fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
5 quick tips when creating a design system in Sketch
By: Marc Andrew
Tags: Design, Sketch, Design Systems, UX, UI

Things can really turn into one long Layer List of confusion if you leave the renaming and organisation of Layers till the end of a project.

Back in the day, I used to sort out this layer spaghetti manually. Yeah, I’m one of the crazy ones. But now there so many great plugins out there that can help you quickly sort out the renaming and organisation of your Layers, and I’ll be touching upon these in the next tip.

Now, that’s not to say you should leave everything right to the end, and X plugin’s magical fairy dust should be sprinkled over your System, which it could, but to rename, and organise sections as you move along. Just small chunks at a time will ease the burden when you come to put X plugin to work.

Tab and Cmd + R are two of the most valuable shortcuts to know in Sketch. Use them. Frequently.
Bill Glass Brings Exciting Event to LorCI
Tags: Basketball, Ohio, Prison, Odrc, Motorcycle

Bill Glass Behind the Walls paid a visit to the offender population at Lorain Correctional Institution (LorCI). Two session were held with approximately 400 offenders attending each session.

Bruce Crevier performs with “Bill Glass Behind the Walls” at Lorain Correctional.

During the first session, guest Bruce Crevier kept the crowd in suspense with his basketball show titled “Spin-Tacular Basketball” - and yes, the event was spectacular! Bruce holds the world record of spinning 21 basketballs at one time (a record he has broken on four other occasions).

At the end of his performance he passed out books, collector cards of him and his family, and signed books that he and his wife had wrote.

The second session guests were Karim Handfield and the Ride4Life motorcycle group. Karim rapped and sang several Christian songs, for the men in attendance, which provided the group with hope after sharing his testimony.

The Ride4Life group consisted of a team of three gentlemen who performed amazing stuns on their motorcycles. At the end of their performance, they too provided some powerful testimonies. During the event, there was roughly 10 motorcycles and a 1967 Cobra sports car on display for all to view.

Overall, this was a wonderful event for the LorCI men in attendance and provided an opportunity for them to experience something exciting and unique.

(Article written by Chris Miller at LorCI.)
Leadership Challenge: Be the Chief Listening Officer
By: Donna Goodaker
Tags: Leadership Development, Productivity, Leaders, Listening, Leadership

The challenge this week is listening. I think about listening, maybe more than most people. As I’ve mentioned before, it isn’t my best thing. I respect and envy you if it’s your best thing. I’m better, much better, at it than I used to be, but I still have to remind myself to listen sometimes.

I’m one of those people whose brain whirs around all the time. I’m good at brainstorming and generating ideas. I’ll be the first to say my ideas aren’t always good ones, but often they’re pretty decent. I used to be that person who could barely wait for the speaker to stop speaking so I could tell my idea. Problem is, it’s very difficult to listen and speak at the same time. And it’s rude.

I worked on it. I’d love to say I found a magic trick to make me a patient listener. I didn’t. I had to repeatedly tell myself, “don’t inhale and open your mouth like you’re about to speak” or “don’t lean in and get the look on your face that says “hurry up” to the person talking”. I learned to plant an interested look on my face and make eye contact, even if I was thinking about my next comments. Eventually, I realized I was thinking less about what I wanted to say and more about what they were saying. I was listening!

More recently…the past couple of years…I take notes during meetings or when someone is talking about a problem or reviewing their ongoing work. I find it helps me focus and remember. It also demonstrates I’m present in the moment and not daydreaming.

THIS WEEK’S LEADERSHIP CHALLENGE: LISTEN BETTER.

Try any of these:

If you’re meeting with someone to review ongoing work or to help them solve a problem, take notes while they talk. Ask three or more questions to ensure you understand what you’re hearing.

Set up a couple of opportunities to listen. Ask someone to tell you about the project they’re working on. While they talk, make sure you make eye contact and have a patient and open look on your face.

After you’ve been in a conversation with a couple of other people, write down several main points and details you heard. Were you listening?

Sometimes excellent leadership involves giving direction and active decision making. Other times, excellent leadership is quiet and supportive. You are listening. You are present. It may be all someone needs.
530. Minimum Absolute Difference in BST
Tags: Leetcode, Algorithms

Think carefully of the problem. The result pair must be adjacent in the BST inorder traversal. So we can traverse the BST in order. The traversal cost O(n) time and O(logn) space(either cost by recursion or a stack in an iterative way).

class Solution {

int _min;



public:

int getMinimumDifference(TreeNode* root) {

_min = INT_MAX;



if (root) {

dfs(root);

}



return _min;

}



std::pair<int, int> dfs(TreeNode* root) {

int minV = root->val;

int maxV = root->val;



if (root->left) {

auto v = dfs(root->left);



_submit(root->val, v.second);

minV = std::min(minV, v.first);

}

if (root->right) {

auto v = dfs(root->right);



_submit(root->val, v.first);

maxV = std::max(maxV, v.second);

}



return { minV, maxV };

}



void _submit(const int a, const int b) {

_min = std::min(_min, std::abs(a - b));

}

};
NLP: Making sense of review data using relation extraction
By: Oskar Handmark
Tags: Deep Learning, NLP, Data Science, Text Mining, Sentiment Analysis

Why is it called one hot encoding? Because one of the features is hot, and marked as a one. You can think of this step as putting a word into a category bin, where the bin’s name is the word itself, and not putting it in any other bins.

This methodology is often used when you’re working with actual words as features, but brings up the dimensionally of your feature to multiple thousand dimensions (this is usually fine, since the matrices are sparse). In our case, we don’t include the actual word as a feature, but we still have to do this, since the POS-tags are strings.

The observant reader might have noticed that we’ve already done a slightly similar but different version of this step for the in and out-links features. Since we defined our features as binary, and named them ‘in_nsubj’ etc, we’ve essentially created a similar encoding for our link features. We’d put 1’s in all bins where there is an in- or out link, respectively. The only difference here is that a word might have multiple in links, and multiple out links, hence the separation.

Given our 27 training sentences, we have a total of 253 used features (after encoding), resulting in an input layer of size 253. We’ll use a few hidden layers of different sizes, and an output layer of size 5, one for each category.

Training the model is as simple as feeding the feature vectors and correct labels for all our training examples into the neural network model that we’ve defined. We can then cross validate (or use a separate test set) to measure the performance of our model (my example code with 27 sentences of training has an accuracy of about 81%).

Since we’ve trained this model with a categorical output (our final layer has 5 outputs), we can get the probabilities assigned to each output for a given word during prediction:

4. Linking

This is a post-prediction step in which we link the entities and descriptors together. After the model has made its predictions, we’ll look at the dependency parse tree again, and follow the following simple heuristic:

If there is a link between any of the words in the entity group, to any of the words in the descriptor group, we’ll say they are connected. If there are more descriptors than entities, we allow multiple descriptors to be linked to the same entity, and vice versa.

We’ll also look for negations and transform words to their lemma-forms (i.e impressed → impressive). For example, imagine a sentence like:

“I was impressed by the battery life, but not by the design.”

And our classifier produced a correct classification of:

Follow all original dependency parse tree links (for the predicted groups):
Cleaning House
By: Ann Litts
Tags: Mental Health, Healing, Self-awareness, Letting Go, Transformation

I take the time to write about this on New Year’s Day specifically as a counterculture protest.

On New Year’s our culture encourages us to ‘get our shit together’ in a more organized and tidy manner for the coming year. But what if we’ve been doing that and we are sick as fuck of that damn organized treadmill?

There is more to Life than ‘cleaning it up’. We can all sit in our homes and realize the rug is going to need to be vacuumed in another three days (much less than that if you have kids or a dog). We can lament over the fact there will ALWAYS be laundry. ALWAYS. We can fight dust bunnies with our swifters until we are blue in the face. But it will change nothing.

The tasks of Life will remain. What would I give to have back all the hours I spent doing those things? It’s water under the bridge now and all I can do is move forward knowing my mind was a slave to the OCD. And forgive myself those lost moments. Moments I could have spent with my children, my friends, my own soul in peace instead of drudgery.

I can be thankful for this insight. This place where I have finally landed. This moment where I understand I can do small tasks, one at a time, as needed and give myself the Gift of Free Time.

Free Time to spend in Growth and Love and Peace.

Organizing and Busyness is a game our brains are trained masters in. They deflect us from our Real Purpose in this Life.

Our Real Purpose is simply to Love.

And we start by Loving ourselves enough to let go of the damn lists, schedules, and organizational charts which society tells us makes us better Humans. If you are doing Love well — you are sure to have a bright and beautiful New Year.

Namaste.

Addendum: In the two years since I wrote this piece, I took yet another step towards healing my OCD. I hired a cleaning service. And I am pleased to report — they clean All. The. Things. just as good or even better than I could myself. This is great progress! I have let go of holding myself to unrealistic expectations. I have gained Time. The cleaning service is worth every penny I spend on it.
AOP with F# — Memoization using higher-order functions
By: Yan Cui
Tags: Functional Programming, Programming

I touched on the topic of memoization in the past in relation to doing aspect-oriented programming with PostSharp, however, with functional languages like F#, Haskell or Erlang there is no such frameworks (although PostSharp should still work with F# to some extent) to help you.

That’s not to say that you can’t do AOP in a functional language though, in fact, here’s a simple implementation of the aforementioned memoizer in F# as a higher-order function:

Here’s a FSI session that shows the memoize function in action:

Note that the memoized version of the original function f took a second to execute the first time around but then subsequent calls didn’t take anytime.

Parting thoughts…

The implementation I’ve shown here is a very basic and only works for functions that takes in a single parameter, if you can think of an elegant way to make it support functions with different number of inputs please feel free to contact me as I’m very interested to hear about your thoughts.

Also, this implementation won’t work with recursive functions because when the function recurs it will be calling the non-memoized version of the function, it’ll require some special handling to make a recursive function ‘memoizable’.

In general, I don’t feel AOP is as well suited to functional programming as it is to object oriented programming, but there’s still a pocket of use cases where AOP can be beneficial. Memoization is one of them, so is tracing and input validation, all of which is possible through the use of higher-order functions. A word of warning though, If you’re familiar with frameworks such as PostSharp, the AOP experience you’re going to get through higher-order functions is not going to be as unobtrusive as you’re used to.
How To Build an Angular Static website with AWS S3
By: Bhargav Bachina
Tags: AWS, JavaScript, Programming, Web Development, Angular

Implementation

Let’s build our local project and upload those static files into the bucket.

Build the local project

Let’s build the project with this command ng build --prod and the resulting built is placed under /dist/<app name>. In this case, it is dist/my-profile.

build

Upload files into the bucket

Let's create a bucket called bachimyprofile(you can name any) and upload all these files under /dist/my-profile folder.

AWS S3 Bucket

Once you upload all the files, we need to enable static website hosting under properties. Make sure you have index.html as an index document.

Notice that the index.html has all the compiled javascript files from the Angular compiler and you can see <app-root> component in the body. This index.html pulls all the required files for the app to work properly in the browser.

index.html

One more thing we need to do is enable public access under the permissions tab. You can do this while uploading files as well.

Public Access

Copy the URL from here and access it on the web. This is the URL http://bachimyprofile.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/

Endpoint

Error Page

If you enter any other URL other than above you will get 403 Forbidden. For example, Let’s access this URL http://bachimyprofile.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/someurl you would get the below page.

403 forbidden

We can configure an error page instead of a default error page from AWS. We should define error.html under a static website hosting for an error document.

Defining error.html for Error Document

Here is an error.html file and should be uploaded as well.

error.html

error.html uploaded to the bucket

If you access the URL again http://bachimyprofile.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/someurl, you would get our customized error page.

Displaying Error page

If you want to access this with the DNS name. Check out this article.
MUŻE.X and the Pre-Conference Webinar Events
By: Sandro Debono
Tags: Culture, Future, Conference, Museums, Community

MUŻE.X and the Pre-Conference Webinar Events

Six international museum voices from around the world

Our biennial conference, MUŻE.X — Shaping Museum Futures, had to happen this coming November but circumstances dictated otherwise. But, as the saying goes, there is always a silver lining. We have now shifted the physical conference to October 2021 and, in the run-up to the physical event, we shall be holding six webinars featuring six international voices each sharing thoughts and ideas about museum futures. The webinars shall be happening live between October and December 2020. Registration is free of charge.

The line-up of speakers includes Nina Simon (CEO of the international movement OF/BY FOR ALL), Diane Drubay (founder of We Are Museums), Alistair Hudson (Director of the Whitworth and Manchester Art Gallery), Kristin Alford (Director of Australia’s future-focused museum MOD), Sebastian Chan (Chief Experience Officer at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Melbourne) and Kayleigh Bryant-Greenwell (Head of Public Programs with Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Renwick Gallery).

The webinars shall be moderated by Prof. Carmel Borg and Sandro Debono from the Department of Arts, Open Communities and Adult Education (University of Malta). Towards the end, Mike Murawski, change leader and committed advocate for more equitable and community-centred museums, shall present his reflections on the presentation and discussion.

Here they are …
11 histórias e 1 segredo
By: Luiz Borba
Tags: Programming Languages, Programming, Internet

in Both Sides of the Table
Newsletter August 16th, 2020 –A Warm Welcome to Our Writers!
By: Keira Fulton-Lees
Tags: Journalism, Writing, Autism, Artfully Autistic, Newsletter

Artfully Autistic is a Publication about Autism for those Autistic or Identify as such, friends/families of those with Autism, Health Professionals, those who are supportive of Autism, or those simply interested in Autism. You don’t have to be Autistic to post here!

Follow
What do I mean by ‘Travel like a local’?
By: Snehal Wagh
Tags: Travel, Tourism, Indian Food, Local, Transport

Why, why do I need to travel like a local? Why can’t I travel as a tourist?

Well you can, if you want to. Then why did you click on this article?

When you travel how locals travel in that place, you can travel cheaper and experience more. You can learn more by immersing yourself in an environment.

1. Transport

Use similar transport systems locals use while they’re commuting.

There might be special apps that locals use daily for their commute.

For example, when you’re in Mumbai, travel by local train and an app to navigate is m-Indicator. If you’re in Delhi, use metro! It goes everywhere. Super fast and super cheap.

2. Accommodation

Use hostels instead of hotels, you will make friends and you can then travel with them. I had an amazing experience staying in Zostel Rishikesh while we were there for some adventure travel.

Have you heard of an app called CouchSurfing? It lets you stay with locals for nothing. And you will end up getting a richer experience.

If you want privacy and don’t want to stay in hotels (little compromise) I would recommend AirBnB.

3. Language

I know English is a universal language but at least learn a few terms of the local language so you can communicate better with the locals.

Like hello, good morning, how are you, please, thank you, can I have a cup of coffee, how much does it cost, where’s the toilet, what’s your recommendation, etc.. No seriously, et cetera.

Duolingo will surely help you with it!

4. Food

I don’t get people who travel to another country and eat the same food they eat every day at their home. And there are some travel agencies that offer these things.

The other day, I saw in a newspaper “Indian meals available if you don’t want to eat local food.”

What! why would you even do that?

What’s the catch if you are traveling to a place and not eating their food. Local food is like the soul of that place. Eat what locals eat, they’re probably eating it because it suits the climate you are in and it’s cheaper.
Moments from The Verve profile of The Awl, ranked.
By: Michael Sippey
Tags: Ranked, Theawl, Theverge

Why are the most important people in media reading The Awl?

In February, at the Code/Media* conference in Dana Point, California, some of the most powerful people in media found…
4 Rules for Writing About Yourself
By: Todd Brison
Tags: Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Writing, Blogging, Creativity

This biggest disconnect between the stories a writer lives and the ones they tells is this: life does not make narrative sense. Were you to try and tell any part of life exactly as you lived it, from start to finish, nobody could follow it.

Also — and I mean this with no disrespect to you —your story will be boring.

That isn’t to say my life is more interesting. Many of life’s events are meaningless out of context. The story of How Todd Stared Into the Fridge for 10 Minutes, Hoping a New Snack would Appear is not particularly compelling.

If you want to write about yourself without sounding like a narcissist, it’s your job to mold the story of your own life into something we can digest as readers. The best way I know to do this is to imagine yourself as a character when you write.

The good news for you is it’s much easier to write a character than it is to write a human being. Writers have been penning characters regularly for over a century now. We know what works. We know what doesn’t. This is true even if the character is you. Character You is a different person than actual you.

We’re teetering on the edge of a metaphysical cliff now. Let’s stop with the theoretical and move into the practical, lest we start spiraling downward. My existential crisis is not scheduled until next Tuesday, and I don’t want to go there too early.

Here are four rules for writing about yourself as a character. At the end of each rule is a question to ask yourself while writing.
A sort-of-product review of RoboTerra
By: Mika Reyes
Tags: Robotics, Tech, Design

These are the tabs for the navigation bar. I assume the biggest “action step” RoboTerra wants to do is translate views into purchases, and I think Shop should be a link on its own (and maybe changed into the word “Products”), or at least focusing on the things a user can actually buy, so conversions can increase.

The CrowdFunding campaign is another significant “action step” at least at this point in time, so it should have a bigger push on the website overall to drive more traffic into it. I only found out about the IndieGoGo campaign when exploring all tabs, but because it is the biggest need right now, why not highlight it in the front page and everywhere else? So it may not have to be in the permanent navigation bar, but for the time being, it should probably have its separate tab, but also should be promoted everywhere on the site (especially the front!)

(As a side note on the IndieGoGo campaign, I love what’s being shown and written on the campaign website itself, but I think it lacks the “what are we going to do with the money” and “how will this money help us in the long run” part. If that is improved, it might translate to higher conversions!)

The Quantum 2016 Summer Camp and free workshop, should probably be under another category. I notice the company hosts a lot of events in line with their mission, and maybe categorizing this under a separate tab, and having a calendar-esque format will work well.

The two pages for Origin Kit, I would mesh into one page instead, so everything about that product is packed into one. I’d also change “Solutions” to something more like “Products” or “Offers” because, sure it’s solving some sort of problem, but that problem isn’t necessarily highlighted in the copy of the earlier pages. Products or offers seems more an apt word to encompass the Origin Kit, CastleRock and the grant.

For News, categorizing the “For Teachers” and “For Robot Makers” under this seems off. I’d create a separate “Resources” page for these two. I also really like the ideas behind these two pages, as it gives the user more tangible and practical ways to use the robots. I think it’s important to capitalize on the resources to help others onboard on the product better (like what I was highlighting with point #2.)

My little suggestion on the navigation bar.

5. Can I buy parts separately?

If I already have the kit but I lose some parts, what do I do?

Another implication of this last point is that the FAQ needs to be a bit more comprehensive. I can already imagine several sorts of questions kids and parents will have, and it would be best to answer these all in the FAQs. Right now, the FAQs are very ideological, and catered to parents, but what about more technical things that kids might have trouble with? I suppose this comes with more user testing and understanding the recurring questions users will have, but something to keep in mind.

Overall, really enjoy the mission of the startup, and I hope it goes to great lengths in the coming years! For now, maybe I should get a robot myself!
Sharing Your Local App Over The Public Internet
By: Bhargav Bachina
Tags: Software Engineering, Programming, Web Development, Ngrok, Software Development

Sharing Your Local App Over The Public Internet

Learn How To share over the internet from the localhost

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

Imagine you are working from home and you want to demo your application that you have been working to one of your colleagues or friends for immediate feedback. You don’t have time to deploy or it’s not deployment-ready yet. Let’s look at another scenario where you are debugging an application that has a problem only on your machine, you want your colleagues to look at it and help you. How do you share the application that is running on the localhost over the internet so that other people can access it?

You would often find yourself in these situations quite often and in this post, I want to share how we can achieve it with the help of the ngrok library.

What is ngrok?

Example Project

Implementation and Demo

Summary

Conclusion

What is ngrok?

ngrok exposes local servers behind NATs and firewalls to the public internet over secure tunnels. The way how it works is simple when you run an application on your localhost ngrok connects it to the ngrok cloud service which accepts traffic on a public address and relay that traffic through to the ngrok process running on your machine and then to the local address that your application is running on.

It is really useful for the following scenarios

Deming your websites without any deployments

Building webhook consumers on your dev machine

Testing mobile apps connected to your locally running backend

Stable addresses for your connected devices that are deployed in the field

Running personal cloud services from your home

You can find more on ngrok on their website. Here is the link.
To my Son with Love
By: Georgia Lewitt
Tags: International Womens Day, Mothers Day, Poetry, Poetry On Medium, Love

My mind races thinking

At the sacrifice I am to make

For my child.

Clouds sick with wandering

Let planes go through them.

I rub my belly, a slight touch.

Four little bumps raise up as on command.

A soccer player, they said.

I think a little wild horse,

Or a karate kid.

I caress the tiny bumps and they tap back.

My little darling,

My everything,

You’ll need your mommy.

I lift my gaze to the clouds above

My menacing more menacing than theirs,

But they’ve dissipated without trace.

I’m waiting for the sunshine,

My sunshine.

If you enjoyed this, please check out some of my other poems :

Copyright © 2011–2018 by Georgiana Petec. All rights reserved.
“Have A Second Goal Ready In Case You Reach Your First” With Hollywood Composer Scott Doherty
By: Yitzi Weiner
Tags: Film, Culture, Wonder, Music, Hollywood

“I’ve learned that goal-setting is really important — for a variety of reasons. First, they are your roadmap to success, and your lighthouse when you get off track. But from an interpersonal standpoint, goals are critical for self fulfillment. I find it important to celebrate my successes along the path — celebrate the wins — no matter how big or small. I also think that it’s important to always have something to strive toward. Things can change really fast in the business I’m in — and big opportunities can present themselves sometimes very quickly. As such, I make sure I have a variety of goals to keep myself engaged and always growing.”

I had the pleasure of sitting down with lifelong musician and composer Scott Doherty, who has received much recognition for his compositions on numerous film and TV projects, including ‘Weeds’ and ‘Orange is the New Black’. We discussed his career and some of the things he has learned over the years in the entertainment industry.

What is your “backstory”?

I arrived in Los Angeles at the age of 18 after driving across country from Maine. My first job was running live sound at the infamous Coconut Teazer on Sunset Boulevard. I had some success playing in bands, performing at venues like The Troubadour and a number of other L.A. mainstays. I like to say that composing found me, and I began writing music for TV and films. Currently, I’m the co-composer on the Netflix Original series ‘Orange is the New Black’.

Can you share the funniest or most interesting story that occurred to you in the course of your music career?

Not long after moving to L.A., I took a job at Guitar Center in Hollywood. On a particularly long and loud night in the keyboard department, I found myself alone on the sales floor as the other two employees had gone to the parking lot for an extended smoke break. I was about to walk out due to frustration when I heard a voice behind me say, “Are you busy, sir?” I turned around to see Stevie Wonder and a friend, looking to pick up a few last minute items before going to a nearby recording studio. I could not find two of the three items he was looking for, but managed to find the last harmonica we carried in E flat. By this point my co-workers had returned and watched in complete amazement as Stevie asked me to open the harmonica case and proceeded to play “Isn’t She Lovely” just three feet from my face.

Which people in history inspire you the most? Why?

I’m inspired by innovators. People who build things, who create things. People who dare, who dream, who do things that have never been done before — and things people say can’t be done. Some of the people that inspire me are celebrated and known, others are people I know personally who wow me and challenge me to be better — as an artist and as a person.
Feelings of Love
Tags: Life Lessons, Poetry, Love, Feelings, Relationships

Feelings of Love

Feel everything. Pleasant or painful.

To love people, love ALL the feelings they give you.

Your ability to love yourself reflects your capacity to love others.
The Girl I Want You To Be
By: Jessica Lee Mcmillan
Tags: Growing Up, Diversity, Poetry, Women, Youth

When things are misplaced

I want her to see

there are things you can’t smooth,

that guarding our misfit

opens the world of periphery

There are places we are meant to miss

where we’re seduced to pretend

or try on moulds

to appease lust, enforcement

willed by great empty

I want her to see

there are shapes you can’t survive

So she shreds those wallflowers

and burns through the halls

singeing demure petals

to an innocence new

down a loud raucous path

singing out of tune
How Your Signature Strengths Can Help You Find a Meaningful Job
By: Alexa V.S.
Tags: Happiness, Purpose, Advice, Meaningful Work, Self Improvement

Signature Strengths and a Meaningful Job

“The good life is using your signature strengths every day to produce authentic happiness and abundant gratification.” — Martin Seligman

To understand the connection between signature strengths and a meaningful job, we must understand their importance. According to the VIA Institute of Character, they matter because they help us:

- Boost Confidence - Increase Happiness - Strengthen Relationships - Manage Problems - Reduce Stress - Accomplish Goals - Build Meaning and Purpose - Improve Work Performance

At first glance, these benefits seem to be at the core of a meaningful job. To test this, researchers Shiri Lavy and Hadassah Littman-Ovadia tested Seligman’s hypothesis during their 2016 study: “My Better Self: Using Strengths at Work and Work Productivity, Organizational Citizenship Behavior, and Satisfaction.”

During the study, the participants took the VIA strength test. Afterward, they were asked whether they used their signature strengths at work. If so, which and how many. Then the researchers inquired about how much the participants liked their job and whether they felt they were productive.

In the end, Lavy and Littman-Ovadia concluded that “using strengths at work was associated with productivity, OCB (organizational citizenship behavior), and job satisfaction, and these associations were mediated by higher positive emotions and engagement.”

But is there a specific number of strengths we should aim for?

Researchers Claudia Harzer and Willibald Ruch answered this question in their 2012 study: “When the job is a calling: The role of applying one’s signature strengths at work.” By studying 111 employees from various occupations, they measured the correlation between the number of signature strengths used and job satisfaction.

Their results show that “the level of positive experiences and calling were higher when four to seven signature strengths were applied at work compared to less than four.”

In other words, to feel that your job is meaningful, you should regularly apply at least four of your signature strengths.
Why do College Students Become GoPeer Tutors?
Tags: Teaching, Students, College, Education, Schools

Did You Know?

GoPeer is backed by Deborah Quazzo (Managing Partner at San Francisco-based GSV Ventures). Deborah serves as a member of The Board of Dean’s Advisors at the following organizations:

Harvard Business School

The Khan Academy Thought Leadership Council

Princeton University

The Strada Institute for the Future of Work Advisory Committee

At GoPeer We Have Four Primary Goals:

Make high-quality, private tutoring accessible and affordable to all students. Erase the logistical hassle for parents of finding a great tutor. Build healthy relationships between student and tutor to relieve stress, inspire confidence, and promote mental wellness. Reduce the stigma — tutoring is not just for the struggling student, we all could use some help!

Why Tutor?

While every college student is different, all GoPeer Tutors share a similar, altruistic drive to make positive change.

Here is what other college students have to say:

I want to give back to my community in a tangible way. Education is an extremely important factor in socioeconomic mobility, and I want to help students develop the skills that they need in order to pursue higher education. — GoPeer Tutor I get so excited when a student says ‘I get it!’ and then does a problem comfortably on his or her own. — GoPeer Tutor I want students to be able to have the confidence to tackle a subject that they are interested in, regardless of its difficulty. It’s easy to give up when things get difficult, but if I can help students persevere and achieve their goals, I want to do it. I want them to know that it’s okay to ask for help. — GoPeer Tutor

Next Step: Tap here to Create Your GoPeer Tutor Account
They Said What?! Find Out What Neil Peart, Demi Lovato, and Scott Stapp Have To Say
By: Gavin Byrnes
Tags: Brandhole, Brandon Lowden, Neil Peart, Demi Lovato, Scott Stapp

Neil Peart — http://cdn-x.drummerworld.com/pics/drumpics24/neilpeart2.jpg

“Eighth place. Any worse than that and you might as well have stayed home.”

— Neil Peart

On the worst he’s ever finished in a drumming competition

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Demi Lovato — http://o.aolcdn.com/dims-shared/dims3/GLOB/crop/3272x3964+0+125/resize/660x800!/format/jpg/quality/85/http://hss-prod.hss.aol.com/hss/storage/midas/4f26e8478b960f68a93646cd4c3c6996/203176887/502086146.jpg

“If I could do my career over, I wouldn’t have shortened my name. Demetria Lovato is an anagram of ‘Dear Evil Tomato,’ which is a perfect name for the children’s book I’m writing about an evil tomato and the plucky children who convince him to change his ways through a sustained letter-writing campaign.”

— Demi Lovato

On regrets

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Scott Stapp — http://loudwire.com/files/2012/10/100305255.jpg

“Can you take me higher?”

— Scott Stapp

On Ferris wheels
FPL Gameweek 15: No time to lose
By: Tom Thomas
Tags: Soccer Prediction, FPL, Soccer Analytics, Fantasy Premier League, Soccer

36 points was a measly return but we’re going to be patient and see how this next week pans out. A lot of the regular players in form like Harry Kane, Heung-Min Son, Ben Chilwell, Kurt Zouma, etc. didn’t perform.

Gameweek 15 FPL Data Team, source: FPL

As we spoke last week, having a Manchester City player seems to be a valuable asset. Pep Guardiola did play John Stones and our risk there has been validated. To add insult to injury, turns out Jaanick Vestergaard is injured and will be out for a month as well.

Going into this next week, I was tempted to make some transfers with these piling injuries. However, our fixture difficulty doesn’t seem as bad.

Gameweek 16 FPL Data Team Fixtures, source: FPL

The toughest choice will be to sub or leave Jack Grealish on who face Chelsea. Chelsea are a tough team to play against. However, they are also vulnerable at the moment.

The rest of the fixtures seem okay so it may be best to hold off on transfers for this week. We’ll see if I’ll regret this in a few days.

Good luck to all.

Thank you for taking your time to read through this. If you’d like to follow along in this series, here is a timeline of the FPL data analytics project.

1. Introduction

2. Gameweek 1

3. Gameweek 2

4. Gameweek 3

5. Gameweek 4

6. Gameweek 5–8

7. Gameweek 9–10

8. Gameweek 12–13

9. Gameweek 14

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

And there we go! Hope you enjoyed reading this piece as much as I did writing it. Feel free to write down any thoughts or suggestions. I’m always working on improving my analysis and my articles as time goes on so I appreciate all comments! Collaborating is fun so if you’ve got any interesting projects in mind, feel free to reach out to me personally. If you would like to follow me to keep up with updates in this series, follow me here or — — @__tomthomas

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
80. Remove Duplicates from Sorted Array II
Tags: Leetcode, Algorithms

I tend to reuse existing experience, so I modified std::unique and only to get a lengthy and brittle algorithm in which I missed some corner cases several times.

The basic idea is to partition the range into three parts:

[begin, trash_beg): elements here are valid

[trash_beg, cursor): elements here are all garbage.

[cursor, end): elements here are not inspected.
ICON: Network Stabilization, ICON Tracker, Mobile Staking and BTP
Tags: Crypto, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Cryptocurrency Investment, Cryptocurrency News

Biweekly update 27th November — 11th December

ICON published a roadmap update for the month of November, with a promising update in the first half of 2020.

The network was momentarily paused a few weeks back due to a leader node initializing bug. The ICON team and P-Reps worked through the night to resolve and troubleshoot the issue. ICON is now working on 2 internal releases and 1 external release. It is expected that with Revision 8, the network will be fully stabilized.

ICONists can now enjoy mobile staking capabilities on the iOS version of the ICONex wallet. The Android version should soon be updated following a QA revision that ICON is working on resolving.

ICON is continuing efforts with BTP and is preparing its Proof of Concept (POC) of BTP version 0.5, with an expected launch in the coming weeks. More details will be shared once the team releases their design plans for BTP version 1.0.

The Iconist met the ICON’s resident cryptoeconomic experts, Changju Lee and Bong An Ha to discuss post-decentralization and what lies ahead for the ICON network.

The decentralized advertising ecosystem (and main P-Rep) weBloc has officially launched JUBJUB, a blockchain-based service that rewards users for taking offline actions. JUBJUB users can earn WOK tokens by coming within 150 meters of a participating cafe. In the future, you’ll earn tokens for undertaking certain “missions,” such as visiting locations, ordering certain menu items or providing particular information.

Stay tuned!
5 Reasons for Product to Attend Project Product
By: Julie Brown
Tags: Tech, SaaS, Product Management, Product Launch, Product

Project Product: Uniting Product Marketing & Management is a conference for anyone who develops, manages, markets, and enables tech/software-as-a-service (SaaS) products. There are many reasons to attend, specifically for Chief Product Officers, Product Managers, and really anyone who works in a product organization.

5 Reasons Product Should be There on March 19

1. Five Product Team Collaboration Mistakes

There are many barriers you face as a product manager, and one of them is the difficulty in collaborating among your own product team and external teams. Bryan Paul Kelly of Soft Works Practice will walk you through the five mistakes many product professionals make when trying to communicate and collaborate. And Bryan will equip you with a simple action plan to help you avoid these mistakes in the future.

2. Tricks & Tools to Make Product Managers’ Jobs Easier

Everyone is looking for the latest software, process, or template to make work feel a little less like work. This interactive panel discussion with two seasoned product professionals from Lessonly and Springbuk will share their many tricks and tools for product roadmaps, beta and early adopter programs, and how to best gather customer feedback.

3. Product Management in the Wilderness

Whether an early startup or a mature business, the terrain of the product management world can be a rough one. Ashley Wali, Director of Product at Discuss.io, will cover many topics that are top of mind for product managers: gathering customer feedback, gaining executive buy-in, and minimizing risk.

4. Product Launches

There are two sessions all about product launches. Hear from Eric Prugh, Chief Product Officer of PactSafe, share his story on the good, the bad, and the ugly of product launches. And the marketing and product teams of Lessonly will share how they collaboratively work together to launch new features every four weeks!

5. A Fireside Chat on Uniting Product Marketing & Management

Join in on the candid conversations with product management and marketing leaders from Aprimo, ProductCamp San Diego, PERQ, and Zylo. Learn how you can help your product and marketing organizations unite and collaborate. A product is only as strong as the bond between product marketing and product management.

More Sessions

In addition to product-specific presentations and panels, many sessions are geared toward product marketing. What better way to break down the barriers between marketing and product than to understand what the other half does? You can attend these marketing sessions and gain a better sense of their day-to-day jobs and the struggles they face.

If you’re excited as I am for #ProjectProduct19, be sure to save your spot today. And use the discount code, CRAFTED, and save! (There are just a few of these discounted passes left!)

Thanks for reading!

This post originally appeared on the 56th Street Productions blog.
Ktor in Server-Side Development: The Basics
By: Siva Ganesh Kantamani
Tags: Programming, Server Side, Kotlin, Ktor, Software Development

Get Started With Coding

In the application module, we need to implement features like authentication, login, security, define routes, like we’re going to do in this example, to simplify handling endpoints, etc.

We need to start adding routes to the service inside the module function using the routing lambda function to define the endpoint’s behavior. Routes are nothing but a feature to simplify request handling. Have a look:

Ktor routing declaration

get Request

To keep things simple, we will add a route at the root path using lambda’s get function. In the lambda block to respond back, we can use Ktor ApplicationCall .

Inside the get function, we will respond with a simple text by invoking the respondText function on the call object. We need to pass the message and content type, as shown below:

Ktor get request

To test this implementation, hit the run button beside the main function, and then you’ll see the following log inside the run tab in the bottom panel of the Intellij. Have a look:

Now, click on the URL (http://0.0.0.0:8080) or type localhost:8080 in your browser; it should show the “From Ktor” message. Have a look:

post request

Now that we’ve implemented get request successfully, let’s build a simple post request in which we’ll read the request body and respond with the request body and “received data” string. Have a look:

Ktor post request

Here we have to use the receive function with expecting type on the Kotr ApplicationCall object. We have to concatenate the response with the “received data” label and send it back using the respondText function.

To test this, click the run button beside the main function. After successful execution, open the terminal tab in the bottom panel of the IDE and run the following command:

curl -X POST -d “sample data” localhost:8080

If you’re facing any problems, try changing the URL from localhost:8080 to http://http://0.0.0.0:8080/. This shows the output in the following line.
Are You Living a “Pressure Cooker” Life?
By: Wendy Griffith Isley
Tags: Stress, Mindfulness, Hypnosis, Meditation, Wellness

The life of a parents and non- parents alike is very busy. It seems the demands and challenges of modern life are ever increasing and more complex. We’ve come to valorize perfectionism, glorify overwhelm and push ourselves harder than ever before to always be “on.”

Yes, it seems there’s no denying most of us are trapped living what I call a “pressure cooker” life! If you can call existing in a permanent state of anxiety and stress while joylessly reacting to circumstances — often unthinkingly — as “living.”

Just because we’ve adapted to the broken and dysfunctional patterns of the “Pressure Cooker” life it doesn’t mean we’re healthy, happy or even really living! Click to Tweet and help your friends avoid stress and anxiety and live more #joyfully

How we think about our tasks and activities can make our lives seem burdensome or joyful or somewhere in between. How can we feel more joy and less anxiety?

When we rush from task to task thinking of the next task or how stressed we are, time seems to literally “crunch” us down. The pressure feels intense. Then we have a need to release the pressure, just like pressure cookers, an appliance that has regained popularity. The methods of “letting off steam” are different for different people; however, they often involve some type of overindulgence in physical pleasure.

There’s a lot of talk these days about present moment awareness. During the last few years, I have been placing my attention on mindfulness. I even created a meditation CD — born out of my work as a certified hypnotist — to help people practice mindful awareness and bring themselves into the present where we experience deeper satisfaction and increased joy.

What I have know to be true is when I am very present, time can seem to slow down and even feel expanded. Take a few moments over the next few days to slow down, breathe deeply and observe your surroundings without judgment. What do you notice?

It might take you a little bit of practice; and before long you’ll be experiencing the mental, emotional and physical benefits of bringing your attention to the present moment and simply letting yourself BE.
3 Things Tai and I Wish We Would Have Started Sooner
By: Kathy Gerstorff
Tags: Entrepreneurship, Travel, Writing, Life Lessons, Music

Do we really learn from others’ mistakes and life lessons?

Photo by Erik Brolin on Unsplash

You can get most things you want in life. It’s just that most goals will take one or two years longer than expected. Be patient. — Tai Lopez

This morning I received an email from one of my mentors, internet marketing sensation Tai Lopez, and it inspired me to write about a few of my life experiences in an effort to help aspiring writers and budding entrepreneurs on their journey. Then I wondered, do we really learn from other people’s experiences or must we learn the hard way on our own?

In honor of the three remaining days of the year, here are three of the many things I learned the hard way and sometimes wish I could change:

1. Stick with the businesses and projects I start.

Tai said he wishes he would have started a business before age 12. I was much younger when I accompanied my mother door-to-door selling Fuller Brush products. I went on to start many businesses, but the problem was sticking with them.

I get super excited about ideas, finding the perfect name and domain, planning, marketing… it’s all fun, but when it comes to day-to-day operation, fighting fires, accounting, etc. I lose interest.

I learned the hard way to hire or farm out the work that drains my energy and focus on my strengths. I have lost thousands of dollars learning that lesson. I thought in the moment that I couldn’t afford help, that I had to do everything myself, but getting help, especially in areas of weakness, is a good investment that saves a lot of time and money in the long run.