fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
10 Key Takeaways from Google’s Material Design Guidelines
By: Danny Sapio
Tags: UI, Design, Product Design, UX, Tech

The Material palette generator can be used to generate a palette for any color you input. Hue, chroma, and lightness are adjusted by an algorithm that creates palettes that are usable and aesthetically pleasing. — Material Color System Guidelines

Trying to create a color palette from scratch can be tedious and often less effective (since you’d have to calculate the values yourself) than using a tool like Material’s Palette Generator (located near the bottom of the page).The best part is that the colors generated already meet accessibility standards, so you’re spared the hassle of checking your palette against WCAG guidelines. You should still probably double-check your designs with a plugin like Stark, though.

4. Color

As you’re considering colors and how to use them, Material also has strong tips and tools for using color in an interface.

Show brand colors at memorable moments that reinforce your brand’s style. — Material Color System Guidelines

Think of your brand colors like salt and pepper on a plate of avocado toast. Too much and it overpowers the natural flavors, too little and it’s bland. When adding colors to reinforce your brand to the interface, be thoughtful about when and where they’re added.

By limiting the use of color in your app, the areas that do receive color — things like text, images, and individual elements like buttons — will get more attention. You’ll notice that apps like Instagram and Twitter that feature many colorful posts and unpredictable content tend to have a pretty plain interface. This design element is subtle, but it takes the focus away from the interface in favor of the content.

Color indicates which elements are interactive, how they relate to other elements, and their level of prominence. Important elements should stand out the most. — Material Color System Guidelines

When an element’s appearance contrasts with its surroundings, the user understands that it has greater importance than its surroundings. We can use color and color weight to establish a hierarchy within an interface. The weight of a color refers to how saturated that color is. More saturated colors will appear more vibrant and bold, thus giving them a greater visual weight.

More prominent, bolder information will draw the user’s eyes first, and then they will move on to the supporting information below it. If one element is more important than another, it should be of a greater visual weight. Thus, the user can quickly skim the page and distinguish between the various levels of importance.

5. Material’s type scale generator
My Father Will Not Be Giving His Permission For Me To Get Married
By: Carrie Wynn
Tags: Relationships, Life Lessons, Mental Health, Self, Family

You know how sometimes you don’t realize something until it just… hits you?

That is exactly how I came to the revelation that I do not want my partner to ask my father for his permission to take my hand in marriage.

Now, you may think that I’m about to go on a rant about why I think it’s a silly tradition/old/irrelevant in this day and age. But the reality is that I don’t necessarily think that at all. I think it’s something that could be very special to some fathers and daughters depending on the nature of their relationship.

But… my father and I don’t have that kind of relationship.

I could go on and on about all of the reasons why we aren’t close but I’m going to just focus on the specifics of why I do not want my boyfriend to ask his permission to marry me.
Can You Know Too Little?
By: Mj Blehart
Tags: Personal Development, Self Improvement, Empowerment, Psychology, Mindfulness

Can you know too little?

Short answer: Yes, of course. There is always more to be learned.

Long answer: Sometimes, less is more.

Much of this thought is connected to our modern society, and the information overload we’re fed daily. On any single given subject, there are probably a minimum of a half a dozen outlets reporting. Multiply that number in certain circumstances, and the number of viewpoints becomes utterly untenable.

Truth at its base comes in three brands — mine, yours, and the absolute. When, however, you factor in the individuality of people, that number grows exponentially.

For example: Every time Trump puts out a new Tweet, countless sources, credible and otherwise, will examine, analyze, exaggerate, minimalize, report on, and otherwise share it. Here there will not just be three brands of truth, but uncountable brands instead.

Everyone has opinions. These get based on experience, education, situation, environment, personal perspectives and viewpoints and more. Sometimes you as an individual can have multiple opinions on a single topic. Point being, the truth as we believe it outside of the absolute is going to be rather variable.

If you go to the trouble of taking in multiple sources reporting on a single thing like a Trump Tweet, you could easily drive yourself mad. Odds are pretty good you’ll make yourself feel negative, either in agreement or disagreement with one of those opinions you encounter. From there, it doesn’t take much to become really distressed.

The point being that knowing less is to your betterment.

To know too little is better than overwhelm

This is very topic specific. Overall, knowledge is power. But there is a fine line between knowledge and overwhelming information.

You may desire to be apprised of current affairs. This can help in making informed decisions in elections, whether to participate in protests, call and e mail members of Congress, and so on.

But do you need to dig into the story and get all the gory details? Does intimate knowledge of a particularly unpleasant or troubling subject serve you?

If it is going to bring you down, cause you to feel negative, or otherwise distress you, likely the answer is no.

To know too little is not the same as being ignorant. Ignorance is a total lack of awareness. It is knowing nothing at all about a subject. Knowing too little, on the other hand, means you are aware of the subject, but probably not a subject matter expert.

If knowledge is power, how can there be too much? The real question is, do you actually need to know this?
Sqair Air Purifier Real World Test
By: Robert Ritz
Tags: Environment, Air Pollution, Data Science, Mongolia

Sqair was kind enough to lend me a unit for a few days to test it out. I’ll first give my general thoughts on the device and then present my experiment to show how effective the Sqair is at removing PM2.5 from a room.

I was very pleased with the look of the device as it didn’t stick out as much as other air purifiers (the IQ Air purifier looks like an industrial battery). The controls are dead simple with three options: off, 1, 2, and 3. Fan speed 1 is very quiet (like very quiet). Fan speed 2 is certainly audible even in a room with a little background noise, but it easily blends in. Fan speed 3 is downright noisy, but as you will see below there isn’t much need to use this speed unless you are looking to really move some air through the machine.

The Experiment

One thing I really wanted to test was how effective the Sqair is at clearing pollution from a room. I’ve heard criticism about air purifiers from several people who are skeptical of how well they circulate air. The common question is, “How do I know it isn’t just cleaning the air in one corner of the room?”. So I set up an experiment to see how well the Sqair works.

At my school we have a quiet study room that is 10m² and has ceilings of 3 meters. That makes 30 cubic meters of air in the room. The room has a door that seals completely and has no air vents. This made the perfect room to conduct an experiment with an air purifier. The only problem is that in early September there is essentially no air pollution outside, and inside PM2.5 levels hover around 5 µg/m³. So I had to get creative and make some air pollution.
I Let My Kid Get Hurt — A Lot. It makes me cringe now, but will…
By: Not A Doctor
Tags: Parenting Advice, Parenting, Family, Psychology, Parenting Toddlers

That consequence-based learning carries so much value may be intuitive to some, but I only started to understand it while teaching an undergraduate Psychology course in learning theory a few years ago, when I was still pregnant — and damn, was I grateful for that crash-course in parenting. I came out of that class convinced that taking a learning theory course — or at least reading the textbook — would be an amazing tool for parents. For example, did you know that punishment doesn’t work? Well, it’s very difficult to make work. More on that in a future post.

Anyway, once I realized the value of consequences, I started thinking of the learning process in terms of this question: Where is the point at which I can maximize learning (consequences) while preventing my kid from getting seriously hurt? In other words: There’s a line between maximum learning and serious injury, and my job as a parent is to let her approach that line without actually crossing it.

So I started seeking out opportunities for her to test boundaries. Why not? It’s the fastest, most effective way for her to learn. Hell, it saves me a lot of work because I have to supervise her less down the road if I let her learn for herself than if I’m constantly safeguarding her.

When I see my kid about to do something daring, like fling herself across the yawning gap from the coffee table to the couch whilst donning a superhero cape, and she looks at me with that gleam in her eye, I don’t tell her: “Don’t do that.” Instead, I quickly size up the dangers: Anything she could knock her teeth out on? Impale herself with? Then I say, “Go ahead. Try it!”

I’ve let her stand on flimsy cardboard boxes, fall right through the top, and land smack on her butt on the kitchen floor. I’ve let her crawl into the top of the cat castle and tip the whole thing over. I’ve let her put her hand too close to the stove and watched her pull her hand back quickly, wide-eyed — though I was holding her far enough away that she would not have been able to *actually* reach the burner (this is what I’m talking about with drawing the line between learning and crisis).

I’ll add that big part of making this work has been knowing my kid’s natural limitations and propensities. For example, she naturally tends cautious with certain things like avoiding the street, moving vehicles, and strangers — but apparently, pink puppy dog scooters transform her into Evel Knievel.

And again, I have to do the work of creating environments where maximizing learning is still safe, like restraining her from the stove, or moving ankle-breakers off the floor in a jumping zone. Again, that’s drawing the line between learning and serious injury. But it’s way easier than constantly chasing after her and yelling at her not to do things. Also, I don’t get as sick of the sound of my own voice saying the same damn thing over and over again.
Did A Martha’s Vineyard Bookstore Send The President Shameful Books?
By: Dave Bry
Tags: Erotica, President Obama, Books

Everyone’s dug into President Obama’s official reading list for his vacation this week on Martha’s Vineyard: Richard Price’s Lush Life (which is terrific), Kent Haruf’s Plainsong (which sounds interesting), David McCullough’s John Adams (which sounds like, um, he should just watch the movie instead), couple others. But we did not notice until now that the President will also be receiving a very interesting sounding package from a local bookstore. “Over at Bunch of Grapes…a clerk acknowledged that they had sent books, but when asked which ones, she sounded as if she were on the press office payroll. ‘Nothing [we] can share with anyone,’ she said.” What do you think they sent? Jackie Collins? Anais Nin? ? Maybe The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir by Toni Bentley. God, remember that?
I Found My Mom Groove. Let’s Find Yours
By: Ashley Alt
Tags: Self Improvement, Authors, Quarantine, Writing, Writers On Writing

I Found My Mom Groove. Let’s Find Yours

In the realm of motherhood — or womanhood — what do you want advice on?

Photo by Court Cook on Unsplash

I’ve been dragging my feet on finishing my book.

“I’ll pick it back up after quarantine” was my first excuse. And then the quarantine got extended to May 20th where I live in Connecticut. If I put it off until then, there’s no way I’m going to finish it.

I have this vision of popping champagne with my friends on a rooftop once self-isolation is a thing of the past, and I won’t feel like I deserve that moment unless this book gets written beforehand.

For those of you who don’t know, I’m writing a book on modern motherhood. What started out as a self-improvement book based on true experiences, has now become a full-blown, deeply personal memoir, sans the self-helpery speak.

I wanted to ask you, as fellow moms and fellow women, what topics are of most interest to you in the realm of motherhood? Do you want style advice? Do you want relationship advice? Do you want personal experience stories? Do you want to know how to find the best mom friends? Do you want it all?

The excitement of continuing to write it has finally resurfaced. So I’m taking advantage of this momentary surge of motivation, and am giving myself a hard deadline of April 30th to send my completed manuscript to my lovely editor, Simone from Seattle, and my other lovely editor, Kate from Brooklyn.

To give you an overview, the book covers the bases of figuring your new self out as you begin the unpredictable journey that is motherhood.

My Hope For This Book

My hope for this book is to create a modern mom movement in which laying everything on the table in the realm of new motherhood isn’t just acceptable, but celebrated. My hope is for a new mom to read this book and be able to completely relate. My hope is for that new mom to then begin embracing her new life instead of struggling through it.

It is my story — or more specifically — my journey from the moment I found out I was pregnant up until my son’s fourth birthday. And I truly, from the depths of my soul, hope the book helps fellow moms who are struggling with mental health issues, postpartum issues, and the general overwhelm and loneliness that is the reality of new motherhood.

That said, I’m asking what you would like to see in the pages of this book. Please let me know in the comments (or email me back!). After all, I’m writing it for you!

As always, thank you for reading.

Be you.

XOXO,

Ashley

PS! Do you want these newsletters delivered to your inbox? I send them 3x per week (on Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday mornings) in super short snippets. Content focuses largely on self-improvement, happiness, and embracing your true self.

Sign up for Ashley’s Newsletter here.
Announcing the Dreamit Fall Class of 2016
Tags: Digital Health, Education, Entrepreneurship, Startups, Healthcare

Eko Devices — Non-invasive sensors and software currently enabling precision cardiac care in over 400 hospitals, health systems, and other providers across the US.

GraftWorx — “Smart” wearables and implantables for dialysis and peripheral arterial disease patients that transfer clinically actionable data from the device directly into the clinician’s EHR system.

Yosi — Eliminates patient intake from waiting rooms and provides an end to end patient on-boarding solution, making the office paperless and coordinating care between different EMR platforms.

Voiceitt — Translates unintelligible sounds voice into clear speech in real time, enabling those with motor, speech or cognitive disabilities to communicate with caregivers, family members, health care professionals and society as a whole.

PadInMotion — Provides customized tablets integrated with the patient care protocols of the medical facility enabling medical facilities to improve key quality of care metrics while patients are in the medical facility and an advanced software platform for care management outside of the medical facility.

BrainCheck — Mobile, rapid, and easy-to-use cognitive health assessment and management technology, connecting patients and their care teams in both the concussion and dementia markets.

PhotoniCare — Changing the way middle ear disease is managed by enabling physicians to look through the eardrum without cutting it open, saving months of treatment time per patient.

Synotrac — A patent pending implantable medical device that is changing the way doctors look at infection after joint replacement surgery by actively monitoring the joint health via smartphone app

Reliant Immune Diagnostics — Developing innovative diagnostic tests for detection of certain allergies, infections and diseases.

Lilu — A pumping accessory that automatically massages and compresses the breasts of pumping moms to increase milk output by up to 50% and enable moms to pump more milk in less time.
You’re Wrong: Apple Can Justify the $550 Price Tag
By: Henry Gruett
Tags: Technology News, Technology, Apple, Technews, Tech

Another reason they’re so expensive is that they’re just really high quality. The headphones make the other competitors look old and bulky. When compared side-by-side, the Sony’s look a decade old.

Plus Apple chose to use metal materials for earcups and much nicer plastics on other parts. The build quality just overall looks so much better. Sure the metal makes them a lot heavier. But Apple’s willing to take that sacrifice. It just looks so much better.

Features — Specifically Spatial Audio

We’ve gotten a taste of the Spatial Audio magic on the AirPods Pro. And while I haven’t had an opportunity to try out Spatial Audio on the AirPods Max yet, I’m confident it’ll be even better than the Pros due to the additional H1 processor and a total of 9 microphones.

Apple

When you first hear about it, Spatial Audio seems like a gimmicky feature that’s trying to be the next-gen surround sound. The thing is, it’s actually really immersive and brings more depth to movies. I recently recommended my friend to try out Spatial Audio. This is what I got back:

whoops

Look, if you have access to AirPods Pro (or AirPods Max for that matter) you should try out the feature. It’s supported on all Apple TV+ shows, Hulu, and Disney+. Unfortunately, it has not come to Netflix or Prime yet. The feature is also waiting to be added to Macs and Apple TVs for some reason.

Regardless of Spatial Audio, the AirPods “brand” has a bunch of other features that you don’t see on competitors. Starting with the AirPods connecting “magic”, Apple has the experience refined to a tea.

Reviews are also starting to say that the transparency mode on AirPods Max is also next-level. The transparency mode takes cues from Spatial Audio and has the same spatial effect but with your actual surroundings. You’re more immersed in real life (pretty sad sentence, I know).

It’s the Little Things

Combine all this and we’re left with the question of whether the $200+ price difference is worth it. Apple obviously says yes. And I’m, hesitantly, kinda agreeing with them.

Yes, $550 is a lot of money. And no, I won’t be buying them anytime soon. But the headphone landscape is overall pretty expensive in the first place. Forgetting about the Sony XM4’s or Bose 700’s, the $500 range is pretty affordable and fair. And with those extra “Apple magic” features, the headphones themselves blow the Sony’s and Bose away like nothing.

I’m putting my bets on this product having a decent amount of success. Feel free to tell me why I’m wrong in the comments.
The Crypto Gaming Multiverse Is Happening, Right Now.
By: Crypto Fights
Tags: Gaming, Startup, Blockchain, Mobile, Ethereum

The team at CryptoFights has been working very hard getting to this point. We started back in January with a goal to bring a real deep strategy video game to the #dapp market and its been a windy road, to be honest. In a previous article, I touched on how we switched from focusing on being a desktop game using metamask and staying totally on the Ethereum mainchain for all combat logic to now being mobile, using sidechains for the game logic, and having all game items using Enjin’s ERC1155 token standard. Not to mention the ability to purchase game items using in-app purchases in the full version to obtain those game items.

CryptoFights Development

We have now reached a point in our game where we have developed the very first set of weapons aptly named “Genesis Zero” to recognize these are the very first set of weapons for the game and multiverse. All of these items are never to be recreated again by us, have no trading restrictions, no trading fees and All of Our Pre-Sale Items Will be Multiverse Enabled. All items were handcrafted by 3d artists with unique traits to make them fully unique for the gaming multiverse and given special properties and rarity tiers to be used within our game. There is only a specific amount of weapons that will be sold, you can check the quantities by visiting our presale page.

Our presale is scheduled to start on September 19th at https://presale.cryptofights.io

CryptoFights Game Trailer

The gaming multiverse is an exciting time to be a gamer. Imagine being able to collect all your gaming items in your digital wallet to be used across a multitude of games. Buying a legendary item means its legendary in ALL games in the multiverse since they can not create more of them.

To learn more about our combat mechanics and how rounds work check out this video.

Stay tuned with more CryptoFights news in our Discord channel where we are running a contest to win Ethereum and a chance to design and name your own weapon.
How to Set Up a Deployment Pipeline with React, AWS, and Bitbucket
By: Matthew Brown
Tags: JavaScript, Programming, Cloud Computing, DevOps, Software Development

Bitbucket Pipeline

We jump back into our Bitbucket dashboard and from there we will want to pull up the Pipelines section.

Screenshot by the author

If you scroll down there will be a spot with templates for creating your first pipeline. We will want the option for “Deploy React app to S3”.

Screenshot by the author

This will pull up an editor with a starter script for our pipeline. Note that we are going to need to provide AWS access keys to Bitbucket as variables that will be used when the pipelines run.

Screenshot by the author

Back in AWS, we will need to also set up an IAM user for Bitbucket or you can provide the access keys for an existing user, provided they have S3 and CloudFront access in their profile.

Screenshot by the author

Screenshot by the author

Screenshot by the author

Screenshot by the author

Once created you will be given the access key needed in Bitbucket.

Back in Bitbucket, there is a section for “Add variables” over on the right side. Expand that and we will need to provide 3 values for the following variables here: AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID , AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY , and AWS_DEFAULT_REGION

Screenshot by the author

Screenshot by the author

In the bitbucket-pipelines.yml file, we just need to change 2 lines. The first is the S3_BUCKET property in the deployment to S3 section. The value will of course be the name of the bucket we created for our static site.

The second value we need to change is the DISTRIBUTION_ID for the CloudFront invalidation section. For reference, my full pipeline file is below.

Next, we click on the button to Commit the file to the repository. Now if we go back into the Pipelines section we should see at least one pipeline run.

Screenshot by the author

If we go into the detail section for the latest pipeline run we should see a Deploy button if the pipeline ran successfully. Click that Deploy button to kick off the deployment process.

Screenshot by the author

Click that Deploy button under the “Deploy to Production” step and that will pop up a confirmation dialog where we click Deploy one more time to kick off the process.

Screenshot by the author

After that runs successfully if we pull up the domain name for our CloudFront distribution we should be greeted with the React logo. Note that every time you push to master this pipeline will run and after successful runs, you’ll have the option to manually kick off the deployment to production.
You Don’t ‘Need’ Hormones To Be Non-Binary
By: Robin Kyrie
Tags: Gender Identity, Mental Health, LGBTQ, Nonbinary, Transgender

You Don’t ‘Need’ Hormones To Be Non-Binary

There is no one, definitive, “right” level of hormone — or prescription pathway — for non-binary trans people

Image by gthylla from Pixabay

I see this a lot — which hormones do you take if you’re non-binary?

Now, myself, I take the full HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy) dose for someone transitioning female to male. But that is because gender is a spectrum, and on it, I’m more on the masculine end of the spectrum. For my mental health and mental happiness, I’m comfortable being viewed as male, as much as I’m comfortable being non-binary androgynous.

But that is my story and my approach.

I’m also looking to eventually have most of the hair on my body (other than that on my head) removed by laser, as it causes me some distress, but not a high level of distress.

What about other non-binary people?

Which hormones should non-binary people take?

As I mentioned — gender is a spectrum. People present their gender externally, and everyone’s gender identity falls somewhere upon this spectrum. This is how you get “tomboys” (or girls who like to dress in more masculine clothing but identify very firmly as female), non-binary people, cis-male/cis-female individuals, and trans people!

But with this spectrum in mind, that means there is no one, definitive, “right” level of hormone, or prescription pathway, for someone who is trans non-binary. Some individuals may opt for lower levels of hormones to bring things more to the middle ground.

Some non-binary people may opt for the full dose level. Some people may opt for no hormones but go for surgical interventions. Others may do nothing — they are comfortable in their body as it is, or they don’t have the funding to do such. Non-binary people typically make decisions in consultation with themselves and and a trained medical professional to find the right pathway. It can sometimes take a lot of time, and even experimentation.

Ultimately the experience of treating a person who is non-binary with dysphoria is that of trying to find the right combination of hormones and other treatments to alleviate gender dysphoria. The alleviation of dysphoria removes mental distress, often allowing a person to be better able to function in society.

However, you don’t need dysphoria to be non-binary or trans; sometimes, you don’t realize you have dysphoria, or maybe you feel a sense of “wrongness.” Other times the dysphoria doesn’t register — just the euphoria of finding yourself and being free from the constraints of wearing a mask.
How To Deal With Imposter Syndrome For Self-Taught Developers
By: Ann Adaya
Tags: JavaScript, Software Development, Web Development, Programming, Software Engineering

“I have had dreams and I’ve had nightmares, but I’ve had conquered my nightmares because of my dreams.” — Jonas Salk

Before we tackle the “how’s” let us first understand why we self-taught developers feel this way, and you need to understand that it’s not just you, but almost everyone feels the same, the first step will be awareness, while most of the developers know that they are suffering from this very common trap, others are in denial, but you will never overcome anything if you don’t admit it first with yourself.

After getting that first or second developer job, have you ever felt like you don’t deserve it?

Why are you even doubting yourself when the company that you are working on chose to invest in you, they know better than you do, they probably see something in you that you don’t, and it is your job to prove them that it was the best decision they made.

I am not an expert on anything especially on this one, but I am also a developer like you who has had to deal with this imposter syndrome all my life, and I don’t think I will ever overcome this, but I just have to make sure that my confidence and will is far bigger than my anxiety, if you are an ambitious self-taught developer like me who doesn’t include settle in their vocabulary then you know how it feels, you just have to deal with it and face it instead of running away because that is how you will grow, and that is where you will fly.

Ask yourself often, would you want it to control you or you will control it? and of all the sacrifices you made just to be where you currently are, would allow your anxiety stop you now?

Feed your mind more about your dreams, goals, and ambitions for what you feed your mind you become, a person with a clear goal can overcome anything.

For courage doesn’t always roar, sometimes it is the silent voice that whispers, I will try again tomorrow.
What It Means to Be Spiritual but Not Religious
By: George J. Ziogas
Tags: Religion, Self Improvement, Personal Development, Spirituality, Psychology

Practice openness

Our tendency is to judge things by our past experiences. When faced with something new, try to keep an open and non-judgmental mind. New opportunities to learn and expand your perspective are all around you. Attaining a higher sense of spirituality requires being open to the possibilities.

Learn to listen

Few people really listen. Most of us are simply waiting for our turn to talk. But it’s not just about listening with your ears. It’s about listening with your heart to hear what the world is trying to communicate to you.

See the beauty in people, things, and situations

Part of spirituality involves seeing the truth. There’s beauty to be found in nearly everything and recognizing it is part of recognizing the truth. When you see the truth, you come to realize there are very few things to worry about.

Spend some time in nature

There are few things more spiritual than sitting in nature with the sun on your face and the breeze pressing against your back. Experience the trees, grass, flowers, and birds. The Greek physician Hippocrates said it best, “Nature itself is the best physician.”

Look for the bigger picture

The mere act of wondering about the universe and what it all means is an exercise in spirituality. Consider your purpose and true meaning to the world. What is the greatest gift you have to give?

Spirituality is ultimately about self-discovery

It can be considered the art and science of discovering who and what you really are. American novelist and scholar, Ralph Ellison, famously wrote, “When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.” Renowned English writer, Lewis Carroll, aptly declared, “Who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great puzzle.”

Stay focused on the present

Living in the past or the future isn’t living. Life can only be lived right now. Part of being spiritual is recognizing that living a positive life today leads to good things tomorrow.

Spend time each day focusing only on the moment you’re currently experiencing. By focusing on your thoughts, words, and actions today, you have the ultimate amount of control over your life.

Love yourself

If you don’t love yourself, how will you ever feel comfortable enough to present your true self to the world? We’ve all done things the wrong way and come up short numerous times, but it doesn’t define us. It merely describes us in a certain situation at a certain time.

Allow yourself to be inspired

To fully learn about yourself, it’s important to experience new things. Meet new people and read new books. Only by being exposed to everything that interests you can you learn everything there is to know about yourself.
Proiectul „Conştientizarea şi educarea tinerilor privind problematicile de protecţie a mediului şi dezvoltare durabilă” porneste la Galati si Bacau
By: International Relations
Tags: Economia Romaniei, Economy, Ecology, Environment, Educatie

IRICE is dedicated to promote the international relations of Romania and to develop the economic, cultural and diplomatic relations with nations of the world.

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Why Most People Never Achieve What They Want?
By: Saeed Ahmad
Tags: Success, Life, Motivation, Self Improvement, Life Lessons

Here are some of the reasons that stop people from achieving what they want:

Lack of motivation

It’s the motivation behind what someone wants to achieve that forces us to strive for it. You work hard, you take your time out, you manage different things side-by-side.

Whatever we do to reach our milestones, there’s the motivation behind that.

Generally, motivation comes from wants or desires that develop by the influence of many factors like lifestyle, society, culture, etc. These are the real forces that motivate us to do something to achieve and force us towards action.

Not organizing life

It’s well-known that businesses, companies, and startups have complete plans, strategies, and drafts for the projects they want to work on.

Why is that? Because organizing things helps us to focus, prioritize, and work on our goals in a clear way.

Similarly, keeping yourself organized increases productivity. By organizing your life and goals, one can quantify that what they worked on, where they are stuck and what they have achieved so far.

It helps us to remain disciplined which is really important to chase our dreams in life.

Overdependence on something

As human beings, we need support and help from people around us to achieve something. A child needs the support of his parents to grow. A student needs the help of their teachers to excel in education. On a similar note, everywhere we are dependent to some extent on certain people in our life.

Getting help is good and there’s nothing bad in it. But sometimes, overdependence on situations, people, and certain things hinders our progress and stops the journey towards success.

You might have heard stories of numerous successful people in the world who started with uncertain conditions in life.

What if they’d have excused themselves due to their situation? It’d have stopped them from working on their goals and achieving everything they later did.
Taking Memories and Time for Granted
By: Tatiana Santana
Tags: Self-awareness, Memories, The Masterpiece, Happiness, Love

We do not realize that every moment we share with special people will be a moment we will crave in the future. Life is short. Good times become memories. And they are not like the movies. We do not have literal flashbacks, so every touch, smell, feeling, facial expression, and picture matter.

Sometimes we forget memories, but they always linger in our subconscious and our dreams, then we wake up and smile, we remember that time that we have shared.

We take advantage of the time that we have right now. We are too focused on issues of the world that we forget to make the most of the time we have. Time slips through our hands like sand on the beach. We forget that every breath we take is a breath borrowed from our creator. Memories shape the life we are living right now.

Getting up and doing something with that someone feels like a daily task until we look back again and think about how much we would give to go back to that moment in time.

Some of us crave to go back to simpler times or times where our hearts smiled, but at that moment, we did not know how cherishable it was.

Love is strong. You can find it in any memory, I am sure. Even the ones that were heartbreaking to the point where you could feel your chest hurt. You will find yourself wanting to go back to a painful place to feel that love you felt in that very moment.

Why is it? Why is the moment you are currently living have vague meaning? Why is that same moment valuable down the road?

We know nothing of the good old days until we are looking back at them. The truth is that you are in one right now. You are in the next phase of those good old days that will shape the rest of your life. You will not see the good old days until you think you are out of them.

My heart weighs heavy on this subject. I can not get over the feeling of feeling yesterday. It is a never-ending cycle that keeps repeating itself into infinity. You look at the simplest things that take you back to those times.
Boost Your Influence Using These 6 Keys From Forbes Expert Josh Steimle
By: Clément Bourcart
Tags: Marketing, Leadership, Self Improvement, Life, Inspiration

Boost Your Influence Using These 6 Keys From Forbes Expert Josh Steimle

Being influential doesn’t have to feel like a dark art.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Without influence, no matter how great your ideas, how talented you are, or how hard you work — no one will notice.

The bad news? You can be the smartest person in the room; without exerting influence over your peers and decision-makers, you won’t get any traction and stay stuck in first gear.

The good news? You can become more influential and accelerate your outcomes with the right approach.

How can you do so? By implementing 6 keys, which, according to influence master Josh Steimle, will multiply your impact.

Josh is widely recognized as an expert in this field, being a regular top contributor to Forbes Magazine, Inc. and many others.

He uses a specific framework built around the below elements to maximize influence.
InfoTimes’ Data Lab Combines Journalism and Technology
Tags: Journalism, Infotimes News, Data Journalism

InfoTimes’s Data Lab

CAIRO- InfoTimes, the first Arabic website specialized in data journalism, has just launched a new training program called “Data Lab” combining data journalism and technology in cooperation with Arab Digital Expression Foundation.

Data Lab aims to provide interested data journalists and software developer with needed skills and knowledge to use data more professionally and easily.

“Data Lab is trying to find topics that fill the gap between journalists and software developers and to create a common framework that can help them to work together,” said Amr Eleraqi, a journalist, mentor and the founder of InfoTimes.

The lab, which will start next month, includes 8 sessions on data handling, storing, cleaning, and data quality measurements. It will also cover the basics of the following languages in the context of online publishing: HTML, CSS, PHP, Python and R. In addition to explore the various online media tools most useful to journalism and the best methods to write professional data-driven stories.

“Data journalists spend hours and days collecting and analyzing files and documents and filling excel sheets, while learning Python can help to do the same task in less than a second,” said Eleraqi adding that every data journalist should be aware of the basics of programming language which are often available online for free.

At the Lab, there will be sessions on easy web development platforms like Wordpress to encourage journalists to post their work individually. The training will cover also data visualization techniques including advanced topics for developers like interactive visualization using D3.js.

“At the end of the training, all participants will be able to write some programming codes, develop web pages and design websites with responsive interfaces.

To know more about how to participate, click here.
Reserve x Certik Technical Partnership
Tags: Development, Certik, Updates, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency

Meet Certik

Reserve has been working closely with our friends and partners at Certik to ensure the security of the smart contracts that comprise our stablecoin protocol. We wanted to take the time here to shine a light on their services and the ways in which they have contributed to the Reserve mission.

CertiK is a blockchain and smart contract verification platform. It was founded by former senior software engineers from Google and Facebook and formal verification experts from Yale and Columbia University. CertiK is unique among software auditing firms in the blockchain space, in that they perform formal verification services. Formal verification is a process that mathematically shows what a program does and how it may encounter errors. CertiK has received investments from Binance Labs, DHVC, FBG Capital, Bitmain, and Lightspeed. They have also formed partnerships with exchanges like Binance, OKEx, and Huobi, as well as blockchain projects like NEO, ICON, and QuarkChain.

To learn more about Formal Verification, head over to Certik’s blog where they discuss the topic in more detail.

CertiK and Reserve

Our RSV token is a decentralized stablecoin that is backed by a basket of stablecoins including USDC, PAX, and TUSD. Our goal is to make RSV a dollar-independent and universally-accepted currency for people and businesses in emerging markets with high inflation and significant financial frictions.

CertiK has and will continue to work with our team to secure the RSV’s Ownable, ReserveEternalStorage, Reserve, Vault, Basket, Proposal, and Manager smart contracts, as described in our whitepaper.

We chose CertiK to formally verify our contracts because of their unmatched reputation for quality assurance and professionalism within the industry. After carefully examining the architecture of RSV v2, Certik concluded that we have “implemented a well-designed system” for our tokens. They also noted that careful checks are performed during each critical operation, such as issuance and redemption, to ensure that RSV stays collateralized. Every operation is associated with the correct access control to prevent untrusted parties from manipulating the state of the protocol.

Conclusion

Reserve’s mission to become the world’s next reserve currency and to provide sound money to those countries that need it most involves taking on a great deal of responsibility. As such, we want to make sure that we are putting forward the best product possible. We are proud to work with CertiK to ensure the software we release meets the highest security standards. Their industry-leading Formal Verification tools have and will be a great benefit to the Reserve mission.
11 Ways to Immediately Change Your Life for the Better
By: Jessica Lynn
Tags: Self-awareness, Self Improvement, Life Lessons, Success, Inspiration

Here are some ways to live better.

#1. Say “No” — a lot.

Say yes to the right things. Say no to everything else.

Learn to say no to those things you don’t want to do, those non-essentials in your life, tasks that aren’t adding value, but rob you of your energy.

You know the ones. When you say “yes,” and you immediately regret it.

Those.

Say yes to those events, people, and tasks that fill your life with gratitude, joy, and value.

You know the ones. They are the ones that when you say yes, you are immediately excited and look forward to them.

Say no to any distraction that interferes with getting the life you want a year from now.

Time is a limited resource, so when you say no to what doesn’t matter to you, you will have more time for what does matter to you, whether that is writing, your business, your health, or your loved ones.

If you make your moments matter, everything will eventually fall into place because it’s important to you.

And remind yourself often that “No” is a complete sentence.

Those with boundaries will understand your no.

Those who don’t. Oh well.

Caveat — If you have children, you will not be able to say no to the many things you want to say no to. Like picking up your teen at their friend’s house at 9:00 pm when your yes includes reading Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow in bed, (I’m on page 254, I’m getting through it this time!).

Pro tip — Teach your children to be self-sufficient from an early age. They should know how to clean up after themselves, how to do their chores without being reminded, able to do their own laundry, make meals for themselves, and figure out solutions to problems before coming to you. Teach them grit. When you teach self-sufficiency, it will allow you can say no more often.
Consider Metaprogramming
By: Walter Aab
Tags: Beginner, Flatiron, Software Engineering, Metaprogramming, Ruby

In this post, I would like to discuss one use case, out of several use cases, for Ruby’s metaprogramming that I found very helpful while working on building a command line interface application (CLI) with external data for my first portfolio project at Flatiron school. I am referring to the use of mass assignment for the Initialize method. One of the requirements of my project was that my CLI should make only one call to an external source, in my case I used the National Park Service API that returned a large data set in the format of an array of nested hashes. During the early stages of development of my project I found myself ‘mining’ the array of nested hashes for the data I intended to use with my CLI and then compiling a list of variable names for which I knew I was going to have to create at least an instance variable for each of them and, using the attr_accessor macro, a setter and getter method for each them. This was going to be a sizable task given the large amount of interesting data I could see in what was being returned from the API.

Ruby’s metaprogramming offers a lot of functionality. You could write every bit of code from scratch yourself if you wanted to, but doing that is very time consuming and quite frankly inefficient. If you have read this far, it would be safe to assume you are familiar with the fact that methods can be defined to take in multiple arguments. For example:

On line four of the code snippet above, our initialize method is being passed four keyword arguments. Note: Keyword arguments are a special way of passing arguments into a method, pairing a key that functions as the argument name, with its value.

One of the benefits associated with using keyword arguments is the ability to use something called mass assignment to create new instances of the class Park, or in other words, instantiate new ‘Park’ objects. With the initialize method in the example above defined to accept keyword arguments I realized that I could use key-value pairs from the array of nested hashes in my API response and assign them to a variable, then I could pass that variable to my initialize method. One problem persisted, not all of my parks contained a description, in other words not all the new instances of the ‘Park’ objects were going to require the same number of variables, so I needed to find a way to abstract away the Park class’ dependency on a specific number of attributes. Let’s take a look at the code below:

I started by defining the initialize method to take in an ‘attributes’ variable which had been assigned a hash with the parks’ data. Then, I iterated over each key/value pair in the attributes hash. I called the class method attr_accessor on the Park class itself (on line four) and passed the key to dynamically add both a getter and a setter. Then I used the .send method which calls the method’s name that is the key’s name, with an argument of the value, and et viola! I had an initialize method that could easily adapt to a different number of attributes.

The above code snippet is considered metaprogramming.
Make your data easy to read use Angular custom pipe
By: Yurii Kuznietsov
Tags: Development, Front End Development, Angular, Programming

Angular guid

Make your data easy to read use Angular custom pipe

Custom angular pipe

Standard Angular pipes are very handy but it will be much better if we will make our own pipe.

Let’s create a small project.

app.component.ts

Every user have a phone number which is very hard to read.

Table

We can solve that issue by making a custom phone pipe. For that we need to do couple of things:

use a Pipe decorator where we have to put a name of a pipe, this name we will use in html files.

implement PipeTransform interface, this interface have a definition of transform method

Our implementation of the transform method will be simple, we just adding a space to the phone number.

phone.pipe.ts

Pipe is ready. Now we need add our pipe in ‘declarations’ section in module where we want to use it, in our case we need to put it in ‘AppModule’. After that in HTML file we can use our pipe.

Result of phone.pipe.ts

Every user have a money on his account. Let’s make a small shop and show to user have many stuff he can buy in our shop. For that we need to make another pipe with parameters. In this case our implementation of the transform method will take more than one parameter.

amount.pipe.ts

Also we need to put this pipe in ‘AppModule’.

AmountPipe in AppModule

Right now our shop is selling TV and tablets.

AmountPipe in app.component.html

Result

Angular custom pipe is very beneficial because we can give to our data any look.

If you need to take a close look on project here isthe link.