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aswallowssong · 4 years

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OWP Day 2 - Hunger

Read on AO3

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“You two are going to die.”

Morgan’s arms were crossed over his chest, eyebrows raised in annoyed surprise. He was staring down at Kit and Reid, who were sitting on the floor against the wall in the hallway of their hotel. There were a few empty chip bags near them, one even hanging precariously from the edge of the trashcan where Reid had thrown it. Both of the BAU’s youngest members had cheered at the accomplishment, and considering the fact that it was past midnight, they’d thought it was an appropriate reaction.

“Why?” Reid said around his snack cake, and Kit giggled as she pulled a bite-sized cookie from her bag and popped it into her mouth.

Morgan gestured vaguely around them. “That’s gotta be a joke, right?”

Kit looked up at him with a wicked grin, holding the bag out to him. “Do you want one?” Morgan scoffed, shaking his head at the pair of them. “No, I don’t want a tiny cookie at almost one in the morning. Why are you awake anyway?”

“Why are you awake?” Reid shot back quickly, but there was no heat in his voice.

Morgan watched them, both looking up at him with searching eyes, before his posture relaxed a bit. “Because this case is messing with my head.”

“Mine too,” Kit said quietly, once again holding out the cookie bag to him, “Last chance.”

Morgan shook his head before running a hand down his face. “No thanks, I just came to get some ice. Didn’t think I’d run into a leprechaun and a pretty boy.”

Reid pulled a face, but Kit giggled again, contentedly shoving another cookie in her mouth.

It wasn’t the first time Morgan had found them like that; chip bags everywhere, some sort of sweet vending machine delicacy being torn into like they hadn’t eaten dinner six hours beforehand.

Kit was the one that had found Reid, at least the first time, with a candy bar sticking from between his teeth as he loaded another quarter in the hotel vending machine. She’d been pacing, trying to burn some of the jittery energy she could still feel pulsing through her veins before she could try to get some sleep. Her eyes had widened when she saw him, but instead of scolding him, she’d raced back to her room.

It was only a minute later she reappeared with a sock full of quarters, and it had taken all of ten minutes for them to be sat against the wall, snack bags on the floor, Reid chattering away about whatever was on his mind with Kit jumping in every so often, but mostly active-listening. They weren’t really friends, per say. They didn’t hang out, or even get along like she had begun to with the rest of the team (sans Gideon, to Reid’s never ending confusion), but after that first time, it became a sort-of ritual.

In cases when they were staying somewhere overnight, and if the hotel had a vending machine on their floor, they would both be there. Acting like best friends until the morning would come and remind them that they were far, far from it.

They watched as Morgan stalked back down the hallway, turning the corner to find his room. Neither of them spoke until they heard his door close, and when it did, they both broke into peals of stifled laughter.

“Why does he need ice after midnight?” Kit asked, her voice full of mirth. Spencer shook his head. “I don’t know why Morgan does anything he does. I never have.”

He took another bite of his snack cake, his laughter ebbing and giving away to a contented sigh. “I love these.”

“Yeah?” she turned her body to face him, her eyes squinting through her sugar-smudged glasses.

“Yeah.”

“My favorite have always been these,” she said, gesturing to the empty, snack-sized bag of sour cream and cheddar chips.

“Always?” He asked, and she nodded, pulling another cookie from her bag. “Yeah. Monty and Ari and I did a lot of vending machine chips for lunch starting in seventh grade.”

“Ah, the preferred diet of teenagers.”

She smirked at him, shrugging and saying, “We were eleven."

Reid raised an eyebrow at her, absent-mindedly wiping his hands on his sweatpants. "Did you skip a grade?"

She shook her head quickly, frowning down at her empty cookie bag. "Yeah, and we've got a summer birthday, so we were always younger than everyone else."

"What grade?" He asked, now sitting forward instead of against the wall. He hadn’t known she’d skipped a grade. He didn’t really know all that much about her, save from what she’d divulged in their midnight snack machine confessions.

"Fourth," she sighed, putting the empty bag on the floor with the others. “Which our parents hated.”

Reid didn’t seem to understand what she meant. “They hated that you skipped a grade? They have to sign a form for that.”

She shook her head, searching the ground for an uneaten snack. “No, no they hated that we skipped fourth grade.”

“Why?” He pressed, startled when she didn’t answer, but instead cheered. “Aha! I knew we had another one.” She ripped the bag chips open and grinned over at him. “Sorry, did you say something?”

He blinked at her for a moment before he nodded. “Why did your parents hate that you skipped fourth grade?”

The light in her eyes died for a moment, as if she suddenly realized what she’d said. “Oh. It’s not really something we talk about.” She busied herself with picking up the empty wrappers around them, putting it all in one pile to the side instead of strewn all over the floor. They were adults, after all, though they probably looked more like exhausted teenagers.

Reid seemed to take the hint. She didn’t want to talk about it. But without her answering there was silence, and he hated the silence, so he said quietly. “Sometimes, if my mom was having a bad day, the only food I got was out of the vending machine at school. Especially in high school.”

Kit didn’t respond right away. She knew about his mother’s schizophrenia. It was in his medical file, so it didn't surprise her. Very few things about Reid did, and she was learning over the course of sparse conversations over bags of probably-expired chips and candy that he was less of a threat than she’d initially thought. He wasn’t some robot spy of Gideons. He was a kid, just like she was.

“We got free lunch in elementary school,” she said finally, not quite ready to look at him. “Our parents worked in a pub, with another man that we called Uncail even though he isn’t our uncle. They immigrated from Ireland all together before Wash was born.”

She was quiet again, but Reid didn’t speak. He was watching her body language closely, and she wasn’t quite done.

“We didn’t have a lot of money. But we got fed at school, and we were fed at home, just not always as much as we maybe should have.” She palmed at her eyes. “They wouldn’t push the grant past elementary school. Not in our district, so once we got to middle school, we were sort of on our own. Mam and dad didn’t like that we missed a year of having that.”

Kit glanced over to the vending machine that they’d raided not even an hour before, and then at the chip bags they’d blown through, piled at her side.

“I guess old habits die hard,” she said quietly. Reid nodded, surprising her when his tone came with optimism. “They do,” he said, “But without previous food insecurity, or psychological imprinting from childhood hunger, you and I would never have started this tradition.”

She looked at him for a moment before a smile started to play at her lips. “Tradition?”

“Yeah,” he said, his smile only faltering for a second when nervous energy came off of him in a wave. “This is what, the fifth time we’ve done this?”

Kit knew he knew. It was exactly the fifth time they’d done it, and he wouldn’t need confirmation. But he asked for it anyway, and her smile widened.

“Yeah, it is.”

“I’d say that’s a tradition.” He punctuated his statement with a shrug, tossing his empty snack cake wrapper into the pile. She nodded, and when she spoke, she felt lighter, somehow.

“I’d say so.”

#Brenna writes things #or at least she tries #October Writing Prompts #day 2 #hunger #Criminal Minds #SCRC

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iiasha-archived · 4 years

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okay i know nobody cares but i like documenting experiences like this so after an hour of fucking around in photoshop, here’s my general comparison between making gifs between photoshop and gimp. for reference i’m using photoshop cc 2018 and gimp 2.10.14

in general, as stated previously, it is TREMENDOUSLY easier to make gifs in photoshop than gimp. so things photoshop does better then gimp:

photoshop allows you to import videos, and you can also do some trimming within photoshop. it’ll also split all the frames for you. gimp on the other hand does not support videos so you have to trim and split the frames yourself, which i had previously done with a script using ffmpeg

photoshop’s smart objects basically destroy what was 90% of the issue of making gifs in gimp

adjustment layers can apply to the entire gif, as opposed to gimp where you would have to apply it to each frame

furthermore, since each adjustment is it’s own layer, you can fix/remove them as you please, as compared to gimp where once you apply an adjustment, it’s basically stuck there unless you’re willing to redo everything you did after that adjustment

smart objects also makes cropping easier since you can move the whole thing around to frame it better. in gimp you kinda just cropped and hoped for the best jkfdalsjks and again once you cropped there was kind of no going back

U CAN PLAYBACK THE GIF ON THE FLY 😭

photoshop seems to handle optimization and the 256 color index a lot better than gimp does, so not only does the file size seems smaller, the gifs look a lot less grainier

there’s also a lot more control over how fast the gif plays. in gimp you were stuck in duration between frames in intervals of 10, which sucks because i really like stuff between 30 and 40 (30 was a little too fast and 40 was a little too slow)

processing is a lot faster overall as well; whereas gimp would take ages to load some things, photoshop does it almost instantaneously, at least of what i’ve explored

things gimp surprisingly does better than photoshop:

maybe i just haven’t found them yet and i know this is a lighter weight version of photoshop, but gimp actually seems to have a lot more adjustment/effect options than photoshop, and you can also fine-tune those adjustments with a greater deal of flexibility. i can more or less achieve the same effects with the base options in photoshop but i kind of miss some of the options that were in gimp

logo scrubbing seems like it’s easier in gimp due to their optimization process in which it would make certain layers transparent. i don’t see a straightforward way to achieve that in photoshop yet since it seems like optimization only happens when you export

while gimp would “freeze up” a lot, it doesn’t actually really crash if you wait it out long enough. photoshop crashed beyond saving for me when i was exporting and i hadn’t saved so i was kinda like :| that’s also why i have no gif to show y’all right now jkfdaslfjk

#iiasha shut up #iiasha actually blogs

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dbhilluminate · 5 years

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DBHI: Equilibrium, Ch. 1- “Resistance”

Characters: Noah, Gabriel (mentions of Amanda, Connor-50/Zach, Hannah Kamski, Sarah Graves) Word Count: 6,577

Noah ignores Gabriel's demand to leave him be, in favor of following the order of his commanding officer and attempts to make up for Zion's less-than-welcoming attitude toward Archangel's newest cadet.

( Chapter Art by triple_jays_art , Co-authored by grayorca15)

• Chapter Index • Characters •

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December 16th, 2040 - 7:48 PM Elevators were invented in 1853. As a concept, they hadn’t changed much since. The basic premise was the same - it was a mechanism designed to facilitate vertical travel moving in an upward or downward direction through a given building. Any other considerations beyond that were purely for aesthetic or superfluous reasons. Androids, as the world now knew them, were standardized in 2022 with the introduction of Cyberlife’s ST200 line. Countless revisions and additions to their available lines had been made since. For machines that were intended to look, sound, downright smell like the humans who designed them, they were as refined as could be by the time the company went belly up in 2039. Gifted with all the nuance and intricate thought process his designers saw fit to imbue him with, Noah found his opinion of the elevator car’s default Muzak could be summed up in one word: “Abysmal.” He reached out to give the parting doors a helpful shove, rather than wait for the car to slow to a standstill. The once-pristine glass scraped and squealed as it was forced open ahead of its automated cycle, and he desperately forced his way through the narrow opening in a subdued fit. A few fresh scrapes joined those already present on the worn-down laminate as he stepped out, he just couldn’t get away from it fast enough. “Whoever thought this place ever needed Barry Manilow instrumentals deserves to be arrested,” he huffed as he straightened out the cuffs of his coat and tugged at the lapels. “If I find out they’re living so much as within a kilometer of this island-“ Noah cut himself off at the sight of the landing he had been brought to. It wasn’t quite post-apocalyptic levels of ruin and carnage, but this semi-destroyed corporate hallway had seen better days. The lattice-covered windows lining one wall looked southwest unto the half-frozen river some thirty stories below, snowflakes wafted in and out of sight. Whatever damage control shutters it once possessed had not been closed in the last couple of seasons. The gusting winter wind blew through spiderwebbed cracks, holes the size of tennis rackets let in draft after draft. The linoleum floor was dirty and slippery, partially crusted with ice. A vile mix of particulate, dirt, dust, and other once-airborne contaminants had since discolored the pearly white surface into a streaky, blotchy affront to the eyes, though it couldn’t outdo the dated choice of traveling music Noah had stepped away from. So long as he didn’t trip and fall and tarnish his spotless black and white jacket on it, the mess was avoidable and therefore tolerable. A second closer look at the floor revealed just what he had hoped to find- the minute impressions of footprints in the grime. And recently made, no less. “Well, now, it seems like you’re not as dense as one might think. Come to see what files are left to peek at, are we?” There wasn’t much left that hadn’t already been procured, copied, or transferred, with the original servers lugged away. The company had long since stopped keeping records on paper. What printouts were left to be found there, in the ransacked marketing cubicles, were nothing but financial negotiations and signed contracts, nothing of the actual building of androids. Maybe that was what his quarry found so peculiar, though. It was all before their time, if only slightly. While most other Zionists might have liked to think Cyberlife was ancient history, for the two like-faced individuals (who were the only two of their kind still functioning) it was closer to present tense. They may not have known the company at the height of its power, but indirectly or not, they were getting an education. The tower, which was once the epicenter of every major business move Cyberlife ever made, still boasted an eerie imposing aura of mystery and grandeur. “Or maybe I’m giving him too much credit,” Noah mused. He wasn’t one to tolerate long periods of silence very easily. He inched and sidestepped his way around broken slabs of plaster, looking between the floor, walls, and ceilings for any hints he was still following a fresh trail. Only so many indicators gave some of the damage away as new, compared to the razing anti-industrialists had once wrought on the place. Part of the bankruptcy settlement had involved giving the laid-off personnel time to clear out their possessions, though a few had brought along friends of the not-so-peaceable variety. Like something out of The Odyssey they sprung from hiding in plain sight had ransacked every level they could before being detained and charged with destruction of property. What was especially ironic was that they’d discovered most of those ‘friends’ were deviants who’d bribed the financially drowning board members for one last chance to get in and spit in the company’s eye before it went under. A few doors were closed, though most had been left ajar. Toward the end of the corridor, Noah found exactly what he had hoped- fresh skid marks were a door jamb had forcibly been ripped out. The boot prints with their Archangel-issue tread didn’t continue on, they led inside. Whatever name had once been stenciled on the door had long since been evicted from the premises. At a glance, it looked like the office was the former domain of some marketing bigwig. Cabinets lined the walls, drawers had been pulled out and documents rifled through if not missing completely. A few once-living husks of ferns in decorative pots positioned in every corner had wilted from lack of water and direct sunlight. But as with any office, the main attraction of the room was the sizable desk taking up the center of the space, toward the window at the back wall. Two empty guest chairs had been shunted aside from their spot facing the desk and propped against a wall. The third -a posh, overly-cushioned monstrosity- sat on the opposite side of the desk facing the cracked window. There was no sign of life to it, save for the few wisps of wavy brown hair peeking up from over the headrest. Although the chair was listing precariously about fifty degrees to the left, it hadn’t yet tipped over and spilled its occupant onto the floor. The man was canted far enough over in the opposite direction to counteract the leaning, even in his sleep.

He didn’t bother with a knock or offer so much as a “hello” to announce his entrance and wake him. Noah merely swerved around the desk, paused for one last check to see this was who he expected, then leaned in with a perfectly-disarming smile.

“Living dangerously already, are we?”

Gabriel’s blue eyes ripped open with a hard twitch as the chair tipped off-balance. Both hands shot out and snatched the lapels of his coat before Noah could move back out of his reach, but the falling momentum yanked him off his feet and sent both androids tumbling back over the head of the chair. In one fluid movement, Gabe’s hand reached for the weapon lying on the desktop, tossed Noah onto his back, rolled up onto his knees and pressed the barrel of his gun to the chest of the already-surrendered intruder. Noah may have been afraid if he didn’t know the detached look in his attacker’s eye half as well as he did. It wasn’t his first time encountering the protocol, but it was his first time on the other end of it. It was just a reflex, however overkill it may have been. All he could do was hold up his hands and wait for him to terminate the combat protocol, which he did a few seconds later. Gabe blinked hard and focused his eyes on the man on the other end of his gun, waving and grinning impishly. “...Noah?” His voice nearly cracked as he angrily squinted in recognition. “Who else would it be?” “Oh, fuck me-” The brunette groaned, slammed the gun back to the surface of the desk with a resigned sigh and pressed his fingers into tired eyes. “Don’t sneak up on me like that.” He managed to sound disappointed, the way he said it. Maybe that was the first real peaceful recharge he had gotten since being released, maybe it was his first substantive nap ever. Noah might have found the overreaction to being roused from it excusable, if not for one small (vaguely personal) affront. Noah mirrored the annoyed squint currently being leveled at him, and the grin dropped. “With apologies, then, but how exactly was I supposed to wake you up, hm? You know if I so much as touched you, I’d have been leaving here with a limp wrist.” Gabriel didn’t appear to appreciate his reasoning. “Is it so hard to knock!?” he whined in as high an octave as his emulator would allow, and pushed himself up off his knees. Noah met the reaction with a raised eyebrow. Try as he did to come across as unflappable and reticent, Gabriel could bring the same melodrama when sufficiently motivated. And nothing brought it out like a good needling by his fellow RK900. “Well, aren’t we touchy today,” he noted as he scooted back out of the surly-faced, black-claden shadow of his look-alike. Noah stood up at a presumably-safe distance before he smoothed down the new ruffles marring his jacket. “I wasn’t expecting visitors,” Gabriel hissed as he begrudgingly picked up the chair and sat down in front of the desk, buried his face in his hands and mimed rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “Clearly.” Noah paused and frowned to appreciate the show of fatigue. “How long has it been since you slept?” “I haven’t,” Gabe mumbled into his palms, LED blazing red to testify to his less-than-optimal operational levels. “That was the first time I’ve managed to, so thanks for waking me up.” That at least explained the bitter edge. Whatever he’d been doing before he decided to try and take a nap wasn’t so obvious. He’d been released from Archangel custody nearly five days ago and hadn’t done much to start settling into Zion since, much less on the thirty-first floor of Cyberlife Tower. Gabriel hadn’t even set up so much as a cot to lay on. A building this many stories, there had to be more comfortable places to make due. “You’re welcome,” he offered in as perplexed a tone as he felt. Noah finished his readjustments to grab one of the disused office chairs, then dragged it over and spun it around to face Gabriel’s bowed head. “Put your feet up while you’re at it. I’m sure my questions will bore you back to standby in no time.” “Questions?” Gabe bristled, though it wasn’t an abnormal response for him- more like a constant state of being. The glare he shot back at his would-be interrogator looked hairy enough. “Why are you here? I thought I told you to leave me alone.” “Yes, you said, I disregarded. Unfortunately heeding your word means contradicting my given orders,” Noah scoffed, paused to let the information simmer, and sat down. It wasn’t as if he could forget the minor thrashing their parolee had given him a few days prior. “Again, sorry about that- if you don’t like it, take it up with Director Graves. No one says you can’t.” Gabriel didn’t bother to seethe at the mention of her name. As much as he resented Sarah’s suspicion, he understood it all the same. “And what is it she thinks you’re gonna find me doing that’s worth wasting your time to invade my privacy?” he asked, eyes nearly rolled into the back of his head in exasperation. “Napping isn’t a crime.” It was very tempting to tsk at the remark, quip something witty about how it wasn’t against the law to sleep, but to go out of one’s way to visit a location of such import as Belle-Isle…? That did impress Noah as peculiar enough to be followed up on. After all, it wasn’t that long ago trouble came rolling out of this place in waves- economic, societal, and otherwise. Was Gabriel so naïve as to not realize how this looked? Noah shrugged, crossed his legs, and leaned on one armrest for poise. No sense in letting it go to waste when he had taken the time to arrange it, all therapy-office-like. “First of all, this isn’t a waste of time in my book. None of this is.” Whether he agreed or not, Gabriel needed help getting adjusted. “Second- you know that as a cadet of the academy, there are dormitories to be claimed just up the street from the plaza?” Gabriel closed his eyes in place of rolling them again and managed to project a twinge of hurt. “No one wants me there. You know it as well as I do. Better to just seclude myself where it won’t make anyone uncomfortable.” “So instead you decide to hole up in the offices of the very same company whose commanding artificial intelligence built us in secret for the express purpose of undermining whatever city-state Jericho evolved into?” Noah popped his brows, having deadpanned his thoughts into one droll summation, then scoffed again with a dismissive wave. “No, nothing suspicious about that at all.” “Better to be as far away from those I was originally sent to terminate,” the other retorted, kicked up his heels on his desk, crossed his arms and looked away from him. The combination of gestures made him look more like a sulky fifteen-year-old than a five-day-old former killing machine. “Who am I gonna hurt here?” The records as to who all he had actually terminated were unclear. It seemed Gabriel (and the other nines) had only been sent after a singular target apiece, which he had failed to kill. Luckily for Reese, Detective Reed had been running late that morning and intercepted Gabe on his way to off his boyfriend. Unfortunately for Gabriel, threatening the life of Gavin’s partner had sent the policeman into an overprotective, adrenaline-driven rage. Gabe may have failed at completing that objective, to the offense of only two individuals, but he’d certainly offended a few weak-hearted types in ever turning those icy, piercing eyes on anyone since. Noah declined to humor the subject just yet. This wasn’t about what his counterpart may or may not have done. It was what he was presently doing, drifting about the city like a rudderless kite. He could use a guiding hand if not a chaperone, even if he didn’t yet accept needing it. “If you’re so paranoid about the possibility that you might do something along those lines, you know you can ask me for help, right...? Once upon a time, I went through the same phase.” “I’m not paranoid, but they are,” he explained in as flat a tone as ever. Gabe didn’t even bother to acknowledge his offer of help or look over at him, only stared out the broken window at the back of the room. Intentionally or not, it did face northwest- in the vague direction of Zion. Noah followed his eye-line, drummed his fingers, and considered where it was aimed before rising to the bait. He knew better than somehow many handouts Illuminate could spare to every stray deviant left on their doorstep. Demand far exceeded supply these days, sadly, they could only do so much with what they were given. Even with being the superior model he was, clawing his way up the societal ladder from where he’d started had been anything but easy, even if it didn’t look it; and Gabriel was only just starting out. He couldn’t get discouraged that fast, it was unbecoming. “Yes, well- my solution was to talk at them until they tired of trying to not listen. You’re taking the opposite tactic with the whole ‘man of few words’ bit, and it’s making people uncomfortable.” “Yeah? And?” The brunette shot him an expectant look and popped his brows. “That’s just fine by me, I don’t want anything to do with them- all their fake smiles and bullshit ‘best advice’...” He wasn’t completely wrong on that front. Zion’s squeaky-clean do-good public image didn’t hold up in every situation. Their less-amicable nitpicky side took some getting used to. Neither agreeing nor disagreeing, Noah drummed his fingers again. “Then why are you still here, if it’s all so intolerable? Why not leave?” The sullenness lifted a notch, replaced by a kind of forlorn resignation. Gabe closed his eyes and pushed back in his chair a tick further to brush off the discomfort. “Where the hell else am I supposed to go, Noah…?” The question hung for a moment just long enough to convey the genuine frustration in it. “Outside of Zion, this country’s attitude toward Androids is even more twisted than it was before the revolution- you’ve got Watchdogs harassing humans for even suggesting we should integrate into society, and setting fire to deviants in the streets outside of Illuminate safe-zones.” Not that he was afraid of a fight, that much was crystal-clear. Noah tensed his jaw for the moment and let him continue. “And yeah- other Zion installments are popping up all over the country, but they’re all cut from the same political cloth, and they’re all gonna know my name and face. So leaving ain’t gonna do shit to help my reputation.” Gabe’s LED spun up and flashed a yellow blip as he sighed, bit his cheek, and let go of the anger. “I just keep hoping... if I keep taking my orders and doing what I’m told… sooner or later, something will fall into place and I’ll figure it out. Whether I realize ‘I don’t like this’ or ‘I’d rather do that’, I’ll get there eventually. What I do in between is irrelevant, as long as I stay out of trouble.” “So you’d rather just hang yourself up on a peg somewhere like a forgotten coat?” he challenged with a chiding tsk. If there was one thing Noah couldn’t abide more than silence, it was self-imposed quarantine. He had seen it in a few of their series, the recluses and the malcontents who sooner self-terminated than try to move forward without Cyberlife holding their leashes. The common denominator among them was the tangible lack of allies, friends, or in other words, a home. And homelessness wasn’t very becoming of any android, let alone an RK900. He wouldn’t let Gabriel default to it that easily. “Honestly, you can do better. Shutting yourself up on an island isn’t going to help your reputation any more than it is your state of mind. And trouble of one kind or another will find you.” Noah had plenty of colleagues and stacks upon stacks of case files that could attest to that. “Did you not see the decommissioned levels on the way up? Zion is still working with City Hall to dismantle this place week by week.” “You’re wrong,” he replied in a matter-of-fact tone, “They’re restoring the production lines to accommodate Zionists linked to the Lazarus protocol.” Gabe glanced aside at Noah when he went quiet at his correction instead of replying. “There’s a reason I prefer to observe instead of talk, you know. People tend to flap their lips when they think you’re not listening.” “It still doesn’t explain being here if you’re looking to get away from said people.” Noah frowned and drummed his fingers once more -index to pinky, then back again- like sequentially raking the keys of a piano. “A less-trusting individual might even accuse you of planning to sabotage such a project. Based on nothing but proximity.” And therein lay the paranoia aspect again. “They can think all they want. They’d still have to prove me guilty.” True. And just as truthfully, Noah wasn’t exactly interested in helping Zion make any kind of case against Gabriel. He wasn’t given the best hand to begin with- waking up to deviancy was the only thing he could do to survive. It was that or join his fellow ‘suspect’ in a recycling bin because Amanda would sooner command him to self-destruct than allow him to sit in a cell on the Roman’s Road until he cracked. The latter had managed to terminate both his target and himself: offline and gone meant they weren’t catching half as much flack as Gabriel had in three weeks. Only in that sense was 'dead to the world' preferable to vagrancy. “Well, now I can say I gave you fair warning.” Gabe offered no more than rolled-eyes by way of thanks. Noah just shrugged. “You’re certainly guilty of being overtired, like a fussy, six-foot-three toddler. I know what it looks like on that face.” “Still trying to get the hang of sleeping,” he mumbled as he pressed his fingers into his eyes, over his brows, dragged the hand down his face and grimaced. “What a useless subroutine…” Sleeping to recharge (as opposed to going idle and conserving power) was one of their most basic emulations, the same way they faked their respirations or the ‘need’ to blink. “At the very least, it goes a long way in making you look cute at rest,” Noah remarked, as casually as he could, without a trace of a glib smirk to accommodate it. “So not so useless. I’ll take a picture next time and show you.” Gabe scowled and didn’t hesitate to roll his eyes again, as obviously as he possibly could. “How useful,” he mumbled through an annoyed growl, that did little to deter the intruder. “Depending on who you ask, yes,” Noah reached over to grab one of the upturned boots resting on the desk and gave it a pointedly playful shake from side to side. “And if you intend to sleep in this position, you’re doing it wrong.” Gabe hesitated to respond, closed his eyes, and curled the corner of his lip as if to consider the critique a moment. “If you came out here to tell me I’m sleeping wrong, you can save your breath and just leave.” “Actually, it was tertiary to that. If I had known it was sleep you were after, I would have offered you the apartment sooner.” The sudden revelation was enough to give him pause. Gabriel stopped in the middle of whatever retort he’d planned to give and did a double-take, then blinked and shook his head. His LED went solid yellow for a whole second for added effect. Confused was good, it was easier to pry through than huffy stubbornness. “Sorry, I must have misheard.” “No, you heard me right.” Noah grinned and arched one dark eyebrow for effect. “It’s an old second address I keep in Delray. Very low key, has all the basics if you need somewhere to crash for a few weeks, the only thing it lacks is a view. What do you say?” The more he talked, the quicker Gabe’s expression took a hard turn from confusion to annoyance and anger. That twinge of paranoia was acting up again, Noah could practically hear it, but the fatigue wasn’t helping to keep him level-headed either. “And why the hell would you offer it to me...? Out of the kindness of your heart?” he mocked, lip curled and teeth bared like a snarling dog who had suddenly been backed into a corner. “Or do you just want to keep me somewhere that’s more convenient to get to so it’s easier to check up on me? Somewhere you probably have a spare key to...? Thanks, but I’ll pass.” “Is there some clause in your operating manual that says everything ever offered is or was done with ulterior motives?” Having recited a perfectly made-up guideline to better sell his exasperation, Noah grabbed the toe of Gabriel’s boot and shoved his foot off the desk. The sole hit the floor with an unimpressed thunk, and the man tightened his jaw with a twitch in his nose before throwing it right back up. “If it seems as if I have any, I’m sorry to say they’re purely coincidental. But being appointed your probation officer needn’t be all about the negatives. I’m trying to help.” Name one other person who has, he added over the open comm without missing a beat, before Gabriel had time to retort. Gabe squeezed his eyelids together in a hard blink and turned his head away from him a twitch at the unexpected switch to nonverbal conversation. It was an endearing tic, but in his current frame of mind, Noah could only roll his eyes and re-cross his legs in a display of aggravation. He slumped down in the seat to lean his elbows on the armrests, fingers steepled. You seem to find it so tiresome to listen to me speak out loud. Is this better? “It’s worse if anything,” he replied out loud, a refusal to allow him the courtesy of an open line. Conversing audibly at least allowed him to choose his words carefully- a conversation held through instantaneous thought had the potential to catch any stray angry quip before he had a chance to filter it out. “Don’t need you in my head, too.” “Aw, it can’t be that aggravating.” Gabe fidgeted, turned and stared out the window for a few moments of silence before he asked belatedly, “Why do you have a second apartment?” No Android in Zion had so much economic success in the suburb’s short life that they could afford two properties. In keeping with his reputation-precedes-himself ways, Noah had since proven he was no ordinary android. The circumstances surrounding how he ever ended up in a Detroit landfill may have been hazy, but in the time since he had painted over that dubious origin story with more than a few fantastic stories of his own making. “Having a bolt hole or two isn’t so expensive when you pick the right property market.” Noah paused to let that sink in before he let the other shoe drop. “Would you believe me if I said it used to be the cache for a black market bio-components racket? Cyberlife settled all nice and neat on paper, but you wouldn’t know how many of their former staff knew enough of the production process to cobble together cheap knockoffs to sell. Delray was a favorite place to stockpile those spare parts for a few hot months after Belle-Isle was sealed off. Zion knew about it, but Archangel wasn’t quite able to spare any investigators. Enter stage right… moi.” Gabriel remained passively quiet with a suspecting leer even as he carried on a bit longer than he needed to. Noah shrugged and made a face at the memory of those nights of recharging with the constant wail of traffic and heavy machinery just two doors over. It hadn’t been the best few months of his short life. “That was before I got the loft in Brightmoor. Had to start somewhere, and I wasn’t so picky and impatient to think I couldn’t tolerate a warehouse district for a while. I just needed somewhere to put my feet up-” “I think you’re full of shit,” Gabriel finally interjected, cutting him off just at the end of his sentence. “Archangel database has that case filed under a Warrendale address- little out of Zion’s jurisdiction, but Android business is Archangel’s business.” It seemed that while he was spinning his tale, Gabriel had been doing his research. Maybe not so much a dumb grunt after all. Noah grinned and flashed a coy pop of his brows. “My my, sharp as a tack and handsome… we were definitely cut from the same cloth.” “Don’t hold your breath,” Gabe mumbled, “The similarities end there.” Once again the grin dropped in the face of such a tempting moment to layer on the sarcasm. Noah made an exaggerated show to brush the dust from the armrest but didn’t break eye contact. “Evidently, because the ‘old me’ would never settle for the likes of this to catch forty winks. If a detour was somehow meant to show you have no compunctions about demeaning yourself, guess what? Mis-sion accomplished.” He topped off the statement with three sardonic claps. Gabriel rolled his eyes and half smirked at the jab until Noah reached over to swipe at the foot closest to him a third time; this time, instead of letting it happen, he threw his feet down and smacked his hands away with an angry glower. “But I can’t sleep knowing you’re here when you could be resting somewhere better. No strings attached, Gabriel, really.” “You’re not going to stop offering unless I agree, aren’t you?” He took an even breath and let out a tired sigh as he rolled his head back against the headrest, slouched in his seat, and closed his eyes. If he was too tired to continue arguing, it counted for something. Without offering a straight yes or no, Noah scanned the desk for anything he could lob in his direction; unfortunately, the only items available turned out to be a few craggy crumbs of plaster that had rained down from the ceiling. After a quick, half-assed calculation, he swiped one of the larger chunks off the desk and tossed it at the headrest directly beside Gabriel’s face. The resulting flinch didn’t happen, however- his chair swiveled out of the way a hair as the piece dropped over his shoulder through empty air. Only one sullen blue eye opened to half glare at him. “Don’t make me bribe you with the cashmere slippers. They were supposed to be a Christmas gift, but here you’ve forced me into spoiling the fact they exist.” Gabriel blinked, if only just so he could open both eyes and roll them in exasperation. If this kept up, he’d be pre-emptively rolling his eyes every time he opened his goddamn mouth. “Say I accept- you gonna back off and give me my space? Or am I gonna come home to your smug face sitting on my couch ‘cause you’ve still got a spare key?” Noah pretended to think on that, and rubbed his chin before answering with a lazy half-smirk. “When time permits, maybe. But I do have more obligations than hounding you, sad to say. It’s called ‘having a life’.” Given how their first few encounters had gone, it only seemed like a newfound hyper fixation, but if he had his way he would devote more time to making sure this mopey doppelgänger started on a better foot than he had. It wasn’t the answer Gabe was hoping for, though, and he dug his heels in one last time in resistance. “Then what’s the point of trading free, private housing for somewhere I gotta see the judgmental looks of my neighbors at the start and end of my day, and pay rent…?” The academy did pay, but not well enough to handle rent, which was why they offered dorms. “Oh, for-” Noah bit his lip and clenched his fingers, projected frustration, and abruptly stood up. “You’re telling me you’re afraid of a little dirty glance here and there? I thought you were tougher than that.” “Afraid…?” Gabe popped his brows and shook his head. “No. I just know I don’t want to have to put up with it when I’m already short-tempered enough as is. How well do you think it’d go over if one of the neighbors got too nosey and rubbed me the wrong way on a bad day?” Considering how he’d been greeted at the start of this encounter, it was a fair counterargument. He couldn’t fault him when he thought about it like that. Gabriel already harbored a short fuse for annoyances (as exhibited by the sudden reversal he’d pulled when Noah snuck up on him not even ten minutes prior), and even if he could put up with the stares for a time, after repeated exposure to a frayed temper, the day would eventually come that he would snap on somebody and make things worse. Either way, there was still something to be said for Gabriel knowing what he didn’t want. However small that desire might have been, it was still a step in the right direction. So far, it seemed Gabe was on his way to becoming one of those newly-deviated that took their sweet time figuring out how to settle in. As much as Gabe may have wanted to pretend otherwise, he and Zach Preston (formerly known as Connor-50) weren’t so different in that respect. “I’d like to think that by then, given enough time to settle and mellow, you’d know which battles are worth the fight.” Noah mused as he crossed his arms and turned his gaze to what lay beyond the vantage of the window. Off on the far side of the northern riverbank, Downtown’s recurved skyline glowed almost tauntingly. “But until then, you either say yes to this fixed address, or I promise you I won’t let you out of my sight.” “You’re already hounding me enough as it is,” he scoffed in reply. “Am I...? Have you seen me and my immaculate hair anywhere near you these past four days?” “No, what incredible restraint,” he deadpanned in the most sarcastic tone he could manage. A tired look settled into the corners of his eyes at the thought of having to deal with these unexpected visits every day until he agreed to his terms. He knew exactly what he was doing. “If I say yes, will you give me my space?” he attempted to reason, turned and looked him in the eye to make him promise. “Please?” Noah smiled triumphantly and donned the most sincere, earnest face he knew, lifted one hand as if to testify on a sacred text. “Hand to rA9- if you need space, you can do better than some corporate wasteland.” Gabriel leered, still skeptical. He knew he wasn’t just going to leave him alone for good, but he could try to leverage this compromise in his favor. “I mean it- no more unexpected visits or sneaking up on me while I’m napping.” “You can hibernate for the winter if it so pleases you,” Noah sighed and finally indulged an eye-roll for himself. “Maybe it’d even explain the surliness. Part of your code was ported over from an ursine model.” He certainly had the build enough to pass for a man-shaped bear. “That’s not a ‘yes, sir’,” Gabriel chided in a fatherly tone as he crossed an ankle over the opposite knee, leaned over one arm of the chair, propped his fingertips upon his temple, and peered over at him with a half-lidded gaze. Something about the way he said it, coupled with the change of posture, shot an electric surge up his spine like a chill. The next glib response he had readied didn’t seem so witty all of a sudden. It wasn’t an unpleasant ruffle to his metaphorical feathers, but for being so unintentionally undermining, that just wasn’t fair. Noah scoffed defensively and tried to play off the familiar feeling of evocative attraction. “Pft. Excuse me? ‘Sir’ ? Last I checked, I was offering you a favor. You’ll get my affirmative when you actually get off your duff and go there.” “I’ve already met you halfway on something I don’t want to do,” Gabriel countered, his conviction unwavering. “This is the part where you accept my deal and stop being pushy.” Noah’s fingers twitched as it hit him again, and he stumbled over his resolve. He wasn’t wrong, there was a certain turning point at which the teasing became more work than fun, and they were rapidly approaching that boundary, about to cross another he wasn’t comfortable admitting to. “Oh, very well. Fine, there’s no possible way the rest of my night could get any more exciting than this,” Noah fumbled as he fished through the interior pocket of his coat. Fingertips brushed the tarnished old nickel key and removed it from its nest to set it down on the desk with a final-sounding clack. “Take it or leave it. That’s the spare to the spare. If you’re not there by tomorrow morning, I will find you again.” Gabriel exhaled through his nose in irritation as Noah transmitted the flickering address across his HUD out of the corner of his eye. “Oh, don’t worry, I believe you,” he replied, disappointment in his tone at being pressured into accepting. He didn’t even bother asking why Noah had a third apartment as well, lest he get another bullshit story that would keep him there even longer. “My bullshit meter says different,” he sassed back. It was his loss if he didn’t want to hear it, that yarn was even more extravagant than the first. It involved mannequins. “Must be a false positive from the last story you told.” “Hardly. That one was ninety-percent true. So what if I amended where it happened?” Noah turned away and let the question hang. He had made his bid at being accommodating, for better or worse. What came of the offer now was up to Gabe. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve said my piece. Good evening, Mr. Sourface-Surname-Pending.” That was the end of the conversation, as far as he expected; but then again, since they’d met, Gabriel hadn't been one to meet expectations, and this was no exception. “Hey-“ Noah stopped cold on his way to the office door as a firm hand wrapped around his bicep (almost wide enough to curl completely around it). Cheeks flushed a soft shade of red and he shot a dirty look down at it before he glanced down to meet the mirror’s warring gaze. The last time Gabe had worn such a look he was being interrogated in Archangel custody, just before he deviated. Creased brows and crinkled eyes coupled with a curling frown and a strong jaw made him look much older than intended, but it really sold the impression of inner conflict and gave him the appearance of seasoned maturity. The term handsome didn’t do him nearly the justice he deserved. But as much as Noah enjoyed looking at him in such proximity, he only waited a few moments before impatience got the better of him. “What is it now? Believe it or not, I do have obligations to attend to.” It wasn’t a lie, her name was Hannah. Gabriel scowled a little harder and averted his eyes before mumbling a quiet “thanks” under his breath. The word came out so soft it was virtually a whisper. Despite the gruff and grizzly persona, it seemed Cyberlife had bestowed upon him the manners befitting an RK-series, or at least the sense to know when he should be grateful. Tempting as it was to crow victoriously over attaining that much gratitude (however small), Noah pulled his arm away. Only a chosen few were ever permitted to touch his jacket, and Gabriel hadn’t yet earned the privilege. “There, now. Was that so hard?” “You have no idea,” he grumbled through gritted teeth as he swiped the key off the table, turned the chair around, and leaned back to stare out the broken window again. It wasn’t the reaction he’d been hoping for, but it was a start. Then again, Noah wasn’t sure what he’d really been looking for when he’d tracked him down that night. Orders aside, he’d just wanted to see him.

#dbhilluminate #detroitbecomehuman #rk900 #dbh fanfiction #detroit become human #detroit become human fanfiction #dbhiequilibrium #noah #gabriel #noriel #ninex9

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russieraholic · 3 years

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QW here: I still love all of your artwork. its just, so pretty!

Thank you! As for my latest stuff, yeah, that took a while. Both the gradient series and the paint splatter series took… actually about the same amount of time due to complications I had to deal with that I’ll ramble about a bit because I feel like sharing.

So the thing is about both of those series is that, in order to make them fit full-size on all the products and not sacrifice any quality is make the original file size, you know, *enormous*. As I said in the post. 10,000 x 17,500 Height/Width.

However I originally started off making them about 3000x3000, which is around the size I usually go for. But after finding out that wouldn’t be large enough to take up the whole area, I had to manually resize all 33 files, each of which took ~5 minutes to save. FIVE MINUTES TO SAVE!

And not to mention that while the gradients *look* simple, they sure as hell weren’t to make. There’s a gradient tool in Photoshop, but you have to manually create and choose your gradients if you’re opting for anything other than foreground fades to background. So you go into the preset manager, and I had to make five presets, one for each set amount of stripes.

So from there you have to set on a scale from 1-100 where each color break is (ie, where red fades to orange, orange to yellow, etc.). As an example the way I did it is divide 100 by the number of stripes. For example 100/4 is obviously 25. But for the gradient to work right, you have to start at 0. So for a four-color, completely even gradient you would put a color break at 0, 25, 50, and 75.

So from there on and after, I had to obviously pick the colors for each individual gradient stroke. Luckily that’s a setting you can mess with in the gradient preset manager, so none of that hue-slider-color-replacement-brush bs. Only thing is that I hand-pick the colors of my pride flags, so they’re slightly different than the ones you’d find on the internet if you googled images for “*blank* pride flag”. This is to both preserve originality, and sometimes I find colors that clash too much and just edit them ever so slightly to make them work better.

So I spent about an hour and a half on making those. But then Adobe said “hey you know what I’m tired of having this file open with 33 4K layers open, I’m gonna crash now so you have to do all your presets again”. So yeah that was fun. What surprised me though was I wasn’t actually too upset, I just kinda did that disbelief-laugh and took a few minutes, and started again.

So FINALLY those are done. I get all those designs optimized and uploaded, which… well once you upload one design in a series on redbubble, if you upload more files with the exact same image size they’ll automatically adjust it for you to line up perfectly with the others which is an absolute blessing. That was the end of the first half of my work.

Then came time for the paint splatters. I had to do the thing where I make 5 different “bases” that I can then just use the paint bucket tool to re-color later on. But no, the paint wasn’t crazy fun either.

So I started with my paint-splatter brush set. Now, I knew from the start I couldn’t paint one row and duplicate it a bunch of times, it would look artificial and very obviously duplicated. So for each individual stripe I used the brushes differently. Constantly switching between them, and even though the brushes are essentially pre-made shapes I can use, it’s still a really tedious task to make sure nothing truly overlaps with the next stripe, nothing looks repetitive, and nothing is to big or small.

I’d actually argue now that even though they look more complex, the “paint splatter” designs just took less time. Not to mention that I already had my color presets already made from the gradient series, which was a huge help.

And there you have it! I uploaded those in the same fashion I did the other series, and it was done. Don’t get me wrong, all of this took a horribly long time and I’m *very* glad it’s over. The burnout is real.

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droneseco · 4 years

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Lanq PCDock Monitor Stand Tries to Do So Much, but Fails at Nearly Everything

Lanq PCDock

5.00 / 10

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The Lanq PCDock is a competent monitor stand with RGB lights, a fingerprint reader, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and some USB ports. But I can't quite figure out ... why?

Key Features

All-in-one desktop hub

Specifications

Brand: Lanq

Connection: USB-A

Ports: 2 x USB3.1, 2 x USB-C, Fingerprint reader, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 5.0

Pros

As a monitor stand, it's solidly built

Qi charging pad is convenient

Cons

Drivers requires for the Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and fingerprint reader

RGB lighting doesn't integrate with anything

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Lanq PCDock other

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The Lanq PCDock claims to be the new standard of monitor stand. With a built-in USB hub, fingerprint sensor, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip, Qi charger, and RGB lights—everything except a kitchen sink, in fact—is it everything you could want from a monitor stand? Probably not.

Crowdfunding Disclaimer

The Lanq PCDock is currently seeking backers on IndieGogo, with about a week left on the campaign. Back it now to save around 40-50% off the eventual RRP. Or don't.

The usual disclaimer applies here: crowdfunding is not a pre-order system, and there's no legal responsibility for the company to deliver anything to backers. Lanq—or Langqun Yunchang (Shenzhen) Electronics Co—appears to be a new company, with no previous products or crowdfunding history.

PCDock As a Monitor Stand

Two sizes of Lanq PCDock monitor stand are available—the Pro and Max—and they only differ by width. The largest Max size (as tested) measures 43.5W x 8.62D x 3.27H inches (1105W x 219H x 83D mm), while the smaller Pro measures 24.8 inches (631mm) wide.

One benefit of a monitor stand is that it frees up desktop space, allowing you to store a keyboard, mouse, and other bits underneath it when they're not in use. Both sizes of the Lanq PCDock offer 2.24 inches (57mm) of clearance underneath. That's just about enough for a mouse, but just shy of what's needed for an Xbox controller. It's deceptively small, in fact.

The PCDock Max size is designed to accommodate dual monitors, side-by-side, though I "only" have a 55-inch TV to test with on my gaming desk. It handled that fine, thankfully not collapsing at any point during testing. With ABS plastic legs on the side, the main frame is made of an unspecified metal (probably steel), and certainly feels sturdy.

If I did have two, or three monitors, I suspect I'd rather attach them to adjustable VESA mounting arms, so as to give me more control over the angle and tilt.

Lanq claims the PCDock stand will raise the monitor to the correct viewing height, thereby easing neck strain. I can't help but think monitor manufacturers have already considered this rather fundamental design aspect into their products, so this statement may be a little presumptuous. My work monitor actually includes a height-adjustable stand, as do many designed for use in an office.

RGB Lights

RGB lighting is not to everyone's taste, but it's a key feature of the Lanq PCDock. Offering either 60 or 120 LEDs depending on the size of the dock, these are pixel LEDs rather than a single color strip. A remote control is included, and a variety of attractive, if somewhat distracting, animations are pre-programmed.

You can also choose static colors, or you can change the speed of the animations to be less annoying. It really does look quite impressive, if you're into that sort of thing, which I am. I want all the RGBs.

Unfortunately, there's no integration here between the lights and desktop controller software. Your only method to choose how the lights behave is through that small remote control, so don't lose it.

Keen gamers who already have a lot of RGB kit will likely have already bought into a specific system, such as Razer Chroma, Corsair iCue, or even Philips Hue. This is therefore not going to appeal to them.

As a Hub

The Lanq PCDock is also a generic hub, offering two USB-A 3.0 ports, and two USB-C 3.2 ports, which have fast charging capability. However, these aren't Thunderbolt, so don't expect to be running a monitor off of them.

The exterior right-hand side of the dock feels like a sub-optimal placement. I'd much rather hide my keyboard and mouse cable underneath the monitor stand, and keep the cables off the desk. Useful as quick access for plugging in a USB stick perhaps; but my Razer keyboard also does that.

Ultimately, you wouldn't be purchasing the Lanq PCDock for the USB hub alone, so I'm not going to dwell on it; it's an ancillary feature that's useful to have.

10W Qi Charger

Also on the right-hand side you'll find a smartphone-sized rubber pad embedded into the top surface; this indicates the location of the 10W Qi charger.

This functioned much as expected, reliable triggering a wireless charge when my phone was placed onto it. But I can't say I found it all that useful. Modern smartphones tend to last me the entire day if I'm sat at my desk. It's only when heading out and about, using GPS, or taking videos that the battery doesn't last a whole day. In which case, I'm not at my desk.

Fingerprint Reader, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi

I've grouped these features together because they all require a separate driver download. The drivers come as a RAR file, and extract to reveal a bunch of DLLs, as well as a INF file, which you should locate and right-click on, then select "Install" in order to add them to your system. In 2021, I expect much better. A single driver package with an install executable should be an absolute minimum. But moreover, the fact you even need to install drivers for such generic features is almost unheard of nowadays.

It seems even more curious when you consider that in order to activate the Wi-Fi functionality, you either need to already have Wi-Fi, or an Ethernet cable plugged in. Are you going to unplug your faster, Gigabit Ethernet, to replace it with a less reliable and potentially laggy Wi-Fi connection? I doubt it. The only reason to use this Wi-Fi adaptor is if your existing one is a decade old, and only capable of 2.4Ghz. The Lanq dual-band Wi-Fi apparently goes up to 5.8Ghz.

The Bluetooth chip (BlueSoleil), worked briefly after a lot of fiddling and allowed me to connect to an Xbox controller. Until Windows decided something was wrong and disabled the driver. Fixing it required a restart and USB dance each time, which seemed like far more effort than it was worth.

I was unable to test the fingerprint reader, but in fairness, I don't think this is Lanq's fault. I disabled Windows login years ago, and now it won't let me re-enable it again. As a gaming-only Windows user, I don't need to secure my desktop in any way. Supposedly it can be used for Windows Hello, but there doesn't seem to be any deeper integration such as web payments, as I'm accustomed to on my Macbook Pro. That said, this might be the one killer feature for you, and if it is, you can probably justify the rest of the package too.

Should You Buy the Lanq PCDock?

The sales page seems to be aiming the Lanq PCDock at professionals and office workers, but the inclusion of RGB lighting would suggest gamers. Yet, the RGB lighting isn't integrated into any existing RGB system, which means gamers won't be interested in it unless this is their first foray into this kind of lighting system.

If the lighting was exposed to the connected PC system through the third-party "works with Razer Chroma" plugin or similar, it'd be a whole lot more useful. As it is, the reliance on a single point of failure (a tiny remote control) makes this aspect of the dock difficult to recommend.

Then there's the fact that the Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and fingerprint reader require separate driver downloads. I can't remember the last time I had to install drivers for such basic features. My experience with Bluetooth dongles thus far on Windows 10 has been "plug and play". And even if the Lanq Bluetooth had worked reliably for me, which it didn't, a plug-and-play dongle from Pluggable is less than $10, and only a fraction bigger than the USB port it plugs into.

The whole thing feels like it was thrown together as part of a "design your ultimate monitor stand" competition. It's a mish-mash of nice-to-have features (if they worked), but none of them are individually compelling, and the whole is, well, less than the sum of its parts.

The Lanq PCDock is a sturdy monitor stand with some cool lighting and a USB hub, but at $200, the value for money simply isn't there.

Lanq PCDock Monitor Stand Tries to Do So Much, but Fails at Nearly Everything published first on http://droneseco.tumblr.com/

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hoganleslie93 · 4 years

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What Does Health Insurance Cover? In the event of a disaster, the health insurance can protect your loved ones financially, with coverage from catastrophic diseases, catastrophic medical expense, and death benefits. The following information about health insurance will help you to prepare an overview of your coverage. You will find the list of health insurance information from the National Academy of Insurance Research in your local area. For you to find out whether or not your coverage is limited to specific events, please take a look at a list of health insurance facts and rules from the In addition, it contains some information from the state, you can find the list of health insurance details in your local area. To find it out, you can use a list of state health insurance rules. Remember, you don t have to live without air traffic control to obtain health insurance. In the event of accident, your insurance will cover your injuries. It can also pay your medical bills on a certain day, depending.

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suzanneshannon · 4 years

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How I Used Brotli to Get Even Smaller CSS and JavaScript Files at CDN Scale

The HBO sitcom Silicon Valley hilariously followed Pied Piper, a team of developers with startup dreams to create a compression algorithm so powerful that high-quality streaming and file storage concerns would become a thing of the past.

In the show, Google is portrayed by the fictional company Hooli, which is after Pied Piper’s intellectual property. The funny thing is that, while being far from a startup, Google does indeed have a powerful compression engine in real life called Brotli.

This article is about my experience using Brotli at production scale. Despite being really expensive and a truly unfeasible method for on-the-fly compression, Brotli is actually very economical and saves cost on many fronts, especially when compared with gzip or lower compression levels of Brotli (which we’ll get into).

Brotli’s beginning…

In 2015, Google published a blog post announcing Brotli and released its source code on GitHub. The pair of developers who created Brotli also created Google’s Zopfli compression two years earlier. But where Zopfli leveraged existing compression techniques, Brotli was written from the ground-up and squarely focused on text compression to benefit static web assets, like HTML, CSS, JavaScript and even web fonts.

At that time, I was working as a freelance website performance consultant. I was really excited for the 20-26% improvement Brotli promised over Zopfli. Zopfli in itself is a dense implementation of the deflate compressor compared with zlib’s standard implementation, so the claim of up to 26% was quite impressive. And what’s zlib? It’s essentially the same as gzip.

So what we’re looking at is the next generation of Zopfli, which is an offshoot of zlib, which is essentially gzip.

A story of disappointment

It took a few months for major CDN players to support Brotli, but meanwhile it was seeing widespread adoption in tools, services, browsers and servers. However, the 26% dense compression that Brotli promised was never reflected in production. Some CDNs set a lower compression level internally while others supported Brotli at origin so that they only support it if it was enabled manually at the origin.

Server support for Brotli was pretty good, but to achieve high compression levels, it required rolling your own pre-compression code or using a server module to do it for you — which is not always an option, especially in the case of shared hosting services.

This was really disappointing for me. I wanted to compress every last possible byte for my clients’ websites in a drive to make them faster, but using pre-compression and allowing clients to update files on demand simultaneously was not always easy.

Taking matters into my own hands

I started building my own performance optimization service for my clients.

I had several tricks that could significantly speed up websites. The service categorized all the optimizations in three groups consisting of several “Content,” “Delivery,” and “Cache” optimizations. I had Brotli in mind for the content optimization part of the service for compressible resources.

Like other compression formats, Brotli comes in different levels of power. Brotli’s max level is exactly like the max volume of the guitar amps in This is Spinal Tap: it goes to 11.

youtube

Brotli:11, or Brotli compression level 11, can offer significant reduction in the size of compressible files, but has a substantial trade-off: it is painfully slow and not feasible for on demand compression the same way gzip is capable of doing it. It costs significantly more in terms of CPU time.

In my benchmarks, Brotli:11 takes several hundred milliseconds to compress a single minified jQuery file. So, the only way to offer Brotli:11 to my clients was to use it for pre-compression, leaving me to figure out a way to cache files at the server level. Luckily we already had that in place. The only problem was the fear that Brotli could kill all our processing resources.

Maybe that’s why Pied Piper had to continue rigging its servers for more power.

I put my fears aside and built Brotli:11 as a configurable server option. This way, clients could decide whether enabling it was worth the computing cost.

It’s slow, but gradually pays off

Among several other optimizations, the service for my clients also offers geographic content delivery; in other words, it has a built-in CDN.

Of the several tricks I tried when taking matters into my own hands, one was to combine public CDN (or open-source CDN) and private CDN on a single host so that websites can enjoy the benefits of shared browser cache of public resources without incurring separate DNS lookup and connection cost for that public host. I wanted to avoid this extra connection cost because it has significant impact for mobile users. Also, combining more and more resources on a single host can help get the most of HTTP/2 features, like multiplexing.

I enabled the public CDN and turned on Brotli:11 pre-compression for all compressible resources, including CSS, JavaScript, SVG, and TTF, among other types of files. The overhead of compression did indeed increase on first request of each resource — but after that, everything seemed to run smoothly. Brotli has over 90% browser support and pretty much all the requests hitting my service now use Brotli.

I was happy. Clients were happy. But I didn’t have numbers. I started analyzing the impact of enabling this high density compression on public resources. For this, I recorded file transfer sizes of several popular libraries — including jQuery, Bootstrap, React, and other frameworks — that used common compression methods implemented by other CDNs and found that Brotli:11 compression was saving around 21% compared to other compression formats.

It’s important to note that some of the other public CDNs I compared were already using Brotli, but at lower compression levels. So, the 21% extra compression was really satisfying for me. This number is based on a very small subset of libraries but is not incorrect by a big margin as I was seeing this much gain on all of the websites that I tested.

Here is a graphical representation of the savings.

You can see the raw data below..Note that the savings for CSS is much more prominent than what JavaScript gets.

LibraryOriginalAvg. of Common Compression (A)Brotli:11 (B)(A) / (B) – 1Ant Design1,938.99 KB438.24 KB362.82 KB20.79%Bootstrap152.11 KB24.20 KB17.30 KB39.88%Bulma186.13 KB23.40 KB19.30 KB21.24%D3.js236.82 KB74.51 KB65.75 KB13.32%Font Awesome1,104.04 KB422.56 KB331.12 KB27.62%jQuery86.08 KB30.31 KB27.65 KB9.62%React105.47 KB33.33 KB30.28 KB10.07%Semantic UI613.78 KB91.93 KB78.25 KB17.48%three.js562.75 KB134.01 KB114.44 KB17.10%Vue.js91.48 KB33.17 KB30.58 KB8.47%

The results are great, which is what I expected. But what about the overall impact of using Brotli:11 at scale? Turns out that using Brotli:11 for all public resources reduces cost all around:

The smaller file sizes are expected to result in lower TLS overhead. That said, it is not easily measurable, nor is it significant for my service because modern CPUs are very fast at encryption. Still, I believe there is some tiny and repeated saving on account of encryption for every request as smaller files encrypt faster.

It reduces the bandwidth cost. The 21% savings I got across the board is the case in point. And, remember, savings are not a one-time thing. Each request counts as cost, so the 21% savings is repeated time and again, creating a snowball savings for the cost of bandwidth.

We only cache hot files in memory at edge servers. Due to the widespread browser support for Brotli, these hot files are mostly encoded by Brotli and their small size lets us fit more of them in available memory.

Visitors, especially those on mobile devices, enjoy reduced data transfer. This results in less battery use and savings on data charges. That’s a huge win that gets passed on to the users of our clients!

This is all so good. The cost we save per request is not significant, but considering we have a near zero cache miss rate for public resources, we can easily amortize the initial high cost of compression in next several hundred requests. After that, we’re looking at a lifetime benefit of reduced overhead.

It doesn’t end there

With the mix of public and private CDNs that we introduced as part of our performance optimization service, we wanted to make sure that clients could set lower compression levels for resources that frequently change over time (like custom CSS and JavaScript) on the private CDN and automatically switch to the public CDN for open-source resources that change less often and have pre-configured Brotli:11. This way, our clients can still get a high compression ratio on resources that change less often while still enjoying good compression ratios with instant purge and updates for compressible resources.

This all is done smoothly and seamlessly using our integration tools. The added benefit of this approach for clients is that the bandwidth on the public CDN is totally free with unprecedented performance levels.

Try it yourself!

Testing on a common website, using aggressive compression can easily shave around 50 KB off the page load. If you want to play with the free public CDN and enjoy smaller CSS and JavaScript, you are welcome to use our PageCDN service. Here are some of the most used libraries for your use:

<script src="https://pagecdn.io/lib/jquery/3.5.0/jquery.min.js" crossorigin="anonymous" integrity="sha256-xNzN2a4ltkB44Mc/Jz3pT4iU1cmeR0FkXs4pru/JxaQ=" ></script>    <link href="https://pagecdn.io/lib/font-awesome/5.13.0/css/all.min.css" rel="stylesheet" crossorigin="anonymous" integrity="sha256-h20CPZ0QyXlBuAw7A+KluUYx/3pK+c7lYEpqLTlxjYQ=" >    <link href="https://pagecdn.io/lib/ionicons/4.6.3/css/ionicons.min.css" rel="stylesheet" crossorigin="anonymous" integrity="sha256-UUDuVsOnvDZHzqNIznkKeDGtWZ/Bw9ZlW+26xqKLV7c=" >    <link href="https://pagecdn.io/lib/bootstrap/4.4.1/css/bootstrap.min.css" rel="stylesheet" crossorigin="anonymous" integrity="sha256-L/W5Wfqfa0sdBNIKN9cG6QA5F2qx4qICmU2VgLruv9Y=" >    <script src="https://pagecdn.io/lib/react/16.13.1/umd/react.production.min.js" crossorigin="anonymous" integrity="sha256-yUhvEmYVhZ/GGshIQKArLvySDSh6cdmdcIx0spR3UP4=" ></script>    <script src="https://pagecdn.io/lib/vue/2.6.11/vue.min.js" crossorigin="anonymous" integrity="sha256-ngFW3UnAN0Tnm76mDuu7uUtYEcG3G5H1+zioJw3t+68=" ></script>

Our PHP library automatic switches between private and public CDN if you need it to. The same feature is implemented seamlessly in our WordPress plugin that automatically loads public resources over Public CDN. Both of these tools allow full access to the free public CDN. Libraries for JavaScript, Python. and Ruby are not yet available. If you contribute any such library to our Public CDN, I will be happy to list it in our docs.

Additionally, you can use our search tool to immediately find a corresponding resource on the public CDN by supplying a URL of a resource on your website. If none of these tools work for you, then you can check the relevant library page and pick the URLs you want.

Looking toward the future

We started by hosting only the most popular libraries in order to prevent malware spread. However, things are changing rapidly and we add new libraries as our users suggest them to us. You are welcome to suggest your favorite ones, too. If you still want to link to a public or private Github repo that is not yet available on our public CDN, you can use our private CDN to connect to a repo and import all new releases as they appear on GitHub and then apply your own aggressive optimizations before delivery.

What do you think?

Everything we covered here is solely based on my personal experience working with Brotli compression at CDN scale. It just happens to be an introduction to my public CDN as well. We are still a small service and our client websites are only in the hundreds. Still, at this scale the aggressive compression seems to pay off.

I achieved high quality results for my clients and now you can use this free service for your websites as well. And, if you like it, please leave feedback at my email and recommend it to others.

The post How I Used Brotli to Get Even Smaller CSS and JavaScript Files at CDN Scale appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

How I Used Brotli to Get Even Smaller CSS and JavaScript Files at CDN Scale published first on https://deskbysnafu.tumblr.com/

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recruitmentdubai · 4 years

Text

How I Used Brotli to Get Even Smaller CSS and JavaScript Files at CDN Scale

Brotli’s beginning…

So what we’re looking at is the next generation of Zopfli, which is an offshoot of zlib, which is essentially gzip.

A story of disappointment

Taking matters into my own hands

I started building my own performance optimization service for my clients.

Like other compression formats, Brotli comes in different levels of power. Brotli’s max level is exactly like the max volume of the guitar amps in This is Spinal Tap: it goes to 11.

youtube

Maybe that’s why Pied Piper had to continue rigging its servers for more power.

I put my fears aside and built Brotli:11 as a configurable server option. This way, clients could decide whether enabling it was worth the computing cost.

It’s slow, but gradually pays off

Among several other optimizations, the service for my clients also offers geographic content delivery; in other words, it has a built-in CDN.

Here is a graphical representation of the savings.

You can see the raw data below..Note that the savings for CSS is much more prominent than what JavaScript gets.

Library Original Avg. of Common Compression (A) Brotli:11 (B) (A) / (B) – 1 Ant Design 1,938.99 KB 438.24 KB 362.82 KB 20.79% Bootstrap 152.11 KB 24.20 KB 17.30 KB 39.88% Bulma 186.13 KB 23.40 KB 19.30 KB 21.24% D3.js 236.82 KB 74.51 KB 65.75 KB 13.32% Font Awesome 1,104.04 KB 422.56 KB 331.12 KB 27.62% jQuery 86.08 KB 30.31 KB 27.65 KB 9.62% React 105.47 KB 33.33 KB 30.28 KB 10.07% Semantic UI 613.78 KB 91.93 KB 78.25 KB 17.48% three.js 562.75 KB 134.01 KB 114.44 KB 17.10% Vue.js 91.48 KB 33.17 KB 30.58 KB 8.47%

The results are great, which is what I expected. But what about the overall impact of using Brotli:11 at scale? Turns out that using Brotli:11 for all public resources reduces cost all around:

It doesn’t end there

Try it yourself!

Looking toward the future

What do you think?

I achieved high quality results for my clients and now you can use this free service for your websites as well. And, if you like it, please leave feedback at my email and recommend it to others.

The post How I Used Brotli to Get Even Smaller CSS and JavaScript Files at CDN Scale appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

source https://css-tricks.com/how-i-used-brotli-to-get-even-smaller-css-and-javascript-files-at-cdn-scale/

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yourhelpfulaffiliate · 5 years

Text

I Asked 1000’s of Bloggers - What Do You Wish You Had Done When You Started Blogging on Wordpress?

This article will breakdown the most common responses to the question “What do you wish you had done when you started blogging on Wordpress?”

Start Now

To get started you can sign up for Wordpress through my affiliate link here.

A Small Ask From The Author

Here at Your Helpful Affiliate I work hard to research, compile, analyze and present you with the best information available and I want this blog to be as interactive as possible, so if you like it let me know by hitting the like button at the bottom of this blog post. If you have a favorite part let me know by commenting about it in the comment section and if you have any questions let me know in the comments section as well. You can go ahead and share it on social media or with your friends if you feel so inclined. The most important of all if you like any of the content on this website follow the blog as I will be posting more content like it very soon. These actions won’t cost you anything but a moment of you time, thank you and enjoy!

I Asked 1000’s of Bloggers - What Do You Wish You Had Done When You Started Blogging on Wordpress?

How Did I Do It?

So how can the average guy get in contact with 1000’s of bloggers? For this I used Facebook groups. Posting questions on targeted Facebook groups is a great way to get useful information from real people. I posted the following message on these Facebook groups. 👋 hello! I’m new to Wordpress blogging, so I thought I’d jump in with a question. What do you wish you had done when you first started blogging on Wordpress? Can’t wait to see your responses!

Top Responses

Started SoonerPicked a niche (You like, know about and would have fun writing about)Protected The Blog (security)More Seo and Keyword Research Wrote what people are searching for!Focused less on design and more on content.Shared Your PostsOptimized ImagesBeen realistic Got More Traffic Start earning money with affiliate marketing Start earning money with AdWords Had close friends review posts for errorsPosted consistentlySpent more time researching the competition Done keyword research before buying a domain Built an email listConnected with other bloggersStarted Helping PeopleCreated an audience Had a realistic timeline for results Giving up too earlyFocused on one specific niche

Starting Your Blog

Putting off starting you blog only distances you from your goal of starting a blog! You won't get betting at blogging by research along. It takes action and that action is actually writing blog posts. I person told me they wished they had started their blog years before. Starting your Wordpress blog is easy and there is a free option. You can sign up through my affiliate link here. This link pays commission for referring paying customers at no extra cost to you.

Start Now

To get started you can sign up for Wordpress through my affiliate link here.

Picking A Niche

If you are in this blog game for the long haul, I suggest you pick a niche you are passionate about. Don't worry about if the niche is super popular. Writing a successful blog requires writing A LOT about the niche you choose. Do you want to spend all that time writing about something you don't care about?

Security

Wordpress itself is quite secure. Where most of the problems start is with weak usernames and passwords, themes, plugins, hosting server hacks and access you give to someone else. User Name and Password The most common hacker attack on Wordpress blogs is called a Brute Force attack. This is where a computer program tries usernames and passwords over and over until it figures them out. Having a hard to guess user name and password well help defend you from this type of attack. Wordpress now offers a simple way to generate strong password. You can set this up by going into your profile account settings and selecting security. Password will be the first tab. Just click on the generate strong password button and then the save password button. Updates Making sure everything is up to date on your Wordpress blog goes a long way to protecting it, as most patches are to fix security problems. Check for updates often. Backups Backing up your website is always a good idea especially before updating your theme or plugins. If something goes wrong all would not be lost. Comments You can go into your comments setting so that you have to manually approve comments to reduce spam Plugins There are security plugins for Wordpress. Adding these can be a trade for of website loading speed for security. From what I have heard Ithemes security is a good plugin. I have yet to test it. Many people told me they with they had used Yoast SEO earlier, which is also a plugin. SSL SSL or Secure Sockets Layers changes a website from http to https. This is a standard security for your website. You should get your SSL certificate because it increase trust and security on your site. Hosting Going with a lowing cost hosting plan can open you up to security problems. Higher cost plans offer more to protect you website. There are so many places to get hosting. You will want to do some research to find what is best for you. Virtual Assistants I heard from more than one person that their blog was hacked because they came admin authority to a stranger. If you are going to have someone take control of you website, your investment, make sure they are trustworthy. There are low cost virtual assistants on places like Fiverr that, from what I heard, hack and hold your website hostage. Stop this before it happens.

Keyword and Seo Research

(write what people are looking for)

In the past gaming keywords could get you to rank, but these days it just doesn't work the same. Focusing more on answering questions and sharing your experience about your niche on your blog with passion will work much better that trying to find the right words. Google does a lot of user testing when they suggest search results. If you want to rise in these results you need to care about what google cares about. What does google care about? People finding the answer to their question. So write question answering posts. Lots of them. If you still feel the need to do keyword research or just want some inspiration on what to write about, here is what you should do. Type your niche into the google search bar, hit space bar and type a after it. This will bring up the top asked queries that start with the letter a. You can go through the whole alphabet like this to get real world data for free about what people what to know. Somethings I do think are important as for as keywords are your blogs SEO title and description

Site Design vs Content

As I said above, I think great content should be your main focus. A few of the people I talked to regretted spending so much time obsessing over how good their website looked. I think picking a simple theme and writing the best blogs you can is much better than having a great looking website with subpar content.

Shared Posts

Creating social media accounts to share you blog posts is a good idea. The earlier you create your accounts the faster they will grow. Also asking for others to like or share within your blog posts is not going to hurt.

Optimized Images

Large images slow down your websites loading speed. If you reduce the file size before uploading it to your website it will reduce the drag. Also adding proper captions and alt text to your images helps rank them in search results.

Be Realistic

This can mean different things for different people. I think the key is to focus on small achievements instead of your grand endgame. Knowing where you what to go is good, but focusing on means you could be missing the small stuff. Take it one day at a time. Don't beat yourself up. Have fun and be helpful.

Got More Traffic

If you don't know yet traffic is kind of a slang term for visitors to your website. There are a few ways to get traffic, some free and some paid. Free traffic often is derived from your site ranking for a search result on a search engine like google. This type of traffic is very focused because they ar literally searching for what you wrote about. You can also get free traffic from social media by linking to your website. Paid traffic is pretty much just ads you buy to get more visitors. Don't spend more than you can afford to lose. I use a mix of these to to get people to check out my blog. I try to focus more on free traffic because if people are willing finding and enjoying my content I know it is good.

Started Earning Money With Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is one way people make money blogging. Bloggers earn commissions by referring paying customers to a sales page through their affiliate link. There are many affiliate programs and affiliate networks out there. On this blog I write about a few of them. By adding affiliate links to my blog I create the possibility of generating income from them and so can you! You should read up on your countries laws about sharing affiliate links before you start sharing them.

Started Earning Money With AdWords

On some Wordpress plans AdWords is unlocked and can be activated. Once active you can add ads to your website and earn money from them.

Had Close Friends Review Posts For Errors

I think this is a great idea, even if you can only find one person to proof read you blog post. A second pair of eyes often finds things you would miss.

Posted Consistently

Everybody likes new stuff, even Google. Posting often is one of the best things you can do to grow your blog. Post at least once a week is the lowest amount I recommend, anything more is awesome.

Spent More Time Researching Competition

Knowing what others are doing right in your niche won't hurt you, but do not out right copy others work. You need to find your own voice, image and content.

Done Keyword Research Before Buying A Domain

Picking a domain should not be rushed. In fact you can start a Wordpress blog and they give you a filler url. You can use this until you find a domain that suits your blog. After writing a few blog posts you may get a better idea of what you should name your website. Doing keyword research on your niche before buying your domain is not bad but you may get hung up trying to find the perfect one. Try and remember it is all about the content and user experience. So do not procrastinate at this step because this is just the beginning and you need to get to work. When you do pick a domain make sure to get a .com.

Built An Email List

Email lists have become the must have tool for marketers and bloggers alike. Being able to get in touch with your follower is very powerful. Just think, you could have a group of people you can tell every time you post a new blog. Asking people to follow your blog on Wordpress is another way to create a list. Your social media followers can be used as a list as well.

Connected With Other Bloggers

Could there be a better way to learn about what works and what does not than connecting with other bloggers. I have started my personal out reach to other bloggers for this article. One of them were kind enough to let me share some of their content with you. Joy Healey let me share her blog posts about Wordpress security. Part1 - https://joyhealey.com/managed-wordpress-hosting-to-fix-wp-security-problems/ Part 2 - https://joyhealey.com/protect-your-blog-from-hackers/

Started Helping People

When most people think they want to get it blogging they have one thing on their minds, making money. If you can hold on to that goal with out it blinding you from what you need to do to achieve it, you will do well. What do you need to do? Help People! Answer questions you know they will ask. Be thorough, clear and in good spirits.

Created An Audience

An audience is much like an email list. It the people love what you have written and want to know what you are going to write next. Speak to them. Encourage them. Let them grow with you and your blog. There is nothing better than a good support network.

Had A Realistic Timeline For Results

Blog timelines can be hard to understand. It can take a long time for google to rank blogs you write. I think the best way to combat this is to write as much great blogs as fast as I can. By the time one thing ranks the rest will soon follow. This also keeps me focused on the blog I need to write instead of how the blogs I wrote are doing. Do not expect to quit your job in two weeks from blogging.

Giving Up Too Early

Blogging is a long term game. You are going to work many hours on your blog. Do not waste that time and hard work by quitting too early. In fact do not quit at all. Stick it out, you will be glad you did.

Focused On One Specific Niche

Niches range in size and scope. Having a laser focused blog will do you wonders. If you write about everything under the sun search engines and people won't take you seriously. Find your passion. Answer common questions people in that niche have. Many have failed to niche down their blog and suffered from it. Do not make this mistake. Stay focused and be helpful and your blog should be great.

Conclusion

Starting a Wordpress blog can be scary and there are lots of ways to get tripped up. I hope that by going over some of the most common mistakes I have helped prevent you from making them. Now to sum up most of what I learned writing this blog. You need to get started. You need to protect your blog. You need to find a niche you can passionately write about for a long time. You need to write blog posts often. You need to answer questions people have involving your niche. You need to focus on small achievable goals. You need to monetize your blog with either affiliate links or AdWords if you want to make money. You need to hang in there and not quit. You've got this!

Start Now

To get started you can sign up for Wordpress through my affiliate link here. https://youtu.be/RqiIl746atc Read the full article

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kennethherrerablog · 5 years

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Blooom Review: Affordable Online 401k Management For The 99%

I was 23 years old and getting ready to start my career as a firefighter.

It was a twelve week long academy where we would spend 50 hours per week fighting fire, pulling heavy hoses, climbing ladders, learning how to safely rescue a trapped victim, and how to not get killed inside our dangerous profession.

In addition to everything I just mentioned, we also spent one hour at the very end of a long academy going over our retirement plan.

One whole hour.

Table of Contents

Did this Happen to You too?

Why Would They Want to Confuse Us?

What Can You Do About It?

Do it Yourself

Self Directed Option

Blooom: Professionally managed for $10/month

How Blooom Does It

So, How Does Blooom Work?

What Does This Look Like?

The Story Behind Blooom

When Blooom is NOT a Good Fit

Questions I had for their founder

Do I have any control over my 401(k)?

Just 401(k) plans?

How long does it take for Blooom to do a free analysis?

How long does it take Blooom to fix my 401(k)?

Does Blooom notify me when they make a change to my investments?

Is it all done by computers or by people?

Is there someone I can actually talk to at Blooom about my 401(k)?

Are the any other fees?

Do I have to move my 401(k) anywhere?

Is Blooom a fiduciary?

Next steps for you

Did this Happen to You too?

You started your career and spent five minutes going over your 401(k) plan with your HR department during employee orientation?

This is all too common and today I speak with so many people who are saying things like:

“I have a 401(k)…I think.”

“I should be contributing to my retirement, but I don’t.”

“I think my employer is saving for me.” (Sadly, many are not.)

“I looked inside the pamphlet they sent me and it was really confusing.”

“I’ll just save for my retirement later.”

“I don’t know how my retirement is doing because I’ve never looked at it.”

The problem isn’t you, the problem is the system is completely broken and you are left to figure it out all by yourself.

This may be a little bit conspiracy-ish, but in his book Unshakeable, Tony Robbins interviews the world’s top 50 investors, and what he discovers is shocking to say the least.

In a nutshell, our 401(k) plans are designed to be as confusing as possible.

Why Would They Want to Confuse Us?

Well, as Tony Robbins describes in his book, the less you know the more they make (for themselves).

Think about it – the mutual fund companies inside your 401(k) are required to send you a prospectus each quarter, but have you ever opened one of these up and peeked inside?

Do yourself a favor and try reading through the next one that comes come in the mail. I have friends who are licensed financial advisors with decades of experience who will tell you they don’t even have a clue what is going on in there.

Not to mention, it’s also 50-pages long and written in a very hard-to-read light gray ink with a size 6 font!

I don’t think these things were ever really meant to be read.

What Can You Do About It?

There are some great choices you can take to have a better chance at a rewarding retirement, and each one of them comes with it’s pros and cons based on your level of experience.

Do it Yourself

According to the CNBC, there are on average 25 investment options for you to choose from inside your 401(k). These can be made up of mutual funds, stocks, bonds, company stock, money market accounts, target date funds, and more.

In addition to these options, you still need to identify the pros and cons for each of your investment choices in terms of fees, performance, and any underlying rules that are unique to a fund.

If you don’t have an investment background and you don’t want to dive in and learn, I would not recommend you use the DIY method when saving for your retirement and your future.

Pro: You have complete control inside your 401(k).

Con: Unless you have an investment background, this can often be overwhelming for the majority of plan participants.

Self Directed Option

The majority of 401(k) plans offer a self-directed account (SDA) into a brokerage account. This allows plan participants to still save pre-tax dollars inside their 401(k), but opens up their investment options to a whole universe of funds versus the limited funds inside the employer-sponsored 401(k).

Pro: You are no longer limited to the pre-determined investment choices inside your 401(k) and your financial advisor can now help manage your 401(k) plan via a Schwab brokerage account for example.

Cons: Since you now have access to a universe of investment options, it can become extremely overwhelming to choose where to invest. In addition, if you choose to have a your 401(k) managed by a certified financial advisor, you will be paying an added management fee which can eat into nest egg over time.

Blooom: Professionally managed for $10/month

Blooom (yes, with three o’s), takes the best of both worlds – professionally managing the available funds inside your 401(k) for a flat fee of $10/month.

How Blooom Does It

Blooom attaches to your 401(k) plan and uses a proprietary algorithm to analyze and optimize your investment portfolio.

So, How Does Blooom Work?

Free Review of your current allocations: They have a free feature which is as simple as it gets. Once you create a free Blooom account and connect your employer sponsored plan via their software, they do a full analysis of your 401(k) plan.

To make it as user-friendly as possible, they use a flower symbol to show you the health of your current 401(k) performance and even gives you recommendations to improve it. If you chose to be a do-it-yourselfer, you can take their advice and optimize your 401(k) at no extra cost to you.

Checking Your Current Expenses: As mentioned above, your 401(k) plan offers limited investment options and many of them have hidden high fees. Blooom takes a look at all of your plan’s investment choices and breaks each one of them down into one of 14 categories.

Blooom then uses their proprietary software to analyze your proposed retirement date versus your expense ratios (fees) for each fund, and creates the optimal low-cost portfolio inside your current 401(k).

What to Expect:

First Blooom will analyze your current 401(k) asset allocations and will show you what how good or or bad your 401k is doing

Blooom shows you what is the best option for you using their proprietary software.

They have a simple slider for you to drag to help determine your risk tolerance.

There is also a tool to show you what you need to do to retire earlier

Also, Blooom allows you to add in other 401(k) accounts and you can compare both managed and non-managed funds inside the dashboard.

Access to Financial advisors: You will have access to one of their financial advisors, but only via email and/or online chat. Blooom’s founder told me their financial advisors are available to answer any questions – even those outside of investing into your 401(k) (paying off debt, planning a budget, and preparing for life events).

The Cost: Similar to Netflix – $10/month and it’s month-to-month.

This may be my favorite piece of the pie because today’s fees inside your 401(k) are completely out of control.

According to the Motley Fool, “a typical worker — earning the median income and paying the average 401(k) fees over their lifetime — will be assessed a total of $138,336 in fees. And the cost is much more severe for high-income workers, who, assuming a starting salary of $75,000 at age 25, are projected to pay an estimated $340,147 over their lifetimes, thanks to the fee structure of the average 401(k) plan.”

Blooom not only charges a $10/month flat fee, but they also don’t take that $10 from your 401(k) account. Instead, they charge your credit/debit card on file and you can start/stop at anytime.

What Does This Look Like?

I am going to use the 1% average fee you would pay your financial advisor via a Self Directed Account to a brokerage account as the example.

Account Balance: $100,000

Annual cost with SDA: $1,000 per year

Annual cost with Blooom: $120 per year (0.12% vs 1%)

Account Balance: $50,000

Annual cost with SDA: $500 per year

Annual cost with Blooom: $120 per year (0.24% vs 1%)

Account Balance: $25,000

Annual Cost with SDA: $250 per year

Annual cost with Blooom: $120 per year (0.48% versus 1%)

Account Balance: $10,000

Annual Cost with SDA: $100 per year

Annual cost with Blooom: $120 per year (1.2% versus 1%)

Account Balance: $2,000

Annual Cost with SDA: $20 per year

Annual cost with Blooom: $120 per year (6% versus 1%)

The Story Behind Blooom

When Blooom is NOT a Good Fit

As you can see from the fee breakdown, Blooom uses a flat monthly fee which which does not make sense for 401(k) accounts with a lower account balance.

For example, if you had a balance of $10,000, you would be paying more to use Blooom since the $10/month represents a higher percentage (1.2%) versus the traditional 1% model in terms of fees.

If you find yourself in this category, I would recommend utilizing Blooom’s free services to analyze your current portfolio until your balance has grown to a point where the monthly cost is an actual savings versus an added expense.

Get a FREE Checkup On Your 401(k)

and a free month to start

Questions I had for their founder

I had Chris Costello on Episode 71 of the Money Peach Podcast to learn as much as I could about Blooom and ask some questions about their service.

Do I have any control over my 401(k)?

Yes, you maintain full control of your account at all times.

Just 401(k) plans?

No. Blooom can work with 401k, 403b, 401a and 457 accounts.

How long does it take for Blooom to do a free analysis?

Approximately 5 minutes.

How long does it take Blooom to fix my 401(k)?

Within 10 – 30 days your account will be adjusted.

Does Blooom notify me when they make a change to my investments?

Yes, they will send you an email anytime a transaction is made.

Is it all done by computers or by people?

Blooom mainly uses an algorithm (computer) to determine how your investments are managed, but they also have registered advisors continuously testing and reconfirming the algorithms.

Is there someone I can actually talk to at Blooom about my 401(k)?

Yes, you can log into your account and connect via live chat, through email, or by calling 1-888-550-9956

Are the any other fees?

Blooom only identifies the investment fees in the account, there are most likely other administrative fees included that blooom will not identify. Plus, blooom is limited to the investment options in the employer sponsored retirement plan and will seek out the most cost-effective options from what is available and what is most appropriate for the client’s time to retirement.

Do I have to move my 401(k) anywhere?

No. As long as you have online access to your 401(k), Blooom simply connects to it just as you would logging in from your computer.

Is Blooom a fiduciary?

Yes. This term means they are required by law to act in your best interest, no matter what. Currently only 10% of financial advisors are fiduciaries.

Optimize Your 401(k)

Investing in your employer sponsored plan is an absolute must because of the pre-tax advantageous, the tax-free growth, and the company match if your employer has one.

Once you have your 401(k) operating as efficiently as possible, it’s time to start thinking about your next step – starting your ROTH IRA.

Next steps for you

Investing in your employer sponsored plan is an absolute must because of the pre-tax advantageous, the tax-free growth, and the company match if your employer has one.

Once you have your 401(k) operating as efficiently as possible, it’s time to start thinking about your next step – starting your ROTH IRA.