fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Not Some Kind of Wonderful
By: Melissa R. Mendelson
Tags: Retail, The Bad Influence, Memoir, Eric Stoltz, Melissarmendelson

Not Some Kind of Wonderful

Eric Stoltz

A long time ago, I worked at Payless Shoes on Long Island. You would not have recognized me. I don’t recognize me, and while working in Retail, I have come across a lot of despicable individuals. She was one of the worst, if not the very worst, and her name was Princess. Yes, that was her name, and she had set her sights on me, sneaking cash out of the safe when we closed at night. She nearly got away with pinning it on me, and she loved getting underneath my skin. She ate an apple once while standing beside me, and as she spoke, she spat pieces of it into my face. But there was one day, where she really got under my skin. I screamed in this man’s face, not meaning to, but I lost it. Later on, I thought about him, how he dressed incognito, and I remembered the tattoo on his wrist. I knew who he was, and I wanted to curl into a ball and cry. I hope to this day that I am wrong, but I think the man that stood at my register and took the brunt of my scream was Eric Stoltz.
The Library | Review of “Becoming”
By: Cait'S Collections
Tags: Memoir, Book Review, Becoming, Michelle Obama, Readinglist

Among nearly every list of must-reads I came across Becoming, by Michelle Obama; the autobiography of Michelle’s life. I’ve never read a memoir, but after seeing this book listed so frequently I decided to check it out. Literally, I checked it out of the library, after the other 46 people in front of me on the wait list were done with it!

The book was worth the wait, it had me laughing out loud from the very beginning all through to the end when she describes leaving the White House. It’s not heavy on the politics, as readers will learn Michelle (ironically) isn’t a fan of “big” politics. She is however, a big fan of empowering the youth, prioritizing education, and looking out for those who may otherwise be overlooked.

What I love about her story is that it’s very relatable to readers, especially women. She describes struggles with balancing her career path, raising children, taking care of herself, and her marriage. As a Princeton and Harvard Graduate, born and raised on the South side of Chicago, Michelle discusses the importance of over coming adversity. She is first African-American First Lady and is blazing trails and setting the bar high.

Have you read Becoming? If so, what did you enjoy most about her story? Are there any other memoirs y’all recommend reading?

~Cait
Meeting Jeffrey Epstein
By: William, Dollar Bill
Tags: Pedophilia, Memoir, Prison, Crime, Jeffrey Epstein

Meeting Jeffrey Epstein

Photo by Serge Kutuzov on Unsplash

Never in my wildest dreams (or nightmares) did I expect to meet anybody interesting — let alone infamous — when I self-surrendered to MCC federal prison where I served most of 2019 for the crime of underreporting my income.

But MCC is located in Downtown Manhattan just 300 yards from New York State court. And s a result, several inmates of note have passed through the hallowed portals of that federal facility — among them — Bernard Kerik, El Chapo, DMX (the rapper), Michael Avenatti, Paul Manafort, and (drum roll) JEFFREY EPSTEIN.

And while serving my sentence, I not only had Paulie (Manafort) as my celly for a spell — but as Inmate Companion Coordinator (an exalted prison job), I spent many hours one on one with Jeffrey Epstein during the month leading up to his suicide.

And I’ve dropped a few stories right here on this platform — as it was an interesting experience to say the least. And I like to chronicle my life experiences on paper (or computer).

Here is a collection of my encounters with Jeffrey, a man who was actually a charming and normal-appearing guy to know — though his crimes were anything but.
Mid-Winter Visits the Summer Cottage
By: Will Schmit
Tags: Grief, Memoir, Winter Solstice, Writing, Poetry On Medium

a solstice poem to read around the fire

photo by Alex Hawthorne at Unsplash

My mother doesn’t haunt these parts.

Any visage of her is foxfire,

a green glow from a gone world.

Still, my pulse pricks

at the creaking swing set.

Frost steams off a metal cup.

Scraggly apples yearn

for the return of pioneers.

Scalpel petals flower through the snow,

glint like a German Christmas.

A few clouds spell something for the stars.

Ripples from the icy diving raft curl blue.

I was a child playing foam tag,

Ma dragging a toe

in the wet sand of a great lake.

Snow fills my open boot,

her voice, in a brooding crow,

shakes my reverie. Windows

are secure. I peek in

on an empty table and chair.
Not Bothering With It
By: Alina V
Tags: Travel, Lifestyle, Food, Memoir

Cooking became my personal psychotherapy since March 2020. I can’t even imagine how many hours I spent in our tiny kitchen in Berlin. Learned a lot too. However, the main principle of my cooking is not really bothering with it. So it really helps against corona panic.

When I was pregnant and my memory shrunk to a span of a few minutes, I could be worried about something, and then immediately forget what it was, and have this feeling of worry without any obvious cause for a while, and then just let it go.

Same idea applies to my cooking. No recipes, no need to remember the precise proportions, just a small bunch of ingredients and inspiration as a starting point. The rest comes with it.

In our hideaway the list of ingredients has a glass ceiling defined by local demand.

So I’ll tell you about my favourite Christmas dessert, that’s baked apples. Just made a tray of them. The smell of hot apple sirup and cinnamon fills the living room, it is comforting, and relaxing, and soothing, and delicious.

Whenever I read about baking apples, it seems that people tend to really overdo it. There is always something about honey, sugar, nuts, yoghurt, quark, oil, butter, dough.

I don’t even bother to take the stem out, haha.

Join me, it’s a very good one. You need sweet simple apples and cinnamon.

Step number one. Take apples. No exotic tastes. Take them however many your baking tray can hold. Wash, don’t dry.

Step number two. Treat your child, cut accurate squares from the top of the apple. Keep the stem. Cut the squares in halves and give the little one a snack.

…or don’t. I mean you can eat them yourself. Or chop and put back into the apple once you have sprinkled it with cinnamon.

Step number three. Yeah, I actually said it already, sprinkle the apples with cinnamon. You can be generous.

Step number four. Bake them. Use baking paper (unless you enjoy washing the trays). I heat my stove to 200 degrees Celsius, but it’s just my favourite baking temperature. You can choose yours.

Step number five. Take them out once they are cooked. That is — the skin has burst, the tray is filled with boiling juice, the apple still preserves its shape, the kitchen is full of wonderful smells.

Let them cool, pour the sirup from the tray all over them and enjoy them warm or cold. The sweet taste is intensified by baking, the texture is soft and a bit chewy, the cinnamon adds Christmasy notes. Yes, you don’t need any sugar there. Really.
Riding the Rails
By: William, Dollar Bill
Tags: Life Lessons, Memoir, Amtrak, Travel, Trains

Riding the Rails

vergx96 — Pixabay

Admittedly, riding a train for more than a couple of hundred miles is a “back in the day” adventure most people would rather read about than suffer.

But several years ago, I was given a credit that effectively made a round trip ride from New York to West Palm Beach a $63 excursion. Plus, the trip was a spur of the moment decision which meant if I’d chosen to fly, the cost would have been quadruple that $63.

And finally, a friend had just finished an Amtrak voyage from California to New York during which he claimed to have sex in the bathroom with a hot girl.

So what the hell! I couldn't resist. It was onward and upward (or actually southward and northward) with the experiment.

I can’t tell you it’s an experience I’d want to repeat. But it wasn’t without value or entertainment as it turned out.

Flying from point A to point B, you really get no sense of what lies in between. But on the train? You definitely know what you’re passing through. Come share the adventure with me.
The Funtime Salesman
By: William, Dollar Bill
Tags: Nonfiction, Sex, Memoir, Humor, Sex Worker

The Funtime Salesman

Photo by Marcelo Fernandes from Pexels

Busting a hack (driving a taxi) in the Big Apple (New York City) is at once a job nobody wants — but everybody wants to hear about. And those of us who drove the night shift (5 PM — 5 AM), boasted stories of debauchery and decadence with which we could entertain a dinner party for hours on end.

So surreal were some of the anecdotes, that I felt compelled to type them out for posterity — and advocation which eventually got me published in 40 different papers and magazines ranging from the lowest (NY Times, NY Magazine) to the loftiest (Screw, Juggs and Orgy).

Eventually, one of those publications offered me full-time employment writing stories for, delivering their publication to, and collecting advertising money from a string of brothels in New York City.

At first blush, your average horny guy would think this was the opportunity of a lifetime. And in some ways it was. Still, it was a job working for a drug-addicted boss while catering to some of the most spoiled and entitled people you’d never really want to know.

In “A Day In the Life of the Funtime Salesman,” I peel back the layers to expose exactly what one day doing business with escorts is really like. And trust me, it’s a lot different when they’re giving you money — rather than vice versa.

Buckle up and rubber down for the fun!
Step Up to the Plate
By: William, Dollar Bill
Tags: Pardon, Memoir, Prison, Manafort, Trump

Step Up to the Plate

pexels — pixabay

Just a day ago, I characterized my writing career to a published author using a baseball metaphor: “I made it to the majors as a pinch hitter and performed reasonably well. But I never got into the starting lineup.”

Translated, that means I’ve freelanced for papers like the NY Times, Village Voice, and NY Daily News (among others), but never worked for any of them full-time.

I didn’t get those gigs because I was a great writer. Rather, it was as a result of my being a real live taxi driver, an employee who sold advertising to escorts, or now, as an ex-con.

So Michael Avenatti gets locked up at MCC? I got a gig. Having spent a year in the prison, I knew better than anybody at the paper (or website in that case) exactly what Avenatti was experiencing.

When Michael Cohen was sent back to prison for a probation violation? Cha ching. Another gig. Harvey Weinstein at Rikers? Score! Paul Manafort got sent home because of covid. Mo’ money!

Yesterday, Paulie got a pardon from the King, effectively releasing him from years of home confinement. So it’s back to the Show for me. It only took 30 minutes from the moment I heard the news to the moment I hit the send button with a draft to my editor at the Daily Beast.

So to metaphorize musically and athletically this time, it’s “Put Me In Coach, I’m Ready to Play” time.

This is of course, a time-sensitive piece. It will be old news quickly. And you know I want to send it to all my connections at the same time and let them bid for the piece. After all, how many ex-cellies does Paul Manfort have who can spell “cat?” I have a perspective that few share on this bit of news.

Regardless, if I sent the article to more than one outlet at a time, I could kiss any future with any of them goodbye. Submitting simultaneously is a huge no-no.

And so, the next day will see me soliciting until I find a home for the story. Hopefully, somebody will publish and pay for it. Which is why I really can’t divulge the contents on Medium yet. If I did and the outlet found out about it? Another big no-no.

So many rules and restrictions! Oh well. I’ll toe the line — as I don’t have a choice in the matter if I ever want to be published in a major media outlet again.
Papa Utolo
Tags: Memoir

On the day Papa Utolo died, our home was overcome by a strong sense of quietness. It was so quiet that one could hear the stalks of the orange trees outside our bungalow scratch against the unplastered fence.

Someone, I am not sure who, called our landline to inform my mom. She went to her room and faced the wall. At that time, she still slept in my father’s room. On the wall she faced, was an altar with several mini statues of Jesus and Mary and a picture each of Mary and Saint Jose Maria. A little above the altar was a picture of my paternal grandma.

I am not sure how long she lay there, but it was very long. I remember asking my sister why mom had been in her room for so long and she telling me that our grandpa had died. Why is she so sad though? I asked. It would take me some time to realize that grandpa to me, meant father to her. I imagined how deep her pain was and somehow I managed to promise myself not to become too attached to grandma because I did not want to have to be overcome by such pain.

Somehow I made it through life thinking this way — maybe I won’t get hurt if I do not get attached. As time went by, this became my subconscious MO. I was excited every time I saw her, I enjoyed her jokes, offered myself for her to throw shades at me, but I never let myself become too attached.

For two weeks now, her health has deteriorated. This is one more way 2020 has tried to test my limits. I talked to my mom today and you can tell she is really worried. Just like over a decade ago, she is once again in that position where a parent is ill.

Has my attempt over the years to not become attached worked? I sincerely doubt. For two weeks in my subconscious, I have squashed several times, thoughts that begin with “what if….”
When Tara Westover Questions Her Own Narration Throughout *Educated* It Undermines Her Story
By: Aimée Gramblin
Tags: Books, Memoir, Mental Illness, Reading, Psychology

Tragedy With a Hopeful Ending

By the book’s end, we are informed Westover is estranged from parts of her family. As readers, we are relieved she has escaped and hope she will not return, though she has returned so many times, we wonder about the odds.

While the premise of the book is Westover overcoming impossible odds to earn an advanced education, I don’t believe that’s what Educated is really about. It would more aptly be titled Questioning or Who I Am or Fragmented Family, Fragmented Memory, or The Nature of Memory. The title is a bit misleading. It feels like Westover wants Educated desperately to be about her overcoming the odds and escaping her family, but in the end, it doesn’t feel as though she’s yet escaped. Physically? Yes. Mentally? Not all the way; not yet.

Westover’s ending is abrupt — the last paragraph a statement that reads more like a question — but also a tidy bow. Life is never tidy; Westover’s story is in many ways tragic. I hope to read a sequel to Educated when Westover is a bit older and is more equipped to discuss what she has learned, what questions she still has, and encourages readers to ponder along with her.

That Westover is a highly wounded woman seeps through the pages of Educated. She’s grappling with her abusive childhood — trying to make sense of the details, yet she hasn’t come up with a deeper meaning of what she has gone through. She doesn’t analyze why her siblings, her mom, or dad, are the way they are, except to emphasize her suspicion of her dad’s mental illness and the way in which they use religious fanaticism as an excuse for extreme abuse.

Perhaps, what’s missing, in the end, is an acknowledgment of the grief Westover experiences when she finally releases her family. Maybe she hasn’t yet felt this grief. In some ways, it feels like a numb, dissociated retelling. Although Westover has gone to talk therapy, she doesn’t indicate that she’s been through much healing beyond telling her history, which is certainly a necessary step, but I’d argue the healing journey goes beyond this. I hope the future brings more healing to Westover’s life.
Not Yours: Finally Mine
By: Tara Zoë Roshe
Tags: Memoir, Mental Health, Counseling, Mental Illness, Poetry

When you’re poor and you’re sick

your life isn’t yours anymore.

Someone else’s life maybe.

But not yours.

And the doors all have locks.

And the windows have bars.

But they don’t beat you

or rape you.

So you’re lucky.

When they lock you up

they say, to protect you

your country isn’t yours anymore.

Some else’s country maybe,

but not yours.

Not the Land of the Free.

or the Home of the Brave.

When you’re poor and you’re sick

you can complain, but

no one believes you.

Some old man with a Rolex

reads off questions from a pad.

He’s heard your story before.

Fills in the blanks himself.

Five minutes of time.

You get a label for life.

When you’re given that label,

your mind isn’t yours anymore.

Someone else’s to mold maybe

But not yours.

And the nurses give pills

and the pills are so pretty.

Pastels and bright colors,

snowy whites.

And no one knows why

but sometimes they help.

So you take what they give you.

You trust who they tell you to.

You say the right things.

But when you’re stuck in the system,

your future isn’t yours anymore.

Someone else’s to control maybe,

but not yours.

When you can’t get a job

and you can’t pay the rent.

Oh of course

there are laws

but lawyers cost money

When you’re poor and you’re sick

you live where they tell you to.

Someone makes rules.

Just like God, you can’t see him.

And the counselors say

you can always leave, but

When you’re poor and you’re sick

your freedom isn’t yours anymore.

Someone else’s freedom maybe

but not yours.

You can leave, non-compliant.

No insurance coverage, no treatment.

No medicine.

There’s no where to go.

So your freedom isn’t freedom.

and your home isn’t home.

Lawyers cost money.

The hospital has money.

When you’re poor and mentally ill,

your life isn’t yours anymore.

It belongs to clinicians, therapists, doctors,

and they all take home paychecks.

And the windows don’t have bars

or maybe

you just can’t see them.

When you’re poor and you’re sick

your decisions aren’t yours anymore.

Lots of other people’s to make maybe

but not yours.

Because they can commit you

whenever they want to.

Take your money.

Take your home.

Take your freedom.

Take your children.

When you’re poor and mentally ill,

your nights aren’t yours anymore.

Haunted, twisted dreams.

And you pray every night

for someone to come.

Someone to come save you.

And it could be an angel from heaven

or a demon from

the pit of hell.

You really don’t care

as long as

someone comes.
Ephemeral Life
By: Roy Gillett
Tags: Philosophy, Spirituality, Memoir, Fiction, Poetry

Johannes Plenio/Unsplash

In solitude, I listen to the voice of Spirit. I am guided by an unseen presence, an energy that sparks my intuition and allows me to navigate the physical realm. Our telepathic dialogues bring me peace amidst the turbulence of life. When the seemingly endless storms tyrannize the atmosphere of my experience, I am centered in the presence of Divinity, a watchful observer of transient images.

And for a moment, I become nothing. I become the formlessness of pure being, and in this state, I realize that the world is an illusory fog that will one day dissipate into the ethers. It is like winter vapor released from the lungs of creation, disappearing as quickly as it appeared.

I let go. I don’t hold on, for what is there to hold on to? None of this is real. It only feels real in the moment, while we’re living in it. Once it passes, it becomes the past, a phantom in the distance that travels on subconscious roads before encountering a black hole, an ancient monster that consumes the lost souls of time. And all becomes still again.
Rite of Passage
By: Trisha Traughber
Tags: Memoir, Vagabond Voices, Call For Submissions, Fiction, Poetry

Rite of Passage — what does that mean to you?

What does that mean in normal times, in your present, in your past…these days?

What have you learned in your wanderings, your travels, your relationships, your connection with your ancestors, your culture…or your search for belonging?

Do we need rites of passage today?

Can we still embark on rites of passage in these times?

My challenge to you:

Take the idea of a rite of passage and run with it.

The literal, the non-literal, the lyrical, the messy, the heartfelt. Bring yourself, your traditions, your languages, and all your emotions.

Your experiments. Your creative messes. Your musings.

If you decide you just absolutely need a rite of passage right now and you go out and have yourself an experience?

Maybe that’s enough…maybe you return wiser and tell us all about it.

And if you have to create your own rite of passage in these odd times by any means at your disposition? That is a radical act of creativity right there.

This is pure invitation, not obligation.

As always, if you’d like to submit a story on the prompt to Vagabond Voices, I would love to welcome it here.

There is no deadline. You can show up with your rite of passage months from now. We’d love to hear about it.

If you’ve got another story to share with us in the meantime? Well, share that. We’re eager to listen around the campfire.

If you are new to the Vagabond Voices publication, you can ask to join us by leaving a comment below.

Join the community, write for us, read with us…and more.

If you’d like to stay aware of all our community events — like writing workshops, book chats, the latest on our anthology…or just get a few extra writing prompts, you can sign up here.

Curious to know what we’re reading the first few months of 2021? The book list is here.

Here is some inspiring writing from our community.

Enjoy!

By Lee Ameka:

By Pablo Pereyra

By Marta Mozolewska

By Jonah Lightwhale

By Mary McGrath

Thanks for reading!
The Reflection of an Empty Room, Part I
By: Jr Verwey
Tags: Life Lessons, Fatherhood, Memoir, Depression, Mental Health

Parents want to protect their children. There are outliers, of course, but for the most part, I am confident in the truth that parents want to protect their children.

This was true for me decades ago when my daughter, Caitlin, was two years old. My wife and I were viewing a new apartment. It was an empty three-bedroom with speckless walls surrounding floors of medium pile that had not yet met bare feet. The scent of fresh paint invoked fresh possibilities of our family growing into and out of a new home.

Caitlin ran from room to room, no furniture or discarded toys to stop her passing. The walls echoed her squeals of excitement at a place so new and all hers. I watched her with the same hope as all parents, that her boundless energy and wonder would rekindle my own.

She crossed the threshold to the master bedroom. Her eyes widened at the size of it, trying to take it all in.

The western corner of the room held a massive walk-in closet. The massive doors held massive mirrors. Those mirrors, clean and new, held the reflection of an empty room beyond. In the light of day, the mirrors seemed to double the room’s size. To Caitlin, the mirrors must have appeared as portals of possibility, more thresholds to cross with more room to run. And she ran. She did not hurt herself when she hit the solid silver air. The medium pile caught her bottom when she fell. She did not cry, but her smile left for a moment, and at that moment, my heart broke. When she saw her reflection, she giggled, and we giggled with her, but for me, the wound went deep. This simple moment taught me I cannot protect my child from the invisible barriers that stand in her way, like the solid air which held the reflection of an empty room. Parents want to protect their children, but I cannot protect mine.

Throughout the years, this turned out to be true. Things have stood in her way and have knocked her down. Others have become obstacles for her to overcome. Sometimes I am the obstacle. I have learned a lot from that medium pile. Now, I will catch her when she falls, and when I cannot, I hope that when she sees her reflection, she can smile, or giggle, or scream, or cry and know that she can get up and try again.
A Career in Review
By: M Ainsley Blackman
Tags: Memoir, Marketing, Books, Book Review

A Career in Review

Image courtesy of Mat Zucker

Bronze Seeks Silver: Lessons from a creative career in marketing, Mat Zucker, 2020: Cidiot

A book that combines memoir with an analysis of one’s resume? Let me double-click into that. The latter phrase is something I learnt when reading Mat Zucker’s book, Bronze Seeks Silver: Lessons from a creative career in marketing. This was a humorous read, detailing Zucker’s three-decades-long career in advertising and marketing.

So, let me double-click into it, which is management consultant speak for ‘let me talk in more depth about it’. Zucker started out with a portfolio presentation to a recruiter at the famous Saatchi and Saatchi Advertising in New York. Unfortunately, there was a misled metaphor regarding cleanliness and Dial soap that scuppered the presentation. However, Zucker was able to use it as a learning experience and, undeterred, pursued his goal of working in advertising, always focussing on success. He has worked at OgilvyOne New York, Razorfish, R/GA, and Agency.com, all of which is detailed in his memoir.

The book is structured in short chapters with intriguing titles (You Only Have to Walk This Pet Once, and How to Buy Girl Scout Cookies as two examples). Each chapter is generously sprinkled with humorous anecdotes, but also contains a message or a lesson learnt from that part of Zucker’s career. There are stories featuring outrageous personalities, sometimes with the identities concealed (“Nem”, short for Nemesis) and outrageous marketing campaigns, all told with Zucker’s self-deprecating wit. After finishing the book, I was sad that the Alicia Keys video never came to life, but it did allow for a few funny anecdotes about brushes with celebrity, and as Zucker says, don’t dwell on regrets.

I liked the overarching theme of looking at your achievements and finding pride in them. This is a point in history when many people are undergoing career changes, some forced, some not, so it’s a good reminder to look objectively at your work history, strengths and achievements. At times, Bronze Seeks Silver feels like a blow-by-blow account of Zucker’s work history, but it is all tied together neatly in the epilogue. The final message about valuing your career, your efforts and your time as precious are pertinent for all of us trying to make our mark in the modern world of work.

What is marketing but a form of storytelling? Zucker writes an entertaining and thoughtful story of his career that will make you laugh out loud while musing about the directions your professional life can take. It’s also a reminder to be grateful to the colleagues and mentors that we come across in our working lives. And that is worth not bronze, nor silver, but gold.
Blurry Visions. I often wonder what it would have been…
By: Sagar Gurnani
Tags: Memoir, Mumbai, Memories, Trees, Birds

Blurry Visions

I often wonder what it would have been like to grow up in the Indian countryside.

Honking cars in morning traffic would be replaced by belled cattle jingling on their merry way. Lunch would constitute fruit, vegetable and grain picked from our fields rather than from supermarket aisles. We’d still play cricket in the evenings, because let’s face it, it’d be blasphemous not to. The difference would be that we wouldn’t play our games on concrete in the constant fear of smashing an old lady’s windowpane. That, and the fact that the ball hit by a star batsman would disappear into the depths of an adjoining lake and not a smelly sewer. The preferred way to wrap up the day and call it a night would be to lie down in complete silence and look up at the stars in a resolution 72 times better than 4K televisions playing loud reruns of asinine content.

Now, before our readers with degrees in critical thinking can interject and inform me about how a lack of healthcare facilities, technological infiltration and education will mar the otherwise rosy image I am attempting to paint, I implore them to suspend their disbelief.

During summer, would we visit a nearby city instead? Marvel at shiny cars, gape at tall buildings of glass and become apprehensive of the urgency of the crowds? Would we return home, glad to be back in a familiar place, while silently fearing the ruthlessness of the outside world?

Or would we spend countless hours trying to climb a tree because we thought we saw a nest tucked away in a nook, only to slip and scrape our knees in the process before trying again? Would we be busy splashing around in a babbling brook or cooling off in a serene pond?

I could go on and on, romanticizing about these tropes us city folk have seen on TV, in the movies and in the figments of our imagination while reading books. The truth is, I’ve already lost half of you in the abyss of un-relatability. The half that is terrorized by the idea that there may be no WiFi, air conditioners or escape from their own thoughts. The half that almost always vehemently suggests something is wrong with the world around them, when in reality something is wrong with their expectations. But that’s a rant for another time.
iOS 程式設計初心者
By: Jean You
Tags: iOS App Development

Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more

Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore
CoreML: Machine Learning in iOS
By: Fidan Musazade
Tags: iOS, Coreml, iOS App Development, Machine Learning

One of the most interesting findings for me recently was the presence of a library, which would make it possible to train and use machine learning models inside an iOS mobile application.

CoreML was released in iOS 11, around 3 years ago. It is very powerful, as you can build models using TensorFlow, scikit-learn, and other frequently used technologies, then simply convert it to CoreML format and integrate it into the mobile app.

CoreML supports a great number of models, including Support Vector Machines (SVMs), tree ensembles (e.g. Random Forests), Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs), and Deep Neural Networks (DNNs).

However, there are obviously certain advantages and disadvantages we can discuss. Basically, CoreML gives you a set of pre-trained models you can use or even develop your own.

Advantages:

The model operates on the edge. This means that they are calculated on the device and do not need to wait for request to get the result. Therefore, the latency is low and you get almost real-time results

It can be used offline. As there are no requests/responses from the external API, the model can operate without an internet connection. This gives the app advantage as it can be used without the Internet

The data is private, as it is not sent anywhere and stays on the device all the time. Privacy issues are therefore eliminated by using a CoreML model

The cost of operating this app is also lower, as there are no API calls and nothing has to be hosted anywhere on the cloud. With traditional models, the back-end has to be hosted somewhere in order to send and receive API calls

Disadvantages:
視覺化設計iOS app
By: Jean You
Tags: iOS App Development

Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more

Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore
類別練習 Class Inheritance
By: Boting Wang
Tags: Class, iOS, iOS App Development, Xcode, Swift

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Clean code Chapter 4: How to write good Comments
By: Aymen Afia
Tags: Comment, Clean Code, iOS, iOS App Development, Swift

the book discourages you to write comments, because if you wrote good, clean, and informative code, you shouldn’t need to have comments in the first place.

if we write good variable and function names, comments are not necessary.

Bad Comments

Any comment that makes you looking in another file for the meaning of that comment

Noise/Redundant comments: The comment is not more informative than the code

/** * The day of the month */ private dayOfMonth: Int

Don’t use comments when you can use function or variable names

commented out code

Too much information

Good comments

Legal comments. Like copy right information.

Informative comments. a date time format kk:mm:ss EEE, MMM dd, yyyy for example.

Explanation of intent, we should explain our intent in the comments for example what’s the number 25000.

Clarification. The book of course is in java and the example they used is

assertTrue(a.compareTo(b) == -1); // a < b assertTrue(aa.compareTo(ab) == -1); // aa < ab

Warning of consequences. For example, if a function is not thread safe

The book also mentioned that TODO comments are good comments I am not totally agree with this.

Because TODO comments discourage us and opt for filing technical debt(explained in the chapter 1).
Generics in Swift
By: Swapnanil Dhol
Tags: Swift Programming, Generics, Generic Programming, iOS App Development, Swift

This article was originally published on my website

According to the Swift Org Docs:

Generic code enables you to write flexible, reusable functions and types that can work with any type, subject to requirements that you define. You can write code that avoids duplication and expresses its intent in a clear, abstracted manner.

Introduction

In this article, we’ll learn about generics by writing and optimizing a maximumOfTwo function. This function will be used to first get the maximum between two integers but later in this article, you’ll learn how to convert this function into a generic so that this function will work for any two similar types. Let’s get started

Getting started

Open up a Swift playground and write this function definition

func maximumOfTwo(a: Int, b: Int) -> Int {

return a > b ? a:b

}

This is a rather simple function that takes in two parameters, a and b both of which are of type Int (Integer) and it returns an Int. Inside this function, we will return the greater value between the two (a, b) by using the ternary operator.

The issue

As we can see, this function only works when the passed values are of type int. This means that you cannot compare any other data types other than Int. For example, you may want to compare two Double or Float values but this function just doesn’t work for those data types in its current form.

The solution

The solution is to convert the maximumOfTwo function into a generic. How do we do that? Using 3 simple steps

Introduce a new template type that will conform to Comparable . This is a custom type that we will use to refer to our parameters in the next step.

. This is a custom type that we will use to refer to our parameters in the next step. A bit about Comparable : The Comparable protocol is used for types that have an inherent order, such as numbers and strings. Many types in the standard library already conform to the Comparable protocol. Add Comparable conformance to your own custom types when you want to be able to compare instances using relational operators or use standard library methods that are designed for Comparable types.

The Comparable protocol allows use to use the <, >, <=, and >= so that Swift knows how to compare two or more variables.

func maximumOfTwo<T:Comparable>(a: Int, b: Int) -> Int {

return a > b ? a:b

}

Next, we convert the parameter types to this new type T .

func maximumOfTwo<T:Comparable>(a: T, b: T) -> Int {

return a > b ? a:b

}

Finally, we convert the return type of the function to T .

func maximumOfTwo<T:Comparable>(a: T, b: T) -> T {

return a > b ? a:b

}

Finishing up

Attempt to call the function now with any type but make sure that the two parameters are of the same type (Since we need to conform to Comparable so that Swift can compare the two values)

Conclusion

In this tutorial we learnt how to get started with generics in Swift by converting a simple function into a generic function to avoid code redundancy and to improve code readability.
#14 模仿 Instagram App (IG), Instagram API , JSON 資料解析篇 #1
By: Marso Yu
Tags: Ig, API, Json, iOS App Development, Swift

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Getting issues while creating IOS or Android Mobile App from Angular Web App Using Cordova?
By: Nitesh Agrawal
Tags: Android, Cordova, Angular, iOS App Development, Mobile App Development

Getting issues while creating IOS or Android Mobile App from Angular Web App Using Cordova? Nitesh Agrawal ·Dec 25, 2020

It is really super easy to create mobile apps if you know how to build Angular web app. Using Cordova, web app can be easily converted into mobile app. Here is the official link of cordova.

But I faced the issue while creating IOS Mobile App from Angular Web App Using Cordova. Actually these platforms use different paths or locations format. So I had to made two changes in Angular code:

1. Added hash routing in Angular in root Route module as RouterModule.forRoot(routes, {useHash:true})

2. In index file I need to replace from “<base href=”/” />” to

<script>document.write(‘<base href=”’ + document.location + ‘“ />’);</script>

this modified Angular code supports all platforms i.e. Web, IOS and Android.
What is the difference between a native app and a hybrid app?
Tags: Web Development, iOS App Development, Mobile App Development, Android App Development

Hybrid apps are based on web technologies, so the same app can run in a browser like any other website or it can run as progressive web app (PWA).

The hybrid app can deliver the same consistent user experience across all platforms, regardless of user movement between different devices or browsers. Native plugins are required to access native platform functions such as camera, microphone, etc. (native plugins are like a container on top of native libraries or components)

Graphics apps, HD games, and heavy animation apps can work well as native apps because native code is always faster than HTML and JavaScript. WebGL standards help the browser and hybrid application for gaming applications achieve performance, but the native always has the edge.

Native SDKs allow you to access device functionality without having to deal with the complexity of native plugins, and new device functionality will be available immediately with SDKs.
Generics in Swift
Tags: Swift Programming, Generics Swift, Generics, iOS App Development, Swift

How would I describe the Generic in one sentence? well, generic is like a paint 🎨. it can be mixed with all the colors.

Generics

Generic code enables you to write flexible, reusable functions and types that can work with any type, subject to requirements that you define. Much of the swift standard library is built with generic code. Even though it sounds so hard to understand, (or is it just me here? 😅) you’ve been using it through working on iOS development because Swift’s Array and Dictionary types are both generic collections.

For example if you have some protocol SomeProtocol and you want to create a function that takes two parameters and it returns it. The function below only can work with the SomeProtocol type. What if you have a different type other than SomeProtocol? then you probably have to make another function which accepts different types as a parameter.

func hello(first: SomeProtocol, second: SomeProtocol) -> SomeProtocol {

//more codes..

}

But what if the function accepts any types without restrictions? then you don’t have to spend time to make another function work for that type. right? that’s what generic exist for us.

👉🏻 Generics allow you to create a single method that is customized for the type that invokes it.

function hello<T: SomeProtocol>(first: T, second: T) -> T {

//more codes..

}

The code above, the placeholder type T is an example of a type parameter. Type parameters specify and name a placeholder type, and are written immediately after the function’s name between a pair of matching angle brackets (<T>)

👉🏻 T is substituted for whatever type you use.

It’s not only limited to functions, but you can also implement generic in many other ways! as a type such as class, struct and enum as well.
Observer Pattern
By: Aymen Afia
Tags: iOS, iOS App Development, Design Patterns, Combine, Swift

The observer pattern lets one object observe changes on another object. Apple added language-level support for this pattern in Swift 5.1 with the addition of Publisher in the Combine framework.

This is a behavior pattern, it focused to observe changes on other object.

This pattern involves three types:

The subscriber is the “observer” object and receives updates. The publisher is the “observable” object and sends updates. The value is the underlying object that’s changed.

When should you use it?

Use the observer pattern whenever you want to receive changes made on another object.

This pattern allows the model to communicate changes back to the view controller without needing to know anything about the view controller’s type. Thereby, different view controllers can use and observe changes on the same model type.

Combine makes this pattern to be easier to implement.

First of all we need to import our Combine framework, otherwise we are not going to be able to use @Published.

Next we are basically creating a Person class that receives a nickname.

We must not forget to declare our nickname property as @Published

Warning ⚠️ To use @Published our variable cannot be a constant, also it can just be used with classes not with structs.

@Published has created 2 of the objects that conform this pattern for us, the Publisher and the Stored Value, so we just need to take care about the Subscriber

We have created a new instance of our class that contains our Observable property

we declare our publisher property with our nickname property from our Person class

So, what publisher property exactly is 🤷‍♂️? — We know that nickname was declared as a String, so if you think that publisher is a String, well you are almost correct, using $ before our property, turns our value type to Published<String>.Publisher

so lets create our subscriber.

let's dive in sink method, that method attaches a subscriber with closure-based behavior, so each time our publisher changes, that in this case is our $nickname property of Person, the closure in our subscriber will print our new change.

Finished !!!! 😁, of course this is just a useful approach to use Combine the huge framework.
Animation Hitches in iOS Development
By: Sai Durga Mahesh
Tags: Hitch, iOS App Development, Animations In Apps, Ios Development, Swift

Hitch is a kind of performance issue where user feels rough while interacting with application. It may occur while scrolling, animation or transition between screens.

iPhone or iPad is having 60Hz refresh rate. Frame duration is 16.67 ms(1/60). When user starts interacting with the app, the new corresponding frames need to be rendered. This cycle of rendering new frames on to screen is “Render Loop”.

This Render Loop comprises of 5 stages as shown in above image.

Events are touches, keyboard presses or timers. Responding to these changes App View Hierarchy will be altered.

Changes corresponding to event from each view will be collected in next commit phase. These changes such as drawing image views or adding labels are applied to views from top to bottom and left to right. These collected changes were passed to Render Server.

In Render Prepare Phase the collected changes are pipelined in the order of top to bottom, left to right and back to front(layers).

Render Server executes this changes in next phase and displays them within a deadline. If any changes happened to miss the deadline causes the Hitches.

Hitches can occur in two stages of Render Loop

Commit Hitch

When commit phase takes extra time to prepare changes then Hitch occurred is Commit Hitch. Developer Tool Instruments from Xcode12 includes Animation Hitches measure. This also includes Time Profiler to detect and locate commit hitches.

Render Hitch

When execution of pipeline takes extra time then Hitch occurred is Render Hitch. Same Instruments can be used to detect the Render Hitches labeled as “Expensive Gpu” hitch type. To fix them Xcode View Debugger is to be used. Xcode introduces performance optimizations to suggest fixes for render hitches. Those can be viewed by enabling Show Performance Optimizations from Editor menu.

To Learn More about each hitch and fixes to solve them see Apple Developer Talks.

Thanks For Reading !!!
Unit X：「APP 上架」— 開發者路上的最後一哩路
By: Cooper Hsieh
Tags: App Store, iOS App Development, Xcode, Swift

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Simple iOS carousel image slideshow — Swift 5
Tags: iOS App Development, Development, Swift, Xcode

Hi guys,

I had a task to build simple carousel, full screen, image slideshow, that acts on swipe and displays the current photo “1 of 5”.

I have tried CollectionView for the image carousel slideshow, but it didn’t work out for me. I didn’t like the hackish ways I had to do to make it show images in one row and I also didn’t like the fact that it cannot return the active image (there is some workaround here as well, but they don’t seem reliable). So, naturally, I ended up building a custom slideshow carousel for my purpose. I will share the code here, so hopefully, it can help(or at least guide someone) with a similar problem.

NOTE: My carousel is full width, singleImagePerScreen carousel, with a swipe recognizer to swipe through images and delegate function that is triggered when an image is active(I use it to display active image — “1 of 5”).

TESTED ON: SWIFT 5, XCode 12.2, iOS 14.2
What is a bridging header in Swift?
By: Rlogical Techsoft.Pvt.Ltd
Tags: Swift Programming, iOS Apps, iOS, iOS App Development, Ios Development

You can use Objective-C and Swift files together in a single project, no matter which language the project used originally. This makes creating mixed-language app and framework targets as straightforward as creating an app or framework target written in a single language.

How to create a bridging header?

Let’s see here step-by-step guidelines:

File -> New -> File -> Header File

2. Name your Header file like this yourAppName-Bridging-Header

3. Now click on your Project -> Build Settings

4. Change from Basic to All

5. Search Bridging

6. You will get the search result as shown in the below image

7. In that double click the right of Objective-C Bridging Header and enter as follows

eg, yourAppName/yourAppName-Bridging-Header.h

Also you can see below the screen shot for the reference.