fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Is it Important, How We Earn Money?
By: Mohammed Ali
Tags: Make Money, Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, Make Money Online, Earn Money Online

Is it Important, How We Earn Money? – Essay

Earning money has always been a subject of talk and the various methods on how one could make money has been discussed many a times through various platforms and media’s. Yet the opportunity of making money is so vast, that most of the people do not really understand their potential or the potential of chances in making money.

Definitely, earning money is important. You need money to sustain yourself, yet you should never have the urge to have more than what is required. Be content in what you have and with a little bit of careful analysis and careful spending, one could surely earn enough and more money.One could earn money in many ways. There are plenty of opportunities for someone who really wants to make money in the legal manner, rather than opting for the illegal mannerisms. We will discuss a few ways in which you could make money and save for yourself.

The traditional method of making money or the common 9-5 office jobs. Here the income is steady and there are chances that while climbing the professional ladder, the income also gets increased. Even though it is said a 9-5 job, most of the time you leave home early and get back late. Hours spent with your loved ones get minimal here.

Another method is in investing. Investments are in various methods and depend on how one looks at it. Some people opt for the share markets, where you buy shares of different organizations and sell them based on the market fluctuation. It could be profitable but at times even huge looses are faced. While some others opt for the very traditional methods like investing in metals such as gold or silver. Again another class of people go for mutual funds, bonds, insurance plans and various such options for long terms investments.

Another option which is now widely catching up is through the Online market. Online jobs is high in demand and you get paid for what you do. A flexible kind of job and more and more people are turning to this kind of jobs. Another platform that people make money is through their interests being publicized such as blogs. Blogging is possible any anyone and gradually you could generate revenue from it.What ever be the mode that you opt, the main agenda should be profit at the end. So spending unwisely or more than what you make is never a wise choice and you should keep a close eye on the current markets and financial status to have a better understanding to place yourself in the best suitable position. Face boldly any situation that comes up in life and then, learn from mistakes (if any), on how to earn your income and how to save it for a better future.

If you want to learn more about making money online you can visit :

https://www.scribd.com/document/504644309/50-Ways-to-Make-Money-Online
Cherry Blossom Season Isn’t Over…Yet!
By: Cleveland Museum Of Art
Tags: Flowers, Garden, Japan, Art, Japanese Culture

Come spring, the Fine Arts Garden at the south entrance of the Cleveland Museum of Art becomes a popular attraction. For many Greater Clevelanders, when the cherry blossoms appear around Wade Lagoon, it is a sign that spring has arrived.

Originating in Japan, cherry blossom trees called sakura (桜) commonly adorn Japanese textiles, decorative pieces, and other fine works of art. In Japan, cherry blossom season comes with a tradition dating to at least a thousand years ago called hanami, meaning “blossom viewing.” It is a time when people get together to share snacks or enjoy a picnic near or underneath the trees and appreciate the beauty and scent of the blossoms.

Watch this video to learn more about hanami.

This year, the cherry blossoms have already bloomed, and due to the nature of the flowers, the blossoms only last a couple of weeks. If you missed them at their peak, join our virtual hanami through the CMA’s Collection Online.

Nō Costume (Nuihaku) with Blossoming Trees and Flowers, 1675–99. Japan, Edo period (1615–1868). Embroidery, silk and applied gold leaf on silk ground; overall: 164 x 138 cm. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund 1974.36.

This magnificent robe was a costume specifically designed for performances of Noh theater in Japan. Originating during the 1300s from simple folk plays, Noh drama evolved into formal presentations of ritual, theater, dance, and music performed in the courts and shrines of the nobility. Stories were derived from a variety of sources — myths, legends, poetry, and prose — many dating back to the medieval period. The design of weeping cherry trees and irises in the snow was very likely inspired by a medieval Japanese poem.

Dish with Weeping Cherry Tree, late 1800s. Japan, Meiji period (1868–1912). Porcelain with underglaze blue and overglaze red enamel (Hizen ware, Nabeshima type); diameter: 15 cm. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Sherman E. Lee 1963.97.

This dish depicts a cherry tree called sakuragi in Japanese, whose flower-laden branches are the centerpiece while a sliver of thetrunk and roots appear on the left edge. The blossoms are delicately depicted in an iron-red overglaze. The flowers’ various positions (facing out and downward) and stages of maturity (bud and full bloom) enhance the naturalism and dynamism of the image.
The colour of spring
By: Uea Ecology Ben
Tags: Uea, Plants, Wildlife, Garden, Nature

The UEA campus comes alive with the colour of spring in the form of bright yellow daffodils as the weather starts to warm. The wild daffodil grows to 30cm in height and flowers from March to April (The Wildlife Trusts) but the blooms on display at UEA are most likely to be garden varieties. Nevertheless, they are a welcome sight amongst the imposing grey concrete and dull green grass.

The wild daffodil, Narcissus pseudonarcissus, has now become rarer than it used to be but can still be seen in the dappled shade of undisturbed woodlands (The Wildlife Trusts). The leaves are a greyish green in colour and the flowers, although lighter then garden varieties, are a striking yellow. Due to the intensification of agriculture true wild daffodils, as opposed to hybrids or garden varieties, are rather rare and found scattered mainly in the west of Britain (Plantlife).

The daffodil is the national symbol of Wales as well as being the flower of the county of Gloucestershire (Plantlife).

The muted colour of a wild daffodil.

Garden varieties are bolder and come in a range of colours, from orange through to white.

References

Plantlife https://www.plantlife.org.uk/uk/discover-wild-plants-nature/plant-fungi-species/daffodil-wild (last accessed April 2020)

The Wildlife Trusts https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/wildlife-explorer/wildflowers/wild-daffodil (last accessed April 2020)
Commercial Landscaping Tips
By: Landscaper Basingstoke
Tags: Landscaping, Landscaping Ideas, Garden, Gardening, Commercial Landscaping

The importance of commercial landscaping is understandable when someone enters in your office premises, he/She could be your client, your employee or any of your family members. The first and foremost thing that would be noticeable is an entry or the garden area. It could help in giving first positive reflection to your client. Here’s how you can gain that favorable first impression with some of the landscaping tips for commercial area.

1. Focus on Entrance

An easy- going and attractive entrance with less number of plants is one way of creating welcoming appearance. Use high quality pathways or walkways surrounded with perfect lighting to brighten up the entrance even in low light.

2. Convey the right Message

The first impression of any building could convey a right message, whether it is empowering sustainability, greenery, cleanliness etc. Using different elements like fountains, flower plantings and other Hardscaping components can help you translate that message.

3. Outdoor Furniture

Wooden furniture added in the commercial garden area makes it a perfect relaxation area for employees. Choose durable, easy to clean, attractive and weatherproof furniture.

4. Plants

Different colored plants and flowers would make your landscape area eye-catching and beautiful. Use different plants and shrubs to show your brand logo in a creative manner.

Apart of it, make sure that your building is visible from all directions. For that, avoid using huge trees and pay attention to outdoor lighting for security as well as to enhance the beauty of your landscape at night.
My shoes are in the garden.
By: Mary Mott Writes
Tags: Shoes, Mary Mott, Garden, Writing

My shoes are in the garden. Facing the white hyacinths. But I am not there.

I might be under the tousled covers in the bedroom at the end of the hall on the left. Waking to see the girl I was at seventeen. Sitting at the end of the bed.

Or I might be in the portico having my morning coffee with my dog. Who will eventually turn, look at me and say, “I have loved you. You have been a good friend.”

My shoes are in the garden but I am not there.

I might be at my desk in the studio writing to you. Telling you that I am uncertain. I have never known.

I could be walking down the driveway. Because it is shady. Avoiding the splotches of sunlight. It is very hot.

If I am in my car I am driving on a road I do not know. I choose that.

If I am meeting you I will not be late. I have done that and I feel the weight of making you sit alone in a place not of your choosing.

If I am speaking to my daughter I will tell her the things that she does not know. Does not know about me. Things I want her to know in that vast scape of time when I will not be.

My shoes are in the garden facing the white hyacinths. But I am not there.
A vacation for botanical exploration
By: Rudie Verougstraete
Tags: Plants, Horticulture, Gardening, Gardens, Landscape

After a very hectic spring at the farm as a result of the explosion in business lingering from the 2020 pandemic lockdowns, I’m finally on vacation! The Southeastern Plant Symposium I usually attend around this time (hosted by the J.C. Raulston Arboretum and Juniper Level Botanical Gardens) was virtual this year out of caution while people get vaccinated. I had hoped it would be in person, but I understand why it would be tricky to plan around something that’s changing on a daily basis. So instead of attending that, I decided to visit some public gardens in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area that I haven’t been to before: Sarah P. Duke Gardens, and the North Carolina Botanical Gardens. This area of North Carolina is really an epicenter of plant development (the University of North Carolina has one of the leading horticultural programs in the country) so naturally, they need trial gardens to test out new varieties, and hence why there are three major gardens in the area.

As the name implies, Sarah Duke Gardens is located just adjacent to Duke University. The gardens are massive, sprawling over 55 acres and featuring several different gardens including an Asian garden, an Italian-style rose garden, and a native plant “meadow” garden. One could easily spend a full two days, to really see everything.

Meanwhile, next door in Chapel Hill, we have the North Carolina Botanical Gardens, which, while not nearly as expansive as Duke Gardens, nevertheless packs a lot into a smaller garden. I was most struck by their dedication to planting native shrubs, perennials, and trees and their efforts to educate the public on the need for habitat restoration (they have signs throughout the gardens). Their woodland gardens are particularly extensive, with an impressive array of ferns and wildflowers tolerant of shade. Their gift shop also sells seedlings of some of the shrubs and perennials planted in their gardens, for $7–15 generally.

The N.C. Botanical Gardens also features a kids “discovery” garden where they can learn about host plants for pollinators, food sources for birds, and more.

Both gardens require no entry fees, though Duke Gardens does have a metered parking lot which for me, came out to $6 for 3 hours, which was plenty of time to wander about most of the garden.
How To Combat Powdery Mildew On Your Herbs and Greens
By: Roman Gonzalez
Tags: Gardentips, Gardener, Gardening, Garden

Photo courtesy Gardenio member.

Gardenio is a new kind of garden club membership for new food growers. We send you everything you need to grow your own organic food at home with app based tools and support to help you as you grow. Become a member today at www.growgardenio.com.

Powdery mildew is caused by a kind of stillness. Your plant is most likely in shade, wet or in a warm, humid environment. No air circulation. These are the perfect conditions for powdery mildew, and for your chagrin.

Number one, wouldn’t recommend eating plants with powdery mildew on them. It’s not that it’s necessarily toxic to humans, it’s that you don’t want to risk having an allergic reaction to the bacteria. You could just have no idea you have that, ya know?

Luckily, it’s one of the easier things to get rid of. I’m gonna share the way we’ve found most effective: potassium bicarbonate (KHCO₃). You’re gonna make a potassium bicarbonate spray.

Potassium bicarbonate, while an inorganic compound made industrially, is actually approved for organic growing — it poses no health risk and in fact is used widely in cooking. Potassium bicarbonate is actually present in everything — plants, animals, humans, nature, and it’s produced typically as a substitute for leavening agents in baking like baking soda aka sodium bicarbonate, which has also been used in food and farming for ages.

Wanna dive REAL deep into it? Here’s a primary article on it.

How To Make A Potassium Bicarbonate Spray

Take a pint size spray bottle Put 1 teaspoon (a barspoon actually works perfectly) of potassium bicarbonate into the bottle. ($8 pack, good brand on Amazon) Fill the rest of the bottle with water and seal with spray top Shake. Boom you got a KHCO3 spray!

How to apply Potassium Bicarbonate Spray

Apply to the foliage directly and heavily — in this case, it’s okay to drench it. Check in every two to three days. If you still see powdery mildew, spray to drench again.

It’s best to apply when conditions are relatively dry. Feel free to move your plant to a covered spot temporarily while you’re applying it

How to Prevent Powdery Mildew In The Future

If you want to prevent the dew in the future, any of the below will do:
The Garden
By: Carlo Bautista
Tags: Poetry, Garden, Love, Relationships, Beauty

A beautiful garden sits carefully on a hilltop of a small town.

This particular garden is filled with flowers of all types.

A man and woman took it upon themselves to care for this garden.

With meticulous planning, the pair created a system that flowed liked a masterful symphony.

The man tended to his part of the system while the woman kept up with hers.

The townspeople often mention that the two make a great couple, for their passion for the garden has transcended into their unique personalities.

However, the two would often brush the comments aside and continue on with their day.

As the year went by, the man continued caring for his Peonies, Dahlias, Zinnias, and Hydrangeas.

As the year went by, the woman continued caring for her hollies, snowdrops, Pieris, and Acashias.

As they work each day, they ponder upon the townspeople’s comments.

Could they come together in harmony, much like the beautiful flowers they pour their sweat into?

Could they combine their hearts in a way that will draw eyes from everyone, just like the garden they patiently created together?

Could they achieve a sort of unified life?

Alas, these were just dreams of the minds.

The pair could only ever imagine of such thing.

After each day of work, the two individuals fall back into their routine.

The man would pack his tools up, wipe the sweat of his forehead, and stand up as his drenched shirt soaked up the cool breeze of the summer air.

He would look around the garden with his arm over his eyes as he tries to block the strong, hot sunlight from hitting his eyes.

At this moment, he could appreciate the beautiful work he has done.

The woman would pack her tools up, replace her hands into her warm gloves, and stand up to put on her heavy coat, just as the sharp wind of the winter hits her face.

She would tread around the snow carefully so she can get a good view at the garden, all the while she tries not to slip on the ice.

At this moment, she breathes with a sense of accomplishment for the work she has done.

The man and the woman deservingly smile, for they created a beautiful piece of art.

However, the smiles were short lived.

They knew the answer to the question that continues to linger in the air.

Oh how much they wish to fall in love, to spend life together, to continue caring for something they both have so much passion for.

But as faith would have it, they cannot.

For as of now, the man and the woman are in two different seasons.
My Little Garden 11th Sept 2021
By: Alison Moore
Tags: Blogging, Garden, Gardening, Blog, Photography

My Little Garden 11th Sept 2021

I remember the 9th September 2001 very well. I was sitting in an office in Cheadle Royal, where Concorde would frequently skim the roof en route to Manchester Airport, and like so many people around the world, watched the horror unfold on screen.

So much has happened since that day, and it’s hard to believe that 20 years have gone by. I changed jobs in 2003 and loved the new challenge despite the fact that it was still in an office. In fact, I stayed for nine whole years until redundancy gave me the opportunity to change course completely in 2012. During these years, my boys grew up, went off to university (and came home again), and now I’m granny to four girls and dabbling in garden design, writing and photography. I had no more thoughts about writing a weekly blog in those days than I did about what it would be like to live through a global pandemic. And as to knowing the difference between an Aster macrophyllus and a Eurybia x herveyi ……

But here we are, after almost a week of scorching September sunshine, and I’m thinking about what to include in this week’s choice of six. And looking forward to reading the other blogs and admiring the many fabulous photos on twitter of course.

You might need sunglasses for this first photo!

Colour clashing

Now I don’t mind a bit of colour clashing, but this really is too much. I quite like the bright pink of the Pelargoniumon on it’s own, but the poppies were part of a mystery seed mix that didn’t really work in my two large rectangular containers. More on that disaster at a later date.

2. Not so dazzling dahlia

Veronnes Obsidian is one of my favourite dahlias and it has grown beautifully this year and battled successfully against the slug army.

But, I planted it in the wrong location for such a dark flower and it just blends into the green background. Fortunately the zinnias are now saving the day.

3. Very dazzling zinnia

And talking of zinnias, I have pink ones

And orange ones - as unplanned a combination as the pelargoniums and poppies! Sometimes I think I should go back to the world of insurance and write articles on risk management again.

4. Another aster

This one hasn’t changed it’s name and is still Aster × frikartii 'Mönch' unless someone tells me otherwise.

5. Rudbeckia

I’m trying out the Goldsturm in new locations by moving the container around.

It works nicely with the purple of one of the other asters so it may get planted permanently here for next year.

6. Cosmos

Stalwarts of the September garden with my rusty poppies helping to hold them up.

And that concludes this week’s selection from my little garden. We’ve been promised rain here for the last two days but barely any has fallen so I suspect watering duties may be required.

For a peek into more adventures in the gardening world, take a look at the #sixonsaturday hastag on twitter as well as the blog of The Propagator who’s in charge of this weekly event.

https://thepropagatorblog.wordpress.com/

Thank you for reading and have a great weekend.
My Little Garden 4th Sept 2021
By: Alison Moore
Tags: Blogging, Garden, Gardening, Blog, Photography

My Little Garden 4th Sept 2021

This week I’m ‘celebrating’ the end of the school holidays. Of course I love spending extra time with my granddaughters, but after six weeks I’m ready for a little bit more time to myself.

For the last outing of the summer we took the eldest two to the Dunham Massey Ice Cream Farm and the Sunflower Trail they have there. The sunflowers themselves were well past their best but all the other annuals were still very colourful and the girls enjoyed themselves in the maze. Next week it will be back to the school and hopefully a full year of schooling in the classroom.

At home in my garden, there are a few signs of autumn. On the first day of the month, I spotted a squirrel digging up the lawn to bury something. It seems a bit premature for that particularly annoying activity so it probably ‘means something’ like a cold winter is in prospect.

But enough of autumn, because I’m still enjoying summer. My six choices for this week are strictly summery and for the first three I’m celebrating the front garden surviving the trampling of of big footed VM engineers in their latest attempt to solve our internet issues.

Helenium

I had a serious deadheading session about 10 days ago and have been rewarded with lots of new blooms. The variety is ‘Moerheim Beauty’.

2. Rozanne

This is a perfect perennial for a low maintenance front garden. Unlike some geraniums it just carries on flowering right the way through the summer and autumn.

3. Derrick Cook

A spare plant from a job earlier in the summer and a very pretty geranium. It’s grown into a decent sized plant and hopefully it will do well when it wakes up next spring.

4. Handel

I love this rose and I always think it’s late summer flowers are the most beautiful.

5. Frilly Knickers

The latest anemone acquisition is looking very frilly

With the palest of pink ruffles.

6. A star

This Star Dahlia named ‘Honka Fragile’ is certainly trying to be a star of my garden at the moment. It could do with a few more blooms but the ones it’s produced so far are stunning.

The weather forecast for next week sounds pretty good, so I expect I will be spending a few hours in the garden. And as always if you want to find out what’s happening elsewhere around the gardening world, take a look at the blog of The Propagator and the rest of #SixonSaturday gang.

https://thepropagatorblog.wordpress.com/

Thank you for reading and have a great weekend.
Why you should never use ‘npm install’ in your CI/CD pipelines
By: Pascal Zwikirsch
Tags: NPM, JavaScript, Ci Cd Pipeline, Nodejs, Continious Integration

When starting a new project or cloning an existing one most people run npm install or the shorthand version npm i which is fine. But most likely you have already stumbled over a similar command called npm ci .

Often I still see the npm install command in regular CI/CD pipelines. What sounds fine at first can lead to quite some problems. The ci in the npm ci commands stand for “clean install” or if it helps you, you can also use “continuous integration”. So it's quite clear that it should be used in favor of npm install in your pipelines. But let's quickly check what the differences are before you blindly follow my advice and use npm ci in all of your pipelines.

Even though the following definitions aren’t 100% aligned with the official NPM documentation I try to explain them in super simple terms containing the most common use cases.

npm install

It’s being used for adding dependencies to your package.json and package-lock.json , thus modifying your dependencies and installing them on your machine. This is absolutely fine for development but it should for no reason ever happen in your pipelines. You don’t want to add/modify any files in your pipelines.

npm ci
Azure Pipelines. First of all, there is no…
By: Firat Dogan
Tags: Azure Devops, Ci Cd Pipeline, Microsoft, Cloud Computing, Azure Pipelines

Currently, I am playing with Azure Pipelines and it is good to share my notes for my self and others as a reference. (know that soon will be obsolete :)

First of all, there is no language/version control/Microsoft dependency for Azure DevOps/Pipelines means that you can use any programming language such as Java, Python, .net, or git, TFS, etc. This is also valid for the infrastructure and other cloud providers you don’t need to stick only Microsoft stack but have an option to use AWS, IBM or others. Majority of tools such as Nuget, npm, Maven, Gradle are also supported by the Azure Pipelines.

STAGE(s) are logical entities such as QA, Prod, Staging, Pre-Prod that are used to deploy a release and mostly independent from each other. However, App Db and Web tiers should be modeled as a single stage.

TASK(s) are building blocks for defining automation in a release: packed scripts or procedures. Tasks can be versioned for future reference and for the reuse. You can simply think that tasks are parts of a stage when combined together for example :

Task 1 can be “Get source from Github”

Task 2 can be a Terraform script that generates Infrastructure as Code on Azure

Task 3 deploys web application to different environments

Task 1 + Task 2 + Task 3 = Stage

There are out of box Tasks available in Azure Pipelines’ so you don’t have to write scripts for simple/standard tasks; pick one from the list or pay for the one in the marketplace.

As you can see in the above example tasks can be TRIGGERed based on the rules such as commit a new piece of code to the repo or in different ways.

Below you can see very basic CI pipeline that is triggered by the new commit and executed unit test cases for a basic Java — Spring application (it is really a toy project / experimental )

It seems like I need more space for this entry for the CD part, so stop here and leave the remaining terminology like Deployment Triggers, Azure Resource Manager (ARM), ARM Templates and Build Agents for a next one if i can :)

Azure/Microsoft for a Java fan like me, might be very interesting journey let see what is changed in the Microsoft world or not :)
A Snowflake development environment — Part 2 — SQL & Git
By: Werner Daehn
Tags: Ci Cd Pipeline, Sql Scripts, Git, Snowflake

When building applications for databases a lot of SQL scripts are created. These can be executed in Snowflake but what is missing is an automation. Something that upgrades the database objects from an old version, that executes the scripts in the correct order — in short a CI/CD pipeline for Snowflake development.

That is the second area the AppContainer does help.

Dealing with upgrades

In the Editor each sql script can be activated — that is the top right button next to the save icon — and with that the script runs and each SQL command is executed. Either itself deals with upgrades of existing objects or the script engine allows conditions.

For example in Snowflake there is no option to say “execute the alter table add column” command only if such column does not exist yet. A conditional comment of // if column not exists ORDER_FACT.REPLENISH_FLAG runs the subsequent SQL commands only if the condition is true.

This deals with tables, views, procedures and similar database objects. Getting data into the large tables is no problem using Snowpipe. For the tons of tiny tables that need just a few rows, CSV files can be provided and get loaded/merged into the table at activation time as well.

Activate all

To activate all content, the Design Time Browser has the same activation option and does activate all files (based on file extensions) within a (root) directory. With that all tests are possible:

Create a fresh system

Upgrade the current version via scripts to the new development version

Test an upgrade from any version to the new development version

Deploy the same code multiple times, e.g. in dev, test and production

For the latter the script engine supports various ways to deal with schema aliases. Either no schema is provided in the scripts, the the given schema is used. A schema name ${production} is replaced with the actual schema for the current setup using a mapping file in the root directory. And there are more options to allow for maximum flexibility with the least amount of work.

Activation result with detailed feedback

Git Repo

The nice thing about the Design Time Browser is its git integration. The buttons pull get the latest changes from the configured git repository and the push updates the repo with the user’s version.

This makes working together in a team straight forward, also deploying a new version is just a git pull away.

Summary

This functionality is one part of the AppContainer enhancing the developer productivity by magnitudes.
System Thinking with Casual Loop Diagram - Learn by Examples
By: Warren Lynch
Tags: Software Engineering, Software Development, Agile, Systems Thinking, Lean Startup

Causal loops diagrams (also known as system thinking diagrams) are used to display the behavior of cause and effect from a system’s standpoint. A causal loop diagram (CLD) is a causal diagram that aids in visualizing how different variables in a system are interrelated.

Edit the Cause Loop Diagram Example Online

It is a causal diagram that aids in visualizing how different variables in a system are interrelated.

It consists of a set of nodes and edges.

It’s nodes represent the variables and edges are the links that represent a connection or a relation between the two variables.

It’s link marked positive indicates a positive relation and a link marked negative indicates a negative relation.

A positive causal link means the two nodes change in the same direction, i.e. if the node in which the link starts decreases, the other node also decreases.

A negative causal link means the two nodes change in opposite directions, i.e. if the node in which the link starts increases, the other node decreases, and vice versa.

Cause Loop Diagram Example — Growth and Investment

A Growth and Under investment structure is simply an elaborated Limits to Growth structure where the growth inhibitor is part of another Balancing Loop with an external standard and some delay. The nasty thing about this structure is that the two balancing loops form a single reinforcing loop that inhibits growth.

Edit this Diagram

Cause Loop Diagram Example — Pizza House

A new home delivery-focused pizzeria opens up in the neighborhood. At first, the demand is low, but the pizza’s quality is excellent, as well as the delivery times. After a while, the pizzeria gets noticed and is featured in a local online food blog. As a result, the demand for pizza rises sharply. But the pizzeria owners are reluctant to purchase more delivery capacity (pizza delivery vehicles and personnel) along with higher pizza production capacity (additional pizza ovens). That results in higher delivery times and a larger percentage of undercooked pizzas, in turn lowering the number of returning customers. As a result, the pressure for additional investment in both delivery and production capacity is eliminated. The pizzeria owners are happy that they held off on the additional investment.

Online Tool for Creating Casual Loop diagrams

VP Online lets you create Causal Loop diagram, here is some examples for you to have deeper understanding of this topic.

Get a head-start of our own Causal Loop Diagrams by following some of these templates:
MVP myths and the one question you should ask (including the MVP recipe)
By: Phil Delalande
Tags: Product Management, Product Development, MVP, Agile, Lean Startup

The key may not actually be in the definition, but in the value of an MVP. Let’s unpack that:

I. A product is… a product.

A landing page advertising a product, though useful for testing an idea, is usually not a version or a slice of that product. Nor is a clickable prototype.

A product is a good that serves a need or satisfies a want.

II. The aim of the MVP is for the team to learn fast. That’s why it can rarely compete with existing products, as its potential lack of breadth will generally impact its desirability.

Learning fast also infers it is supposed to be revised!

What point is there in learning if we don’t revisit the product in the light of the learnings?

III. V is for viable. It means it has to be working and meet the essential quality of a product: Being used by people. Besides, you cannot arbitrarily decide if the product is viable. It is viable if it presents both a business and user value, and users will be the judges of the latter.

IV. The next question we should ask: Product Managers are not only faced with the challenge of what and when to release, but also who the MVP should target. There is no point blaming the concept of an MVP if it is released too early, too late or to the wrong audience.

It’s not all about the what and when. A crucial question when rolling out and MVP is who for?

Let me give you an example.

The right audience — a case study

A B2B software company was developing a cloud product as the new generation of a feature-rich desktop application. With a very high-profile, demanding user base, they could simply not settle for less than a very rich product for several reasons.

One of them and certainly not the least was that when a tool is upgraded, users don’t expect less out of it, but probably more.

Rather than wait for a finished product, my friend Myles Morson and his team identified a key market segment outside the current user base. For these users, the product would a huge step forward, given they were using excel spreadsheets to run their businesses.

In proper MVP fashion, the team were able to collect feedback while cruising towards a broader release.
Something for Kate (an accelerator-in-action)
By: Jack Andrews
Tags: Strategy, Innovation, Accelerator, Lean Startup

Kate is one of UnitingCare’s personas. She is often the eldest sibling, is aged between 45–64, is a ‘sandwich’ carer (provides care for both children and for an ageing parent), and lives in a world where ideals around womanhood and femininity are rapidly changing. Our team has spent the last few months exploring what it means to be Kate, what the various stages of ‘Katehood’ entail, and ultimately how UnitingCare can design something to make Kate’s life easier. We have done this through an accelerator.

Kate

What is an accelerator?

An accelerator is a collection of methodologies (and their underpinning tools) that allow us to define, test, and validate new business models in a short amount of time. Ours combines design thinking, lean startup, and agile methodologies into an end-to-end process where an ‘input’ (usually a customer problem) is married to an ‘output’ (a solution to this problem) and delivered in a way that makes economic sense for UnitingCare. If an accelerator is done correctly it allows us to greatly reduce the risk of a new product or service in a short amount of time and for relatively little investment (especially the market risk, i.e. does anybody actually want the thing we are thinking of building?)

An accelerator usually combines Design Thinking, Lean Startup, and Agile methodologies.

Our Accelerator story so far

We run our accelerator one day a week on Wednesdays.

In Week 1 we started with an examination of the context in which UnitingCare operates today, and the forecast changes to this context in the short, medium, and long-term.

Grove Consultant’s ‘Context Map Canvas’

Analysis of this context led us to narrow our focus on three key demographic trends:

Australia’s ageing population: by 2032, the number of people in the 65+ category will have doubled, by 2051, 10 x increase in the 85+ category. Less informal carers: demand for ‘informal’ carers exceeds supply in 2019, there is a decline in birth-rates/fertility, propensity to care in decreasing (in absolute terms, there were 10,000 less informal carers in 2015 than there was in 2010). Increasing life-expectancy and co-morbidities.

Kate emerged from this demographic analysis as an ‘under-serviced’ customer with complex needs. In UnitingCare’s current service-delivery mix, Kate is approached only as a primary influencer. Our team decided to turn our focus toward Kate, and formulated a design challenge that would act as an anchor throughout the accelerator.

‘Siggy’ is another UnitingCare persona, Kate’s ageing father.

From here we formed hypotheses on what we thought Kate’s lived experience would be.

Ash Maurya’s ‘Customer Forces Canvas’, and ‘Problem Interview’ script

Cindy Alvarez’s ‘Lean Customer Development’ Framework, and Steve Blank & Bob Dorf’s ‘Early Adopter Test’

We then set out to talk to Kates.

The flyer we distributed at our Ann St. Head Office

The team spoke to 10 Kates in our first-round interviews and began to synthesise our finding using empathy maps and customer journeys.
You Don’t Need Permission
By: Steve Blank
Tags: Innovation, Medtech, Customer Development, Startup, Lean Startup

I was pleasantly surprised to hear from Suresh, an ex-student I’ve known for a long time. A U.S. citizen he was now the head of sales and marketing for a company in London selling medical devices to hospitals in the UK National Health Service. His boss had identified the U.S. as their next market and wanted him to set up a U.S. salesforce. Suresh understood that the U.S. health system was very different from the system in the UK, not just the regulatory regime through the FDA, but the reimbursement process and the entire sales process.

Over a Zoom call Suresh explained, “I’m trying to push the importance of running customer discovery and testing these hypotheses before we build our U.S. product, but I’m running into a pushback from my CEO. He says, “We’re disruptors! Discovery is going to slow us down. We need to move quickly!”

Suresh was concerned. “If we don’t test our assumptions about the market and any changes needed to our products, we’ll build something I can’t sell. Worse, given how expensive clinical trials are in medtech, I’m concerned if we build a product that isn’t commercially viable, we’ll be out of business before we even start.”

I could hear his frustration and concern when he asked, “How can I convince my boss to use customer discovery to test our hypotheses?”

That’s when I realized that Suresh was overlooking a few things.

He was trying to sell the “story” of Customer Discovery as part of the Lean Methodology to his CEO by explaining how discovery worked with the business model canvas, agile engineering, pivots and MVPs. But talking about the method to others is not the same as “doing” Customer Discovery. Customer Discovery is about gathering validated evidence, not proselytizing a method. The goal of discovery is to gather evidence to test hypotheses, deeply understand the customer problem and validate a solution. As head of sales and marketing, Suresh didn’t need his CEO to buy into the process or give his permission to start the discovery process. He was in charge. Given the ubiquity of Zoom, he could use it to rapidly get out of the building to the U.S. to test some hypotheses and gather some initial insights.

I pointed out that once he had potential customer, regulator, and reimbursement data from his Discovery interviews, he could bring that data into conversations with his CEO.

Having real data turns conversations from faith-based to evidence-based.

Lessons Learned

Talking about the Lean method to others is not the same as doing it

If you’re in charge or part of a customer-facing organization, you don’t need to wait for permission to talk to customers to test hypotheses

Having real data turns conversations from faith-based to evidence-based

Steve Blank writes about how to build a successful startup at www.steveblank.com
Front-to-Back development process
By: Diop Makhtar
Tags: Lean Startup, Agile Development, Software Engineering, Software Development

The good practices of now fast evolving customers and users demands and need want us, software engineers, to focus and center our works around customer and user satisfaction what’s make the frontend of the solution we are building more important than all these backend stacks that are needed for our solution to be more easily managed. Then with the spirit of agile and lean development, the frontend functionalities have more priorities than the backend functionalities. Building fastly the frontend even with simulated data that could allow us to show it to potential users or customers in order to get feedbacks fastly is the first and foremost thing to do. Then using API tools that could help us implement all the endpoints that will serve the data to the frontend is the first step of what I seek to call a front-to-back development process or an up-to-bottom development process. You can use API tools like Postman for building all the requests required by the frontend with the relevant or simulated data. After that, your frontend engineers are ready to use these entry points to build the interface of your tech-enabled solution and once this is done your marketing team could show it to potential customers and users and provide to your product development team the required changes that should be applied to the frontend to make your tech-enabled platform more successful.

That’s what I am doing right now with this tech-enabled platform called J….K which is this journalistic data-driven platform that I was writing about in this article and which will allow you to get metrics like those highlighted in these two articles.

This development process is not new because tech companies like Fog Creek Software and Stack overflow are using it and reading Joel Spolsky maybe can help you learn how they do. It is obvious to first build the interfaces of your software before you go into all these new database technologies and server-side solutions because what you are building is not for your software engineers, DevOps, and Sever administrators but for your customers and users then early in the development process your team should focus on the things that these users and customers will see and continue to improve it during all the lifetime of the development process up until all your backend stack are ready like how they are designed to be in production.

This front-to-back development process seems to be a process for a development team but you also as an alone software engineer who is developing a tech-enabled solution should use this process by starting to develop what your users or customer will see before spending time on the database schemas and server-side operation because if your backend stack is messy and crappy the user or customer doesn't care but if it is your frontend which is you are in real trouble then I advise you to start building from the front.
W1 NFL 2021: Monte Carlo Simulated Scores & Cover Probabilities
By: John Culver
Tags: Sports Betting, Predictions, NFL, Monte Carlo, Lean Startup

Identifying betting value by leveraging fundamentals, data, and simulations to compare our odds to the market.

Value Plays: NFL 2021 Week 1

(1) DET +8.5 (1.5 units)

(2) SF @ DET OVER 46.0 (2U)

(3) WSH Moneyline -125 (1U)

(4) WSH -1.5 (1U)

(5) CAR -3.5 (1U)

(6) IND +3.0 (1U)

(7) MIA +3.5 (1U)

(8) HOU +3.5 (1U)

(9) JAX @ HOU OVER 45.5 (2U)

(10) HOU ML +135 (1U)

(11) PIT @ BUF OVER 48.0 (0.5U)

(12) DEN @ NYG OVER 41.5 (0.5U)

How to interpret the ISW’s Tables

p (win) = Implied win probability per team based on the results stemming from 10,000 monte carlo simulated games (e.g. NYJ won 5,156 / 10,000 simulated games → NYJ’s p(W) % = 51.6%).

Avg. Score = The average (projected) score per team derived from 10,000 simulated games.

Spread = The average point differential between the two average scores.

Avg. Total vs. Market = The average total is equal to the the sum of each team’s average projected scores. The market is what ESPN’s quoted total (‘over /under’) is.

Market Spread = The current line or spread per ESPN’s NFL Daily Lines.

p (cover) % = Estimated likelihood that each team covers the spread given the market spread based on our 10k monte carlo simulations.

p (cover total) % = The likelihood that the total (i.e. the sum of each team’s final scores) goes over ‘O:’ or under ‘U:’ the market total based on 10k monte carlo simulations.
The ISW Newsletter: NFL Power Ratings 2021
By: John Culver
Tags: Sports Betting, Investing, Systems Thinking, NFL, Lean Startup

September 9, 2021

Volume 1 Issue #1

Greetings Intelligent Sports Wagerers!

Thank you very much for signing up for our newsletter. I am John Culver, founding editor of The Intelligent Sports Wagerer (The ISW) blog and co-founder and CEO of the Fanvest Wagering Exchange, Inc.

Our mission at the ISW is to make us all better sports bettors.

We believe that value investing principles offer us the best roadmap to navigating the wagering marketplace. Namely that a security (e.g. stock, bond or fund) and a wager each have intrinsic value that can be estimated with a replicable systematic framework — when that value is greater than the market price, we’re typically buyers. Like investing, successful sports betting is a long-term game. We hope to show you ways to generate positive ROI.

In time, we hope to build a community whereby we all get smarter as group through the dissemination of ideas, concepts, and discussions. So please do not be a stranger and reach out!

Email: john.culver@fanvestwageringexchange.com

Twitter: @jvculver88

LinkedIn: The Intelligent Sports Wagerer

Given that I am wearing a few hats, I will be doing my best to provide you all with links to my weekly articles and NFL picks.

Checkout our NFL 2021 Preseason Power Ratings article and stay tuned for our NFL 2021 W1 Preview!

***

May the odds be ever in your favor.

Sincerely,

John
PVS-Studio Journal, Issue #6
By: Andrey Karpov
Tags: Cpp, Programming, Sonarqube, Pvs Studio, Csharp

We started preparing for the C++ SIBERIA 2020 (RU) conference that will be held in Novosibirsk on February 28–29. While marketing department is packing the suitcases full of distributing materials and renewing the C++ puzzles, Philip Khandelyants is preparing a talk ‘Paranoid’s take on C++ Code Review’. Anyway, I’d like to invite you to the conference — visit our booth and Philip’s talk. The conference is usually not big but the atmosphere is pleasant and welcoming.

The C# analyzer under .NET Core is taking shape. We made it to such subtasks as creating a package for Linux.

One of the clients needs a SonarQube plugin for macOS, and we’re taking care of it. This is another piece of evidence of the fact that PVS-Studio is more often used along with SonarQube. So we don’t consider them as competitors but rather symbionts. Those who want to try PVS-Studio along with SonarQube, please, visit the following website section: Integrating PVS-Studio Analysis Results into SonarQube.

As for the C# analyzer, we reflect on the following error patterns of code:

(a?.Length).ToString()

Well, actually, this is a no-brainer :). The error is simple and one can easily detect it. However, there may be cases with intermediate variables that are far more sophisticated. And that is what we’re thinking over.

We’ve also decided to renew the PVS-Studio description in Jetbrains Plugin Marketplace because it looks quite ‘pale’.