fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Safe vs Secure
By: Martin Thoma
Tags: Software Engineering, Software Development, Safety, Site Reliability, Security

When I hear “safety” in the context of software development, I’m always reminded that I need to automate my backup solution. The potential harm most software developers have to deal with is luckily only data loss due to hardware failures.

Safety is resilience against accidential harm to people, property, or the environment.

Aspects of safety in software development and operations include:

Availability : A single server could be cut off the internet by construction workers, a hard drive could reach its end of life, a fire could break out, an earthquake could hit the region.

: A single server could be cut off the internet by construction workers, a hard drive could reach its end of life, a fire could break out, an earthquake could hit the region. Scalability : Web services might go down when they are too successful. It’s sometimes called the “hug of death” when a huge website links to a small one. Or just when you have a successful marketing campaign.

: Web services might go down when they are too successful. It’s sometimes called the “hug of death” when a huge website links to a small one. Or just when you have a successful marketing campaign. Integrity: All ways to send data are prone to errors. Package loss or bit-flips happen. We have error-correcting protocols to deal with that.

Software can also be safety-critical, for example when you think about airbags. A defect there can put lives under risk (example). Other examples of safety-critical software include traffic lights, life-support systems, software managing the electrical power grids, industrial software which is used in machines that produce medicine, pacemakers, and many more.

When we are talking about security in software development, we are thinking about hackers. Wikipedia has a pretty nice explanation:

Security is resilience against harm caused by others.

Aspects of security in software development and operations include:

Accountability : You want to have a log of changes. This includes source code. In the version control system git, you can even cryptographically sign the changes so that others cannot tamper with your changes.

: You want to have a log of changes. This includes source code. In the version control system git, you can even cryptographically sign the changes so that others cannot tamper with your changes. Availability : An attacker might run a Denial-of-Service attack (DOS).

: An attacker might run a Denial-of-Service attack (DOS). Confidentiality : Man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks that apply packet sniffing come to my mind. Dharmil Chhadva wrote a nice article about this topic.

: Man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks that apply packet sniffing come to my mind. Dharmil Chhadva wrote a nice article about this topic. Integrity: Think of a bank account. An attacker wants to increase the money on one account. Cryptojacking is an example where not data, but the software is affected.

Measures to increase security include:

TL;DR: Differences between Safety and Security
The MAGA Conundrum
By: Phil Rossi
Tags: Society, Culture, Politics, Trumpism, USA

Many Trump voters are the entrepreneurs who took a hit from the pandemic. The lockdowns that have compromised business. Mandates that have shortened hours and seating capacity. All of these dynamics strip their bottom lines.

These folks are fighting to keep their businesses afloat. Hard-earned dollars to meet payroll and expenses. Any remaining profits are funneled back into their enterprise.

Most are forgoing a salary, tapping their rainy-day funds. The litany of sacrifices and the continued risk they endure in order to survive. Even the business-to-business sector, feeling the crunch of their customers’ cash flow.

All they’re doing with their vote is exercising self-preservation. Here is some of their internal dialogue:

The government mismanaged my tax dollars. The government failed to solve a social problem and needs more money to fix it. Why do I have to pay for their malfeasance? How are I and my family supposed to survive? How could my business prosper, much less function under such financial stress and added regulations? Can’t we find politicians with a business acumen, understanding, and ability to plan? Who is looking out for me? Who has my back?

These are the honest conversations we need to have. We all need to put ourselves in each other’s shoes. To listen and engage. To craft partnerships instead of tribes.

It’s the current path of partisan politics that has poisoned our society. The body politic that has created our divisions. We should be working together, on a social problem by social problem basis. Instead of choosing sides, we need to find workable solutions.

For the record, many of the Trump voters I have spoken with voted for Obama in 2008. Others supported Kerry in 2004. Their answers were the same:

The country’s headed in the wrong direction. We need a change. I expect my taxes to go up, but it’s best for the country.

Do these sentiments sound greedy, selfish, or racist? Hateful, supremacist, or xenophobic?
Open sourcing the IWillVote widget
By: Emily Dillon
Tags: Voting, Data Engineering, Democracy, Polling Places, Election 2020

Open sourcing the IWillVote widget

Making the polling location lookup tool accessible to all

IWillVote voting location widget in action in the 2020 Democratic primary

The DNC is continuing to expand our voter education efforts by making the IWillVote.com voting location widget available to any entity that wants to use it!

You can use a few lines of code to embed the IWillVote voting location widget on your website and customize it for your brand. You can change the font, colors, and more to make the widget your own.

Available in English and Spanish, the widget allows a voter to enter their address directly on your website, then view up-to-date and accurate voting location options (including drop off locations, if available in that voter’s state) on IWillVote.com.

Get the widget here: https://democrats.org/iwv-widget/

Default IWillVote widget

During the primary season, presidential campaigns and state parties used the widget to make it easier for voters to find their voting locations. We’re excited to share the widget with any organization or person who wants it. The more voters that have accurate information about where, when, and how they can vote, the stronger our democracy will be.

— — — — —

Copyright 2020 DNC Services Corporation / Democratic National Committee

The IWillVote widget and code referenced on this page is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the “License”); you may not use this widget except in compliance with the License.

You may obtain a copy of the License at http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an “AS IS” BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.
TypeScript With Fewer Types?
By: Kris Guzman
Tags: JavaScript, Web Development, Typescript, Technology, Programming

Outdated API Type Definitions

Let’s say you are on a front-end team called Team Alpha (because front-end teams are the alphas… kidding) and you are consuming an API created by Team Bravo.

Your team is large, so you went with TypeScript and laid out some type definitions for a particular API endpoint:

OK, cool. Not only do we have type safety, but it’s easy to understand the input and output of the API endpoint.

Fast-forward one week, and Team Bravo made a change to the /user endpoint. They sent a message in the api-news channel on Slack. Some people on Team Alpha saw it, while others missed it. Suddenly, your front end is breaking and you don’t know why. Here’s what was changed:

Now, the types you wrote to protect you are causing massive debugging headaches because they are out of date.

After a brief amount of time banging your head against the wall, you either finally read the update from Team Bravo or you find the source of the problem yourself.

Maybe the first time is no big deal. You update the types and move on with your life.

But how many times are you going to have to debug, update, and refactor? Probably forever.

Ideal Solution

If possible, a great “hands-free” solution is to use a type generator for your API schema. If you use GraphQL, you are in luck because there are solid options for type generators (GraphQL code generator, Apollo codegen, etc).

This way, when the API changes, you can run a command to download the changes in request and response types. If you had the time, you could automate it to trigger downloads every time the API repo is updated, for example. That way, you are always up to date.

If you are using TypeScript on both the client and server, then I think it would be smart to leverage that fact and share types downstream. It doesn’t matter how, just as long as you aren’t writing request and response types on the client.
La Isla Bonita
Tags: Blue Insights, Culture, Songs, Artist, Music

Last night I dreamt of San Pedro, Just like I’d never gone, I knew the song, A young girl with eyes like the desert, It all seems like yesterday, not far away…

Tropical the island breeze, All of nature wild and free, This is where I long to be, La Isla Bonita…

And when the samba played, The sun would set so high, Ring through my ears and sting my eyes, Your Spanish lullaby…..

One of her career defining songs back in the 80’s. Still as fresh as early morning dew and like it just dropped today. Timeless classic.

Check it out and have fun!
How I’m Drinking More Water By Measuring Less of It
By: Katie Martin
Tags: Health, Self Improvement, Self, Lifestyle, Mindfulness

In middle school, I was invited to a science camp at a local university. For one activity we were set up in a lab and given an apron and a set of protective goggles and gloves. Our experiment’s instructions were outlined on a lamented sheet placed at each station. The fume hoods were turned on. The atmosphere in the room was dutiful and anticipatory.

We were making silly putty.

To begin, I carefully measured each ingredient, added it to the bowl, and my lab partnered stirred. A liquid substance formed—nothing like the consistency of silly putty.

I looked around at other stations to compare. While I was doing this, a supervisor—a college student—came over to our station, scooped up an indecipherable amount of cornstarch and plopped it in our bowl.

“Excuse me, MA’AM,” I wanted to say. “This is SCIENCE.”

My labmate continued to stir as I leaned forward with my hands on the table. I couldn’t even look at it. Without consulting with us, this supervisor had ruined our experiment. She completely disregarded the measurements.

Within a minute though, I held the orange silly putty in my palm—it was nothing short of perfect.
Feeble & Freed
Tags: Truth, Response, Gospel, Poetry, Creativity

There is power in word and image,

genesis of thought.

Such are these gifts –

Fragments of forever found

in the fleeting feeble and fickle frailty of those now Freed.
The Mad Woman on the Fifth Floor
Tags: Short Story, Neighbors, End Of Year, People

The Mad Woman on the Fifth Floor Agnes Follow Dec 13 · 3 min read

Was she thinking “I’m a mad woman, hear me roar?” Was she pure emotion and not thinking at all?

By Agnes

I count one cop car, two, three. Three too many, neatly boxing in my street. Curiosity sweeps in like a breeze. Alert eyes, furtive glances, little chills. Did something happen? Is it going on still? I locate the closest officer. He’s leaning against the car, eyes forward, hand on gun.

I walk up slowly and ask what’s going on. It’s 6am and it’s not quite dawn, but people are still sleeping. “Street is blocked, we are working,” he says, stating the obvious. I don’t leave and he continues “Mad woman from the fifth floor is throwing things, she smashed a few cars already.”

Mad woman. There’s been a few of those, mad men too I hear. It must be the heat or the time of year. It must be the quarantine, the food, the booze, the sum of a million little things and pent-up feelings.

I stare at the street, the policeman quiet beside me. They must see a lot of this. I thank him and go back to get my stuff from the car. I start to walk towards my apartment without looking up. The police officers watch me, but they never say stop so I hurry on. Quickly, quietly, eager to get out of the emotional drop zone.

It’s so quiet now. I can’t help imagining the neighbors waking up to that. In the 5AM silence: the dented car roofs setting off blaring alarms, pigeons shrieking and the shrill sound of breaking glass. Could they hear the stop and start crackle of the police radios as they surveyed the scene and pinpointed the mad woman on the fifth.

I glimpse the wreckage out of the corner of my eye. Broken chairs and boxes and glass. What happened this morning to make her get up like that? Is it her stuff she’s throwing or is there more to it than that? A lovers’ spat? Somebody she’s grieving? Or is it herself she’s lashing out at?

It’s less than a block and I’m quickly inside, but I can’t shake the image as the elevator goes up. In a stroke of synesthesia, I see the strewn pieces of broken stuff and hear the ripping sound. The shred, the fracture, the crash.

I think about her throughout the day. The mad woman from the fifth floor. I wonder if I’ve seen her before. This neighbor I’ve never met, but now know about. I’ve seen the urban carpet made of her stuff. How little we know about what goes on behind closed doors, the feelings that flicker and flame up behind the windows that blink on and off around us.

Now, I look twice at the couple that holds the door as I step out, the old man from downstairs, the teenager with the dog, the hippy biker from the top floor. We all look normal, until we’re not.
Mundane mist
By: Nuno Ricardo
Tags: Self, Social Media, Poetry, Society, Sonnet

Yesterday holds what was once missed

within the cold arms of a stranger

remembering every mundane mist

consented safety smells like danger

As seasons of the moon elapse

truth invites a shiny mystery

where ancient wolves devour maps

to limitless mirrors of history

Words fight to emerge unsullied

from an ocean tainted by giants

afraid to let shadows exceed

the piercing weight of their talents

Scraps of time strip hope of expectations

when verbal habits die in empty conversations
How to tell if your database is controlling your application
By: Jesse Paquette
Tags: Database, Software Development, Sql, Software Engineering, Data Science

An ever-growing list of anti-patterns and symptoms, in no particular order.

I think about this mostly from the SELECT-side, so I’m sure there’s a fair amount missing on the INSERT/UPDATE-side, and also from the NoSQL perspective.
Facebook Inverse Cooking Algorithm
By: Luís Rita
Tags: Health, Inverse Cooking Algorithm, Deep Learning, Food Recommendation, Recursive Neural Networks

Facebook Inverse Cooking Algorithm

Predicting a full recipe from an image better than humans

Figure 1 Predicted ingredients after running Inverse Cooking algorithm in a meal of sushi [3]

This recipe retrieval algorithm was developed by Facebook AI Research and it is able to predict ingredients, cooking instructions and a title for a recipe, directly from an image (Figure 2) [1].

Figure 2 Example of a generated recipe by the Inverse Cooking Algorithm [1]

In the past, algorithms have been using simple systems of recipe retrieval based on image similarities in an embedding space. This approach is highly dependent on the quality of the learned embedding, dataset size and variability. Therefore, these approaches fail when there is no match between the input image and the static dataset [1].

Inverse cooking algorithm instead of retrieving a recipe directly from an image, proposes a pipeline with an intermediate step where the set of ingredients is first obtained. This allows the generation of the instructions not only taking into account the image, but also the ingredients (Figure 1) [1].

Figure 3 Inverse Cooking recipe generation model with the multiple encoders and decoders, generating the cooking instructions [1]

One of the major achievements of this method was to present higher accuracy than a baseline recipe retrieval system [2] and average human [1], while trying to predict the ingredients from an image.

Figure 4 Left: IoU and F1 scores for ingredients obtained with retrieval approach [2], Facebook’s method (Ours) and humans. Right: Recipe success rate according to human judgment [1]

Inverse Cooking algorithm was included in a food recommendation system app developed and published here. Based on the predicted ingredients in the web application, several suggestions are provided to the user, such as: different ingredient combinations (Figure 1).

References

[1] A. Salvador, M. Drozdzal, X. Giro-i-Nieto and A. Romero, “Inverse Cooking: Recipe Generation from Food Images,” Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, 2018.

[2] A. Salvador, N. Hynes, Y. Aytar, J. Marin, F. Ofli, I. Weber and A. Torralba, “Learning cross-modal embeddings for cooking recipes and food images,” Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, 2017.

[3] Towards Data Science, “Building a Food Recommendation System,” 2020. [Online]. Available: https://towardsdatascience.com/building-a-food-recommendation-system-90788f78691a. [Accessed 18 May 2020].
SelectUntilDestroyed in Angular
By: João Victor Ghignatti
Tags: Angular, JavaScript, Rxjs, Typescript, Ngrx

SelectUntilDestroyed in Angular

A custom RxJS operator to use with NgRx

When using NgRx, we rely a lot on selecting pieces of the store to build our components. Avoiding in-component subscriptions is a good thing, so we normally have containers that hold the observables returned by selectors and we use the async pipe to pass the actual data down to be displayed by the presenters.

Sometimes, we do need to subscribe to selectors, and every subscription is followed by the need to unsubscribe. Out of the box, the best way to unsubscribe from a lot of observables is as follows:

Which means that for every select store, we need to:

It would be great to group both select and takeUntil , right? We can achieve that by writing a custom RxJS operator, like this:

The downside is that in order to use it, we'd still need to define the component destroyed ( Subject ), call next , and complete on it:

If we could find a way of wrapping that Subject creation, the takeUntil , and listen to the component's ngOnDestroy to trigger the next and complete , that would be awesome. That's where ngneat/until-destroy comes into play. They provide a custom operator that does exactly what we need.

By combining untilDestroy to our custom operator and adding the expected type declaration, we can get to this:

Where we use it like:
Bee the Protector they Need
Tags: Age Of Awareness, Poetry, Climate Change, Michelethetrainer, Sustainability

Our hectic lives flow so fast we forget

To smell fragrant flowers or watch the sunset

Suffering Polar Bears seem so far away

Remember messengers & observe them today

Lean in and listen — unfold stories buzz

They deserve our care and attention because

Honeybees are starving and they’re thirsty too

They make all the food possible for me and for you

Insects know the difference between life and death

All littles work hard to protect their last breath

Pollinators are an important relationship to re-establish

Or at mealtime we’ll stare sadly at a big empty dish

How unappreciative we are to have forgotten to care

What happens when we can’t get food water or air?

Pandemics fires floods; lives cannot depend on politicians

Our sweet buzzing friends cannot survive these conditions

Spray some water on an outdoor plant for the bees

Plant pollen-y flowers they can eat & lush trees

Learn why we owe tiny bees a tremendous debt

Together bees/humans/earth need all the help we can get

Michele the Trainer 2020

Sunshines of our Ocean Planet, there is nothing we can buy to remedy climate change, but we can learn and uplift others. If you want to join the conversation about climate change, I’m reading The GenZ Emergency by Dr. Reese Halter which is rich with solutions, research, references and ideas for our future (and poetic inspiration!)
PyTorch Lightning 1.0: From 0–600k
By: Pytorch Lightning Team
Tags: Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Pytorch Lightning, Pytorch, AI

The Lightning DNA

AI research has evolved much faster than any single framework can keep up with. The field of deep learning is constantly evolving, mostly in complexity and scale. Lightning provides a user experience designed for the world of complex model interactions while abstracting away all the distracting details of engineering such as multi-GPU and multi-TPU training, early stopping, logging, etc…

Frameworks like PyTorch were designed for a time where AI research was mostly about network architectures, an nn.Module that can define the sequence of operations.

VGG16

And these frameworks do an incredible job at providing all the pieces to put together extremely complex models for research or production. But as soon as models start interacting with each other, like a GAN, BERT, or an autoencoder, that paradigm breaks, and the immense flexibility, soon turns into boilerplate that is hard to maintain as a project scales.

Unlike frameworks that came before, PyTorch Lightning was designed to encapsulate a collection of models interacting together, what we call deep learning systems. Lightning is built for the more complicated research and production cases of today’s world, where many models interact with each other using complicated rules.

AutoEncoder system

The second key principle of PyTorch Lightning is that hardware and the “science” code must be separated. Lightning evolved to harness massive compute at scale without surfacing any of those abstractions to the user. By doing this separation you gain new abilities that were not possible before such as debugging your 512 GPU job on your laptop using CPUs without needing to change your code.

Lastly, Lightning was created with the vision of becoming a community-driven framework.

Building good deep learning models requires a ton of expertise and small tricks that make the system work. Across the world, hundreds of incredible engineers and PhDs implement the same code over and over again. Lightning now has a growing contributor community of over 300+ of the most talented deep learning people around, that choose to allocate the same energy and do exactly the same optimizations but instead have thousands of people benefiting from their efforts.
Creating ‘Qalam’
By: Stink Studios
Tags: Ramadan, VR, Google, Threejs, Webgl

Each year, at the onset of Ramadan and for the festival of Eid al-Fitr at its conclusion, people send friends and families themed messages as greetings. To help them celebrate these occasions in 2018, Google Brand Studio conceived the ‘Qalam’ project: a series of artworks by renowned regional artists, created in VR, that could be customised and shared with friends and family. Google approached Stink Studios to build the project and help bring the experience to life.

The project began with a series of art capture sessions held in Dubai, London and Turkey. Here, a total of nine artists — whose backgrounds ranged from graffiti artist, through traditional calligraphers, to tattooists — created individual artworks in Tilt Brush, Google’s VR Painting application. These intricate and beautiful artworks then needed to be recreated and made available on mobile platforms for people to customise and share.

This is where the challenge for Stink Studios began. These 3D artworks were composed of:

Up to half a million vertices

Files up to 42MB in size

Complex, custom shaders for unusual brush strokes like Fire, Electricity and ‘Chromatic Wave’

With close to 50 artworks to convert and make available in a streamlined mobile experience, we faced significant challenges on multiple fronts.

Anatomy of a Tilt Brush brush stroke

Tilt Brush is an amazing VR painting application which, conveniently for us, offers an export path from its proprietary .tilt file format to the common .fbx format as well as Base64 encoded JSON.

Opening up the .fbx file revealed that the brush stroke geometry is exported with the vertices ordered in the sequence they were created — with brush colour stored in vertex colours and the particular brush textures cleverly created by UV unwrapping the length of the geometry against compact brush texture map tiles that define the shape of the brush start and end. This information gave us confidence that we had almost all the elements needed to recreate the brush strokes outside of Tilt Brush.

However, the one component that was missing was the specific shader implementation that gave each brush its particular material properties. The look of the brush shaders was a key characteristic of the Tilt Brush art but unfortunately, given we were missing this information from the fbx file, it was going to be very difficult to recreate.
Tested Hair Therapy For The Strong Hairs
By: Onur Inanc
Tags: Hair Care, Healthcare, Life, Hair, Health

REASONS OF HAIR LOSS

The medicine you use, toxic substances, food additives, bad nutrition, bad shampoo,

hair dyes, hair conditioners affect hair loss.

Health problems also accelerate hair loss.

Thyroid insufficiency, some skin diseases, Fungal diseases are some examples. Also, the deficiency of iron, biotin, zinc, vitamin D, omega 3, B12, and selenium in the body are the problems of losing hair.

Moreover, perming and blow-drying damages the hair.

Washing with extra hot water every day and using more than two shampoos per wash will also damage the hair.

Frequent swimming in the sea and the pool will damage hair.

Air pollution, exhaust gases, and dust in the air also wear out the hair.
Getting started with JSON(JavaScript Object Notation)
By: Sarvesh Kadam
Tags: Json, JavaScript, Web Development, Development, Javascript Tips

JSON( JavaScript Object Notation) is a storage format that is completely language independent and it is used to store and transport data. It’s quite an important topic as the data which we fetch from external API usually consists of Arrays of elements which are in JSON format.

The syntax of JSON is quite similar to the Object literal syntax which also consists of name, value pairs. But here both names, as well as values, are quoted in inverted commas.

Let us look at the example below :

//Object literals syntax

let details = {

firstName : "John",

lastName : "Adams",

age : 27

}



//JSON syntax

{

"firstName" : "Mike",

"lastName" : "Bush",

"age" : 25

}

It is believed that in previous years XML format was widely used which has tags surrounding the data. The above mention JSON data in XML format is represented as below

<details>

<firstName>Mike</firstName>

<lastName>Bush</lastName>

<age>25</age>

</details>

As you can see the XML format is verbose as compare to JSON i.e. for a single value “Mike”, the name “firstName” is repeated twice for the opening and closing tags which is quite unnecessary. Also, the JSON can be parsed to Object literal which makes it faster to work with.

JSON is so popular that even JavaScript understands it and it has inbuilt functions to convert from JSON to object literal and vice versa.

Javascript provides JSON.stringify() a method to convert data from object literal format to JSON format

const objectData = { firstName : "Mike", lastName : "Bush" } const JSONdata = JSON.stringify(objectData) console.log(JSONdata) const JSONdata = '{ "firstName" : "Mike", "lastName" : "Bush"}'; const ObjectData = JSON.parse(JSONdata) console.log(ObjectData)

Output:-

{"firstName":"Mike","lastName":"Bush"}

There is another method called JSON.parse() which converts JSON format data to Object literal format

const JSONdata = '{ "firstName" : "Mike", "lastName" : "Bush"}';

const ObjectData = JSON.parse(JSONdata)



console.log(ObjectData)

Output:-

{firstName: "Mike", lastName: "Bush"}

This is what I learned when I started with JSON. Understanding fundamentals and the methods of JSON are important as they are an elemental part of accessing information with API.

Conclusion :

JSON syntax is similar to Object literal where both name-value pair is in inverted commas.

JSON.stringify() Object >>JSON

Object >>JSON JSON.parse() JSON >> Object

Thank you for your time for reading the article, give a follow on my twitter as I am documenting my learning
Christmas with the Drummer Boy
By: James Finn
Tags: LGBTQ, Christmas, Love, Family, Music

Come they told me

Pa rum pum pum pum

A new born king to see

Pa rum pum pum pum

Cory raised his chin, opened his mouth wide, and sang the purest note he knew how. Ms. Wilson looked up from the piano and tossed one of her sparkling smiles at him. He felt great about that, but surprised she heard him over all the other kids.

Eighth grade choir was hard! It was still his favorite class, but it wasn’t all fun. He had to learn this thing called ‘harmony’ and how to sing in ‘parts.’ And how to read music!

Today was easier.

They were goofing off singing Christmas carols. Thanksgiving was over and Christmas was coming! It seemed so far away, but Ms. Wilson said it was close.

“Class! Settle down now,” she said as she stood up from the piano. “The bell’s about to ring, but please remember this is Thursday and the GSA is using the room next. No private practice in here after, sorry.”

Cory’s face turned hot as some boys coughed out something that sounded like “faggot.” Cory knew GSA meant “Gay Straight Alliance.” He even knew it was a club for kids like him. But he also knew he’d never dare stay after school for a meeting like that.

Not even in his dreams!

“Cory!” Ms. Wilson called, kind of loud and stern. “Becka? Audry? Can I see you guys up here for a minute, please?”

Cory gasped. The end-of-school bell rang just then, so probably nobody heard, but he covered his mouth, anyway. How could she know about him? Nobody knew, not even his dad!

What happens next? Finish the story on Prism & Pen.
For heaven’s sakes, creative people, go get your own domain name.
By: Linda Caroll
Tags: Creative, Advice, Writing Tips, Creativity, Business Strategy

A client I worked with had thousands — thousands — of followers on Facebook. Woke up one day and the page was gone. Poof. Facebook deleted it. Violation of terms, they said.

Which term? Who knows. Facebook never answered. They begged and pleaded to have their page restored, but sorry was all they got.

A woman that runs a coaching business got booted off Twitter. They told her it was because of some of her (nursing) photos that showed inappropriate content. People complained, they said. Was that really why? No idea.

Audience, gone. Overnight. That’s what mattered, at least to her small business. She had to start over, which kind of sucked.

It’s not just Facebook

A lot of writers, creatives and small businesses don’t bother to get and use a domain name of their own. Why? It’s so easy to use Wix, Weebly, Facebook, Twitter, Etsy, Instagram, etc.

So they’re promoting a url like:

— authorsfullname.wixsite.com

— myverylongbusinessname.weebly.com

— facebook.com/somelongnameprobablywithnumbers

— twitter.com/HeyCloseEnoughAndAvailable

— etsy.com/shop/SomeLongShopName

— instagram.com/nameorbusinessnamehere

For heaven’s sakes, creative people, go get your own domain name.

A domain name costs less than $10. Use a namecheap coupon and get one for $8. Less when they have a sale. (And no, that’s not an affiliate link.)

Folks, domain names can be forwarded. Free.

I get it. You need a platform that’s easy to use.

I’m not telling you to learn to be a coding genius and get a self hosted package and figure out how to build a site from scratch. Use what works for you.

But own your own name, for goodness sakes.

Register BobTheWriter.com or and forward it wherever you want. To your (very long) weebly url or etsy or wix or instagram or your facebook page if that’s how you roll.

At least if there’s some catastrophe, you can just change the forward.

Perception matters…

A lot of creatives work hard to build a reputation and a following. But your name is part of your reputation and SuzannaSmithWriter.weebly.com does not have the credibility that SuzannaSmithWriter.com has if you hear what I’m saying.

But hey, your call. You could be like the girl who landed some really sweet media coverage and a full page feature in a major magazine — and sent all that exposure to a long url that wasn’t working when I tried to go see more.

/rant
Extracting Audio from Video using Python
By: Behic Guven
Tags: Coding, Programming, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Machine Learning

Getting Started

This will a short and simple project. It will not take us more than five minutes to finish the whole project. Before moving to the programming part, I would like to give some information about the library we will use in this project: MoviePy. Let’s get started!

As you can understand from the title, we will need a video recording for this project. It can even be a short recording of yourself speaking to the camera. Using a library called MoviePy, we will extract the audio from the video recording. If you are ready, let’s start by installing the libraries!

Installing a module library is very straightforward in python. You can even install a couple of libraries in one line of code. Write the following line in your terminal window:

pip install ffmpeg moviepy

Ffmpeg is a leading multimedia framework, that decodes, encodes, transcodes, mux, demux, stream, filter and play pretty much anything that humans and machines have created. (Reference: http://ffmpeg.org/about.html)

MoviePy is a library that can read and write all the most common audio and video formats, including GIFs. In case you are having issues when installing moviepy library, make sure the ffmpeg library is installed correctly.

Now, let’s get to programming. You can use a text editor or Jupyter Notebook. We will start by importing the libraries.
Sweet Cecilia’s ‘A Tribute to Al Berard’ Is Up for a Grammy Award
By: Randall Radic
Tags: Sweet Cecilia, A Tribute To Al Berard, Music, Grammys, Americana Music

Sweet Cecilia

Louisiana-based trio Sweet Cecilia recently received a Grammy nomination for their scrumptious, beautiful album, A Tribute to Al Berard. Produced by Grammy-winner Tony Diagle who has worked with BB King and others, the album is gloriously wrought.

Sisters Laura Huval and Maegan Berard, along with first cousin, Callie Guidry, make up Sweet Cecilia. Playing and singing together from childhood, the threesome follows in the footsteps of their father and uncle, Al “Pyook” Berard, who encouraged them to pursue music.

Their name — Sweet Cecilia — is a nod to their hometown, Cecilia, Louisiana, as well as the patron Saint of Musicians, St. Cecilia. Officially formed in 2011, Sweet Cecilia dropped their debut self-titled album in 2015. In 2017, they released their sophomore album, Sing Me a Story,

Sweet Cecilia’s sound amalgamates aspects of Americana, Louisiana roots music, folk, rock, country aromas, and rock into tantalizing sonic confections chock-full of mesmerizing hues.

The trio has performed at Festival International de Louisiane, Festival Acadiens et Creole, the legendary Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival, Festival International, the French Quarter Festival, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, as well as many more.

Sweet Cecilia

Encompassing seven-tracks, the album begins with “Tout Les Cadien Content,” delivering tasty tinctures of Louisiana bog tints merged with relishes of pop dynamics. Laura struts her grand vocal prowess, imbuing the lyrics with exhilarating timbres and alluring flair.

Entry points include “Dans La Louisiane,” rife with opulent harmonies and velvety textures. A personal favorite is “Fais Do Do Waltz,” brimming with Maegan’s luminous guitar and the delectable purr of a fiddle. The undulating rhythm of the tune is topped by flawless vocals.

“Saute La Barriere” (Jump the Fence) travels on indulgent, blues-flavored colors and then transitions into a tune seething with country and alt-rock elements. A down and dirty guitar solo from Meagan gives the tune tasty foggy-bottom brio.

On the final track, “Sing Me A Song,” the threesome parade their stellar chromatic fusion as their voices unite in exquisite a cappella.

On A Tribute to Al Berard, Sweet Cecilia offers music at once elegant, intimate, and mesmerizing — a marvelous showcase of superb talent.

Follow Sweet Cecilia Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Spotify
ML05: Neural Network on iris by Numpy
By: Morton Kuo
Tags: Machine Learning, Neural Networks, Deep Learning, Numpy, AI

(7) Testing

print("Epochs = 15") # Run both epoch=15 & epoch=100

print('weights = ', weights, 'bias = ', bias)

print("y_test = {}".format(y_test))

activation(x_test, weights, bias)

Figure 9: Testing result of epochs = 15

Figure 10: Testing result of epochs = 100

If we set the decision boundary at 0.5, then we get 100% accuracy in both epochs = 15 & 100.

The first 10 predictions of epochs = 15 are between 0.46~0.49, while the first 10 predictions of epochs = 100 are between 0.23~0.30. The last 10 predictions of epochs = 15 are between 0.57~0.63, while the last 10 predictions of epochs = 100 are between 0.64~0.81. As epochs rises, values of the two flower group become more distance.
Inspiring action with data and design.
By: Camellia Williams
Tags: GIS, Biodiversity, Design, Maps, Data Visualization

Inspiring action with data and design.

Forging emotional connections to global data sets.

Our planet is in danger. Mass extinction is threatening the stability of our planet and our own personal futures. Humans are the cause of this mass extinction, but we also hold the power to stop it. What matters most is what we choose to do next.

Securing our planet’s long-term health will require a massive change in the way we think about our planet and approach our problems. The Half-Earth Project marks the turning point of that change. Conceived by E.O. Wilson, Half-Earth is a call to conserve half the Earth’s land and sea in order to manage sufficient habitat to reverse the species extinction crisis and ensure the long-term health of our planet. But which half? The Half-Earth Map will answer this important question.

Designed and developed by Vizzuality in collaboration with the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation, Map of Life, and Esri, the Half-Earth Map presents global biodiversity data in a way that compels us to take a different look at what’s happening to our planet’s species. Guided by user research and an understanding of human psychology, the Map is an example of how to combine scientifically rigorous data with emotionally stimulating design.
I Was a Prostitute for Halloween
By: Zoe Naz
Tags: Society, This Happened To Me, Sexuality, Culture, Halloween

Fast forward to Halloween day. I put on my pink bob wig, a leopard print bra, fishnet tights, a pair of skimpy underwear, and black thigh-high leather boots. Not quite Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman more Natalie Portman in Closer but you get the idea.

It was going to be a chilly night and the party was mostly going to be outside so I added a purple fur jacket for good measure and stuffed my pockets with 20s and condoms just in case anyone questioned my credentials.

When we arrive at the house party, my friends and I make a beeline to the bar. As we weaved through the crowds, I spotted scantily clad women everywhere…A sexy ninja turtle, a sexy bunny, a sexy vampire, a sexy cop, and sexy Harry Potter.

Ah, I love Halloween, I thought to myself as I quickly realize for adults, jello shots had replaced candy and masks had been replaced by skin. As I squeezed out the last remnants of the jiggly cherry gelatin in my mouth, a group of guys approaches us.

“Nice costume,” Luigi remarks. “What are you?”

“Guess”, I respond.

He looks over at his friend, Mario, who gives him a shoulder shrug and back at me. “I’m not sure. Uh…Lady Gaga?”

“Nah, wrong wig” I respond with a smile. “Try again” I say as I run my hand slowly up my leg with a coy glance.

“An 80s go-go dancer?” He says.

I take out a few 20s, and a condom wrapper falls out of my pocket. He blushes.

At that moment, my friend, dressed as a sexy Where’s Waldo (yes, trust me, it’s possible), drags me off to meet the new guy she’s sleeping with.

“Found you!” he says to my friend as he squeezes her ass.

This is my girlfriend, Pixie”, my friend says with a laugh. I”m not sure how I feel about being called Pixie, but hey, for one night I guess you can call me whatever you want.”

“Nice to meet you, Pixie.”

“Can you tell what I am? I ask again.

There’s a long pause. I think I know, but I’m trying to come up with a proper way to say it.

“Say it anyway,”

“A lady of the night?”

“Yes!” I exclaim. “That’s a nice way to put it. I’m a hooker.”

The look on his face tells me he’s surprised by my enthusiasm to be a whore. At that point, his cute friend approaches. This is Lindsay and Pixie. “Can you guess what she is?”

“Pink?”

It goes on like this all night. After a dozen or so conversations, not a single guy was comfortable calling me a hooker, an escort, a prostitute, or even a stripper. But no one had any problem telling the sexy nun that they’d like to take her at the altar. I realized, while we all have become comfortable or at least immune to seeing women dressing “slutty” for Halloween, we are still very uncomfortable with a woman owning her sexuality as a career choice.

A sexy nurse is just a cliche. A sexy prostitute is too close for comfort. But does a sex worker define a person any more than, say, a tech worker? The real reason I went as a prostitute was captured in a quote by poet and writer, Fernando Passoa, “To be understood is to prostitute oneself.”
Prevent 3 Nasty Habits by Wearing a Mask
By: Jordan Gross
Tags: Humor, Creativity, Self Improvement, Life Lessons, Inspiration

Prevent 3 Nasty Habits by Wearing a Mask

Resist the urge to pick your nose.

Photo by Kobby Mendez on Unsplash

“Put your mask back on!” I tell my friend incessantly for the last few months. It’s not that he doesn’t understand the importance, and he’s not too proud to wear the mask, but it’s been giving him more acne than he’d like. I’m not sure if that’s actually the mask or the copious amounts of fried foods he eats, but hey, whatever explanation he’d like to provide for himself works for me.

Being one of the few people whose whereabouts I am completely aware of for the entirety of quarantine, I see this friend a lot. When we’re together we don’t wear masks, and I’ve started poking fun at some habits he has — that we all may sometimes have — that wearing a mask would prevent. The following is a fun little list of some of these habits and an upbeat, light-hearted way to convince your friends that wearing a mask — aside from all of the health benefits — is actually a really great thing.

1. It Prevents Nail Biting

My friend and I were sitting in my apartment watching football, and I knew he had some money on the games. When it came down to the last few plays and the scores were close, I could see him getting nervous. One of his nervous ticks is nail biting, and he immediately went for his nails every time the team he didn’t bet on looked like they were going to win.

“Wouldn’t be biting your nails if you wore your mask!” I said to him with a smile on my face. Wearing a mask keeps you from putting your hands in your mouth. It may help a child (or my 26-year old friend) stop from biting their nails.

2. It Prevents Nose Picking

We all may go digging for gold every now and then, and my friend is no exception. I caught him with his finger near his nose during an outdoor workout, and I immediately yelled, “Wouldn’t be picking your nose if you wore a mask!”

He immediately slid his mask up and continued his workout. Because the mask should always cover your nose (that is kind of the whole purpose), it’s way more difficult to get caught with any fingers up there.

3. It Prevents Pimple Popping

My friend’s main reason for disliking his mask is because it’s causing him to get pimples. Yet, for some reason, whenever he gets pimples, he immediately touches, scratches, and pops those pimples, which makes them even worse. I saw him popping a pimple during football that same day. Not only was it nasty as is, but also, it started bleeding.

“Wouldn’t be bleeding if you wore your mask!” I said to him. He cleaned his face and put his shirt up over his nose.

The Low Down

Wearing a mask is important right now no matter which way you slice it. But if people don’t want to wear it to save lives, then maybe these fun reasons will help. If people don’t want to wear them because they’re too proud, then maybe these nasty habits the mask can prevent will make them realize wearing a mask can actually be a positive.
Does a List Define a Life
By: Tree Langdon
Tags: Relationships, Vulnerability, Business, Writing, Self Improvement

A while ago, CR Mandler MAT, a lovely writer friend of mine, invited me to write a list.

I don’t think she knows how much I love lists. Usually, they are in a To-Do format, a document that details the endless aspirations, wishes, and tasks that I invent in the middle of the night.

I am frequently forced to triage my lists.

Otherwise, I may be overwhelmed to the point where I get nothing done at all. When I triage, I ask myself, “What is the one thing that absolutely has to get done today?”

This one is a challenge. A random list of personal traits, my life, trivial facts, and whatever lights my fancy is a bit of a different list for me to write.

It reminds me of a game we used to play in high school.

Truth or Dare.

If you’re inspired by this idea, you’re invited to join as well. Please tag me if you do because I would love to read about you.

So here goes.

Random, with no filter.
When There’s Too Much of A Good Thing
By: Larry G. Maguire
Tags: Self, Life Lessons, Success, Culture, Society

When There’s Too Much of A Good Thing

You know this thing has more legs… just one more day, one more drink, one more bet, keep your foot on the gas…

It’s interesting. The old saying “too much of a good thing” is prominent in my mind at the moment. From the extra condition that sits around my waistline, to the over-enthusiastic societal tendency towards political correctness, and the cultural upheaval the US, collapse from the peak of excess seems to be an unavoidable condition of the human experience.

The devil on your shoulder says, just squeeze a little more… you know this thing has more legs… just one more day, keep your foot on the gas…

Then, bang!

It’s too late.

You should have got out sooner. “Why didn’t I listen to my gut?” you say.

More recently though, the accuracy of this idea came to me from my seven year-old daughter.

I was busy painting the landing ceiling late last night. Up a ladder staring squinty-eyed through my hand to try block the light from the recessed downlighter burning a hole in my retina.

Cara watched me as she got ready for bed and said;

It’s funny, isn’t it Dad? When you don’t have enough light you can’t see, and when you have too much light you can’t see either.

Profundity!

I was taken aback by the level of insight I just received from this little blonde girl. Kids are not supposed to know this stuff, but the truth is they do, and sometimes they bowl us over with it.

Nobody Lost Taking A Profit

“Too much of a good thing” recognises that the coin has two sides, that the stick has two ends, and the the other side of both positive and negative experience exists.

The understanding of this idea makes us aware that we’re applying too much gas, that we’re flogging the horse too hard, like the folks that got caught when the markets collapsed in 2008.

A client of mine who managed to make a call before the bust comes to mind. It was 2006 or so, when he told me how he sold all his properties a year or two earlier. He decided to take his profit; “I earned enough” he said, “time for someone else to make a buck”.

He landed on the right side of that coin toss.

Losses aside, this idea also gives us the comfort that things will get better, but usually in their own time. Forcing them to improve tends to work against us.

Best to feel our way in and out. Rationality rarely works.