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monster-creator-12 · 3 years

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How would imagine Baragon in the Monsterverse? And going off by his history in regards to his design shared with some Ultraman kaiju how would you imagine Pagos, Neronga, Magular, and Gabora in the Monsterverse?

Sorry for the delay, been busy with school and life stuff. Warning long post ahead.

Now when it comes to monsterverse I could see Baragon fitting in rather well. She’s already a fairly naturalistic kaiju and the monsterverse could use a lovable scrapper in its monster roster. Biologically Baragon would be a late surviving Therapsid who’s species first appeared during the late Permian and she would be the last of her kind following the Muto plague, escaping death by going deeper into the hollow earth than the rest of her kind. Appearance wise I think Baragon would closely resemble the design she had in gmk with some distinct differences. She would be completely quadrupedal and her forelimbs would have much larger claws, like a moles. Her ears would also be much larger and more armored, able to fold over and cover her eye like she could do during the Showa era. Her nasal horn would also be much larger and extend fully down the snout and forward, think a shark's snout made of hardened keratin covered with cooled magma. Her jaws would be short but robust and armed with large fangs and her eyes would have very large pupils in order to best utilize the limited amount of light in the hollow ear. She would also have large whiskers to help navigate below ground. She would have pangolin like scales covering her body but they would be more raised and square shaped. She could lift these scales and vent out superheated gas from her body as a defense, since she'd only be roughly 150ft tall, much smaller than other titans. She would be a lower tier kaiju, hunting down in the hollow earth for smaller muto’s like juvenile skull crawlers and warbats while supplementing her diet with geothermal energy and radiation. She can store excess geothermal energy in her body and if she can’t escape her attacker she can spew a condensed beam of steam from her mouth at her attacker as a last resort.

As for the Ultra kaiju I will admit I’m not nearly as well versed in Ultraman lore as I am Godzilla lore so bear with me on these ideas. That being said I do have a few ideas for these four that I think would work well for monsterverse and I think you’ll enjoy.

Pagos would be dicynodonts, most closely resembling lystrosaurus and would be found in the upper levels of the hollow earth searching for rare minerals and radioactive material, being common prey for larger subterranean titans. Essentially being a lystrosaurus with shovel-like claws, a larger beak and tusks, and four horns on its head, it doesn’t seem like the most defensive kaiju. Despite its unassuming appearance it does have a few tricks up its sleeve. For starters its stony grey skin is imbued with actual stone, due to it being a lithovore, which like rhinoceros hide prevents smaller titans from taking a bite out of it. It is also a fast burrower, able to quickly dig away from attackers while struggling to chew through its hardened hide. Finally if as else fails it can vomit a stream of condensed acid from its stomach which is normally used to digest durable minerals and can melt away at titan hide in seconds. Despite these defenses they are still eating by larger titans and their distant cousin Baragon has taken a liking to eating the 95ft tall dicynodonts since she too needs rare minerals to strengthen her own scales and pagos hide is easier to digest and find than the unprocessed stuff.

Magular would be pareiasaurs whose kind first appeared during the early Permian. Magular are found mostly under and around Skull Island feeding on buried tubers and radioactive mineral deposits. They’d only grow to about 70ft long at most and their main defense would be their large mineralized spikes and their impressive tusks. Sometimes Magular and Pagos would travel together in the hollow earth since digging Pagos often unearth buried plants and Magular provide an excellent distraction for predators. They are fast breeders and they used to be much more widespread but an increase in subterranean kaiju numbers has led to their decline. They are the inspiration to the french tarasque myth.

Neronga would be a mollusk, having traits from both cephalopods, chitons, and snails. Its back and tail would be a large jointed shell, with chiton like scales running down the outer edges of the shell. Along the edge of the scales would be a fleshy mantle fin, like the one found on cuttlefish. Its head would be large with a pair of cuttlefish like eyes and sensory tentacles behind said eyes, resembling horns or ears from a distance. The mouth itself would be toothless and wide but would have a massive toothed radula within that would act like its teeth. Instead of tusks it would have a pair of bobbit worm style mandibles at the back of its mouth that would aid in pulling prey down its gullet. Its arms and legs would both be sold and boneless, being two pairs of modified tentacles. The arms would have three large hooked suckers at their tips used for grappling prey while its legs would be pillar-like and end in three blunt clawed suckers resembling hooves arranged in a radial fashion at the bottom. Neronga would be a carnivore first, radiotroph second, preying on smaller mutos and battling larger titans for territory and feeding grounds. Abilities wise its biggest claim to fame is its invisibility caused by a combination of precise chromatophore control and an electromagnetic field that surrounds it allowing the kaiju to bend light. It can produce this electromagnetic field because of a large bioluminescent organ on its head, a pointed cone shaped horn situated between its eyes. It cannot use its invisibility for prolonged periods of time however so it only ever uses it to sneak up on prey or escape enemies. Neronga is one of the oldest titans, its species first appearing back in the Ordovecian and has managed to squeeze out a niche for itself even in the modern age. It is currently a threat to large cities since it will target power plants to feed on their electricity to better prolong its own invisibility, and being a 200ft tall titan, it takes a lot of juice to satisfy it. Recently it has showcased new abilities such as being able to produce EMP blasts like mutos and lighting strikes from its horn like ghidorah. This is thought to have happened due to the excess amount of electricity now stored in its body.

Finally Gabora. Admittedly I struggled with this one for a bit until it hit me like a freight train, clam. Gabora is a mollusc like Neronga but unlike Neronga takes more after bivalves than gastropods. Gabora has a soft body encased by a vertical shell, like a clam, but far more elongated. When its shell opens it reveals a large mineralized screw which runs the length of its body, think shin gabora. At the front of the shell is a five petaled structure, forming a drill shape that is there to better allow Gabora to dig through the earth. Openings in Gabora’s shell reveal large clawed paddle-like tentacles, useful for moving on the surface. While digging these limbs retract into the body and the opening seal tight to prevent any dirt or rock from getting into its body. Its drill-like head can open and inside reveals a large blunt beak, used for consuming radioactive minerals. Gabora is blind and has no eyes as it spends most of its time in the deepest recesses of the earth, hardly ever surfacing. During the one time it was spotted, during a battle with Baragon and Neronga, it revealed that it is able to spew forth a radioactive beam of blue fire that resembled a weaker version of Godzilla’s famous breath attack. It retreated back into the ground after its head plates were damaged and the 100ft tall monster hasn’t been seen since. The only reason it seemed to even surface in the first place was due to a specific cry Baragon emitted during its battle against Neronga which has raised more questions than answers amongst Monarch researchers since its only encounter.

Hopefully you like my take on these kaiju and if you want to know about my ideas for other kaiju in monsterverse please let me know and ask away. Thank you again for the ask and sorry of the delay.

#Ultraman #laserdog10 #Godzilla #baragon #gabora #neronga #magular #monsterverse #kaiju #my ideas #long post #again thanks for the ask #feel free to send more #creatures

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aurorajay · 4 years

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I love making costumes but I always feel bad about my skill level being far below everyone else’s. Even though I love making costumes they never look good quality. Any advice?

It's easier to answer specific questions about a project vs. a general "how to be good”, but I'm gonna give it my best shot.

First off, go easy on yourself, you're learning! I know I'm still learning. Hell, the seasoned pro of 3 decades is still learning! Every fuck up and mediocrity is a step of improvement. I won't tell you that practice makes perfect, because it doesn't. It will make you better, great even. But it won't make you perfect. No one ever achieves perfection. And that's okay! Literally every single piece I've ever made has multiples elements I would change if i could. Even the ones that look good, like the now-popular moth cape. I will do lots of things differently when i make my next one.

Also, I know from experience how hard it is to avoid comparing yourself to others, especially online. So when we (inevitably) do, I think it's important to remember that there can be a BIG difference between in person and photos. That cool looking cosplay armour? Upon closer inspection it might be held together by hot glue. That pretty formal gown? It might have a real shitty fraying seam down the back. All we see is a carefully curated version of reality.

It's hard offering practical tips without more info to go on, but hopefully some of this will help. I think what makes a good looking costume can be broken down into 4 basic elements, so here’s what I think are the most important things to consider

Design: This is the part that people seem to have the easiest time with, and I can help the least with. Coming up with the idea. And when you’re costuming just for the pure enjoyment of it, there are no bad ideas! Now everyone approaches this differently, whether it's sketches, moodboards, or diagrams. Unless someone else is executing the concept, it doesn't even need to look remotely good! As long as you understand what the design is supposed to be, it works.

I will say to design with practical considerations in mind though. Think about where, how, and why it will be worn. Plan for things like zippers and buttons to get in and out, the weather where it will be worn, how much movement will be required, etc. You don’t want to end up sweaty and stuck in a polyester bodysuit that can only be opened with the help of two assistants in say, an outdoor summer event in LA.

Materials: This can be tricky, because it’s dependant on your resources. Materials are expensive, and quality ones even more so. But researching options and picking the best fit for your project is important. Making a historical piece? Stick to natural fibers. Cosplaying a superhero? You're gonna need spandex.

If you're short on funds, going through second hand stores can be real handy. Bigger ones will sometimes have actual yardage, but you can find sheets, curtains, saris, and all sorts of things to take apart and use. Get familiar with the properties and names of different textiles. You'll eventually develop a skill for spotting the nice stuff.

More specialized tools/materials like say fosshape or sewing machine attachments are harder to stumble across, but there will be online sales. If i find something good for cheap I buy it and hang onto it for later projects. If possible, take advantage of sales and rare finds while you can. You're a dragon and materials are your hoard!

Construction: Obviously you want your costume to be well-made, but this means knowing and mastering different techniques. It's a slow process, but one everyone is capable of undetaking! Firstly, you need to familiarize yourself with technical terms to make finding the actual tutorials easier. One of my go-to resources for this is The Sewing Book, by Reader's Digest. (There’s also a newer version available, I’ll include it below). It covers a wide variety of techniques, materials, etc. and has fantastic diagrams. Can’t recommend it enough

Companies that sell specialized stuff like thermoplastics or casting resin often have tutorials on their websites which can be indispensable to learning to use them properly. As well as very important safety precautions. They will also sometimes list external how-to sources or sell instructional books.

Take a close look at clothes and costumes you own to understand how they are put together. Figure out what techniques are appropriate to use where. A flat fell seam is great for jeans and french seam is perfect for chiffon, but try the reverse and it will be a pain. Take pictures and make sketches of interesting details that catch your eye. You can come back to them for ideas later.

I try and incorporate at least 1 new technique into every project I make, that way I'm always learning. But don't jump straight to trying it out on the final piece! Always make a sample (or several) beforehand. And keep the samples for later reference! I'm trying to amass a big scrapbook-style binder of samples, which is sooo so handy to come back to when it's been a while since you've done something.

Fit: This is the final, and possibly most difficult element of costuming. No matter how cool the design, how fancy the materials, and how good the construction, if something doesn’t fit right it’s going to look and feel wrong. Most of us here are making costumes for ourselves, which means you're going to need help. Measuring and fitting clothes on yourself is a nightmare, so enlist a friend or family member to give you a hand.

The other thing you can do it is to get a dress form/mannequin. These are pricey, and will probably need to be customized with padding and such anyways, so I recommend you DIY it. Again, you will need a helper, because the easiest way to get a custom dress form it to just straight up duct tape yourself into a crappy old shirt, cut it off, then stuff it. There’s tons of tutorials online for this, it’s a tried and true cheap method.

I highly recommend learning some basic pattern drafting, and that’s honestly the hardest part. You can rely on store bought patterns, but they are extremely variable in quality, and unless you’re in the rare minority who are a sample size, it will need some altering to fit you right. They can be a good starting point, but ultimately I think pattern drafting from scratch is much faster and more adaptable, if you're able to learn it. This is where you will need some good books or video instructions. I don’t have one single resource to recommend for this, but I will list some books at the end. If you personally know ANYONE with this skill, try and get them to teach you everything they know, because they are worth their weight on gold.

It’s important to note that some pattern drafting is easier than others, Stretch fabrics are MUCH more forgiving in this area, and that’s how i got started. Because the fabric will accommodate your form, the pattern requires fewer parts and darts, and there’s more leeway for mistakes. The one downside is that stretches can be more difficult to sew. Personally, I feel like they more than make up for it by being simplicity of drafting. The resources I’ve linked are geared toward drafting for non-stretch, but if you’re not following a similar tutorial i recommend stretch.

One last thing in regards to fit. ALWAYS MAKE A MOCKUP. You can work out so many fit issues just by making your costume in crappy material first, taking note of the fit issues, and adjusting them with pins, marking them with a sharpie, etc. Then you can change your pattern accordingly. Whether it’s a breastplate made of cardstock or a dress done in old sheets, you should always make a mockup. Sometimes several! The material doesn’t matter as long as it behaves roughly like the good stuff you plan on using. Don’t use a heavy blanket for if your costume is going to be a gauzy nymph robe, for example. But it doesn’t have to look nice. It just has to be wearable.

Resources:

*These are mostly tailored towards women’s garments. A lot of the same principles apply, but making men’s costumes will have some separate considerations not covered here. Just something to keep in mind if you want to draft for guys. These are all just starting points anyhow. There’s tons more out there

https://www.amazon.ca/Sewing-Book-Alison-Smith-2014-02-03/dp/B01JXQQ9Y2

https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Guide-Sewing-Step-Step/dp/1606522086

https://www.handimania.com/diy/your-own-shape-sewing-mannequin.html

https://www.fearlessmakers.com/measurements-for-pattern-making/

https://opensourcestitches.wordpress.com/2010/07/14/pattern-drafting-101-drafting-the-basic-bodice-block/

https://opensourcestitches.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/pattern-drafting-101-the-mens-shirt-block/

http://isntthatsew.org/pattern-making-101/

https://sewing.wonderhowto.com/how-to/draft-basic-pant-pattern-0126850/

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/063206501X/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_image_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

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calliecat93 · 5 years

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RvB17 Episode 1 Review: A Sitch in Time

Anyone else getting Kim Possible flashbacks from that title? Just me? Meh, that’s expected. Anyways! Intro!

Red vs Blue Season 17... holy Hell, Season 17. How many shows make it this far guys? Not many. Even though I've only been watching for two years now, seeing how far the show has come... it's crazy. Yet it's been such a fun ride and I am not ready for it to end anytime soon. So, after a long wait and one Hell of a cliffhanger to end S16 on, we are finally here my friends. S16 had... many reactions. But I can safely say that I loved every single moment of it. Yes even Gus as a cyclops, I loved it (eventually). So with that, and a change in staff structure with Jason Weight writing solo and Josh Ornelas and Austin Clark directing, can S17 hit the mark for fans? Well, after eight months of waiting, it's time to find out.

Overview

So to briefly recap, all of time has been broken and our boys have been sent back to the beginning of the series. Which is where we begin as we cut to what would be Season 1 Episode 3 when Donut first arrived at the canyon, only they are now using Halo 1 (I assume the PC version) instead of Halo 2 Anniversary. We start going through the beats of the episode with Grif and Simmons pointing out Donut's Red Armor... but Grif stops due to the deja vu hitting him again, and same with Simmons. The Blues are not much better, with Tucker confused at how “Church” knows Caboose's name when Caboose never said it. “Church” walks off... revealing the truth: it is Genkins possessing Church.

Genkins arrives at Chrovos' domain, where he finds the gears broken, Donut knocked out, and both the Time Gun and The Hammer discarded. Genkins promptly tosses away The Hammer before facing Chrovos, who is in a Monitor body as the Cosmic Powers are. So... Chrovos is an AI then? So due to complications (aka Donut), the plan did not quite go as intended. So Chrovos is having Genkins go through time to fix that problem. The problem? We'll go into it soon enough. For now, Genkins points out how it's hard to make out Chrovos' actions when they’re an orb and after going through a few changes, they settle on a female body that looks similar to Kalirama's model, but all black. They are also now voiced by Lee Eddy, who previously played 479er and is the voice of Gwen in Camp Camp. Nice.

Donut wakes up, with Genkins promptly shooting at him. Since the firewall is still up, Donut isn't harmed but Genkins wanted to vent. He proceeds to compliment Donut on fulfilling his role, even calling him a fellow relative, before leaving through a portal to continue with his shenanigans. It is at this point that Donut sees that Chrovos is freed, and they make it clear that Donut will pay for his actions by his friends suffering. Donut points out that there's no reason as they are now free... but when he steps forward, a barrier comes over the Time God. As it turns out, while Donut couldn't fully prevent Chrovos form escaping, he DID still manage to increase the prison enough to keep them contained. That's our boy!

Unfortunately, Chrovos's new plan is already in motion. Along the barrier is a large crack. Donut finds out that the guys saved Wash, but due to it they caused the paradox and now time is cracking apart. Which if you recall, paradoxes are exactly what Chrovos needs to break the prison fully. You see, the Reds and Blues history together was the back-swing to The Hammer's blow, and is now in a type of buffer period where new timelines are being formed, paradoxes following. This is why they have Genkins going through time, to create the paradoxes as he promptly does by stopping Sheila in Season 1 without Church getting killed. Genkins can also possess any type of AI figure in these timelines, hence why he is able to pose as Church.

Already cracks are forming along the singularity that represents the solid timeline. One has Tucker step up as a leader much earlier, only to die as a result. Another has Caboose on Red Team. More cracks are forming, and soon enough will form to break Chrovos free. So why are they telling Donut all of this? Because they know that he'll try to stop it and even encourages him to do so. He can possess his own incarnations in these timelines, but by doing so and by trying to bring his friends to their senses, he'll cause even more paradoxes and therefore make the job all the easier. Even after hearing this, Donut refuses to let the Time God screw with his friends like this. He goes into the portal, Chrovos wishing him luck, and our intro credits play with Donut being flung through time.

My friends, Red vs Blue: Singularity has begun.

Review

Hmm... there's a word that I want to use to describe my feelings. I apologize as it is a short word, but one that properly conveys my current emotional state. So... here it goes:

AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!

HOLY SHIT YOU GUYS! I LOVED IT! I LOVED IT SO MUCH!

Okay, okay. So honestly there's not too much to digest. Which is honestly fine. This is the first episode and after last year, they really need to explain things so that we would know what we're in for. It's an exposition episode, but a good one. The episode wastes no time at all. We see the guys current situation, find out what happened at the end of S16, establish what the focus of the season will be, and get the ball rolling at the end. It goes from one beat to the next, but without feeling rushed or boring. It was all very welcome information and had the weight of S16's finale to help carry it. We were already invested, so no need to hold back.

This also gives what's probably our first solid viewing of Chrovos. And let me say... I love them. I mean I hate them, as well as Genkins, for reasons but you can TELL that they are relishing their roles. Chrovos comes across as a serious, but quirky individual. Impatient, but also calm and very much in control. They have the intimidating present, but like with the Cosmic Powers they have these comedic traits that make them more entertaining and fun to watch. Same with Genkins, who continues to be a delight. I may hate the bastard for 'killing Huggins' (STILL IN DENIAL) but man he is just SO MUCH FN. His line about Tucker's heterosexuality was by far the best line in the episode. Nd the fact that he can possess any AI figures in the past, like Church? Yeah... that is both genius and terrifying. Helps that Ricco Fajardo and Lee Eddy are clearly having so much fun in these roles XD

So... timelines... holy Hell. I think we all kind of expected alternate timelines, but IDT that ANY of us predicted this. The Reds and Blues are reliving their past as Genkins changes thing up from the main timeline, or the Singularity as it were. Which leaves us with a buffer period as the chain of paradoxes keeps shattering the already weakened timeline. And all of it makes sense. The Reds and Blues history was used as the backswing and they were the ones who caused the paradox so it makes sense that this would be used to further shatter the prison. It explains why we got the paradox explanation last season as now all of the scenarios (Closed Loop, Multiverse, Stable Timeline) are all in effect. Since Donut was in Chrovos' domain, he wasn't affected and is the only one who has a chance in fixing all of this. It all lines up and promises us a lot of insanity, hilarity, and pain.

Speaking of Donut... oh Lord Donut. This is very much going to be his season. He was so great in this episode too. He's still a dimwit, but he's still fun and understands that shit is going down. It's really nice to see him get frustrated about time travel cause honestly? It DOES suck. But yeah he talks back against Chrovos, is still funny and gullible, and he is more than ready to do whatever he can to save his friends. Yeah, he understands the consequences, but screw it. He cares about his friends and he isn't going to let Chrovos get away with making them suffer to get free. He doesn't hesitate at all when Chrovos brings the option of going through the portal up. Is he going to succeed? Well... he's not going to have an easy time going about it, that's for sure. He's probably gonna go through a LOT of Hell. But hey, I'm rooting for him! Two years ago, when I first got into RvB, I would have NEVER said that I am all for Protagonist Donut. But damn it all, I AM ALL FOR IT!!! Also, Dan Godwin (who absolutely killed it in this episode) got top billing. Bless.

The direction of this episode was really well done. The effects are all super good. I mean just watch the credits sequence. The bluish-red mist, the character's appearing when their VA's name appears, Donut bein sent through the portal, it all looks amazing. The machinima was also really good and honestly, using the old Halo's is a MUCH better option than using Halo 2 Anniversary. It connects us more to those events since we recognize the settings and models much better in the past engines. Might also explain why we're only getting 12 episodes because going back and forth between engines had to have been pure murder on the machinimators. The camera work was also excellent, like Donut's first-person perspective when he wakes up. No real animation outside the credits, but honestly the effects were more than enough to keep things interesting. Very solid job by the RvB team.

Alright, we have our beginning... so what's gonna happen now? Honestly, it's hard to tell. We're probably going to spend the first half going through some notable RvB moments, exploring the new timelines, and Donut hopefully managing to get a few of the guys back to their senses. Honestly? There are a LOT of possibilities for how this season can go down. Moments to revisit, old characters to see again, SO MANY POSSIBILITIES. IDK where Jason is going to lead us, but I can safely say that I'm invested.

Final Thoughts

This was a solid start to the season! It wastes no time in getting us into the swing of things but still takes time to inform us of all we need to know and let the characters be characters. As I said, I already love Chrovos far more than I did last season. It perfectly sets up our main plot, and all that's left to do now is see where it leads us. 11 episodes to go people. Let's make them count.

#rvb #rvb17 #rvb reviews #callie reviews #rvb spoilers

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dailydosemiku · 6 years

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So I just beat Yume Nikki -Dream Diary- 100%

I’m gonna write this as an in depth review I guess. So I got done just recently discussing it with an old friend, the very same friend who roughly a decade ago showed me the original game. We have pretty polar opposite opinions of the game and I’m seeing that seems to be the trend with people who have played it so far. This isn’t a call out post or “Your opinion is wrong and mine is right” bullshit. I just want to explain why I liked it and maybe help some people see the game from a different light.

First things first. I want to premise, if this even gets read, that nothing will ever top or match Yume Nikki the RPG maker game that has gained a cult following. Even Yume Nikki on a second playthrough, will never feel like Yume Nikki on a persons first playthrough in my opinion, granted that is if they enjoyed it. Before this re-imagining came out there were mostly 2 kinds of people and barely anyone in between. People who loved it for it’s entire concept and execution and people who thought it was the most boring chore in the world. There is barely anyone I know or have met that’s in between those who are just like “yeah it’s ok I guess” Just because this re-imagining came out does not mean the original is now bad or doesn’t exist and I will respect your opinion if you think one is better then the other, because it’s an opinion, and they aren’t the same.

Below this is the Steam Store page, I want anyone reading this to read it and read it again.

“Yume Nikki has been hailed as one of the greatest (and most controversial) games ever created with RPG Maker. The new YUMENIKKI -DREAM DIARY- is not a remake, but a full reimagining of the original―reconstructed and enhanced using elements and styles of modern indie games. “

If you read this and thought this meant that this is going to be the same game, you went in with your expectations to high. One of the biggest reasons Yume Nikki was so beloved and how most people go into it was, THEY KNEW NOTHING, hell I knew nothing, I got like 2 sentences and like a 5 minute gameplay video of the game and that sold me. Then these people were to learn after diving into this strange game that only told you things with visuals, the creator disappears. For years even. So to do both games right I want to break them down into some basically game design elements to the best of my ability. Gameplay, Soundtrack, Story, Visuals, and Atmosphere/Presentation. Of course I’m going to reference both games because that’s what everyone else is doing for each of these.

Gameplay, well there really wasn’t much of a game to play in Yume Nikki the RPG maker game. I’m sorry I love Yume Nikki, but there’s not a lot of interactivity. It’s more of an experience, a long giant question of How and Why did this game get to this point? If you were at all like me, you kept playing to answer these questions and ultimately you either didn’t get an answer and were happy with it or you found your own answer, which if you ask me is part of the magic of that first playthrough. But as a 2D free RPG Maker game with no admission to entry, it was an experience and just that AN EXPERIENCE. As for Yume Nikki -Dream Diary- the 3D platformer, there’s actually a game to be played which understandable makes it very different then the RPG maker original. But this is an re-imagining, it’s not fair to directly compare the 2. They are in completely different medians and special in their own ways. In it’s essence, whether you agree or not both games at their element are about exploring an experience. If one having gameplay elements, that if you ask me were fairly well tested but not perfect, makes it less of an experience and was frustrating, then I don’t think you remember some of the frustrating non-sense that the RPG maker version had, such as navigating NES World, Locating the Bike which for most of the playthrough you were guaranteed to use because the normal movement speed was slow as shit and that’s usually what stopped a bunch of people from getting farther into it. But I say this with pride, it was part of the experience, it was part of the fun and by all technicality, was it’s own form of rudimentary puzzles and gameplay. Now yes I hear some of you die hard fans cry but there’s not as many effects and not as many doors and worlds, not as many themes and they took out so much. I am sad to say some of the things they took out I will miss, that is if the original game was wiped off the face of the planet with this games release, but it wasn’t.The original is still there as it always was. Because it can’t be replaced. It won’t ever be replaced, people have tried. So onto the point, the gameplay of the 3D one. It’s a horror platformer with puzzle solving and a few jumpscares I guess. You are sitting here reading this, I hope, going wow it’s that easy to categorize? Well yeah sorry to say guys it’s 2018 not 2004, in the time between the first RPG maker classic which I love to death and this newer retake of the very concept of Yume Nikki in 2018 we have had 3 different presidents, saw the rise and fall of many platforms like Vine, went through not 1, not 2 but 3 generations of Video Game Consoles, got 10 versions of the IPhone, like 8 versions of Samsungs Phones and a bunch of other stuff. Needless to say, times change, information is easier to access and we have gotten older and more analytical when it comes to the things we do as hobbies or otherwise. If we are to just look at the word re-imagining at face value and by definition.

reinterpret (an event, work of art, etc.) imaginatively; rethink.

Is the new Yume Nikki a reinterpretation of the RPG classic? Absolutely, it’s a different take on what the game was. Key word different, problem is in 2018 things are easier to find then 2004, communities are larger, people are older, and things in general are going to less surprising. So from a gameplay standpoint is the new Yume Nikki the 3D Platformer a well thought out game from a gameplay standpoint? Yes it is, it has it’s bugs which is unfortunate, but even games that got GAME OF THE YEAR were horrible buggy messes when they came out and those were backed by Triple A developers, COUGH COUGH FALLOUT 3 EVEN THOUGH I LOVE YOU YOU ARE A MESS COUGH COUGH. Moral of the story for the gameplay, it’s different yes but that doesn’t make it bad just not the same. If you can effectively get from beginning to end regardless how the journey goes, the game did what it needed to do. If you felt obligated to finish -Dream Diary- that was nostalgia and that almost need to feel the magic of the first playthrough of the RPG Maker classic, meaning you aren’t taking Yume Nikki -Dream Diary- as it’s own game, you are trying to take it as a replacement for a beloved classic.

Now that I’m done with that portion I guess, hopefully my point was more or less digestible and hopefully didn’t come off as if you disagree I hate you, cause that’s not my intent, if you don’t like it, you don’t like it, I just want to give a separate perspective. The Soundtrack. I think the Soundtrack in both games is just weird and beautiful and bizarre and conveys messages on a spectrum going from of uncomfortable to serene to almost intimidating. I’m no music expert or major or whatever but the music in Yume Nikki -Dream Diary- not only was very good and did what it meant to do in my opinion but was an incredible nod at the RPG Maker classic featuring a lot of remastered tracks from the original which I think portrayed similar emotions as I felt from the first game. I don’t have much else to say on the soundtrack, it’s timing and consistency felt as good as the original in it’s own special way but should not be interpreted as the same.

So the next thing I want to bring up is story. Now if you are a fan of the RPG Maker classic, you know as well as I do that the story is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, it’s almost entirely up to interpretation. The story was what you thought it was, you just get kind of a beginning and kind of a ending. People who wanted a classical game with a story with a beginning middle and end, would not really even touch this game. Cause it doesn’t hold your hand, but not in a “is this the dark souls of RPG Maker games?” kind of way. It’s entire conception, how it came to be, how the game played, how the game ends and how you get an ending to begin with and the mysterious creator and their disappearance are all ultimately part of Yume Nikkis’ Story in my opinion. The time the game came out, the so little information about the game that was known, the fact that Youtube was still young, fuck me I was using SKYPE when I played this game in like 2008, it was the perfect storm but only because of the games story outside of the game as well as inside. It was a mess, but it was such an amazing mess that was so hard to describe and time and time and time again the only thing people could really say is “you just have to play it, I can’t explain it without ruining it” That was also a part of the games story if you ask me. It was so strange and so meta but it always made people say the same thing. Now 14 years later, the developer is back, is older, sees his own mistakes better then any of us ever could, and I know if anyone reads this, some of you are artists or content creators or game designers and you know EXACTLY what I’m talking about being hyper critical of your own work. And now he has help now, a team of developers and even though he worked side by side with these people, of course there’s going to be a disconnect, something lost in translation, that’s exactly what fangames are, an interpretation of the original. So yes sadly there’s a bit more going on that’s coherent now but it’s 14 years later being lead by a guy who knows his own mistakes for a game he made alone, which is an achievement yes, but he has seen and allowed to be published in the very beginning of this new game a nod at where his last game left off. Meaning of course he acknowledges what he made and knows people adored it, but people also hated it. It was a judgement call, and you may not like the result but I assure you it was a decision in good faith, at least that the message I got from this game. Now enough beating around the bush, this games story? It does it;s job without telling you to much and honestly I still feel like in this games case like the last one, explaining what happens loses the impact, and some of the impact is because I played the game prior. So I think it does it’s job at re-imagining the story of Yume Nikki the RPG maker game well enough.

Next is visuals, now as an RPG Maker game you could argue it’s not good looking, till you think about it, that one guy, made all of that basically from scratch, it’s poetic, it’s awe-inspiring, that this one guy makes this strange game and it moved people so much and all you really do is just look at things. It’s a stunning game to the eyes because you want to know what this guy could have possibly created next and each environment is so different from the last, each effect so silly and cute or scary and gross all at the same time making you feel these mixed emotions of joy, excitement, nausea, tension all at the same time. It almost mesmerizes you into this feeling of wanting to do everything while simultaneously fearing when it’s all over and the dream ends both literally and metaphorically. It’s only because of this, in my opinion is why visually the RPG maker game is such a work of art. Now for Yume Nikki -Dream Diary- if you ask me I think the game is breathtaking, there’s so much care put into so many little details, yes there are clipping issues and the animations aren’t great but remember Yume Nikki the RPG Maker game wasn’t perfect either, we didn’t care though, we were young, we just wanted to take whatever it was in for what it was worth. From a technical standpoint I feel like this game is stunning in the visual department, but it’s not that complicated compared to games of it’s time, much like the older classic. The older classic came out the same year as Half Life 2, which was a technical marvel when it came out, now it’s kinda dated but regardless that didn’t make Yume Nikki in 2004 any less of an unique experience, and I feel like that same way of thinking should be applied to this new title as best as a person can. I’m going to steal a line from another reviewer loosely, Portal 2s biggest flaw is that it came out after Portal 1. I must have heard those words 5 years ago or something and they still stick with me. If you look at Portal 2 it’s literally an evolved embodiment of Portal, but you already knew the concept of Portal cause it already came out so it’s shock value, it’s rare and raw punch is lessened because something did that already. It’s the same reasons fangames and Yume Nikki -Dream Diary- won’t feel the exact same. Cause it came out afterwards.

Lastly I wish to touch on a final point before closing this review I guess, more of an analysis. The presentation and atmosphere. Broken down as simply as I can both games share this. They are Surreal Horror Exploration games whose job is to seemingly immerse you in the strange world of a little Japanese girls dreams. That’s where the disconnect begins. Cause even though you wouldn’t think of the RPG Maker classic to be a horror game it has horror themes and the occasional jumpscare or visual for shock value. Now as a re-imagining does the new Yume Nikki -Dream Diary- fit the bill for an amazing strange atmosphere just like the first? Absolutely, it tells most of it’s story passively, no dialogue, nothing crazy, just you and a simple platformer. But alas, it’s a platformer with tension and parts with severely more interaction then the original causing you to feel urgency and demand to escape or jump the next hurdle or challenge, which is not the same as original. Which understandably is this games biggest flaw, if from the very beginning it said it was a remake and that the original is no longer an actual concept. If we were to look at Yume Nikki -Dream Diary- the same way as the original, where we had nothing to compare it too, it’s a lot better of a game and it’s creepy atmosphere is on point, the environments are great and the nods it makes to the older game make me happy.

All in all I think that even with it’s flaws on release that Yume Nikki -Dream Diary- is a stunning love letter to the original game, written by a team of people copying down the words of the creator, ultimately dedicated to those of us who gave Yume Nikki it’s following while simultaneously being something more accessible to wider audience so that by chance they may also play the original game to fully understand why this game exists and what purpose it serves. It’s a thank you letter, an attempt to redo in a different sense what we have tried ourselves many times to recreate and even though a lot of the fan games are great they don’t feel the exact same and neither does this, it’s fantastic but we should all know by now that it can’t be done again, that’s why it’s special. But the creator knew this and wanted to try again but with more knowledge this time and I respect him for it, I respect the team who worked on this game, flaws and all. Perfect or not they wanted us to feel that special feeling one more time, and maybe it wasn’t what you wanted but I don’t even know what I wanted.

-Katy

#yume nikki #yume nikki -dream diary-#kikiyama #kadokawa #kadokawa corporation #madosuki

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nshss · 4 years

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7 Tips for Academic Success in High School

So, you are a high school student. Great! No matter what stereotypes you may have heard, high school is a magical time when students have the opportunity to learn, grow, and make mistakes to work on creating the academic habits they will carry with them to college and a career.

However, for high-achieving students, high school can also feel overwhelming. Academic success seems mandatory to get accepted into the right colleges and universities and pave the way toward a bright future.

Fortunately, the way to enjoy academic success in high school does not have to be a mystery. Here are seven tips for high school students to keep in mind as they strive for academic excellence during these formative years:

1. Explore and Find Your Passions

As a high school student, one of the most important ways to prepare yourself for a successful future is to do a lot of exploring so you can discover the areas of study and extracurricular activities that you’re passionate about.

A common misconception might lead students to believe that colleges and universities, even future employers, find a wide array of activities most impressive. In fact, leaders are actually often impressed by individuals who find their few passions and pursue them whole-heartedly.

Pursuing too many different activities at once in high school could lead to an overwhelming experience. Sometimes, selecting a few activities you care most about will lead to more success in those areas than if you attempt to get involved in every possible way throughout high school.

As Cassandra Allen, recent Wellesley graduate, notes in College Admission—How to Get Into Your Dream School: Real Students, Real Stories by James Lewis, “You don’t have to do everything; it’s okay to pick one or two clubs and be passionate about them.” Students like Allen learned the hard way that overfilling a high school schedule is not always the best strategy.

Remember, you are only human. Take time to explore the world and all possibilities of study while in high school–and then really delve into the subjects and activities you love the most.

2. Learn for Growth, Not Just Your GPA

Speaking of passions, learn to be passionate about the act of learning itself. Though the prospect of getting into the right college or university to eventually land the dream job might tempt you to focus on achieving the highest GPA possible, high school should also be a time when you fall in love with the process of learning.

The more fun you have while learning in high school, the more fun you will learn to have throughout your life, since life is a constant journey filled with new discoveries and lessons. If you can master the art of enjoying school now, imagine how much more fulfilling your entire high school and college experience will be later.

Focusing solely on grades and on-paper achievements will lead to a pressure-filled high school experience. Remember to take stock of where you are, who you are with, and what you are learning as you soak in your high school years. So many students would likely go back and do so if they could, so learn from those students now and enjoy learning for the fun of it! Why not, right?

3. Work On Time Management Skills

While time management does not sound like the fun you might want to have while learning, discovering how to use your time wisely will certainly help you enjoy high school more. You can accomplish time management in whatever ways work best for you, but some tried and true methods include the following:

Keep a calendar, whether digital or on paper. Calendars have a way of reminding you of the tasks you once thought were important, and you can even color-code them to reveal where you are spending most of your time--whether on studying, social time, extracurriculars, etc.

Schedule study sessions for classes before the week of the test. Studying over time is a much better plan for success on tests than cramming the week or night before. Give your brain time to digest information, and you’ll be surprised how much better you know the material–not just for the test, but for a lifetime of knowledge.

Prioritize the most important tasks. Determine which tasks every day are most important to you, and add them first on your list. For example, if you know you have a major project due in a week, you might want to prioritize brainstorming for that project and save the easier homework for later.

Create good habits, like reviewing notes each night before bed. Looking over information before bed can help the content solidify in your mind, so make it a habit to review notes for your hardest classes before you go to sleep. Any small, doable habit like this is a good idea--especially when you can form that habit at such a young age.

Strive to be on time. In every stage of your life, you’ll find that people respect those who are prompt. And when you are on time, you show others you respect their time as well as your own. The earlier you can learn to be on time, the better, since this skill will always serve you well.

Learning how to manage your time in high school will inevitably make the transition to college and your professional life much easier. Best of all, the more adept you become at time management, the more time you will hopefully create in your schedule to have some fun with friends, as well as studying and enjoying extracurriculars.

4. Get Involved in Your Community

The life of a high school student can sometimes feel like living in a bubble. However, you will become more engaged in your own life the more you engage with your surrounding community.

Not only does volunteerism add to a resume, but it also has a way of creating much happier students. Volunteering within your local and global community has been found to have major health benefits like lower blood pressure and a longer overall life–not to mention the good volunteers do for their fellow community members.

Moreover, by getting involved in your community, you will have more opportunities to explore your interests, thus providing you with a better idea of which area(s) of study you might want to pursue in college and in a future career.

You might even find that you start to get more interested in your classes, since you see the evidence of those lessons in your community and can apply academics to the world around you.

5. Utilize Your Resources

As with most accomplishments in life, succeeding in high school cannot be done without help. In high school, you have access to a wealth of resources, and you can usually find sources of help you hadn’t even thought about.

Of course, your parents, teachers, family members, and friends should all be there to help you; but you have other resources at your fingertips as well.

High School Counselors

Get to know your high school counselors, as these individuals will not only be able to help you manage coursework and life throughout your early high school years but will also become invaluable resources as you plan for life after high school--in college and beyond.

High School Honor Societies

As a high school student, you also have access to high school honor societies like the National Society of High School Scholars (NSHSS), where you can apply for scholarships, gain leadership experience, and learn tips and tricks from other scholars and educators--as well as plug into a network.

Becoming a member of a high school honor society will also give you the resources you need to create both short- and long-term academic goals.

College Students

If you plan to apply for college, you should also consider consulting students you know who are currently in college, like family members or friends, who went through the years you are about to experience.

Ask them what advice they would give you, what you should prepare for now, and how they were able to achieve academic success in high school. Though every person is different, gathering as much information as possible will only help you understand the process of preparing for your future and what you should expect.

Books and Online Publications

Of course, you also have access to books and online publications about high school academic success, preparing for college, and planning for the future you want.

Books like College Admission—How to Get Into Your Dream School: Real Students, Real Stories, for example, contain stories and tips from real college students on topics from formulating good study habits to learning how to relax when school gets overwhelming.

Always think critically about where you get your information and check your sources; but with the digital world so full of resources, you can usually find plenty of answers to any question you might have.

6. Prioritize Your Health

You cannot have academic success in high school if you are not healthy enough to experience it fully, so make sure you always prioritize your health.

Tip #3 will help with this, but make time to exercise, eat balanced, nutritious meals, drink plenty of water, and sleep. Take a rest when you really need it, carve out time for mindfulness in your day, and spend time with friends and family.

Your body and mind work best when you take good care of them, so do not sacrifice your health for the sake of a good grade. You know when you can work harder and when you should take a break, so listen to yourself and learn your own signals.

7. Create Your Own List of Success Tips

Finally, realize that you are a unique individual and will be able to create your own list of success tips as you go through high school.

Every student and adult could tell you personal lessons they’ve learned, but only you can get to know yourself well enough to craft your own list.

By recognizing your individual power, you will also begin to learn that only you can be the best version of yourself. Know your value by prioritizing your academic success in high school, learn which classes and activities you are most passionate about, and enjoy learning while you have a safe and supportive place to do so--you will thank yourself in the future!

#nshss #school #academics #education #college #success #successtips #highschool #collegesuccess #information #career

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raygoodwinbaphotographyjournal3 · 4 years

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PHOT301 - Mileage May Vary - An Evaluation

The first portion of this project has gone already? Those people weren’t lying when they said it’ll go fast once third year comes around. And this evaluation marks the end of PHOT301, which is the early stages of the FMP, featuring all of the research and planning of ones project. Although this is only the beginning for what I finally titled ‘Mileage May Vary’. This project is the culmination of a majority of previous works all the way back to my access course, which started in 2016. The seeds of MMV were planted all throughout my tenure at university, with elements from PHOT103, 104 and 201.

Rover 75 - Mamiya 6 IV - Cinestill 800T

PHOT202 is where my work took a turnaround. That whole project was a massive mistake: start to finish. It had the right intentions from the get go, and was meant to let off where Alienated Spaces left off. However, I felt alienated about a project about alienation as I was trying to convey something that had dwindled over time. This lead to me leaving anything contextual behind and focusing purely on taking images for the sake of images. It was during this time of making images without any substance, I thought of a project that documented cars that managed to escape the 2009 Vehicle Scrappage Scheme. Annoyingly, this thought came to me when I was a good way through PHOT202 and wasn’t able to go through with changing an entire project, but I wanted to keep hold of it for a summer project, which then turned into my third year work.

The summer time isn’t a conducive time of year for my to be working, as I find the harsh sun and long days uninspiring and the weather is always too hot. That may come across as whiny, but it is just how I feel about the summer. I managed to get one measly shoot in before university started again in September, yet it was interesting to see where my head was at, in terms of composition and creating images. This managed to lead me into a practice that as mostly self lead, but also included an amount of research to back up what I am doing. Although, I piqued up my reading on hauntology, and came to the realisation that it has been omnipresent without my knowledge since the very early days of the degree. Hauntology is something that took me a long time to get my head around, as the first interaction of it was convoluted. However, with much more reading on the internet, and Mark Fisher’s writing made it a lot easier to grasp the spectral haunting of our society. Fisher has always been an accessible writer to me, and makes somewhat complex theories by making them link into something contemporary, which I find a lot easier to digest. I found Derrida’s original text about hauntology was difficult to take in and only made me hate it. Fisher does a good job in making some palatable without dumbing it down.

The other aspect that informed my practice was governmental data about the VSS. Thankfully in 2014, the government released the numbers from the scheme, which detailed how many vehicles were scrapped between 2009/2010. However, there are some detailed discrepancies with the data as it was all taken from different sources, and those sources were each and every dealership that received candidates for scrapping. Despite this, it was interesting to see the ‘reality’ of the numbers regarding the vehicle scrapping. Perhaps in the final stages of MMV, I should look at the highest number of scrapped cars and document them.

Shooting the project was potentially the easiest experience as of yet. The process of finding subjects was mainly walking the streets of towns and cities. There is no way to gauge what one is going to find as its impossible to know what cars are on what street, with the only way to know is to find out. Finding the right subject was a form of trial and error, with a lot of the cars mainly on the streets now won’t be affected by the VSS as they didn’t exist. Some models did however, but the date on the registration plate would place it after the scheme. The technical aspect was no problem either, as I am now fully proficient and reliant on shooting film for personal projects.

There also wasn’t many issues regarding shooting apart from the exposure issues, which was down to me, and the same roll being slightly damaged by the processing provider. These can be overcome by making sure the equipment is in place, and changing where I process my film for colour. Whilst that may cost slightly more and take longer, its the peace of mind knowing that it probably won’t be damaged by a rushed process.

Volkswagen Type 2 - Canon EOS-1 - 50mm F1.8 STM - Kodak Ektar 100

Taking the photos was a breeze, as I knew what I was looking for and taking. Although, what is included in the photographs has varied over the course of the project. It started with composing the majority of the vehicle in frame, but after talking to Jack Latham, it seemed like a good idea to focus more on the details of the car. I was including things like scrapes and dents, as this shows that it has been used and knocked over the years. But, I was featuring these points whilst the vehicle was mainly in view. I have mixed these together instead of limiting myself to one kind of composition.

One thing I would improve upon is shooting more medium format images for the higher fidelity of negative. I only shot one roll of medium format during these stages of the project, and this was the roll of which I had a shutter speed issue and the roll of soiled by MyPhoto. One thing I would like to experiment with the Cinestill CS41 kit, which allows one to develop colour film at home, with the same process as B&W. This makes it a lot easier to develop colour, as it is a finicky process with tight tolerances with temperature. I also decided to disregard shooting black and white, as I wanted to document the pragmatism and realism of the vehicles.

The photo book is something that I feel my work lends itself to, as it can contain a narrative bundled together in a handheld package. At this stage, I didn’t want to produce a self published book as it is still the early stages of MMV. However, I did want to make something that contained these elements, but had a level of experimentation to it. This is where the ‘zine’ comes into fruition; although I am not sure what to call it, as its a mix of a photo book and work in progress documentation of what I want to create further down the line. I made the online/PDF version on Canva, as it is a free and powerful tool to create graphics and documents. Once I knew what images I wanted and how to display them, it was rather easy to create. The cover was the most challenging aspect to this, as I knew I didn’t want to just have a photograph on the cover, and I wanted to resurrect my graphic design work. For this, I utilised one of my images and editing it with GIMP, a free alternative to Photoshop. The cover contains semiotics to the entire project: cars are the sole image on the cover which reflects on the project’s subject, which is coloured red to signal the Labour government’s scheme and the bitmap effect was to give the illusion of newspaper articles about the scheme/news. This is a style that I would like to go back to and hopefully keep using for the next portion of the FMP.

Being informed and influenced is something that I written about being somewhat difficult for me. Whilst I do digest photography on a regular basis, only some of that actually makes an impression. I can appreciate a nice photograph, but it rarely gets my creative juices flowing. Although once in a blue moon I will stumble across a practitioner that just gets me. Once of those is the little known Vlad Tretiak; a Russian based photographer with a partial social media following. His work manages to intrigue me in a technical aspect as he shoots medium format at night time, as well as the subject themselves. I have always had a fascinating with anything Russian and Soviet related, and this manages to meld in my love for cars. Chris Dorley-Brown was tuned into me by Jack Latham, and Dorley-Brown’s work focused on the portraits of motorists stuck in traffic during the summer of 1987 in East London. I rarely enjoy photographs containing people, but it made me think that my work as portraits of the cars themselves. I also was inspired by Franck Bohbot, who I looked at during PHOT104′s Economy project. These practitioners, as well as the contextual research of hauntology has spearheaded me into a well informed project, which after PHOT202 was much needed.

Citroen Berlingo Aftermath - Canon EOS-1 - 50mm F1.8 STM - Kodak Colour Plus 200

Where does this lead me for the final stage of the FMP? With all of the now previous work, I feel as if I have a good project on my hands and that I can take it far. It feels as if I am finally undertaking a project that I am actually enjoying to shoot to produce, in addition to not feeling like it’s died as soon as it has been handed in like previous projects. The premise of this project was on my mind for a while and I am happy that I can finally undertake it, and take it into the future to wherever it will take me. What I have produced is something that I am proud to have my name to, and it has garnered some good feedback and constructive criticisms. The work flow shall continue after PHOT301, and any film started before, and hasn’t been finished before the deadline shall be used for the second portion of the FMP. With the continuing stages of MMV, I plan to still use the compositions of full car and close up detailed shots, but I would like to incorporate the numbers/statistics of the cars that were scrapped - possibly even photographing a selection of the most scrapped vehicles from the government spreadsheet. The prints will also progress, as I plan to print at least A0 for Free Range and accompany them with a layflat ‘coffee table’ style book, detailing an edited down selection of all vehicles photographed during the project. Technically, I would like to utilise more medium format and find a more uniform visual aesthetic in regards to tones. This would mean possibly shooting one type of film and edit them accordingly. Although I would like to use some expired film to add to the hauntology of the photograph, as well as using a film stock that co-exists with potential vehicles in frame. If multiple stocks are used, I shall to the best of my ability edit them so they are visually similar with little difference between them.

I feel that this has been the most enjoyable project to date, as it has been totally up to me with what I do, instead of interpreting a brief and making my work fit it some how. With this, I have been totally free to create what I want to create in a professional and informed manner. I am looking forward to seeing what the future brings for this project.

#PHOT301

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inflamed-and-untamed · 7 years

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What Life with Chronic Intestinal Pseudo Obstruction is Actually Like.

This is reality. I drove my car for the first time since June a few days ago. I had to drive 5 hours to Michigan to see my doctor. Just doing that simple thing has wiped me out. I slept until almost 2PM the day after I got back to Illinois and I've been running a slight temperature and feel overall awful. My nausea has been a lot worse the past month or two but we switched my nausea med to the IV version so hopefully that will help.

Living with the rare disease, CIPO and Intestinal failure caused by CIPO is difficult. Like really, really difficult. Normally if a patient comes into the ER with extremely dilated loops of bowel with air fluid levels and has symptoms of severe pain, nausea, and vomiting they are treated as an emergency. They are admitted and will have an NG tube placed for decompression and will be NPO and put on IV fluids and pain medicine. Sometimes surgery is required. Luckily for them there is a resolution. An end in sight.

Dilated loops of bowel with air fluid levels is the radiographic picture of a bowel obstruction. That is what a bowel obstruction looks like on imaging tests like CT scans and X-rays, MRE’s and barium follow-throughs. In patients with severe CIPO we live that every day of our lives but there is no fix. No surgery or solution to make it go away like for patients with actual mechanical obstructions or temporary ileus’.

Every

day.

There has not been a time in the last decade where my digestive system hasn't had diffuse dilated loops of bowel with air fluid levels and most times a dilated stomach, too. In fact I had to Google what a normal small intestine looks like on imaging because I’ve never seen mine look normal. The difference is startling. Somehow those of us with CIPO are supposed to manage to live our lives this way when people who have insides that look like ours would be treated as a medical emergency. In CIPO there isn't a mechanical reason for obstruction. Instead the body looks and behaves just as if it has an obstruction because peristalsis is weak, absent, or inefficient due to visceral neuropathy or visceral myopathy. CIPO always affects the small intestine but can also affect the entire digestive system and even other organs like the bladder. In my case my whole system is affected.

I have had to try and live as normal of a life possible with a stomach and small intestine that has diffuse, extreme dilation. The pain, nausea, vomiting, distention, weakness, weight loss, malnutrition, etc is debilitating. Like I said, if anyone came into the ER with a digestive system that looked like mine it would be treated very seriously. All this past year every time I’ve been had any imaging done the radiologist freaks out at the sight of my digestive system. My NJ tubes kept kinking because even my stomach was so dilated it was difficult for the interventional radiologist to get the tube in the right spot. Under fleuroscopy me and the radiologist watched the NJ tubes kink. I swallowed 4 tubes in a week. I went in for a GJ tube placement this year but the radiologist took an X-ray and said he wouldn’t be able to do it because my stomach and intestine were too dilated. I would need to have a surgeon do it instead. The year before a radiologist panicked when she took an X-ray of my digestive system before a barium follow-through. She had to call my GI to make sure it was safe to proceed with the procedure because my insides looked so bad.

In some cases procedures were entirely stopped because it was too risky to continue. Things that should have been routine surgeries or procedures have failed or been stopped because of how messed up my insides are. This is what I live with

every

day.

I've gone through hell and yet I just have to live like this. This is my reality. What would be treated as a medical emergency and a hospitalization is what I live with every day of my life. CIPO is no joke, especially those who have a very severe case of it. Every day I have very real things to worry about. Like how dilated I am and if my bowel will perforate and leak contents into my abdominal cavity causing sepsis and death. Or if my TPN will cause liver failure or bone death. Or if I will lose central veinous access sites or if I will get a blood clot or a line infection that could kill me.

These are my every day risks.

It's so sad to think that people with dilated loops of bowel who have severe pain and nausea and vomiting who come into the hospital are treated as serious emergencies and yet us who live with CIPO have to try and live our every day lives with that and try to function. You become used to pain. Actually, you never get used to the pain. You just have to live with it and sadly every year I watch more of my life slip away.

Those of us with CIPO are living with the same radiologic signs and the same symptoms of a serious bowel obstruction. The same radiologic imaging. Yet no true mechanical obstruction exists; instead our peristalsis does not work. Peristalsis - a function your body should be able to do, and ours can't do it right so food, fluid, and air does not move through our digestive tracts like they should. Contents back up and we feel sick and become nauseous, our abdomens become hard and distend and it's painful and often we vomit. Since contents do not move through our digestive tracts as they should gastrointestinal stasis leads to bacterial overgrowth which increases the risk of recurrent sepsis.

Living this way is SO exhausting.

We lose weight, we deal with severe malnutrition and many of us can no longer eat. Our lives our controlled by horrible things like this:

I can no longer eat. I have intestinal failure due to the fact that my peristalsis is so bad that I don’t even go into a fed response. I receive nutrition through a central line. That means that I have to be connected to a big bag of liquid that is full of protein, carbohydrates, fat, electrolytes, water, and trace minerals. I infuse this bag into my body over 12 hours a day. My life revolves around this ritual. I must take the bag out of the refrigerator 2 to 3 hours before I’m ready to infuse it. Once it is room temperature then I must set up the infusion. I draw back additives into syringes and add them into the bag. I connect the bag to a pump. I pump the bag into my body for 12 hours. I have to make sure that I maintain a sterile technique through all of this because I have a line that goes directly to my bloodstream and if any bacteria gets in it I can die. This is a daily ritual I must do in order to provide myself with the best quality of life possible.

Some days are easier than others. I try not to complain.

My day-to-day life is pretty much running TPN, running IV fluids, taking baths to try and relieve pain and reduce stress, drawing up nausea medication into a syringe and injecting it into my port every 6 hours, and spending most of my time in bed. I feel guilty often for not being more of a person. I want so badly to do more than I can. I want to take care of our house better, be a better this and a better that.

CIPO is a rare disease. It’s a disease listed on the Compassionate Care list. Only diseases that are terminal or guaranteed to be life limiting are on that list. It’s an invisible disease. If I put on makeup and do my hair people think I’m healthy. They have no idea that most of my time is spent in bed and that my life revolves around pain and setting up my nutrition and all the other things. They have no clue I spend so much time in the hospital. They have no idea how many horrible and invasive procedures, surgeries, etc I have had to go through each year.

CIPO is awful. I have a few close friends I’ve made on the internet who also have it. It is so debilitating and we are all in different stages of horrible things that no person should have to face. All of us are on TPN. That means that none of us eat real food. We are “fed” through our bloodstream. We all have intestinal failure. We are at various stages of sad things. Two of my friends have already had intestinal transplants and one is in rejection. Some of us are waiting for transplants. Some of us are hoping to remain on TPN as long as possible to avoid transplant. All of us have been in the hospital this year. NONE of us should have to deal with these things. We are too young and too lovely and we deserve to live a better life.

Pin the image below to reference this later, and check out my award winning Pinterest boards!

#CIPO #chronic intestinal pseudo obstruction #rare disease #intestinal failure #dysmotility #motility disorder

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amartincolby-blog · 7 years

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Angular 2+: A High Level Analysis

This post was written back in December of 2016, so it’s a bit out of date. It is cross-posted from my LinkedIn page.

This is not meant as a primer to get you learning Angular 2, although it could partially serve that purpose. This is meant to provide a high-level overview of the technology, compare it architecturally to Angular 1, and hopefully provide some help to people who need to present it as a possible tool for future projects. Furthermore, as with everything I post on LinkedIn, I will tie this knowledge into the recruiting and hiring process, and offer recommendations to those looking for jobs.

Table of Contents

What is it?

How does it work?

Pros

Cons

Should you use Angular 2?

Should you learn Angular 2?

How should you hire for Angular 2?

Conclusion

What is it?

Angular 2 is called a JavaScript Framework. I don’t like this term, because it implies that it is something different from JavaScript. It is not. It is JavaScript. It is better to describe it as a pre-written piece of application where you decide what the application specifically does. It is the cake mix of the programming world.

Angular provides easy-to-use connections to servers for getting and sending data, and makes it very easy to display that data and capture user interactions on the screen. It provides a variety of safety features that prevent common errors in application development and allows lower-level developers to produce higher-level work.

As you can imagine, since all Angular provides is the routes for the data, you need to decide where the data will go and what the data will represent. Your data could be a map, it could be an e-commerce website, it could be an online puzzle game.

Angular is one of many JavaScript frameworks and libraries. In general, all of them are very similar in intent. They are pre-written pieces of JavaScript intended to make getting an application running quicker and easier. Other frameworks are Knockout, Backbone, Ember, Aurelia, Meteor, and the new 800 pound gorilla, React.

You may hear people say that frameworks and libraries are different, and that is true. But from a high-level perspective, the difference is unimportant. All you need to know is that Angular, along with its ilk, are all implemented for the sake of achieving the same thing. And they all will achieve the same thing. That’s why knowing the details of each framework is pointless. All you need to know is that Angular and React are your only two choices for large scale applications because those are the only two with significant corporate backing. Google backs Angular, and Facebook backs React.

How does it work?

Before we cover Angular 2 and why it is important, let’s look back on Angular 1.

Angular 1 and Angular 2 share a name, but nothing else. They are completely different. Angular 1 worked by taking HTML, the most basic part of a web page, running the JavaScript, then populating the HTML with the data and making any changes to the user interface that were dictated by the JavaScript. Angular’s basic philosophy was to be an extension of HTML so it essentially started with HTML. This allowed HTML/CSS developers to populate their designs with dynamic data without having to worry about any of the data transportation or wiring.

Since the HTML loaded separately, users could sometimes see unloaded Angular references in places where data should be, such as seeing {{ users.kmitnick.address }} in the space where the user’s address should have appeared. If the user created custom HTML elements, just like a <div> or <span> but with a different name like <kevins-element>, and the HTML used them, nothing would appear there at all until the JavaScript loaded.

Broadly speaking, this sort of structure is actually a very, very old idea known as MVC, or Model, View, Controller. MVC is a programming pattern, and a pattern is any structure for a program that is used to determine how the programmer will organize her code.

MVC, MVVM, MVVC, OMGWTFLOL, these are all patterns. As an initialism, MVC has been around since the 70’s, and even longer as an idea being implemented. That’s probably why it’s one of those programming concepts that no matter your level of expertise, you may have heard it. For the modern web, the View is the user interface built from HTML, which sends things to the Controller, which is just some JavaScript that decides how to change the application’s state, and the application’s state is stored in the Model, which is just data stored somewhere.

In early web apps, the View was what the browser, Internet Explorer or Netscape, received and displayed. JavaScript interactions were limited. Requests would come from the View, go to a server, and the Controller there would communicate with a Model, change data, and send back completely built HTML Views to the client. This design still has more merit than many people think, but that’s for another post.

By and large, this form of MVC structure has been superseded by AJAX. AJAX, which is another term you may have heard, was the idea that the Controller and Model could, to a great degree, happen on the user’s computer, limiting the amount of server communication to the initial application code and then just streams of data. This is where Angular 1 entered the picture.

A good comparison of the old web and the new web are map websites. The earliest map websites, like MapQuest, would display a map with buttons for zoom in, zoom out, and moving north, south, east, and west. Each button would send a request to the server, the server would then decide what to display, and send the entire page back to the user, with the map represented as nothing more than an image. It was a slow and clunky process to move around a map.

New, AJAX-powered maps were brought center stage with Google Maps. This allowed the user to move around and dynamically zoom in and out, and all that ever loaded were new pieces of the map which automatically stitched themselves together. In this scenario, everything in the MVC was on the client, with the server only concerned with sending back raw data and new map images. Basically, this technology introduced the sort of map interface that absolutely everyone now uses.

One of the problems with the old MVC structure is that the controller is forced to do two things. It must update both the model and the view. As such, if something goes wrong, the application can have a data misalignment. The model can have one piece of data and the view can have another. If the controller is not adequately prepared to handle errors between the two, massive misalignments could happen. For example, you’re moving around Google Maps and suddenly pieces of map from the wrong place start loading because the controller thinks you are somewhere other than what you are looking at.

To solve this problem, we have Angular’s party piece, two-way data binding, that essentially does away with the controller. Controller functions are integrated into the view and the model. That is why I said that Angular 1 was, broadly speaking, MVC, but is more accurately described as a model-view-view-model, MVVM. This is a broad simplification of the structure, but I think it works for a high level.

The problem with this is that while it mitigates the possibility of a data misalignment, each change can cause another change. For example, the user changes something on the screen, which causes a change in the model, which causes a change on the screen, which changes the model, and on and on. This was called the Digest Cycle, aka Dirty Checking. It was dirty because it was unintelligent. It simply checked everything for changes.

The digest cycle would run ten times by default. Why ten? Completely arbitrary! If changes are still happening after ten cycles, they wouldn’t appear. Angular fans would say that if your application runs into this problem, it’s badly designed. I counter that since your framework allows this problem, it’s badly designed. I win. Angular 2 gets rid of the digest cycle.

Angular 2 also does away with the separate HTML. The HTML and CSS are usually still contained in separate files, so they can be edited by HTML/CSS developers, but the code from those files is then brought into the JavaScript as it runs. The JavaScript engine then produces the user interface. There is no more two-way data binding, and changes are determined with a difference checker and the interface is updated only as needed.

The end result of this is that, since what the user sees is produced based on the available data, there is never a data misalignment. The view no longer exists as a separate entity. It is a product. The ramifications of this mass realignment of perspective are significant for all of software development, but I won’t go into that here.

You will probably hear a lot about how Angular 2 steals many of its ideas from React, and this is how. React is a JavaScript-first perspective. The user interface is produced by the JavaScript. It is not a separate thing that is populated by the JavaScript. Because of this, React was wildly faster than Angular 1 which was an HTML-first design. Its popularity immediately exploded and the Angular team followed it. As such, Angular 2 and React have similar levels of performance.

So, now we know how Angular 2 is different from Angular 1, but what is it, and how does it relate to other frameworks? First, although Angular steals a lot from React, it is not React. The developer experience is very different and how it achieves what it achieves is very different. React follows a paradigm that is proving popular called a virtual DOM. Basically, the entire state of the application is stored in an ordinary object. It's basically just a huge list of values that, when put through React, outputs the page. When a change happens, React compares the old version of the app to the new one, then only renders what changed. Every time something changes, the entire application state is compared.

Angular 2 tries to avoid a complete comparison through the use of various types of mojo, but ultimately, the optimizations seem to be a wash. Speed tests show React and Angular 2 trading blows. The ultimate point of this is that by choosing Angular, you aren't sacrificing speed.

The biggest thing you gain from using Angular is an interface that is similar to Angular 1, so it can make transitioning from old A1 apps easier for the developers. There are concepts to learn, but the layout of everything is similar. And while behind the scenes, things are completely different, the developer still has a CSS file, and HTML file, and a JavaScript file.

Pros:

Angular 2 is a huge upgrade over Angular 1. Not only is there a demonstrable speed increase, it is also better from a theoretical standpoint. There were many people who called Angular 1’s MVVM an anti-pattern, because calling something a pattern implies overcoming potential complexity with the structure. A program that just stupidly checks, over and over and over, for changes is not overcoming any complexity! That is a dumb, brute-force application design. Angular 2 is much more elegant, faster, more powerful, and also easier to use!

Angular 2, being backed by Google, is stable. It’s not going anywhere anytime soon. If anything, with the rise of competition like React, Google is dumping even more resources into Angular, meaning it will move more quickly, and have even more attention lavished on it.

Angular 2 has a great deal of tightly integrated tooling that developers accustomed to Microsoft’s or IBM’s rich ecosystems have had for years. These testing and design tools can make rapid development and setup much easier and make adoption by Microsoft developers less painful.

Angular 2 is very strongly structured. This means that in Angular, there is one way to do something and only one way. This is actually good, since it means you can hire tool developers. By that, I mean the aforementioned developers that don’t understand code very well, but can nonetheless produce functional applications when given education in their particular tool, whether that is Angular or another framework. These tool developers are cheaper and more plentiful. Furthermore, documentation for Angular is better than for most other frameworks, meaning that low-level developers can more easily stumble their way through making something work by using Stack Overflow and Google’s own documentation. Both of these situations make an Angular app cheaper to produce, although not necessarily faster to complete, since your cheap developers are stumbling through their work.

Angular is very declarative. Looking at the code, Angular declares what data is where. If you see {{ user.postalAddress }}, you know that their postal address goes there. That makes it very easy to determine how a page will look when rendered.

Cons:

Angular 2 is very opinionated. This is the flip side of the structured coin. Opinionated software is software that expects you to do something in a particular way. For example, let’s say all of the data from your database comes out in one way, XML, but your framework can only accept JSON data. That is an opinion. And this example is actually somewhat true. Angular more easily accepts JSON than it does XML.

Since Angular is a rigid structure of data flows, file trees, and formatting, it makes things less flexible. If you are trying to integrate a new framework into an old system, Angular can prove very difficult. For example, integrating Angular 1 into a Microsoft MVC web application was easy, since Angular worked on whatever web page was there. Microsoft’s system would produce the web page, then Angular would work with it. But in Angular 2, the JavaScript is producing the web page, meaning that much of what the previous Microsoft structure did is obviated.

This also means that in Angular 2 there is a correct way to do things. If you instead discover some novel way to achieve some end, perhaps leveraging your skills in Vanilla JavaScript (normal JS with no frameworks), that way may end up being not correct in the future. The rectitude of your designs and implementations are at the mercy of another development team over which you have no control.

Angular 2 is not rigid in the right ways. Angular 2 allows a bad developer to create an absolute thicket of dependencies. Basically, an Angular app is broken into components, and each component has its own HTML, CSS, and functionality. One component can import another component, which can import other components. They depend on each other. This is power, but remember, one of the great advantages of Angular is allowing bad developers to produce functional stuff. You don’t want to give them power.

Angular 2’s external HTML and CSS allows large, monolithic components to be easily created, because that’s much faster than taking a design, creating lots of individual components, then combining them, testing them, and making sure they’re created with reusability in mind. Moreover, the HTML is declarative in nature, meaning that each set of {{ }} specifies the data to be contained therein. You can pass in the information externally, but what do you call it in the component? You can’t call it something like {{ accountNumber }}, because you may want to use the component somewhere where the account number is never used. So here, Angular’s declarative nature actually becomes a problem.

The end result is components that are either very large, meaning they are used rarely or even only once. Or the developer will try to create components so tiny that all of the declarative and easy-to-read code is completely gone. We have now severely limited the goal of rapid development with cheap developers.

Angular 2 is lacking critical documentation. Angular 2 has more documentation than the smaller frameworks, such as Ember or Knockout, but much of it is from Angular 2’s early period where answers no longer apply, and the breadth of accurate documentation is being rapidly superseded by React. And with many questions online being about migrating from Angular 1 to Angular 2, companies starting afresh will find little insight for their particular problems. Instead, this information becomes noise that must be filtered out. Since our goal is to use cheap developers, robust documentation is critical and noise is crippling.

The problem is exacerbated by the opinions of Angular and its team. As I said, there is a right and a wrong way to do everything in Angular 2, and that includes learn it. Everything produced by the Angular team online is in TypeScript, and as a result, most of the community writers thus write in TypeScript. What if you don’t want to use that? Too bad.

This is especially frustrating because even within Google, many of the teams use Angular with Vanilla JS. It makes sense! But they have the benefit of direct access to the Angular developers when a question arises. For us, we have to rely on what is published.

Further frustrations can be found in the nature of the online documentation. By that I mean how demos of every framework always show simple, easy-to-understand forms and applications. "Isn't this easy!" an article will exclaim. There's a problem, though.

You will never encounter these in the real world unless you are creating cookie-cutter websites!

The problems of an actually-existing application are very complex. You will have different APIs, different languages, different platforms, and on and on. The easy-to-understand, high-level examples provided by dev teams are almost universally so simple as to be basically useless in any real project. Once a developer actually gets down into the weeds of a framework, she is on her own. As such, community support written by people facing those same complex problems is critical. If the community is small, and the associated documentation not there, your cheap developers are suddenly taking a very long time to solve a problem and costing a lot of money. Angular 1.x has the benefit of five years worth of community documentation online. Angular 2 has less than six months.

I have personally encountered this problem in spades, where official Angular 2 documentation is woefully lacking, and questions answered as late as November of 2016 can be out of date. That is a very difficult environment in which to become educated about a tool. The best that can be said is that, hopefully, this problem will lessen as time goes on.

Angular 2 is large. Angular 2 by default comes with RxJS for handling what are called streams. A stream is just that, a stream of data of theoretically endless length. As data comes in, Angular 2 initiates events that affect the user. This makes interactive web sites very easy, since your server can constantly dispense new data to the user and the user can see those updates immediately. So, that’s good! But RxJS and Angular 2 are over 800KB and can take half a second to start up. That’s not good.

Angular offers the ability to only use the parts of the application that you need, and you can compile your application server-side, but a complex application will rapidly reach Angular’s maximum size. For an application of any significance, it is safe to assume that you will eventually reach the 800KB mark. And if you decide to throw any more JavaScript on your site, you could exceed 1MB of just JS. Any way you slice it, that is a lot of JS.

Learning what's what in Angular 2 is difficult. The previous two problems can combine to give you double the fun. By that I mean how Angular 2, TypeScript, and RxJS all combine to make it difficult to figure out what question to ask. If you are trying to implement observables, is your problem associated with Angular 2 or RxJS? Is the problem with how you are using a TypeScript decorator, or Angular's Injectable? This can grind progress to a halt, because even if you manage to make something work, you cannot go forward until you understand why it worked.

Should you use Angular 2?

First, what is our goal with using a framework or library? Speed and price. That is always the answer. Because otherwise, pure JavaScript is the better direction since, well written, it will always be faster. We are using a framework to speed up development, since we don’t have to write our own connections. And we are using a framework because it is cheaper, both because it takes less time and also because we can use cheaper developers. That is an important point. A great deal of software development is being done by what I call blue collar coders. These are not coding ninjas. They need help.

So with that in mind, you may be surprised to learn that my recommendation is no, you should not use Angular 2. But let me explain.

Angular 2 is a half-step from Angular 1 and where I think the web is going, which is a pure, JavaScript-first perspective on application development. HTML and CSS are output from the JavaScript logic. Obviously, you should have specialists for HTML and CSS as well, because any specialist in JS has their hands full with that, but once the HTML/CSS people hand it over, the user’s computer should only get it after it has been built from within the JS.

I am not advocating pages that do not load without JavaScript. In my opinion, no website should appear as nothing without JS, which is painfully common. This is again why I like React. Setting up server-side rendering is easier in React than in Angular 2 and it is the best way to bring together the ideas of JS-first UI while also delivering static HTML/CSS to clients who either don’t have or are blocking JS.

That JS focus is the reason why I am advocating React over Angular. Angular is, as I mentioned, a very opinionated framework. Once you bring in Redux and Flux, React becomes more framework-like, but fundamentally, it is a library of tools that you can choose to use or not use. That means that you are less learning a tool and more learning a piece of a puzzle that is primarily Vanilla JavaScript.

Why is that good? Because of Angular 1.x!

And, interestingly, also Microsoft .NET. This is perhaps a bit of a tangent, but they say that those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it, and Angular is repeating the past. So if you’ll allow me to go back in time for a couple of paragraphs, I’ll explain how Angular and .NET are quite similar.

When Microsoft released its .NET framework in beta in late 2000, it was a complete paradigm shift, and as a result very upsetting for a great many developers. Literally up to the week of .NET’s announcement, Microsoft had been selling its DNA (Distributed Network Applications) platform and Visual C++ hard. After, it was .NET all the time. .NET was the future. .NET was the alpha and omega. .NET was the new hotness. DNA was not. DNA was dead.

That means that every single business and developer who bought into DNA was left behind. Every penny, while not wasted, was more wasted than it otherwise would have been. Every work-hour, less efficient. Developers had been averse to using Microsoft for years - just look at Java’s rise - but anger over the .NET switch really pushed the open source movement into high gear. Python, JavaScript, PHP, and Java all exploded. In 1996, Java was the 16th most popular language, by 2001, it was 2nd. In the coding world, the early 2000’s were seismic. Why would Microsoft do something so insane? Because they were afraid of competition that was going in another direction. Specifically, they were afraid of Java.

Angular 1 is a very similar situation. Fearing the meteoric rise of React, Angular 2 has been built entirely differently from Angular 1, and Angular 2 is the future. That means every app running Angular 1 is fundamentally dead, and since Angular 1 is a framework, there is no such thing as piece-meal migrating away from it. It’s all or nothing. And every penny you now spend on Angular 1 going forward is more wasted than it would be on a newer technology. Your desire to save money has ended up costing money.

To come back to Microsoft, just as Angular 1 was implemented to let bad developers produce functional code, Microsoft .NET developers are cheaper than other types of developers. That is arguably the only reason why the .NET framework continues to be successful in large scale enterprise environments. Major corporations like GE, Ford, or Bank of America are using cheap, commodity developers for almost all of their software development. Good .NET developers can cost half as much as a good developer in another language like Python. But if Microsoft ever does away with the current formulation of .NET, then you have an application that is destined to die and developers whose skills now have a best-by date.

Compounding this problem is how, as I mentioned earlier, there is a correct way to do something in Angular. That was true in Angular 1.x and it is true in Angular 2. You might be given a requirement, your team comes up with a novel solution, but since it is not the “official” solution to that problem, changes that are later implemented are very likely to either break or at least deprecate your novel solution. This yet again means going back and re-solving problems you have already solved. So not only do you run the risk of your developers going stale in the long term, you run the risk of your solutions going stale, or even completely non-functional, in the short term.

This significant risk of dead developers, solutions, and tools is why I think that Angular crosses a line of viability. Beyond the line, the risk of wasted work is too great for the time saved, at the line is no money wasted or saved, and before the line is money saved.

Admittedly, I don’t know where that line specifically is. I’m basing my assessment on nothing more than experience and the fact that the industry as a whole came to a similar conclusion in its embrace of open source languages in the early 2000’s and the nearly wholesale rejection of Microsoft. Today, I investigated the top start-up unicorns and their technology stacks. As near as I can tell, not a single one uses Microsoft.

The Angular team has not helped themselves in my belief that they are beyond this line with the recent announcement that they will next be releasing Angular 4. Yes, that’s right, Angular 3 is being skipped and they are jumping straight to 4. They have also warned that, while backwards compatibility is a priority, more breaking changes are on the way. This is because the Angular developers know full well where they are going, but haven’t quite figured out how to get there without pissing people off.

Ultimately, that is why I recommend a move away from a rigid framework and toward tools that are merely supportive of well-written, Vanilla JavaScript. This means good developers. It is true that they are more expensive on a line-item basis, but since they are learning the glue instead of the tools, they can more easily jump from tool to tool and will take less time to integrate new technologies. That is why the more modular, more JS-heavy foundation of React is preferable to Angular’s opinionated structure.

If you have a very good grasp of what the application will do, how it will do it, and know that it will not grow beyond that, and you are starting from scratch with no legacy code, then I think Angular 2 could be a powerful fit for you. But if any of those are not true, more modular, less opinionated tools are likely a better choice than the Angular monolith.

So what should you use? As you can guess, I advocate React, Flux, and Redux. I don’t find it surprising how quickly React has grown, and at this point surpassed Angular. It is faster, with front-end parts easier to learn, and much smaller than Angular. By all quantifiable metrics, React is better than Angular 2. I also advocate learning React over Angular because learning Angular means… you learn Angular. But learning React can be more supplemental to good JavaScript and architecture skills.

If you are already using Angular 2, don’t worry. It’s good! It will easily achieve what you probably need it to achieve. Furthermore, Angular 2's long-term direction isn't horrifically scary or anything like that. Changes are coming, but it is obvious from recent performance enhancements that the Angular team has found good ways to optimize the architecture without totally breaking its design. As I said, the developers haven't quite found out how to achieve what they want to achieve, but their progress is impressive.

The problem with this, though, is that your project will always have to remain on the cutting edge. You will constantly be refactoring code. You'll need to do this to ensure that you are taking full advantage of Angular, but also because the online discussion will always be about the newest version. For example, one of your developers asks a question online and is told "that's fixed in version 4.2.3," and then that's the end of the conversation. That will happen. Again, that line I talked about above rears its ugly head. As such, that's another reason why I think that React is a little bit better in most cases. As a library, you will have fewer instances of API breaks and better re-usability of your own code. And when problems arise, questions answered from a few years ago are more likely to still apply.

Ultimately, my views are heavily influenced by a very long perspective on what I think is the direction of web application development, and that direction is JavaScript. As such, the closer you keep your team and project to Vanilla JS, the better.

Should you learn Angular 2?

If you are a JavaScript front-end or full-stack developer, absolutely. Angular 1 was a nightmare, because while its basic concept was very easy to understand, it was implemented in such a confusing way that to call yourself an Angular Expert would have taken many months of experimenting. Angular 2 is even easier to understand at a high level, and with reduced complexity, it is easier to understand on a deeper level as well. You can achieve a high-degree of Angular 2 proficiency in around a month. I should qualify that this means you will be able to develop Angular components and integrate them in with a broader application. To effectively architect an Angular 2 application, you should give yourself three months of dedicated work.

If you are living the contractor life, then it becomes even more important. While I don’t think companies should use Angular 2, they will. Angular 2 is going to be around for many years, so it will be valuable knowledge to have for sale. And while below, I recommend that companies do not hire based on Angular 2 knowledge, they will not listen to me and will continue to do so. So even if you are able to program Commander Data in Vanilla JS, that will not be enough for many job openings.

Do not stop working on your JavaScript skills, though! They are much more important. One, it is a lot easier to lie about Angular skills in an interview. And two, as I said, I see the web application world heading toward a JavaScript-first paradigm. Everything else hangs off of the JS. Know that above any tools. Know your algorithms, know your optimization techniques, and understand how things initialize and flow in JS. Because that will give you the ability to really extract incredible things from inside the bounds that Angular 2 sets.

How should you hire for Angular 2?

As I said, Angular 2 is just a tool, but it is still a tool that requires highly specialized knowledge. This means that if you allocate some amount of a person’s expertise to knowing Angular 2, you must de-allocate it elsewhere. As such, a full-stack developer will have to either de-prioritize Vanilla JS knowledge, or de-prioritize full-stack knowledge. Thankfully, unlike Angular 1, the level of re-prioritizing is not huge. It is real, though, and will have an effect on your project and developers.

If you are hiring developers, whether they have previous Angular 2 knowledge is of almost no importance. You should focus entirely on their skills as a Vanilla JavaScript developer, because it is that knowledge that will enable them to better understand Angular’s under-the-hood functioning, wring better performance from the framework, and better respond to breaking changes in future versions. That knowledge takes a lot longer than a month to attain, whereas they can get up to speed in Angular in that time.

If you can find someone who is already an excellent JavaScript developer and also knows Angular, sweet! You saved yourself a month of training them. But remember, that is all you are saving. Do not choose candidates based on extant Angular knowledge. Especially with the revelation that the speed of Angular development is going to increase, the value of any previous knowledge in the framework is going to have a short shelf life.

Similarly, make sure you are hiring for the right kind of JavaScript developer. if you are using Angular, chances are your application is not brutally complex as regards calculations and data manipulation. Your bottleneck will be the interaction of the JavaScript with the browser, HTML, and CSS. This means that many of the questions that are commonly tossed at front-end developers during job interviews are pointless. The vast majority of those questions involve theoretical computer science concepts, manipulating data and something called Big O Notation. This knowledge, while certainly not useless, is often rarely important in front-end development. You need someone with practical knowledge of working in Chrome, or Firefox, or Edge. It is better to choose a developer with real world experience of dealing with performance issues in the browser than someone with a CS degree or who can ace a coding interview.

Your target skill matrix is JavaScript, HTML/CSS, and in a distant third, Angular 2 or React. Everything else is icing on the cake. I recommend keeping all skills on the client. By that, I mean target your talent search on people who understand working in the browser better than anything else.

If you absolutely need a developer who is able to develop further down the stack, then do not do it by half. Completely de-prioritize HTML/CSS. Search for only basic proficiency and understanding. Instead, your skill matrix is JavaScript, Node/PHP/Java/Etc, then in a distant third, Angular or React. You can then use off-the-shelf HTML/CSS libraries like Angular Material or Bootstrap to create the UI.

I do not recommend doing this. First, although HTML and CSS are often denigrated in the software world as programming for people who can't program, they are complex and fundamentally important to understanding interactions with the browser. And since every browser is different and receiving monthly updates, a front-end expert must maintain a huge set of constantly refreshing information. An employee who is concentrating on full-stack coding simply does not have the time to do this.

Second, customizing UI frameworks, which you will undoubtedly be tempted to do, is dangerous territory. In JavaScript, a slight change to the code will cause it to break. In HTML and CSS, truly awful code can often display correctly. So when a problem actually does present itself, it can be nearly impossible to find out why. And as UI frameworks have become increasingly integrated with JavaScript, e.g. Semantic UI, when things go wrong, they can go really wrong. So just as with Angular 2, using a UI framework forces you to stay within the bounds of the framework.

And third, while everything will work, it will look like many hundreds, if not thousands, of other apps and sites on the Internet. Whether you like it or not, appearance matters, and that means standing out. You don't want to be one of those websites with a Wordpress theme and tons of obvious stock photos. Default UI's stand out just as bad as "Smiling Professional Woman Holding Laptop." It will make your app look cheap.

Conclusion

As a developer, I value quality over speed. Obviously, in any real business, there is always a balance. As such, I am no longer the die-hard framework hater that I once was. Much of that, though, has less to do with my personal growth and more to do with the quality of the frameworks. Angular 2 and React are both much better than Angular 1 and other common JS frameworks. Indeed, the competition created by these two giants, and the multitude of small frameworks like Bobril, Inferno, Aurelia, and Ember, has resulted in a JS framework market that is moving at a truly stunning pace. Benchmarks for data set manipulation and UI rendering times have increased by a factor of two in just the last year. When opting to use a framework, the trade off that was once necessary no longer is, and certain projects can have their cake and eat it too.

So, really, whether you choose Angular 2 or React, you are getting something that is leagues better than what was available during the first era of JS frameworks. There are risks, as I adumbrated above, but ultimately there are always risks. That's why we're all getting paid to do this. I think that React is the future, but if you like Angular 2 more, you're not far off.

#javascript #angular2 #html #css #web development

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ailsiseburns · 5 years

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Mondays Lecture

So on Monday it was back to basics... learning to doodle! I did have a rough idea of what that consisted of due to being taught this through my foundation degree, to be honest, I always find this super super helpful especially to take a breather from all the coursework and enjoy embracing the tasks. First, we did a task on how to draw a penguin, from instruction of Oliver Jeffers, a brilliant past pupil from Ulster.

Yes, my Penguin is pink, but why not? It consisted of some really simple shapes, making it easier to imagine drawing other ideas, its all about breaking it down to the simplest forms.

We listened to a talk by Sunni Brown, an inspirational speaker on TedTalk, on how important doodling is and how beneficial it is especially in the workplace.

After listening to the talk we did some sketchnoting, first we started 20sec doodles of everyday items. Following that, we carried out the same task using 5 seconds, as you can see below.

So yes it is a bit messy, but after doing a quick exercise of learning to sketchnoting- to hopefully help digest the information better, we put this exercise to use with some sketchnoting of the Wilson Miner talk, I found the exercise very useful, it made the talk go in a lot quicker and made it easier to concentrate.

Kyle asked us to brainstorm some words associated with creativity and words associated with me, using the skills we learnt with he previous tasks.

I went home and created a neater version, mainly because the first one was so messy.

Kyle asked use elements about us to create a visual mark unique to us, I began brainstorming different elements and combining them in different ways.

It is very messy and they don't make a whole lot of sense, but they all have different elements of me combined, I circled some of the ones that seemed to work.

#ixdbelfast #ixd103 #branding #visualmarque

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jimmybechtel · 4 years

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10 Tips For Creating Effective and Engaging Website Copy

Cutting through the noise and getting someone’s attention online can be a difficult thing to achieve, but from a writer’s point of view this is an essential skill you will need to master, and fundamental when writing effective and engaging website copy.

So, what’s the fuss with web copy? Well if you think about it, you’ve only got a short amount of time to capture your audience’s attention, connect with their emotions and then keep them engaged until they’ve digested and responded to your text.

This can be difficult to master, especially when it’s not guaranteed that your site visitors will even read the whole of your text, let alone your opening paragraphs. Take yourself as an example – think about when you read content online – do you scan through as quickly as you can to find something relevant to what you’re searching for? Is the answer yes? We thought so. You only then stop and read the content properly when you’ve seen something which piques your interest against your search query. This is why creating engaging website copy is so important, as scanning web copy is something we all do!

Creating great copy takes time and practice and experience certainly counts for a lot. Remember that with practice and the right insights, it’s certainly possible to create great copy that connects with your audience and conveys the right message.

Copy Is An Art Form

It’s important to remember that copy is an art form. Personal preference is a huge factor, and not everyone will respond to your content how you want them to. If you keep your audience central to all your decisions, at the end of the day all you can do is your best to try and ensure those people resonate with your content (any extra readers you can grab along the way are a bonus!).

So, to help you aim to create effective and engaging website copy, let’s take a look at our 10 top tips…

1. Get to the point

As mentioned, you’ve only got a minimal amount of time to gain the attention of your readers. Therefore, get straight to the point. To keep the search engines happy too, make sure your copy is at least 300 words and get some keywords in there – after all a key factor is people actually finding your content in the first place.

You may be thinking that it seems rather contradictory to say ‘get to the point’ followed by pages of at least 300 words, and granted, it is a tricky balance. One way to get around this is to follow point 2 below…

2. Instantly Draw Your Readers In

The intro of your copy is hugely important. As it’s the first piece of text that your audience will view, it needs to instantly draw them in. Spend time on getting your introduction right, writing different versions and even coming back to it once the copy is complete to see if it needs to be amended for maximum effect. You may want to convey all the important parts of your content in this first section, so your readers aren’t left wondering whether your content is relevant or not – and importantly, whether they should keep reading.

Asking a question or creating a scenario relevant to the purpose of the copy are two examples of how to present an opening paragraph, and put yourself in the shoes of your target audience too – this will help you to visualise what they may react well to.

3. Be Personal

Speak to your audience directly and make your copy personal to them. After all, the intention of the words you use is to convince and persuade visitors to buy into your products or services, so address them directly. Using third person in your prose is less likely to connect with them. Instead, use ‘you’ as it’s more effective than any other alternative.

Creating copy that’s personal allows you to make it relevant to your reader’s situation and also convey your own personality too. Visitors want to see that your brand or business has a distinctive personality via your site pages, instead of having to discover this on your social profiles.

4. Avoid Jargon and Heavy Text

Where applicable, stay clear of using jargon and industry phrases. Remember, you want to keep your copy clear and to the point. Pages that are too heavy with jargon can cause your visitors to lose interest very quickly, as they will spend more time trying to deconstruct the phrases rather than the actual copy.

In addition, although you might have a clear understanding of what all of these terms mean, this doesn’t mean to say that your audience will. Therefore, keep it simple and write copy in a language that all new visitors will understand.

5. Present A Problem And The Solution

A great way to make your copy engaging is to present your reader with a problematic situation which they might encounter and then resolve this with a solution.

This will make them connect with the values of your business and make them aware of how you can help. By finding common ground with a scenario that they are likely to face, you are clearly stating why they should invest time and money in you because of the solutions that you can provide.

6. Use Subheadings To Break Up The Text

In 2013, a study by Nielsen Norman Group found that when website content helps users to focus on areas of interest, they stop scanning and begin reading. A similar study in 2006 which looked at site viewer behavior, found that users tend to read web pages in an F-shaped pattern.

To make sure that your audience can find what they are looking for, use subheadings to break up the text. This will make it easier for your readers to locate and identify the specific information they need without having to scan large amounts of text. If they are scanning information in an F shape, it’s also likely that they will pick up on the individual subheadings too and begin reading in more detail.

If your site pages are consistent in using subheadings and result in solid information architecture, this is much more likely to maintain audience engagement.

7. Write Optimised and Captivating Headings

While your content should be optimised, it’s also important to use captivating headings. Your page headings can be just as important as the first couple of sentences of your copy and it’s likely to be the first piece of text that your audience read.

An optimised heading will be favourable for the search engines, but you need to think about your audience too. How can you really gain their attention and entice them to continue reading your copy? The role of any heading should be to summarise what each page is about and also incentivise readers to stay on your site pages.

8. Incorporate Bullet Pointed Lists

Another way to make your copy easier on the eye and turn a scanning visitor into an active reader is to use bullet points and lists. Again, this won’t apply to every single page of copy that you produce, but where appropriate it can make a real difference.

If you are talking about the benefits of a particular service for example, these can be broken down into bullet points

Keep it simple and don’t overdo it

Between three to seven bullet points within a list is ideal

Bullet points will also break up the flow of your copy and create more white space, making it easier for site visitors to digest the information in front of them.

9. Place The Most Important Messages At The Start

Following the fact we’ve already identified in that users will scan information well before they commit to reading it – you want to make sure your important messaging is as upfront as possible. If you’re selling something, let the readers know, or if you offer a certain type of service, again, it’s important to let readers know as soon as possible – the last thing you want is for them to deem your website irrelevant and skip off to a competitor.

10. Use Strong Calls To Action

A prominent focus of web copy is to try and create a desired audience reaction. This is why your calls to action are fundamental. Regardless of whether you’re creating copy for your home, resources, about us or services page, you need to add these in where appropriate.

You may wish to add smaller and distinct actions along the way, such as ‘buy now’, but it’s worth including a stronger call to action at the end of each page of your copy.

Similar to your word count, don’t overdo it with the amount of calls to action you include. Too many will give the wrong impression and confuse your audience as they will be presented with a number of instructions.

Use active language to clearly tell your readers what you want them to do. Words such as ‘register’, ‘call’ and of course ‘buy’ are ideal in this situation. Also make your call to action simple to view on each page so that it can be easily identified.

Conclusion

Web copy can be extremely powerful, so remember the message that you are trying to convey to your audience at all times.

Write with your audience in mind and see if you can put yourself in their shoes and think about what you would expect to see from the site you are writing for. Remember, effective copy that draws an audience in and maintains engagement has a direct impact on customer relations and conversions.

Thanks for (hopefully) taking the time to read this post! If you’ve got any other ideas for making your website copy more effective and engaging, please add them in the comments section below.

The post 10 Tips For Creating Effective and Engaging Website Copy appeared first on Koozai.com

10 Tips For Creating Effective and Engaging Website Copy published first on http://wascript.weebly.com/

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timclymer · 5 years

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7 Day Sugar Detox Diet Plan – Lose Up to 10 Lbs by Flushing Out Poison

Although your love for sugar may seem benign, you’re probably eating a lot more of it than you need. The not-so-sweet truth is that most of us are eating tons of hidden sugars without even realizing it. Research has shown that having a sweet tooth could lead to some serious health issues including obesity, high cholesterol and blood pressure levels, diabetes, and poor oral health.

Getting a better handle on your diet will not only help you to lose weight, but it will also boost your energy levels and help you avoid doing damage to your health. In order to do this successfully you have to get rid of those debilitating sugar cravings, otherwise your whole diet will be put in jeopardy.

There is no value in cutting out sugar from your diet for a few days, and then going back to a diet full of it, but there is a lot of value in permanently leaving it out of your diet. This article isn’t about some 7-day fad cleanse, but rather it’s going to help you to seriously downplay sugar in your diet so that you can make it a permanent lifestyle change if you choose to do so. Your decision to detox from sugar for the next seven days will not only leave your skin glowing and your eyes sparkling, but it will also increase your energy levels, improve your digestion, and ultimately help you lose much of that unwanted fat that has been stubbornly clinging to your body until now. This is your ticket to feeling great and losing weight painlessly.

Why It’s So Hard to Quit Sugar? (But Ultimately Worth It!)

Being addicted to sugar isn’t a joke. According to some experts, sugar is eight times more addictive than cocaine and once you’re hooked, the cravings can be crippling and very hard to resist. Each day you continue to feed those cravings takes you on a slippery slope towards some major health problems which include obesity and diabetes. The reason it sometimes proves hard for some people to kick the sugar habit is that the brain reacts to sugar much like it does to drugs and alcohol. That’s why when you cut sugar from your diet, you initially feel the deprivation for a few days. Whenever your body is overloaded with toxins, you feel the need to continue to eat that particular food, and you get uncomfortable when you don’t.

Fortunately, no matter how hooked you have been to sugar up until this moment, there’s hope for you By following this sugar detox diet plan, you will be able to substitute processed sugars like cookies, cakes and sweetened beverages for natural sugars like fresh fruit without feeling the withdrawal symptoms and cravings that come from quitting sugar. Although it may be a bit tough to quit sugar in the short term, your efforts will pay off as you start to notice your cravings diminishing and your energy levels rising. The long-term benefits of removing sugar from your diet are even more astounding and impossible to ignore. The long-term benefits of removing sugar from your diet are even more astounding and impossible to ignore. One of the reports in the journal circulation states that studies have shown that drinking sugary drinks is a direct cause of diabetes and cardiovascular disease, both of which kill over 180,000 people worldwide each year. That alone is reason enough to go on this cleansing program, which, incidentally is also a great 7 day anti bloat plan for diabetics.

Purpose of the 7 day Sugar Cleanse: What this detox is going to do for you?

Sugar has a way of sneaking itself into much of the foods that we eat daily. The scary thing is that it’s even in a lot of the foods that we consider healthy and sugar-free! All the more reason to ensure that we help our body to get rid of toxins every once in a while. Now that you know just how bad sugar is for you, it’s time to help you understand the purpose of undergoing the 7 day sugar cleanse and what exactly it’s going to do for you. After undergoing this safe and easily do-able detox, you will lose weight, your taste buds will be re-sensitized and you will feel rejuvenated and energized. In fact, the purpose of this detox plan is to help you feel so good in your body at the end of the 7 days that you end up making this sugar-free diet a permanent part of your life.

This detox isn’t a ‘quick fix’ for weight loss, but it can help you to shed some unwanted fat from your body while at the same time taking a lot of the load off of body’s detoxifying organs like the kidneys, bowels, and liver. This means that while your body starts to look good on the outside as the fat is melting off, you’re also fast-tracking your health on the inside and helping your organs to improve their performance by giving them a much-needed break.

So, before we get started on the 7-day program, here’s a recap of all the benefits that you will get from a sugar detox diet:

– Lose Weight: Sugar is the new fat, and by cutting it out of your diet you will essentially lose weight as sugar (in all its forms) is the major cause of obesity.

– Boost Energy Levels: The facts are in, rather than giving you energy as most people mistakenly believe, sugar is actually responsible for sucking the life out of most people on a daily basis. Ridding your diet of it will leave you feeling brand new and rejuvenated.

– Prevent Chronic Diseases: The science is beyond question. Over time, sugar makes you sick and overweight leading to a host of medical problems. By cutting it out from your diet, you prevent your body from developing serious health issues like cancer, heart disease, type-2 diabetes, dementia, depression, and even impotence, acne, and infertility.

Getting Started on Your Sugar Detox:

A lot of us suffer from the effects of toxicity and we don’t even realize that we’re only a few days away from healthier, happier versions of ourselves. Right now what you need is a clear path to detox from sugar so that you can break the cycle of sugar cravings robbing you of your health and vitality. The good news is that it only takes a few days to rid your body of these toxins and to start enjoying some painless weight loss. This detox plan is going to help you get your body and your mind back at the end of these 7 days, and hopefully keep them in an optimal state for the rest of your life (should you choose to make this a permanent change). This detox plan will also help you learn a new way to eat and live that will bring you immense physical and mental health benefits.

Here are three simple steps to help you get started:

Step 1 – Clear Your Calendar Once you have made the decision to get started detoxing sugar from your body, it’s time to give yourself the best chance of success by marking a week in your diary where you will have no important events or functions like birthdays, weddings, or special occasion meals which may cause you to derail your detox plans.

Step 2 – Get The Go-Ahead From Your Doctor Although this 7 day sugar cleanse is designed to help you lose weight and increase your overall health, it’s still advisable to get the approval of your doctor first, especially if you’re pregnant or breastfeeding. Other individuals who should consult with their doctor first are those who have already been diagnosed with high blood pressure, those who are underweight, and those who intend to use this as a 7 day anti bloat plan for diabetics. Even if you don’t suffer from any of these conditions, it’s still a good idea to consult your doctor just to be on the safe side.

Step 3 – Prepare To Go Cold Turkey As previously stated, sugar addiction is a real thing, and the only way to handle such a physiological dependence is to stop it completely. Someone who is addicted to cocaine can’t have just ‘one line of cocaine’, the same as someone addicted to alcohol can’t have just one drink’. If you’re going to kick the sugar habit, you can’t have any sugar for these 7 days of detoxing. But don’t worry, there are plenty of tips and tricks in this article to help you automatically reset the hormones and neurotransmitters in your body and help keep the withdrawal symptoms at bay so that you don’t have to white-knuckle it through this whole process.

The Rules: Your Sugar Detox Diet Guidelines

The key to success with this 7 day sugar cleanse is to not try to ‘wing it’ but rather to have a full, detailed, step-by-step plan to ensure that you know what foods are allowed and which ones aren’t. It’s also important to plan your meals and snacks in advance so that you’re certain about which ingredients have added sugars. This will help you to avoid eating sugar inadvertently (which will just leave you feeling confused as to why you didn’t see any results from your detox). In an effort to help make it easy for you to identify the foods that are healthy and the ones that aren’t going to help your detox plan, here is a list of foods to enjoy and foods to avoid.

Foods to Avoid While on Your 7 day Sugar Cleanse:

– Sugar in all forms: Raw, white, brown, honey, maple syrup, artificial sweeteners, data sugar, palm sugar, coconut sugar, turbinado sugar, confectioner’s sugar, agave nectar, corn syrup, maple syrup, honey – You get the point, no sugar!

– Refined Flours: This includes white bread, bagels, pretzels, cookies, cakes, brownies, and so on.

– Condiments: A lot of added sugar is hiding inside balsamic vinegar, sauces, dressings, and marinades. Always check these for added sugars.

– Dried Fruit: A lot of people don’t realize that dried fruits like raisins and dates actually have a lot more sugar than fresh fruit and that is detrimental to your diet. During your detox period, stick to fresh fruit only.

– Beverages: Stay away from alcohol, sodas, fruit juices, and sweetened tea or coffee. To sum it all up, stop eating all forms of sugar and flour products. These cause an increase in cravings and slow down the metabolism, which ultimately leads to fat storage. Stick to fresh whole foods during this week-long detox. To make it even easier to adhere to this list, try to avoid any foods that come in a box, package, can or that has a label, but if you must use them, than scrutinize the ingredients to ensure that there is nothing in it that will hurt your chances of success. Asa general rule, avoid foods with ingredients ending in ‘ose. like fructose or dextrose. or ‘syrup’ like corn syrup or refiner’s syrup.

Foods to enjoy:

– Fresh fruit: All fresh fruit is great for your detox, so have at it! It’s the lowest sugar snack that you can have and it is packed full of fiber and antioxidants which help you lose weight and keep you feeling full.

– All Vegetables: As for the vegetables, make sure you pile lots of fresh ones on your plate at every meal.

They are not only good for your body but also help feel full faster while eating less overall

– Meat and Seafood: Lean red meat, skinless chicken, fish (fresh, canned in water or olive oil), shrimp, crab, beef, lamb, turkey, and bison are among the healthy choices you can make to create delicious, flavorful meals.

– Whole Grains: Opt for brown rice, wild rice, quinoa, barley, millet, buckwheat, sorghum, oats and other healthy whole grains.

– Legumes and Beans: Include a lot of red, green and black lentils in your diet. Chickpeas, navy beans, kidney beans are also a great addition to your meals.

– Nuts and Seeds: Raw unsalted almonds, macadamias, Brazil, walnuts, cashews, peanuts, raw unsalted sesame, pumpkin, and sunflower seeds. You can also have nut butters with no added sugars.

– Beverages: Drink lots of water (2-3 liters per day is recommended), unsweetened white, black or green tea and unsweetened almond or nut milks.

– Condiments: Red wine vinegar, apple cider vinegar, extra virgin olive oil, unprocessed coconut oil, and sesame cacao.

– Protein Powder: Sugar-free protein powders are fine to have while you’re detoxing, as are eggs, butter and all spices (especially vanilla and cinnamon). All in all, there are a lot of foods that can reverse the effects of sugar addiction and help you rewire and reset your brain and body so that you don’t get cravings during the transition period from a diet that’s soaked in sugar to one that is healthy and delightful. Most people think ‘no sugar = no fun’ and they believe that a diet without sugar has to be bland and boring, but as our sample menu below will show, that couldn’t be further from the truth.

7 Day Meal Plan – Your Sugar Detox Diet Simplified:

The secret to removing sugar from your diet and still being satisfied lies in modifying your favorite foods and making sure that you’re not left feeling deprived. The trick is to make healthier and more substantial substitution that please your taste buds. For example, rather than having a big slice of chocolate cake for dessert, you can satisfy your longing for sweetness with a healthy fruit salad and still stay safely within the guidelines of your sugar detox diet. And as the toxins leave your body and your taste buds start to improve, you will marvel at just how scrumptious fresh fruit actually is!

Here is a Sample 7-day Menu:

Day 1 Breakfast: Eggs cooked fried with avocado or olive oil, avocado, handful of spinach

Snack: Raw vegetables and spicy Mediterranean dip

Lunch, Turkey lettuce cups, tossed green salad with tomatoes, sweet peppers, and cucumbers, dressed with vinegar and olive oil

Snack: Tomato, cucumber, and feta salad

Dinner Chicken, grilled with fresh herbs, light vegetable soup, cauliflower rice lightly sauteed

Day 2 Breakfast: Blueberry smoothie – 1 ½ cups almond milk, a cup of frozen blueberries, 1 portion protein powder, 1 tbsp chia seeds, 1 tbsp coconut oil, handful spinach, and ice

Snack, 3 hard-boiled eggs, remove the yolks if you desire

Lunch, Light vegetable soup, green salad with tomatoes, sweet peppers, and cucumber dress with vinegar and extra virgin olive oil

Snack, Vegetables (celery, cucumber, bell pepper, or carrots), hummus

Dinner Italian green bean salad with low-carb cheesy bread sticks

Day 3 Breakfast: Eggs, scrambled, with sauteed spinach 8 mushrooms and salsa (check for added sugar)

Snack, Handful of Tamari almonds

Lunch, Light veggie soup, zucchini noodles

Snack, Raw Vegetables with spinach dip

Dinner Baked organic chicken breast, roasted asparagus with salt, pepper, and nutritional yeast

Day 4 Breakfast: Feta fritter with sun-dried tomatoes

Snack, Apple, 2 tbsp almond butter

Lunch, Avocado egg salad with mixed greens or have it over some seeded crackers

Snack, Low fat cottage cheese (½ cup) on cucumber slices

Dinner, Turkey lettuce wraps with sauteed peppers, mushrooms, spinach

Day 5 Breakfast: Peanut butter smoothie (2 cups almond milk, handful of spinach, ½ cup frozen zucchini, 2 tbsp cacao nibs, 2 tbsp peanut powder or peanut butter, 1 tbsp chia seeds, 1 tbsp coconut oil

Snack: Tamari almonds Lunch, Cilantro Chicken Salad

Lunch, Low-carb sweet pepper poppers, green salad with lemon and olive oil dressing

Snack, 3 hard-boiled eggs, remove yolks if desired

Dinner: Lettuce-wrap beef burger with onion and tomatoes, sweet potato wedges (tossed lightly with olive oil and seasoned with chili powder, salt, and pepper), green salad dressed with olive oil and lemon

Day 6 Breakfast: Cheese and spinach omelet

Snack, ½ cup ricotta with ¼ tsp. vanilla extract, with vanilla stevia to taste

Lunch, Low-carb sweet pepper poppers, green salad with lemon and olive oil dressing

Snack, Peanut butter (or any other nut butter with no sugar added) on celery

Dinner Stuffed chicken, mushroom, and spinach (baked), with tomato, cucumber, feta salad

Day 7 Breakfast, Crust-less egg muffin, single serve

Snack, Small handful of blueberries

Lunch, Chicken broth (chopped green onion and cilantro, pink salt, turmeric, ground pepper, red chit flakes), organic chicken breast seared and diced

Snack, Small portion of raw nuts

Dinner, Chicken drumsticks with garlic and lemon, zucchini noodles

Remember that this is a sample menu and it is easily interchangeable and adaptable to suit your needs, so feel free to swap around a few of the options and customize the menu plan to make it work for you.

Tips and Tricks, Fast-track Your 7 Day Sugar Cleanse:

Results Tip #1 – Start an exercise plan that includes strength training. Strength training win not only benefit your body during this sugar detox period, but it win continue to help you keep your blood sugar levels steady even after your detox is done. The more you use your muscles, the more glucose they require and use from your bloodstream. Less glucose in your bloodstream means less elevation of your blood sugar (and also reduced cravings later when your blood sugar levels begin to go down). Having lean muscle on your body ensures that your body gets more blood glucose out of your bloodstream and into your muscles, therefore exercise is the way to go if you want to experience truly mind-blowing results with this 7 day sugar cleanse diet. Exercise also releases feel-good hormones called endorphins into your bloodstream. This is great because when you feel good, you’re more likely to be able to resist mood eating. During this detox period, aim for at least an hour of strength training exercise like spin class or Tabata each day. You don’t even need the gym or any equipment, but the type of exercise that you choose has to be vigorous enough to make you sweat, like going for a run or hot yoga. This helps increase your lymph flow and circulation which in turn helps you to sweat out toxins.

Tip #2 – Eat a high-protein meal first thing in the morning. The reason that so many people reach for sugary foods first thing in the morning is that when you wake up (after fasting an night), the Garb levels in your body are low and the insulin levels are high. During your sugar detox week, rather than reaching for something sweet, combat that temptation by eating a protein-rich meal instead. This will not only fill you up without spiking your blood sugar through the roof, but it will also start to re-condition your brain and your body to start using protein as the primary source of energy. Refer back to the list of foods to enjoy as well as the 7 day sugar cleanse sample meal plan to see what a breakfast high in protein looks like. A favorite among some people who have undertaken this detox plan is the protein shake. It’s healthy, easy to make, and saves a lot of time. Although it’s important to have protein at every meal, when you power up your day with a protein breakfast, you ensure that you balance your blood sugar and insulin, which significantly reduces the number of sugar cravings you get throughout the day.

Tip #3 – Lower your stress levels: Swap ‘distress’ for ‘de-stress.. The reason why stressed-out people often reach for junk food is that stress raises your cortisol hormone levels, causing you to feel hunger while at the same time stimulating fat storage (especially bevy fat). This is also one of the causes of type-2 diabetes. Fortunately, recent scientific studies have discovered a way to de-stress and reverse that process. It has been shown beyond doubt that just taking a series of deep, relaxing breaths not only moves you out of the stress state but also triggers the vagus nerve which makes your metabolism burn fat instead of storing it It’s hard to fathom that something as simple as deep breathing could actually make much of a difference in your results, but it’s true. Try it for yourself. This is something that you can do anytime, anywhere, so there is really no excuse to let stress derail your efforts during your 7 day sugar cleanse. If you would rather try something different, by all means, go for it! Pet your cat, take a walk, tell jokes with your friends and family, watch a funny movie, read a good book, take a nice long soak in the tub – whatever it takes to help you de-stress and unwind even for just a few minutes at a time will produce amazing results.

Tip #4 – Be ready for emergencies; Keep healthy snacks with you always If you’ve ever been on any kind of diet, you’ve noticed that (as sure as Murphy’s Law) the worst cravings always hit when there isn’t a fruit stand, farmer’s market, or a healthy restaurant in sight, but you can bet that there will always be at least three fast-food restaurants, two vending machines, and a doughnut shop just a stone’s throw away! This is why you always need to be prepared with a healthy food pack so that you don’t end up making bad choices when cravings hit and there isn’t a healthy snack around. Keep an emergency food pack with you at all times. In fact, you could prepare a few and keep them in your car, laptop case, office, and anywhere else you can stash them. Fill your food packs with lots of protein-rich foods like nuts and seeds, (for example, Artisana nut butters), walnuts, almonds, pumpkin seeds, turkey jerky, salmon jerky, coconut butter almonds, unsweetened wild berries, canned wild salmon or sardines, and other portable treats. Try to have a combination of carbs, good fats, and protein in every snack. This makes it really easy to make a good choice when your blood sugar is dropping and you need something to tide you over till the next meal.

Tip #5 – Fight Sugar With Fat, Eat lots of healthy fat Fat has been blamed for obesity for far too long, but now everyone is starting to understand that sugar (along with flour) is the real culprit behind weight gain. Fat makes you feel full for longer, helps to keep your blood sugar levels steady, and it’s necessary for fueling the cells in your body. In addition to all that, fat also helps to transport essential vitamins and minerals in your body. Make sure that you have enough good fats like omega-3 fats from fish, nuts, seed, coconut butter, extra virgin olive oil, and avocados at every meal, along with lots of protein.

Tip #6 – Put out the fire (of inflammation). According to studies, inflammation triggers imbalances in the blood sugar, resistance to insulin, pre-diabetes, and type-2 diabetes, and the most common source of inflammatory foods is sugar (and flour, and trans fats). By staying away from sugar, you significantly reduce the possibility of inflammation, but there are also other foods that can trigger inflammation, and in order to rule out any hidden food sensitivities you may have, it’s best to stay away from some of the more common culprits during your detox. For the duration of your sugar cleanse, stay away from gluten and dairy. It could be that if you go without them for a few days you’ll find that you start to crave them, but remember that we usually crave foods that we’re allergic to, and although getting off them may not be easy, if you are indeed sensitive to these foods, then after just a few days without them you will feel relief from the cravings and many of your symptoms will start to fade.

Tip #7 – Make Time for your Zzzzz, Get plenty or regular sleep When you don’t get enough sleep your appetite hormones are affected, driving sugar cravings through the roof. In studies conducted on college students, they were deprived of just two of the recommended 7 to 9 hours of sleep, and this led to a marked rise in the hormones responsible for feelings of hunger, and a significant decrease in the hormones that suppress appetite. They had huge sugar and Garb cravings (and not the good kind of Garbs). Whenever you don’t get enough sleep your body wants energy and will crave those sugars that can be quickly absorbed. The best way to fight against this urge to overeat is to get more sleep and ‘sleep’ those cravings away. But remember, it’s not only lack of sleep, but also sleeping at erratic times that raises your cortisol levels and causes sugar cravings to intensify. When you don’t have a regular schedule for sleeping it interferes with your ghrelin and leptin levels (the hormones responsible for controlling hunger and satiety). By getting at least seven hours or more sleep, at about the same time each night (within about an hour), you will help your body to be consistent in ramping up fat loss during this sugar detox.

In Conclusion This 7-day sugar cleanse is much easier to follow than you may think, and you’ve already taken the first step toward success by reading to the end of this article. Now you know everything you need to know about the 7 day sugar detox diet and how it can help you lose up to 10Ibs (in addition to other physical benefits). The meals are all designed to be quick and easy to make, which makes this the ideal 7 day sugar detox plan for students as well as anyone who is too busy to prepare complex meals. Although the first few days may prove to be a challenge, by following the steps outlined and staying true to your goal, you will start to feel amazing in no time at all!

Source by Rico Marco

from Home Solutions Forev https://homesolutionsforev.com/7-day-sugar-detox-diet-plan-lose-up-to-10-lbs-by-flushing-out-poison/ via Home Solutions on WordPress from Home Solutions FOREV https://homesolutionsforev.tumblr.com/post/187742523600 via Tim Clymer on Wordpress

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homesolutionsforev · 5 years

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7 Day Sugar Detox Diet Plan – Lose Up to 10 Lbs by Flushing Out Poison

Why It’s So Hard to Quit Sugar? (But Ultimately Worth It!)

Purpose of the 7 day Sugar Cleanse: What this detox is going to do for you?

So, before we get started on the 7-day program, here’s a recap of all the benefits that you will get from a sugar detox diet:

– Lose Weight: Sugar is the new fat, and by cutting it out of your diet you will essentially lose weight as sugar (in all its forms) is the major cause of obesity.

Getting Started on Your Sugar Detox:

Here are three simple steps to help you get started:

The Rules: Your Sugar Detox Diet Guidelines

Foods to Avoid While on Your 7 day Sugar Cleanse:

– Refined Flours: This includes white bread, bagels, pretzels, cookies, cakes, brownies, and so on.

– Condiments: A lot of added sugar is hiding inside balsamic vinegar, sauces, dressings, and marinades. Always check these for added sugars.

Foods to enjoy:

– All Vegetables: As for the vegetables, make sure you pile lots of fresh ones on your plate at every meal.

They are not only good for your body but also help feel full faster while eating less overall

– Whole Grains: Opt for brown rice, wild rice, quinoa, barley, millet, buckwheat, sorghum, oats and other healthy whole grains.

– Legumes and Beans: Include a lot of red, green and black lentils in your diet. Chickpeas, navy beans, kidney beans are also a great addition to your meals.

– Nuts and Seeds: Raw unsalted almonds, macadamias, Brazil, walnuts, cashews, peanuts, raw unsalted sesame, pumpkin, and sunflower seeds. You can also have nut butters with no added sugars.

– Beverages: Drink lots of water (2-3 liters per day is recommended), unsweetened white, black or green tea and unsweetened almond or nut milks.

– Condiments: Red wine vinegar, apple cider vinegar, extra virgin olive oil, unprocessed coconut oil, and sesame cacao.

7 Day Meal Plan – Your Sugar Detox Diet Simplified:

Here is a Sample 7-day Menu:

Day 1 Breakfast: Eggs cooked fried with avocado or olive oil, avocado, handful of spinach

Snack: Raw vegetables and spicy Mediterranean dip

Lunch, Turkey lettuce cups, tossed green salad with tomatoes, sweet peppers, and cucumbers, dressed with vinegar and olive oil

Snack: Tomato, cucumber, and feta salad

Dinner Chicken, grilled with fresh herbs, light vegetable soup, cauliflower rice lightly sauteed

Day 2 Breakfast: Blueberry smoothie – 1 1/2 cups almond milk, a cup of frozen blueberries, 1 portion protein powder, 1 tbsp chia seeds, 1 tbsp coconut oil, handful spinach, and ice

Snack, 3 hard-boiled eggs, remove the yolks if you desire

Lunch, Light vegetable soup, green salad with tomatoes, sweet peppers, and cucumber dress with vinegar and extra virgin olive oil

Snack, Vegetables (celery, cucumber, bell pepper, or carrots), hummus

Dinner Italian green bean salad with low-carb cheesy bread sticks

Day 3 Breakfast: Eggs, scrambled, with sauteed spinach 8 mushrooms and salsa (check for added sugar)

Snack, Handful of Tamari almonds

Lunch, Light veggie soup, zucchini noodles

Snack, Raw Vegetables with spinach dip

Dinner Baked organic chicken breast, roasted asparagus with salt, pepper, and nutritional yeast

Day 4 Breakfast: Feta fritter with sun-dried tomatoes

Snack, Apple, 2 tbsp almond butter

Lunch, Avocado egg salad with mixed greens or have it over some seeded crackers

Snack, Low fat cottage cheese (1/2 cup) on cucumber slices

Dinner, Turkey lettuce wraps with sauteed peppers, mushrooms, spinach

Day 5 Breakfast: Peanut butter smoothie (2 cups almond milk, handful of spinach, 1/2 cup frozen zucchini, 2 tbsp cacao nibs, 2 tbsp peanut powder or peanut butter, 1 tbsp chia seeds, 1 tbsp coconut oil

Snack: Tamari almonds Lunch, Cilantro Chicken Salad

Lunch, Low-carb sweet pepper poppers, green salad with lemon and olive oil dressing

Snack, 3 hard-boiled eggs, remove yolks if desired

Day 6 Breakfast: Cheese and spinach omelet

Snack, 1/2 cup ricotta with 1/4 tsp. vanilla extract, with vanilla stevia to taste

Lunch, Low-carb sweet pepper poppers, green salad with lemon and olive oil dressing

Snack, Peanut butter (or any other nut butter with no sugar added) on celery

Dinner Stuffed chicken, mushroom, and spinach (baked), with tomato, cucumber, feta salad

Day 7 Breakfast, Crust-less egg muffin, single serve

Snack, Small handful of blueberries

Lunch, Chicken broth (chopped green onion and cilantro, pink salt, turmeric, ground pepper, red chit flakes), organic chicken breast seared and diced

Snack, Small portion of raw nuts

Dinner, Chicken drumsticks with garlic and lemon, zucchini noodles

Tips and Tricks, Fast-track Your 7 Day Sugar Cleanse:

Source by Rico Marco

from Home Solutions Forev https://homesolutionsforev.com/7-day-sugar-detox-diet-plan-lose-up-to-10-lbs-by-flushing-out-poison/ via Home Solutions on WordPress

#Home Solutions Forev

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templified · 5 years

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Migrating a Medium.com Website to WordPress | Templified

New Post has been published on https://templified.com/migrating-a-medium-com-website-to-wordpress/

Migrating a Medium.com Website to WordPress

If you’ve got a blog on Medium and you’d like to move it to your own website, this guide will walk you through the entire procedure from start to finish. There are a lot of benefits to having a permanent home for your content and we’re going to go over everything you need to know.

Medium is an incredibly popular blogging platform, there are millions of personal and professional blogs on Medium and more are coming online every day. Medium is a really solid platform, it looks great and it’s easy to use, but it does lack some features and flexibility that a WordPress blog can bring to the table. WordPress has more customization options, more flexibility and it’s incredibly simple to use. But how do you get that content from Medium onto your own blog?

If you want to know, you’re in the right place.

In this guide, we’ll show you every step you need to follow to migrate your blog from Medium.com to a WordPress website.

Setting Up a WordPress Website

Export Your Medium.com Articles

Import Your Medium.com Articles to WordPress

Import Media Files from Medium.com to WordPress

Create Redirects in WordPress

Add a Custom WordPress Theme for Your New Website

Install Critical WordPress Plugins

Why is WordPress Better Than Medium for Blogging?

WordPress’ popularity is unmatched. Almost a third of all websites use WordPress as their content management system. It’s not just for small, personal blogs either, some of the biggest websites in the world use WordPress because of the stunning number of features, the flexibility and the ease of use. Businesses like Etsy, Home Depot, Playstation, Zillow, The New Yorker magazine and even WhiteHouse.gov use WordPress.

WordPress is popular for good reason. But why? Well, let’s take a look at some of the features that you get with WordPress that you don’t get with Medium.

Traffic and SEO – With WordPress, you have full control over your SEO efforts. One thing that Medium doesn’t allow for is handling meta data, which has a lot of SEO benefits. With WordPress, you’ll be able to work on your SEO a lot easier, which can improve your website’s traffic.

Customization and Flexibility – Medium sort of is what it is, you can’t install plugins or addons for certain features. Pretty much anything you can imagine is possible with WordPress. There are thousands of premium and free plugins to handle image galleries, eCommerce, SEO, security and more.

Full Ownership – Medium looks nice, but it doesn’t allow for customization in terms of style either. With a WordPress site, you can install a theme to ‘skin’ your site for a new style anytime you want.

So, creating a website in WordPress gives you a whole lot more freedom to do what you want. But, with great power comes great responsibility. You’ll need to make sure your website is completely secure all by yourself. Fortunately, there are plugins that can handle that aspect, so it’s not too much of a burden.

Okay, now, you have a couple basic options for creating your blog using WordPress. There’s WordPress.org and WordPress.com versions. Just to sort of skip ahead, WordPress.org is probably what you should choose, but we’ve got a big guide on the differences between WordPress.com and WordPress.org, so you can read more about what choice might be better for your needs. For this tutorial, I’m assuming that if you’re moving from Medium to WordPress, you’re going to do that because of the features that WordPress has to offer and that means choosing WordPress.org for your new website.

Okay, enough about that, let’s get to migrating!

Setting Up Your New WordPress Website

We’re going to start right at the beginning, installing WordPress. First, you’re going to need a couple of things. A web hosting account, which is where all of your website’s files will be housed. And, you’re going to need a domain name.

Most web hosting companies will give you one for free if you sign up for a year long hosting plan, so you can just purchase that from a hosting provider like Bluehost or one of the other hosting companies out there. It’s up to you, but Bluehost has some pretty good deals right now.

Anyway, that’s the absolute basics of what you need to migrate your site from Medium to WordPress.

Once you’ve got your hosting all squared away, you’ll need to create a database and install WordPress. Fortunately, many hosting companies offer one click installation of WordPress, so you don’t have to do it the old fashioned way. Personally, I prefer to manually install WordPress, because the one-click installations often times include plugins or addons that I don’t want to have. But whichever way you choose, you need to get WordPress installed.

Okay, so you’ve got your hosting account and you’ve got WordPress set up. Now, it’s time to export your posts.

Exporting Data from Medium.com

It used to be a bit of a pain to export medium posts, there was no real automated way to get it done. These days, it’s pretty simple and straightforward. In fact, there are tools online to make it even easier than ever before.

Check this out, the Medium to WordPress exporter.

Just add your Medium website URL, enter your contact information and you’ll get a handy file emailed to you with all of your blog posts in a WordPress digestible format.

Once you add your Medium website URL, it’ll ask you for your Medium export file.

That’s easy enough to find, it’s right there in your Medium dashboard.

Click on account >> settings and scroll down to where it says:

Download your information

Download a copy of the information you’ve shared on Medium to a .zip file.

That will save a .zip file to your computer.

Now, upload that file to the Medium to WordPress exporter tool and wait for the magic to happen. Unlike real magic, it just takes a second.

So, once that’s happened, you have a file that WordPress can recognize, which is a big part of the battle.

We’re almost there.

Import Your Medium Content to WordPress

Okay, on the left side of your admin panel, hover on ‘tools’ and click the ‘import’ button.

Since you’ve got a fresh installation of WordPress, you’ve probably never installed the WordPress importer tool. So, install it real quick.

Once the WordPress importer is installed, you’ll want to run the importer, which is all the way down at the bottom of the screen.

After you click on ‘Run Importer’, you’ll be asked to upload your fresh .xml file that you got from the Medium to WordPress exporter.

Select the file and click upload file and import.

WordPress will give you the option to import those authors from Medium, to create new authors for your posts. Also, you can select an existing author or admin to assign those posts. Whichever way floats your boat.

Now, you’ll also want to make sure you click the ‘Download and Import File Attachments’ button, which will make sure your images don’t disappear during the import. It can be a big pain to have to re-upload images from hundreds or even thousands of posts.

Okay, ready? Yep.

Click the ‘Submit’ button.

Depending on how many posts and articles you have, it could take a few seconds to a few minutes to upload everything and get it into a WordPress friendly format.

You should see this success message after your import is complete.

And, that’s pretty much that.

Check to make sure everything has worked properly by going into your ‘posts’ section. You should see all of your Medium.com content as WordPress posts.

Magic!

If something got interrupted, you can always re-run the import. If you want to combine two or more Medium blogs, you can repeat the same process as many times as you need, it won’t create duplicate posts and it won’t hurt anything to run it again with a different .xml file.

Import any Missing Medium Media Files to WordPress

That’s a lot of M’s.

While everything should have worked fine during import, you might find that not all the image files have come through. This can often be the case with featured thumbnails.

Check the media files by navigating to Media >> Library in your WordPress admin panel.

Sometimes, you’ll find it necessary to install a plugin called Auto Upload Images to make sure all the media files get uploaded. But, hopefully, you’re in business without that plugin.

Install the plugin and activate it. You can go through each post to see which ones have failed to import properly. Auto Upload Images will pull any missing images from your Medium blog, so make sure you haven’t deleted it just yet. The plugin works in bulk, so you don’t actually have to go through them one by one, just click and let the robots do their magic.

More magic!

Okay, next, we need to create some redirects.

Create Redirects in WordPress and Fix Internal Links

If your medium.com blog was using a medium.com URL, you won’t be able to add any redirects in WordPress. Then again, if you were using your own custom domain name, you can create as many redirects as you want in your new WordPress site.

I recommend a plugin to create any redirects that you might need. Simple 301 redirects is a great choice.

This might not apply to everyone, but i you’ve linked between posts or articles in your Medium blog, you’re definitely going to want to make sure your new website gets those links. GOing through every post by hand and editing links is tedious, so I recommend a free plugin called Better Search Replace.

Once you install the plugin, you can run a search and replace query on your database.

I like to use very specific searches to make sure the plugin doesn’t accidentally overwrite crucial information, so I’d recommend using the full URL for replacement.

So, you’ll do a search for a URL like: https://myoldmediumsite.medium.com/

And replace it with: https://www.myawesomenewwebsite.com/

That way, you’ll be able to replace all of your internal links quickly and efficiently without overwriting anything you need.

As always, you should make a backup of your database before using Better Search Replace. It’s a powerful tool, but it’s a tool that does what it does without question, so it can hurt your database if you don’t give it the right information at the beginning. Also, I always like to use the ‘dry run’ feature before I actually run it, so I can see how many changes it says need to be made. If the number seems way out of line with what I expect, I know I need to double check some things before actually making the replacements.

Add a Great Looking WordPress Theme

One of the biggest reasons to select WordPress as your content management system, all of the incredible amounts of flexibility that it provides. That’s flexibility in terms of designs and features. So, picking the right WordPress theme is a big part of that. Well you can use one of the default themes, or a free theme, a lot of times more in-depth features can be got invited selecting a premium theme.

We’ve gathered up a number of themes that might be interesting for you. Some have a clean, minimalist style and some are great for eCommerce websites. You’ve got simple blogs or more intricate magazines. No matter what type of theme you choose, be sure to select one with the features you want. After all, that’s why you’re migrating from Medium in the first place, to take advantage of all that WordPress has to offer.

Check out some collections we’ve built to find some really solid options.

WooCommerce Themes for Building an Online Shop

Minimalist Style WordPress Themes

WordPress Themes for Personal Blog Websites

Video Portfolio Themes for WordPress

WordPress Themes for Building a Lifestyle Blog

Anyway, that’s just a few of the different options out there for selecting a great WordPress theme. We keep those collections updated pretty often so if you don’t see anything you like right now, we will probably be adding new stuff soon.

Install any WordPress Plugins You Need

This is a section that I could go on and on about. There are quite a number of plugins that I almost always use when setting up a WordPress website. You’re going to need a cash plugin, I am personally using WP Fastest Cache at this point.

A lot of people are not huge fans of Jetpack, although I’m not entirely sure why. It’s got quite a number of tools that can be helpful, though I’m not entirely sure that it is a must have plugin. Anyway, I have it installed too.

You also want an SEO plugin. Yoast works fine for me, but a lot of people like All in One SEO as well. I don’t think you can go wrong with either of those.

You’re also going to security system in place. There’s a lot to think about in terms of online security for any WordPress website, that is one of the few drawbacks compared to a platform like medium we’re all of the security is handled by the site itself. Anyway, I use Sucuri, though I have also used WordFence in the past. Both you a good job of making sure nothing has been compromised on your website.

So, that does it for this handy guide on how to migrate your website from Medium to WordPress. Hopefully you have found it to be interesting and helpful and we will be back shortly with even more great reviews and key information for running your WordPress website.

Thanks for stopping by!

#Medium #WordPress

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