standoff like we did with instant messaging services back in the day, but that’s a different history lesson.)

Slack has become the market leader for a number of reasons, but it has clearly staked its claim to being the most oriented toward easy integration with other tools, such as help desk, document systems, task management solutions, and so on. I am wagering that they will be the first to move aggressively toward full distributed platform support, just as businesses realize that their futures rely on reorienting their operations toward the horizontal, and move to convert themselves into business platforms. For companies to become full-on business platforms they will need to rest upon foundational work platforms -- technology that will include work chat and other work management tools, as well as close integration with other necessary enterprise software.

This realignment of business operations toward the horizontal is the most obvious motivation for my claim that Slack will ultimately align itself with an internet giant, like Google or Amazon, because we can expect that these horizontal work platforms for business will naturally emerge on top of the cloud computing platforms that the giants will command.

Maybe we will be writing about platform-as-a-service, soon, with Slack as one important element in that stack.

#writings #work chat #work platfroms #slack #atlassian #google #microsoft #hipchat #stride #microsoft teams #amazon #horizontal business #platform-as-a-service

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beautyandthewolffanfic · 6 years

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Best OCR software of 2018

New Post has been published on http://www.dailygadgets.net/best-ocr-software-of-2018/

Best OCR software of 2018

Digitizing paper documents has a lot of benefits for individuals and businesses alike, clearing up huge swathes of space where filing cabinets once stood, and meaning documents are protected against theft, fire and flood.

For this paperless process to make sense though, you really need to add OCR (Optical Character Recognition) into the mix. OCR software scans digital documents to make the text inside them readable by a computer, so you can search them just as you would anything you’d created in Microsoft Word or Google Docs.

Here are our picks for the best five OCR apps we’ve come across, all combining an intuitive interface with a stack of useful features.

1. Google Drive

A quick and easy solution from Google

Leverage the power of Google

Straightforward and automated

Not the most advanced file manager

Whether you use Google Drive as an individual or as a business (as part of G Suite), you can tap into its OCR capabilities. In fact, everything is switched on automatically: any PDF or indeed any image you upload to Google Drive is scanned for text.

That text can then be easily searched from inside Google Drive or inside the specific document itself. You can try it for yourself right now – just search for a line of text that you know is inside an image in your Google Drive, and up it pops. It all works as if by magic.

Of course Google has plenty of training data and cloud processing power to work on this, so you would expect the results to be impressive, as indeed they are. Having a few more advanced search functions and features would be welcome, but it’s hard to fault this as an integrated feature.

If you’re using the Google Drive app for Android, you can scan documents straight in from the app, using the camera on your smartphone. Otherwise, get your documents uploaded via a scanner attached to a computer, or any other method you like, to start the OCR processing in Google Drive.

2. Nuance OmniPage Ultimate

Custom, comprehensive workflows

Top-ranking speed and accuracy

Too expensive for some

If you take your OCR scanning seriously – if it’s a crucial cog in the machinery of your business – then give Nuance OmniPage Ultimate a look. It’s packed with features above and beyond what you might expect, and while the price is relatively high, it still falls in the affordable bracket for most small businesses.

Put down your cash and you can convert paper documents from virtually any scanner source into just about any kind of digital file you like – and everything works super-fast too. If you’ve got stacks of paper to get through, the time saved by OmniPage Ultimate can really start to add up.

Known for its accuracy in conversion, this Nuance software is trusted by some of the biggest names in business – including PWC and Rolls-Royce – and lets you build up custom workflows so your documents get automatically delivered to the right place in the right format, depending on your needs.

If the Ultimate edition is a bit too rich for your blood, try the cheaper OmniPage Standard, which doesn’t include as many input, output and workflow options, but is going to offer more than enough in the way of features for most users needing an OCR solution.

3. Abbyy FineReader

One of the veterans of the field

Comprehensive suite of features

Multiple output options

Expensive for personal use

Abbyy has been helping companies manage documents for a long, long time now, and it shows in the latest version of its FineReader software – it’s just about as comprehensive a solution as you would want for a small businesses, though casual users might prefer something a little more lightweight.

You get all the tools you need for taking paper documents from a scanner and making them fully readable, neatly organized, digitized documents. As well as recognizing text and converting it to PDF, Microsoft Office or other formats, the program can also compare documents, add annotations and comments, and more.

If you need to convert bundles of documents in batches then FineReader can do that too. It can handle a host of output formats and 192 different languages without breaking a sweat, and there are companion mobile apps as well if you need to do some quick scanning from a phone.

The software isn’t the most modern we’ve ever seen but it’s clean, functional and does the job perfectly well. Abbyy FineReader has built up a strong reputation for being one of the best options in the OCR field, and you can take advantage of a free trial to see if all the hype is on the money.

4. Adobe Acrobat Pro DC

A trusted solution from the Adobe stable

Plenty of advanced features

Easy to use

You’ll have to pay month after month

Want to go with a well-known brand name you can trust? Adobe Acrobat DC fits the bill, and brings along with it an impressive list of features and options, even if the price is a little steeper than some of its rivals. For all the OCR features, you need to opt for the Pro version of the Adobe Acrobat software.

That DC stands for ‘Document Cloud’ by the way, and everything integrates rather neatly with Adobe’s cloud solution, should you need to get at your files from any computer. Of course there’s also slick and seamless integration with everything else Adobe makes, so you might consider this if you already use a lot of Adobe apps like Photoshop.

If you do decide to pay up for the Pro version of Adobe Acrobat DC, you get all the OCR basics plus the ability to add comments and feedback on documents, a specialized tool for scanning tables, the option to quickly compare two documents together, and much more. Documents can be edited right on the screen just seconds after scanning them in.

The Adobe badge guarantees a certain level of quality, and we’re impressed by the intuitiveness and the scope of Adobe Acrobat DC. If you don’t mind adding yet another subscription to your life, then this is well worth considering.

5. Readiris

A product that’s packed with features

Comprehensive all-in-one solution

Easy to learn and operate

More advanced features cost extra

Readiris blends a polished interface with a host of useful features and functions to really earn its place on our list. If you’re running a small business or need a serious amount of paper digitized – and you’re prepared to pay for it – then you’ll find this program one of the most comprehensive out there.

From a host of supported file formats (including Microsoft Office formats and the option to have text read aloud), to signatures and security protection on your finished digital documents, it’s difficult to think of anything that the developers of Readiris have missed out. Watermarks, comments and annotations are all supported.

It’s also one of the fastest and slickest OCR programs out there, putting some older applications we’ve seen to shame. Documents are processed and filed rapidly, and you’ll soon be jumping quickly between the various Readiris screens, with no need to consult a manual or embedded help file. Like all the best apps, it combines a lot of powerful features with a simple and accessible interface.

Some features, such as support for a maximum of 138 languages and PDF password protection, require a Corporate level package. The one below that level is Pro, and then the basic product is just the standard Readiris – and it’s still very good, so many of you will be able to get by with the lowest priced package.

#Software

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saasreviewsforyou · 3 years

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Create A Professional Resume in Just A Few Minutes With Novoresume!

Creating a resume is the first step to enter into any professional world. To truly stand out, a resume needs to display a level of professionalism and effort- something that content cannot always convey accurately, the reason why resume builders come into the picture. They help showcase your unique personality and achievements. Novoresume is one such resume builder to create a professional resume and cover letter effortlessly.

It is an easy-to-use builder that could improve your chances to get hired and impress the interviewers.

In this Novoresume review 2021, let us look at some of its key features and pricing.

Why Novoresume?

As a job aspirant, everyone wants to get selected as soon as possible and impress the interviewers by giving their best shot. An attractive resume plays a vital role in this whole getting hired process. You can try and test different tools to make an enticing resume, but it might consume a lot of time and energy to try out all the available options and pick the most suitable one.

Using this tool can save you from browsing and wasting excess time on them as it contains a collection of templates and layouts which give your resume the desired professional outlook. Furthermore, you can also use their expert recommendations to enhance resume quality. It also provides different cover letter layouts for free with such beneficial features it won't be easy to say no to this tool.

The Benefits Of Using An Online Resume Builder

You get the ease to create your resume without hiring any other resume writing services. It provides you with the basic structure/format of building a CV and has eight different templates to choose from with smartly written content samples and can be customized as per the needs.

Functional

Modern

Simple

Creative

Basic

Professional

College

Executive

The next impressive element regarding this resume builder is that it gives recommendations to optimize your content, ensuring that you get your desired job and influence the interviewers. The corporate world has become a tough place to survive. A constant rush and competition make it a little difficult to stand still and keep up with the pace. Hence, you need an expert's help with it.

How To Use Novoresume?

1) Register your account on its website or sign up with Google

2) Ater creating an account, go to the doc section

3) Select the layout as per your needs

4) Create your CV effortlessly!

Understanding Different Sections Of CV and Resume

There is a difference between a CV and a resume. A CV contains all the details about the applicant and is descriptive, whereas a resume is a short and brief detail about the applicant.

Most of the students, freshers, and intermediate use resume format to display their academics, skills, and achievements in detail. On the other hand, professionals and executives choose the CV format to showcase their job type and experiences. But, Novoresume gives you options for both forms.

Exploring The Resume Builder Format

After registering your account on Novoresume, you can use this software for free. There are two options, a resume (0-5 years experience) and a CV (5+ years experience). You will also get many options on the top panel like theme, font, layout, template, and setting.

Font

You get three font options in the free version. To utilize all the fonts, you necessitate enhancing your subscription to the premium plan.

Templates

This tool has got eight different template styles to select from. Here you can see all the available designs to suit your needs.

Functional

In this template, you get the option to highlight your skills, strengths, and talents.

Modern

This template seems more engaging that can grab the recruiters' attention, and makes you stand out from the crowd.

Simple

There aren't many patterns in the simple template but, it is very impactful.

Creative

To stand out in the most intricate competition, you need to display your creativity with this template.

Basic

If you are looking for an instant resume within a few minutes, you can opt for the basic template.

Professional

It gives your resume a professional outlook, highly approved by experts and professionals.

College

If you are a student and looking for a resume for applying to a college, this template will be best for you. Here are the Novoresume college examples:

Executive

As an executive, you can display all your set of skills, talents, and years of experience with this template.

Layout

Here you can design the format of your content all by yourself or choose one of the designs. If you are applying for a job in the US, then go for the premium plan and use the 'US letter format'

Settings

Here you can make general adjustments like using date format, space, etc. Add labels to showcase all the completed tasks/projects/assignments and career objectives.

CV Builder

If you are an expert in your field, and looking forward to displaying all your achievements so far, then CV format is the best option. In a CV, you can be descriptive about your work experiences, skills, knowledge, etc.

A CV also has fonts, layouts, and templates.

Fonts

For more font options, a premium plan is necessary. However, there are still three font options available for free users.

Layout

There is an option to change the structure of a CV as per the requirements. The functions in the layout of a CV and resume are identical.

Templates

In the CV editor, there are eight different template styles available.

Functional

Modern

Simple

Creative

Basic

Professional

College

Executive

Cover Letter Builder

A cover letter is as important as a CV and resume. With Novoresume you can design the cover letter to address the features of a resume to the interviewer.

Pricing

In the paid premium plan, you get three options to create a resume of up to 3 pages:

1-month plan

3-months plan

1-year plan

Pros and Cons

Let us have a look at the pros first:

Get a free basic plan for students

Professional cover letter and resume formats

Impressive layouts and templates

Variations with several font options

Different color scheme options

Professional video tutorials

Cons:

Limitation of templates

Wrapping Up

After looking at the features, pricing, pros, and cons of Novoresume, it is evident that it is the best suitable tool for creating a resume, CV, and cover letter for different purposes. Overall, It is user-friendly and helps to improvise the resume and increase the chances of getting hired.

#novoresume review #novoresume #resume #resume builders #create a resume

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dailydb0 · 6 years

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How to optimize images/files for the web, save bandwidth, storage, and a lot of money

A question that any web developer had to ask themselves at some point in their life. It describes my journey through assets optimization with some examples, but mostly ideas to start your own research. Enjoy!

Why optimize assets?

1. Cost

Some of my websites are centered around images. A lot of images. When I launched them, I naively hosted everything, including static files and uploaded images, to a single EC2 instance. As soon as it got some users, my bill, unsurprisingly, skyrocketed.

2. Speed

While it's easy to jump to the conclusion that most people have modern computers and fast, reliable internet download speed, one must not forget that we are also still in the middle of the mobile era. 4G is slowly getting better, but can still be slow and costly for your users. Though the cost is not on your side, loading large image files on mobile data can affect user experience and drive your users away.

On my side, I also have to take into account the international aspects of my websites. They target English speakers worldwide, and in particular, attracts the South East Asian crowd, which, unfortunately, in many cases, has to rely on slow and unreliable internet.

How to optimize assets?

After years of running these images-centered websites, I went through a bunch of steps, one at a time, to reduce costs and improve user experience. In this article, I'll go through some ideas you can follow yourself, so, unlike me, you can skip the hassle for your future self and have everything ready now!

This article is purely based on my own experience and might not be 100% complete. As I continue on my journey to optimization, I'll make sure to update it. Feel free to comment your own ideas as well!

1. Basics

These should be pretty obvious to anybody with a tiny bit of experience making websites, but I'll list them anyway, for exhaustivity.

Some are more general assets related and not just images, and some might not make a big difference based on your usage. If you're not familiar with them, use them as a base to do your own research!

Resize your images

If your image is resized to 300x300px using CSS, might as well store your image in 300x300px, or you're loading an image that's bigger than needed.

Even in a responsive design, you generally know the limit at which your image can be displayed. For example, if you're using a Bootstrap container and have your image use img-responsive, you know that your image will never be displayed at more than 1170px width.

For SEO purpose, you might want search engines to have access to the high quality image, allowing your website to show up first in Image Search. What I personally do is provide an a href link to the full size image. This way, most of your users will only load the small version, but the larger version will still be available for both your users and search engines.

Use images sprites

This method is used widely, not just for websites, but also for game optimization. The idea is to put many small images loaded frequently (navigation icons, for example) into a single image, loaded once.

You then use a div with this image as a background, properly positioned to only show the image you want.

You can learn more about this method on W3Cschool.

Use SVG

Not only are SVG files much smaller, they can also be upscaled infinitely! Of course, SVG files won't work on photographs, but they're perfect for simple icons.

You can learn more about SVG files on SVGOnTheWeb.

Use fonts for icons

Just like SVG files, vector fonts can also scale infinitely and are pretty light weight, making them a great choice for icons around your website.

Many fixed sets of commonly used icons are available, the most famous one being FontAwesome.

If you want to make your own selection, I recommend using FlatIcon, which generates font files and the CSS that comes with it for you. That's the one I personally use the most and I recommend it.

FlatIcon doesn't let you provide your own icons, but Fontastic does, so you might want to consider it instead.

Minify your CSS and Javascript

Not related to images, but when optimizing for the web, it's better not to cut corners. Minifying is a well known method to reduce your files sizes by removing white space and renaming variables. It makes the source files very hard to read for human beings, but perfectly fine for your browser.

Many tools exist to minify your static files, including desktop clients, command line tools, and even online tools. Many full-featured deployment / continuous delivery tools and libraries come with minifiers as well.

I personally let CloudFlare minify static files for me, which I'll talk about below.

For websites that rely heavily on Javascript libraries, you might want to look into WebPack, which bundles your static sources for you, among many other features.

Use CDNs

CDN hosted files are optimized by being hosted closer to your end user and being heavily cached at multiple levels. Using CDNs also allows a user using multiple websites that use the same libraries to only load it once for both.

I personally use cdnjs, but many free CDNs exist for the most common Javascript and CSS libraries.

2. Storage: S3

After my EC2 nightmare bill I mentioned earlier, my first step to save money was then to host all my static files and uploaded content to S3.

S3 Storage is cheap, but you still pay for bandwidth, which we'll talk about below.

If you know your target demographic, you can pick the right region to speed up loading on your users’ end.

Below is the pricing for S3 in North Virginia. You can check the current pricing and pricing for different regions directly on AWS official website.

As you can see, S3's cost for storage is close to nothing.

You may also pick different storage options such as Standard Infrequent Access if your files are not loaded frequently (duh).

Glacier is another long-term, infrequent access storage. However, I do not recommend it for the web, as storage will be cheap but accessing your files will be very pricey. It's useful for archives of rarely used and not easily accessible files, such as old logs or backups.

Creating an S3 bucket is easy as ABC, so I won't go through that today.

Updating your static images/files on S3

For small, infrequently updated websites, you can opt for manual update. Whenever a file needs to be updated, open the AWS console and upload your files there. That's it!

If your website gets updated frequently, uploading them manually can be a hassle. I suggest to look into Continuous Delivery and the recommended tools for it depending on the web framework you're using. Many web frameworks also come with tools or libraries to automatically update your S3 bucket. GitHub can also provides hooks whenever you push to master, for example. Continuous Integration tools like Travis-CI can make use of these hooks to upload artifacts to S3 after a successful build.

User-uploaded files on S3

Files uploaded by your users should also go straight to S3. Many libraries exist for most web frameworks that let you configure your AWS key/secret and a bunch of other parameters to upload to S3.

If you use a server-side web framework, you may also consider reducing the load on your server by letting your front-end (ie Javascript) handle S3 uploading.

Frequent problems:

I want to use my own domain

You'll need a separate sub-domain for your assets (For example, website.com → s.website.com).

Your S3 bucket should be named exactly like your sub-domain.

Files don't get reloaded

Files get cached by your users’ browsers. You can ask your users to force reload the page, but it's not convenient, and if you opt for the caching solution I'll explain below, that won't work either.

To solve this, I append a version to my files. For example, instead of:

I'll load:

The "version" variable can be something you manually update either per file or for all files, or something provided by your continuous delivery library/tool. Some frameworks have built-in support

Make sure the "version" is not always different (such as using the current date and time, which I've seen recommended multiple times on StackOverflow), and only changes when it needs to. Because if it's always different, files will always be reloaded, losing the whole point of caching files, and pretty much the point of this article :)

Files are not accessible (Permission denied)

When you upload your files on S3, make sure you grant public access to the files.

I get cross origin errors

If you're loading fonts or dynamic javascript files though other javascript files, you'll need to update your Cross-Origin policy under your S3 bucket settings, which is currently under "Permissions" then "CORS configuration".

Here's an extensive example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <CORSConfiguration xmlns="http://s3.amazonaws.com/doc/2006-03-01/"> <CORSRule> <AllowedOrigin>*</AllowedOrigin> <AllowedMethod>GET</AllowedMethod> <AllowedMethod>HEAD</AllowedMethod> <AllowedMethod>POST</AllowedMethod> <AllowedMethod>PUT</AllowedMethod> <MaxAgeSeconds>3000</MaxAgeSeconds> <ExposeHeader>Content-Length</ExposeHeader> <AllowedHeader>Authorization</AllowedHeader> </CORSRule> </CORSConfiguration>

In most simple cases, you won't need ExposeHeader and AllowedMethod POST and PUT, so make sure you only add the configurations you need after testing.

Alternatives to consider:

Google Cloud Storage

3. Bandwidth: Caching with CloudFlare

CloudFlare has a free tier that comes packed with many incredible features that make managing your own website a bliss.

Though I originally used it to help counter DDOS attacks, I won't go over that nor any other CloudFlare features because it's not the point of this article. Visit CloudFlare's website to learn more about it.

CloudFlare caches your assets, for free.

Registering to CloudFlare is extremely easy. Just follow the guide you see when you sign up, which will ask you to change your DNS servers, and you're good to go.

Once CloudFlare is configured, visit the "Caching" and "Speed" tabs to see the options and change them to suit your needs.

I mentioned earlier that some of my websites are image-centric. Here's an example:

Above is one of my websites that gets on average around 100 000 monthly unique visitors.

With CloudFlare properly configure, around 97% of the time, the content loaded by my users comes from CloudFlare's cache and doesn't even hit my S3 server.

That's around 6.6 TB of bandwidth saved per month. Considering that S3 storage is cheap, but bandwidth makes most of the cost, this means I save around $600 / month, which for a small website like this is very significant.

I also mentioned earlier that minifying your Javascript and CSS files might not be much, but bandwidth can easily add up, so you don't want to cut corners on that.

Well, good news: CloudFlare also has an option to automatically minify these files for you!

Be careful when minifying HTML if you're using "pre" tags or "white-space: pre", or in other words, if you want to keep you new lines. The minifier will collapse any instance of multiple new lines into a single new line, which can visually affect your website.

4. Optimize images with close to lossless compression

I mentioned earlier that some of my websites are images-centered. To put that into perspective, the most loaded page of one of my website loads around 100 images, all of which around 800px width.

For this reason, I had to go one step further to optimize my images and ensure that the file size is as small as it could possibly be, without sacrificing how images look.

I've been using TinyPNG for years to save on bandwidth for most of my websites.

TinyPNG is proprietary software provided through an API. It comes with a price tag, but unless you process a lot of images every month, you won't have to worry about, because the first 500 compressions are free.

You can calculate how much it could potentially cost you using the price calculator.

On average, it will reduce the size of your PNG and JPG images to 60% less without affecting it to the naked eye.

Multiple alternatives exist, notably the free open-source python library and command line tool Crunch.

I have tested the same files using Crunch to compare how it performs:

Though it performs significantly less than TinyPNG, it still averages at around 47%. It's also worth noting that it is much slower, though I don't believe you should worry about this for reasons I'll explain below.

TinyPNG also has many open libraries available making it very easy to integrate with any language of your choice.

Also keep in mind that even though you don't need to pay per compression when using Crunch, you'll still need to pay for the extra processing power - which should be cheaper, but not free.

Regardless of which option you go for, keep in mind that image optimization is slow and therefore should be done asynchronously.

To do so, you can:

Use a queue such as RabbitMQ or a good old crontab

Use AWS Lambda or an equivalent

Conclusion

Many solutions and tools exist, and this is really just a base to help you get started with the right mindset.

Make sure your understand your needs and your budget, your target and how you perform through analytics and monitoring, and prioritize based on that.

Happy programming!

TL;DR

Reduce your files' size to the minimum required, and go further in compression if you can

Keep in mind storage and bandwidth

Use smart, optimized and geographically well-chosen storage solutions

Cache, cache, and cache again

Images credit: Icons designed by Freepik, Icon Monk and turkkub from Flaticon and licensed by CC 3.0 BY. Screenshots and logos from AWS S3, CloudFlare and TinyPNG come from their respective websites.

#code #web optimization #tinypng #cloudflare #aws #aws s3 #s3 #storage #bandwidth

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