fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
How to show compassion?
By: Waseem Sajjad
Tags: Kindness, Smile, Helping Others, Compassion, Family

image credit Matt Collamer on Unsplash

Compassion means sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others.

In today’s world, materialism has taken us all in its grip. There are some ways I would like to share my compassion with everyone around you.

RESPECT EVERYONE

We have made different kinds of scales to give respect. We should know as human beings that all are equal. The idea of superiority and inferiority is ruining us. Black Lives Matter was born because of this kind of thinking. Suppose you start believing today that we all are equal. You will see tremendous results. This kind of deed bears its fruit very heavily.

HELP EVERYONE

Suppose you are a boss somewhere or in any shape a leader. You should help others to rise with you.

Even a little help of opening a door for someone is also a kind of compassion. Small acts can make significant changes. If we start helping each other, we will create a society of good habits. And our growth will increase at an excellent pace. Supporting also includes if you know you should help others. If you are helping others to learn what you know, and they do the same after learning from you, the result would be huge.

SAY THANKS AND SORRY

One thing I miss very much in our society is the use of the words sorry and thanks. Compression also is shown by the use of these words. Suppose you have done something wrong or made a mistake. You should have enough courage to say sorry. Your ego should become a hindrance; remember, we all humans make mistakes. But one who acknowledges it raises the chance of not repeating the error. You should thank everyone who helps you. This magic word will incite the helper to do the same again and allow the person to do the same to others.

PRAISE OTHERS

All of us know a human is always motivated by praise for his good deeds. If your subordinate does something well, you should acknowledge his work. If you do so, he will be further motivated to do it again. If you do it in front of others, it might also inspire someone else.

SHOW IT TO FAMILY MEMBERS

Some of our people do show compassion outside their house, but their houses are empty of it. Remember you are first to show your good traits at home. Compassion is much needed in our homes. Modern technology and social media have set us apart from those living in one house. It would help if you used compassion as a tool to reunite the unit of family and home.
#A little bit of KINDNESS is what we all need
Tags: Helping Others, Actofkindness, Kindness

Kindness without any difference.

Is kindness really helps for the betterment of society? For the answer of this question I have decided to spread kindness. I did some small kind things and responses increases my sense of kindness.

First I thought that our parents are the best people who needs our kindness so I decided to start mission from my home. I helped my mother in household works. I helped my siblings in studies.

When I was going to my university by a bus I gave my bus seat to an old woman. I can’t forget her response. She gave me a lot prayers. I felt that to make a place in other’s heart is the real achievement of our lives. Sometimes Bank balance, Bungalow, Cars are felt to be useless. At that time all you need is the best wishes. Your small act of kindness can make your life happier.

In University I helped a professor. She was carrying a big sack of books and papers. I offer him help. I helped to take those papers to the staff room. I saw a huge smile on his face with thank you. She offered me that whenever I need help in any aspect I can contact him. It just took 5 min to help her but in return she can help me even after 5 year. It is only the power of kindness.

In my University class I helped my fellow in making assignment. I shared some topics with him and she completed it in 1 hour. She was vet happy and she give me treat.😂😂✌

Another interesting incident happens, when I was returning from my University I saw an old woman was selling Pens. I bought a box of Pen from him. She says “Thank You beta, today I really needed money for the food of my children”. I can’t forgot her eyes were paying gratitude.

From one day experiment I realized that today the basic things that we all need is kind behavior. Kindness is not something that demands hard work. It originates from simple act of doing that are not harmful to other. The little words of kindness like “thank you, sorry, pleasure, great” can used to make feel another person special.

Before your any deed just keep a thing in your mind that “Your every deed should be helpful to others”. Your just few kind seconds can make others’ lives great. In facts, kindness is the gift that everyone can afford to give. Kindness makes you the most beautiful person in the world. No matter how small, no act of kindness can ever be wasted. Over time, people will forget what you say, but they will long remember your kind deeds.
What Is Giving Tuesday?
Tags: Giving Tuesday, Philanthropy, Helping Others, Giving, Thanksgiving

We’re all familiar with Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but what is Giving Tuesday? Since 2012, the first Tuesday after Thanksgiving is dedicated to giving back to those in need. This movement comes in the midst of the holiday season where it is easy to get caught up in making our own gift list. The goal of Giving Tuesday is to connect communities through service to a good cause in need, helping to create a better world.

Giving on Giving Tuesday doesn’t have to be difficult or time consuming. Here are five ways that you can give back on Giving Tuesday.

Write A Letter

With hand-written, snail-mail letters being so rare, receiving a traditional letter is a real treat to find amidst the junk mail and utility bills. Take a quick five minutes on your lunch break to write a thank you note, letter of appreciation, or a get-well card to a family member, close friend or acquaintance. Not only will this be an opportunity to reflect on all the good times spent with this person, but it will also help you to feel more gratitude towards that individual and improve your relationship.

Spare Some Change

Whether it’s at the vending machine in the break room or the donation jar at the grocery store, you can use your spare change as an opportunity to make someone else’s day. Tape a dollar to the vending machine with a quick, uplifting note instructing the next person who will use the machine to “Treat yo’self.” Drop your extra change in the tip jar at your favorite lunch spot. Donate five dollars to a good cause in need. It’s a simple gesture, but you can smile the rest of your day knowing that your spare change could make someone’s day.

Start a Fundraising Campaign

When someone you know is experiencing a difficult challenge, it can be hard to know what exactly to do for them. However, starting a fundraising campaign can be a simple but very helpful service to provide. Not only will the funds you raise provide some relief for them in their time of need, but seeing the donations from their community can help them to feel the love and support of others.

Clean Up

There are so many ways that you can leave a space cleaner than when you found it. You can start by picking up trash on the sidewalk, clearing and wiping down your table in the break room, helping to clean up and fix a local shelter, or volunteering at a 5k to pick up all the water cups. Cleaning up after yourself and others is easy to do but it creates an inviting and safe environment for everyone to enjoy.

Buy a Little Extra

When you’re at the grocery store this month, pick up a few extra canned good items. These don’t have to be expensive and you can even purchase ones that are on sale. Then take these items down to your local shelter. Whatever you can afford to give will be appreciated.

Even if you feel that you have limited resources or not enough time to volunteer, there are still plenty of ways that you can help others on Giving Tuesday. Try doing one of these small acts and you’ll be surprised at the positive effect you can have on the lives of those around you.
Something to Ponder: Who Helped You?
By: Timothy Kelly
Tags: Helping Others, Daily Thoughts, Kindness

Something to Ponder: Who Helped You?

The greatest gift is when you give it to someone, who least expects it, looking for nothing in return.

We’ve all had that special someone, at some time in our life.

They saw something in you.

Maybe it was a teacher, a parent, a coach, your rabbi, your first manager, a friend you ride the train with each morning.

They helped you in some way. They didn’t have to, but they did.

Maybe they told you about a job opening they heard about, offered to introduce you to someone to advance your career, gave you a few dollars to make it through the day when you forgot your wallet, offered some advice that helped you manage a tough decision.

Someone that showed you kindness when you needed it.

Someone that did something for you without wanting anything in return.

In the next 24 hours, take 5 minutes and send that person a simple note to say thanks.

It’s a small gesture, but one that could form a friendship stronger than you have ever known.

In fact, in the next 24 hours, think of someone you could be kind to or help in some way… and do it.

Maybe some day, when you least expect it, you’ll get a note thanking you for what you did or said that helped them. Wouldn’t that warm your heart?

We all like to experience an unexpected kind deed.

The best way to experience the joy of kindness, it to show it unexpectedly to someone else.
Help to Change!
By: Zaka Ur Rehman Khalid
Tags: Helping Others, Social Media, Social Change

You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end, each of us must work for his own improvement and, at the same time, share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful.

Marie Curie

We started on a quest with the fellowship at AMAL. Among their 4 basic principles is, “EK aur EK GIYARA” or “One and One makes Eleven”. It is with this idea of joining hands with people who are deserving but less privileged to give them a chance to thrive, we decided to give back to the community what we have gotten from it all those years i.e., love, compassion, integrity, honesty, constructive feedback and above all ‘Help’. Help to stand on our feet and face the world on daily basis. We as a group of seven came together to gather people from different walks of life prioritizing their financial strength to further train them and make them able to seek a job for those skills.

We joined hands with “SAYLANI WELFARE ORGANIZATION” to promote their free training program in deprived areas of Karachi. Our goal is to persuade people to come forward, be vulnerable and seek help as in training leading to promising jobs and careers. We are motivated to personally visit these areas and search for our candidates. Our hope is that people will express willingness to become a part of such prestigious program. Our ultimate goal is to help other to help ourselves.

To achieve this task we came with a plan to publicize and promote this project on individual level as well as within groups. For the purpose of promotion we have printed flyers as promotion through print media. We are using social media platforms to boast its frequency. Whereas, we visited areas such as the slums in SAFOORA GOTH and GULSHAN as a group activity. We are also trying to approach transgender community to help them get off the streets and have a respectable source of income. We also communicated within our families and friends to let us know if they know some people who need our help. Right now, we are working abstractly and in different directions to spread our message. Our next step is to gather all people on one platform and get them registered.
“Jab aap logon ke taraf se madad mila toh sach mein aakhon mein aasun aa gaya.”
By: Making The Difference - Ngo
Tags: Covid 19, Change, Helping Others, Pandemic Diaries, Social Change

Life is unfair - probably, that explains why the panipuri wala who keeps people fed throughout the year was struggling to provide for his family during the damned lockdown. One of the painstakingly difficult testimonials to record it was, since a real life instance of miseries galore and assistance miniscule, can move even the coldest of hearts.

Our interviewee recounts how food stalls were the first ones in the chain to face closure and how 10-15 days prior to the advent of the lockdown, they had to shutdown their stalls. Age is accompanied with its own consequences that creeps in stealthily with it. Following the shutdown of the food stalls, he could not switch to an alternate profession, thus, he comments; “ iss umar mein aur kaha kaam milega”. hope of ration supply from the government proved to be a dead end, so did help from other informal sources since the people in his immediate social circle were bearing the brunt of the lockdown as well. However, hunger is like a lifeless statue, an impenetrable fortress; it knows no emotion, no feeling can cross its barriers. As such selling off of hard earned possessions was the sole way of survival, the only way to make ends meet. Situation became so constrained that he could not pay the fees in his son’s school neither could he buy books for his son and daughter whose semester was about to start. A family of four, him, his wife and his two children, survived most days on khichdi limiting themselves to one meal a day.

However, help arrived when he expected it the least. Making The difference ’s month long ration supply gave his family a much needed support. He utilized our ration for 2-3 months to feed his family. His gratitude towards Making The Difference therefore is unparallel.
Due to lack of money and earnings some people are unable to even buy necessary seasonal clothes for themselves and their kids.
By: Ayesha Zia
Tags: Amal Fellowship, Helping Others, Amal Academy

Due to lack of money and earnings some people are unable to even buy necessary seasonal clothes for themselves and their kids. Ayesha zia Follow Apr 8 · 2 min read

“Always have a willing hand to help someone, you might be the only one that does.”– Roy T. Bennett

Every week, a girl comes to our door and asks if we have some clothes to give her and her father. We always try to never return her empty handed. Other than this girl there are many people I know, who ask for clothes especially for their kids. They ask different people around them for the used and old clothes but at the same time they don’t want their kids to come to know that these are not new and it really hurts me.

Not only people living in slums have to face this but there are various people around us who actually don’t like to ask for clothes and even cannot afford to buy some. Season somehow passes but when it comes to occasion, may be parents, themselves don’t mention that they need new clothes, may be they just pass the time wearing the ones they already have but kids are innocent and when they see others wearing new and proper seasonal clothes, it hurts them even if they don’t share it or speak about what they feel at that moment.

I want to provide new seasonal clothes to such people who are living in slums and even those who cannot afford. I want to arrange such a system in which people can register themselves or just give a call and they will be provided with clothes. This can be done for the people who apparently look good but actually they don’t have enough money to manage their expenses and also for people who live in slums. Helping the needy is a duty for each one of us that brings a smile on many faces who deserve to smile and are born to live.
R.P.Bharath: A Social worker emerging as a Spectacular Youth Icon
By: Sundar Arunachalam
Tags: Social Services, Helping Others, Indian Youth Leaders, Social Justice, Inspiration

“Everyone can rise above their circumstances and achieve success if they are dedicated to and passionate about what they do and have a fundamental concern for others.” — Nelson Mandela.

Millions and Millions of people are helping others amid this global pandemic. Youngster Bharath Palani, who is known as R.P.Bharath, is from Tamil Nadu, a southern state of India. He is one of a kind who is not only tirelessly helping the needy but also inspiring others to help.

He is an Electrical and Electronics Engineering graduate from the University of Madras. Then out of interest, he learned law, settled in Villupuram, Tamil Nadu. During this COVID-19 pandemic, as a precautionary measure, he locks down himself at his house in Villupuram with his family, including three children. As he is an entrepreneur, he gets the liberty to rest during this period. However, he can’t relax when he comes to know about the people who are suffering for food and basic needs due to the crisis.

He started supplying personal protective equipment and groceries to the people below the poverty line. He is diligently advising the community to follow the government’s cleaning and hygiene protocols and also helping to implement preventive measures.

He is guided by the core values of service to the community, social justice, and the dignity of every person. At present, he ensures to be an active participant in the community response to emerging public health crises and establishes the right examples to others.

Insights into his social work demonstrate the following three key elements: Educate, Serve, and Inspire. It is a simple but excellent lesson for others who are willing to serve society.

As education is the most powerful weapon which is used to change the world, he is not only educating but also enabling others to educate the people. He established possible measures at his level best to combat poverty and helping to get the necessary healthcare services. Beyond color, race, language boundaries, he extends his offerings to the needy. It started inspiring many youngsters, and they started supporting his initiatives. Now, he has a big volunteer group to serve society.

He is spectacularly emerging as an icon of youths and inspiring many lives through his selfish-less service and volunteer activities.

I recollect the following sayings of Martin Luther King, Jr. “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” “The time is always right to do what is right.”

This youngster R.P.Bharath does the right thing during this uncertainty, and I see it as a just start of his legacy, and he will go miles to serve the people. Likewise, I encourage everyone to do the RIGHT now and always.
COVID-19 won’t last forever.
By: Elvidania Caperonis
Tags: Helping Others, Gods Presence, Love, God, Covid-19

COVID-19 won’t last forever. Take precautions, don’t panic, relax, this too shall pass, and we will get together again.

For the past few weeks, I have been thinking about this pandemic situation that we are all trapped in. It seems like this will never end, but this is not true — as anything in life, this will end at some point. We will be back to normal together, we will be able to smile again, we will be social again, we will continue to celebrate birthdays and parties again.

To begin with, it is indeed sad to see all the people that are dying due to this pandemic, but we should be putting things in perspective. The flu kills about 60K Americans every year and we never have gotten so sad about it because we just didn’t see it in the news.

Why is this happening? I don’t have the answer to this, I don’t believe God sent us this, but I think He is allowing this to happen to teach us an important lesson, “nothing should be taken for granted and we must take care and love each other more.” We have to live every day like it is the last of our days. A few months ago, we didn’t appreciate the value of our front-line workers (doctors, nurses, super-market cashiers, etc.) as much as we do today — they all deserve Oscars. On top of that, several weeks ago, we didn’t appreciate the importance of a hug as much as we do today. Many of us are starting to learn important lessons.

Why are people panicking? If you look at the news these days, you get very discouraged because they don’t seem to have a positive message, so I decided not to look at it anymore and trust me, I am happier than before. Is the news meant to make us panic? I think so.

We need to look at the positive side of all of this. Our planet is taking a break and getting cleaner for all the damage we have have been doing to it, our kids are happier to have their parents at home, we are enjoying more home-cooked and healthy meals than ever, and we are having enough time to retrospect and change the course of our lives by being more human and support each other more.

How can we be more relaxed and look ahead? I think that by reading positive books, exercising more, drinking more water, playing with our kids, and taking care of our elderly we can relax our minds. But most importantly, when all of this ends, I hope we do not forget to be better human beings every single day.
Why Should You Keep Having Fun In Life? That Nobody Will Tell You.
By: Alok Patel, Freaky Writer
Tags: Philanthropy, Kindness, Helping Others, Therapy, Happiness

“Most people take life so seriously and their seriousness doesn’t help them. They keep worrying and struggling all their lives. Finally, they forgot about living therein struggle. If they simply celebrate in everything in their life, they see the joyful life.”

I love kids. I was a kid myself, once.

When is that the last time you’re so happy and joyful? When is that the last time you’re unhappy? does one think we must take life so seriously? Or does one think we must take it as fun?

Most people would count their unhappy moments and ignore happy moments, and thus they think life isn’t fair for them. Instead, they must count happy and joyful moments to visualize hope in their lives.

As kids, we never took our lives so seriously and that is why we laughed heart fully and that we lived truly. We didn’t act and never tried to impress everyone. We did what’s satisfying for us. In short, we had joy in our life.

As we grew up, people taught us rules and limits and told us to require life seriously, to become happy in life. But this didn’t work for most of the people. Instead, we suffered more. Even the people who gave us advice aren’t happy with the rules and limits they taught us.

“There is no fear when you are having fun” “We don’t stop fun because we grow old; we grow old because we stop fun.”

source of happiness

This proves that never take life seriously. Don’t worry too much. Just live your life leaving your mental limits and believe that everything are going to be alright and importantly learn to be joyful daily in all the situations and all these situations are temporary and it’s not useful to stress about what’s temporary.

Leave all of your fears, worries, and all negative emotions that aren’t giving you happiness. Do things in life that bring you joy. Never do actions that suffer you more. Enjoy everything you are doing and life turns into a joyful place.

One day our life ends and flashes all our memories and make sure you’re smiling and enjoying this flash movie of your life. Don’t make moments that cause you to cry even at the end.

Find happiness in everything. Even bad things give you good lessons. Be optimistic. Leave hatred for others as you’ll suffer, not them. Always prefer joy to all or any emotions that disturb you.
This paper will open up your eyes
By: Giani Buriana
Tags: Netflix, Helping Others, Mindset, Reality, Friendship

Photo by v2osk on Unsplash

This week I had the opportunity to realize something that will open your eyes too. Stick with me and I hope this will help you.

I don’t know if you’ve heard about but Netflix released a new mini-series called Unorthodox which tells the story of a young Jewish female from Brooklyn who tries to escape from a forced marriage. Before we jump in be aware that this article may contain spoilers.

As the story goes on, she manages to go to Berlin where she finds a music academy and her old passion for piano starts to fire again. She decides to fill up an application for a place in the academy hold for in-need students. At this point, I start to emphasize with her feelings and I start to believe that she will impress everyone with her piano skills. But at a dinner night with her new friends in Berlin, she was asked to play the piano. The performance was poor and although some of her audience wants to make her feel good about herself, someone from the group decides to reveal their true impression about the performance.

You have no idea about how much I wanted it to be a great performance, but the reality is not like that. She didn’t have the experience needed and she had no chance to get the scholarship.

I realized that, since childhood, we were fed happy-ending stories. With stories full of false hope and without any true connection with reality, just to make us feel better, not to prepare us for the actual situation. I understand the idea of being supportive but I would rather understand being honest to your beloved ones. Instead of creating false hope, we should give honest feedback to help the person to become better themselves and work on their faults. Maybe if we do that, there won’t be so many people coming to talent shows and embarrassing themselves in front of people just because someone made them believe that they can do something they can’t.

Hence, next time a friend asks you to watch him/her perform, give your honest opinion. Try to understand him, don’t be too harsh, but present your opinion so that they know you want the best for them. That is what friends do.
About Me — Elle Canta. I write about navigating life with a…
By: Elle Canta
Tags: Gen X, Helping Others, About Me, Mental Health, Late Bloomer

So far, what I write about is me. I’ve written at length about my childhood. Not so much the graphic details, more about how what happened affected me. I write about my process; how I figure things out, make a plan, fall flat on my rump, get up, dust off, and try again… My life is one of healthy self-obsession. I’m honest and open about how serious my illnesses are, my personality flaws, how terrible my childhood was, and how much dysfunction I deal with as a result of it all. My gift is being able to problem solve and make small, sustainable changes to my life. I move slowly, but with intention. I’m a baby-stepper, and it works well for me.

Medium Stories

When I took the big I-Want-To-Be-A-Writer-OMG-What-Now?! step, I thought I’d be writing about one thing. I’d discovered I was good at the one thing, so as a person with a long history of avoiding even the potential for failure, staying in that lane made perfect sense. But my brain is loving looking at life through the lens of a storyteller. It’s been telling me, “Hey, you could write about that,” and “Ohhh, there’s a great story to be told, here!”

My vision for the writing I do on Medium is to give it the same treatment my blog gets. It’s my plan to help as many people as I can with whatever subjects I cover. However, I’m not much for step-by-steps, and I won’t be telling anyone what to do. I’m brutally honest yet unfailingly optimistic… Well, eventually. I will say shit if my mouth is full of it. I can wallow around in the muck for a bit, but I will always get to the good part. I’m a bit of a contrarian, a tad histrionic, and I love to laugh. I prefer a simpler kind of life, and fortunately, I’ve been able to get pretty close to it. I invite you to join me as I plod along towards life-ing better and happy-ing more. (Yes, murderizing the language IS my style, thank you very much.)

Have you hit the paywall? If you want to read one of my stories, send me a Private Note. I’ll send you a friend link for anything you’d like to read. If you’re thinking of signing up to be a member of Medium, I’d be grateful if you used my referral link, as they’ll pay me a portion of your fee:

By the way, I use a pseudonym because some of my abusers are still alive, and I’m estranged from toxic family members with no desire to reinitiate contact. Also, some of my content will be about sex, and I’m not keen on bumping into Susan at the grocery store after she reads about my sexual history. Ya know?
Maintaining Connection
By: Lara Heacock
Tags: Helping Others, Connection

I’m loving the movement toward maintaining social connection, even through distance.

I’ve decided to continue what I started last week to use this corner of the internet in the best way I can think of right now which is offering a little calm in this storm.

Let’s talk about connection. As we all settle into practicing social distancing, I’m loving the movement toward maintaining social connection, even through distance. I also know that a lot of people don’t really know what that looks like.

Here are some things that are really supporting people:

Use a video tool like Skype, Zoom, WhatsApp or Face Time. There are free video tools available and most of them have virtual technical support if you need help figuring them out. If your computer doesn’t have a camera, they also have smartphone apps available. Seeing people is so important when we can’t physically be together. Research by Marcus Buckingham shows that the medium doesn’t matter as much as the frequency, so check in often!

Lean into social media. I know, usually we hear folks talking about how social media disconnects folks; but right now I’m seeing the opposite. So many people are going Live on Instagram. There are many more Stories popping up. People are reaching out and creating communities. Curate your feed so it’s not full of things that feel stressful, then get some connection from feel good places.

Talk to folks from a safe distance. I’ve chatted with a few neighbors while on a walk and it’s been a bright spot.

Send more texts than you normally would. Even a quick “How are you?” can be a lovely reminder to someone that you’re still connected and thinking about them.

Connect to yourself. There’s a lot of information and feelings to hold right now. The best way to navigate it is to ensure you’re connecting with yourself. That might look like movement, or quiet, or something completely different; but whatever it looks like to you, keep doing it.

If you’re feeling the need for connection, here’s your invitation. Head to our Facebook or Instagram and leave a note. Let’s show up for each other and help maintain connection.
A Light to be shed
Tags: Empowerment, Helping Others, Support, Kindness

A Light to be shed

Humanity is threatened by the catastrophic Covid-19 known as Corona virus,it is truly depressing to have witnessed countless deaths;nowhere to bury the fallen.Even though despite the virus outbreak when everything seems to be in chaos and shattering sight,what can be done to lessen such dilemma ?

In a world full of misfortunes and bigotry we in the end are humans with consciousness and feelings.What have we become after the information technology took its toll ?Did animals became us with more emotions and understanding and we them ?We all are humans needing to care for each other and stand up for each other in times of dire need,our existence relies upon the foundations of survival.

Yes there is war,pain,suffering,strenuous pursuit in living a simple life.But we all can be kind to ourselves and to those around them.We all can become a greater human being by providing with atleast a single word of empathetic approach.We all are peaceful and grateful for the life we have when we think about it and that we must be willing to help those in need and provide for those who can’t provide for themselves anymore.Life becomes much more beautiful when everyone unites in arms together to serve a common objective;Love,Kindness,being a human.

My condolences to everyone out there suffering and living a life they never deserved,battered and broken,shattered and still keeping up with the endless waves of soul crushing darkness and apocalyptic judgements.

Let us all become more kind,more forgiving and more loving to make this world a better place;even more a place where pain would exist but it wouldn’t be deliberate and excruciating.

Seek out the light amidst these dark times,trust in the universe and its abundances,don’t lose hope and never quit.
Isn’t it incredible how we were all so excited for the year 2020, celebrating the Roaring 20’s all…
By: Restoration Of Colorado Springs
Tags: Coronavirus, Colorado, Helping Others, Commercial, Business

Isn’t it incredible how we were all so excited for the year 2020, celebrating the Roaring 20’s all over again, however, I feel that it’s rather the opposite, we got something similar to the Great Depression. COVID-19 has affected so many Americans in countless ways. One that worries me the most is how many businesses will have to shut down because of the social distancing and stay at home orders. According to the US Department of Labor, they disclosed that 22 million people in the US are out of work and JUST last week 5.2 million people filed for unemployment insurance. How scary petrifying is that?

How can WE help those small businesses that have been surviving paycheck to paycheck to stay open? How do WE help the employees from losing their jobs? How can WE help essential employees feel a little more comfortable while working through a global pandemic? How can WE make people feel more comfortable to go out shopping for essential goods?

Restoration 1 of Colorado Springs is doing an incredible disinfecting service while being flexible with the price because the owner understands the need for this service and understands it’s a difficult time for businesses. This disinfecting service includes full-service cleaning with commercial-grade products that reduce service contamination by 98%. We have been working with factories, convenience stores, homes, and even delivery vehicles. While being able to work with each company as a case to case basis to help them continue to do this cleaning weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly because we understand it can be expensive. As long as the businesses are taking the precautions to keep the property decontaminated by wearing gloves, and masks.

That is how WE can help.
Create a CouchDB 2 Cluster using Docker on Localhost
By: John Mcenery
Tags: Couch, Clustering, Cluster, Docker, Couchdb

First, we need to create our CouchDB instance containers. Start with this on the command line.

docker run -itd -p 5984:5984 -p 5986:5986 --name=couchdb0 \

-e NODENAME='couchdb-0.local.com' \

--mount 'source=volume-0,target=/opt/couchdb/data' \

couchdb:2.3.0

So, let’s explain this bit by bit.

docker run -itd This command starts a container based on an image. In this case the image is at the end couchdb:2.3.0 .

-p is short for --publish which will publish the container’s port (2nd number) to the localhost’s port (1st number).

--name is the name that your container will take on and it must be unique from any other containers whether or not they are running.

-e This means the following will be an environment variable and NODENAME='couchdb-0.local.com' provides the key and value to couchDB for the node’s domain name. This will produce a full node name of couchdb@couchdb-0.local.com . We’ll need this information to create and administrative user for our CouchDB instances. If you don’t provide a node name then you won’t be able to cluster and the default node name is noname@nohost .

--mount create a volume with the value of the source key that then maps to the value of the target key. So the result will be a new volume named volume-0 and it will map to the CouchDB instance’s data location /opt/couchdb/data .

Phew, so now we have our first node. You can check to see if it is running with curl -X GET http://localhost:5984 .

You should be rewarded with the following response:

{

"couchdb": "Welcome",

"features": [

"pluggable-storage-engines",

"scheduler"

],

"git_sha": "07ea0c7",

"uuid": "4f11be4ecaf0473f60bbac4dbb80ee95",

"vendor": {

"name": "The Apache Software Foundation"

},

"version": "2.3.0"

}

Great one down two to go.

docker run -itd -p 15984:5984 -p 15986:5986 --name=couchdb1 \

-e NODENAME='couchdb-1.local.com' \

--mount 'source=volume-1,target=/opt/couchdb/data' \

couchdb:2.3.0

Next.

docker run -itd -p 25984:5984 -p 25986:5986 --name=couchdb2 \

-e NODENAME='couchdb-2.local.com' \

--mount 'source=volume-2,target=/opt/couchdb/data' \

couchdb:2.3.0

Great we’ve got our three CouchDB instances. Check to see if they are running with curl or list all the running containers with docker ps .

curl -X GET http://localhost:15984

curl -X GET http://localhost:25984

No, those port numbers aren’t wrong. We bound the standard CouchDB port 5984 to 15984 and 25984 for couchdb1 and couchdb2 instances respectively.
How to Setup a MongoDB Replica Set
By: Samuel Addico
Tags: NoSQL, Replication, Clustering, Mongodb, DevOps

Introduction

In this tutorial, we are going to be looking at how setup a MongoDB replicat set including 3 nodes: One primary node and 2 secondary nodes.This tutorial also assumes you have a fair knowledge of MongoDB and Clustering.

MongoDB Installation

Well, so as the title suggests, we will have to install MongoDB on all 3 nodes.For the sake of this session, we will be using version 4.0 and on Ubuntu 16. You could follow installation guide on the official website.You should see below once MongoDB is up and running:

Configuring The Replica Set

Hosts File

To ensure that there is communication amongst the 3 nodes, we need to configure the hostname and their corresponding private IPs in the /etc/hosts as shown below :

For this update to be effected you need to reboot the nodes

Mongo Configuration File

We will update the mongo configuration on each node by ensuring they listen on the private IPs configured above.See below :

net:

port: 27017

bindIp: 172.31.24.121 replication:

replSetName: replicaSet

Also note to restart service mongod after this updates

Initialize the Replica Set

This is where we do the actual replica configurations.Connect a mongo shell to one of the running mongod instances and configure as show below.

ubuntu@mongodb-node-1:~$mongo

> rs.initiate()

You should see an output as shown below.

Next, we will add the remaining nodes to the replica configurations by running below :

> rs.add('mongodb-node-2:27017')

> rs.add('mongodb-node-3:27017')

If the replica set has been configured properly, you’ll see output similar to the following:

Congratulations !!, We have successfully configure a MongoDB replica set.

Advantages of Replication

High Availability : when one node or the primary node goes down, another node in the cluster can be switch to and depended on for serving of workload

Increased read performance : Multiple machines provide greater processing power and data can be spread across multiples machines on a network.This allows to vastly improve your application’s read performance.

Greater scalability: As your user base grows and report complexity increases, your resources can grow.

Improve data durability guarantee: Replication allows you to increase this durability guarantee by ensuring that data modifications are written to multiple machines. This means that multiple disks, disk controllers, power supplies, and CPUs are used to ensure that your data modification makes it to stable storage.

Considerations

This replica set consists of 3 nodes as you can see.However, if you decide to go with an even number say 4 members, deploy an arbiter so that the set has an odd number of voting members.Voting is usually conducted by cluster members to elect a primary node and so adding an arbiter ensures no ties are risen during voting.Hope this helps. Read more here

In my next story, we will deal with how to add authentication to this :-),Thank you for reading. Don’t forget to hit the clap icon up there.
K-Means Simplified
By: Luthfi Ramadhan
Tags: Data Mining, Data Science, Clustering, K Means Clustering, Machine Learning

What is clustering?

Clustering is the process of grouping a set of data objects (or observations) into subsets. Each subset is a cluster, such that objects in a cluster are similar to one another but different from objects in other clusters. Clustering is commonly used to explore a dataset to either identify the underlying patterns in it or to create a group of characteristics.

Clustering is sometimes called automatic classification. Because a cluster is a bunch of data that are similar to one another within the same cluster and dissimilar to data in other clusters so that a cluster of data can be treated as an implicit class. The difference here is that clustering can automatically find the groupings. This is a distinct advantage of clustering.

Clustering has been widely used in many applications one of which is business intelligence. In business intelligence, clustering can be used to organize a large number of customers into groups, where customers within a group share strong similar characteristics. By doing this, it is easier to develop business strategies for enhanced customer relationship management.

In this context, different clustering methods may generate different clusterings on the same data set. The grouping is not performed by humans, but by the clustering algorithm such as K-means. Hence, clustering is useful in that it can lead to the discovery of previously unknown groups within the data.
Deploying Hadoop Cluster on AWS using EC2 instances
By: Ashwini Patil
Tags: Deploy, Clustering, Hadoop, AWS, Amazon

Installation and configuration of Infrastructure to deploy our projects often consume a lot of our time which can be used in learning instead. With the help of this post I attempt to make the process easier and save some of your time. Wasting no more of your precious time lets dive right into the subject. While on the article look out for some tips and tricks mentioned as notes to help you out!

In this post I will walk you through the process of configuring and deploying a Hadoop cluster using Amazon EC2 instances in 10 Simple steps.

STEP 1) Create AWS account

For those of you who are new to AWS, AWS(Amazon Web Services) is a cloud computing platform provided by Amazon in a pay-as-you-go model. For more information kindly visit here.

AWS offers certain services in it’s free tier so as to give customers a look and feel of their platform. Luckily for you, the resources used in this post will cost you only as much as you use them and some fall right into the free tier category. Anyone can create an AWS Account with a valid email id and access free tier resources(for first 12 months).
Selecting a common node in given time interval in a multi-node cluster systems
By: Shubhmeet Kaur
Tags: Consistent Hashing, Distributed Systems, Clustering, Hashing, Distributed Hash Table

Selecting a common node in given time interval in a multi-node cluster systems Shubhmeet Kaur Feb 18·2 min read

Hashing is computational technique to convert data of arbitrary size to a fixed length value. Hashing can be achieved via Hash functions and Hash tables. Common application of hashing is in data storage and retriecal applications to access data in small and constant time per retreival. Amount of storgae space requried to store hashed value is very low, and is fractionally greater then storing the actual data. Hashing avoids non-linear acess time of complicated structured and non structured data structures such as trees and list.

Problem Definitation :

There are n nodes in the clustered system. The requirement is operation o needs to be performed every f hrs by any one node/server in the cluster. The node selected must be random to ensure evenly distribution of load balancing among the clustered system. The same node should be selected in the given interval irrespective of which node is running the selection process or how many time you select the node in the given interval which has to execute the actual operation. How will you ensure each node selects the same node in the given interval {time t1 + frequency f} to execute this operation o? All the nodes/servers in the cluster will use consistent hashing algorithm to generate the same node to the caller as depicted in below code snippet.

/*

*

* Choose a node to execute the operation, if the localnode is selected, then execute operation, otherwise log it.

*

/

public void executeOperation()

{

Node nodeSelected = selectServer(startTime, frequency, listofServers);

//am i the node to execute operation?

if (nodeSelected is localNode) {

System.out.println("Current Node is choosen to run operation in this iteration");

//exceute operation o

}

else

{

System.out.println("Node " + nodeSelected +" was choosen to run operation in this iteration");

}

} /*

*

* startTime :when the operation o was started

* frequency :how frequent the operation o needs to be triggered

* listOfServers :list of all the servers in the system

*

/ public Node selectServer(long startTime, long frequency, List<Node> listOfServers)

{

long currentTime = System.currentTimeMillis();

long interval;

if (currentTime >= startTime)

{

interval = (currentTime - startTime) / (frequency * 1000 * 60 * 60);

}

else

{

interval = (startTime - currentTime) / (frequency * 1000 * 60 * 60); }

int index = (int) (interval % listofServers.size());

return listofServers.get(index);

}

Conclusion

Hence, one can use hashing to ensure same node/server can be selected to perform given operation for a defined interval of time in a large scale multi-node cluster system.

Thank you,

Shubhmeet
Unsupervised Learning
By: Daniel Moraite
Tags: Satellite Technology, Unsupervised Learning, Clustering, Satellite Imagery, Machine Learning

Unsupervised Learning

As you have seen in my previous work for classifying objects in satellite imagery, deep learning is used, and it does achieve good results, though it has a high dependency on the amount of available data, and more exactly labeled data.

Remote sensing creates a huge amount of data every day which mostly lacks annotations. The data complexity and the lack of a well-defined typology make it impossible to use supervised tools. And here is where clustering methods come in.

For better results:

Using all the bands available

For example, Sentinel 2 has up to 13 spectral bands available and this extra information can bring more clarity to the algorithm and eliminate noise.

Bellow, I will use all the 3 bands available for clustering and compare the results with the clustering obtained for using only 1 band.

Conclusions

Using all the bands available

In order to obtain the results above I have been using:

— images from both Planet and Sentinel

— Rasterio, Numpy, Scikit-learn, KMeans, Matplotlib, Python.

One can save the resulted images as a GeoTIFF

(either using rasterio or gdal) and it can be imported into a GIS platform for further study and classification.