9 9 Obvious Things You Probably Don’t Know About WordPress SEO By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Fri, 29 Sep 2017 04:48:42 +0000 f there is one thing you should include in your WordPress website’s strategy, it’s search engine optimization. Because when you do it right, you’ll be rewarded. Hugely rewarded. With tons of high quality visitors. Full Article SEO 9 about things
9 How to Change Your iPhone's DNS Servers By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Mon, 08 Apr 2013 13:10:34 +0000 Just like in Mac OS X, you can change the DNS servers on your iPhone. This can significantly speed up Safari and other iPhone apps that use the Internet. For a general introduction to DNS, and to learn why you would want to change the DNS servers on your iPhone, see How to Change Your Mac's DNS Servers. Before we start, you should know a couple things about how iOS handles DNS. First, these instructions only work for Wi-Fi connections - iOS does not allow you to change the DNS servers when connected to cellular networks. Also, the changes are network specific, so you'll need to change the DNS servers every time you connect to a new wireless network. The good news is that iOS remembers the settings, so you won't have to do anything the second time you connect to a network. Here's how to change your iPhone's DNS servers: From the iPhone's home screen, tap Settings. Tap Wi-Fi. The screen shown below appears. The available wireless networks in range of your iPhone appear, as shown below. Find your wireless network in the list, and then click the arrow. The screen shown below appears. Tap the DNS field. Delete the current DNS servers, and enter the new DNS servers. (If you enter more than one DNS server, be sure sure to separate the servers with commas.) To use OpenDNS, enter 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220 To use Google DNS, enter 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 Test your new DNS servers to make sure they're working. If you're using OpenDNS, visit the OpenDNS test page. If you're using Google Public DNS, follow these testing instructions. That's it! You've updated your iPhone's DNS servers! Related Articles How to Find the Best DNS Servers How to Change Your Mac's DNS Servers How to Change Your iPad's DNS Servers Change an AirPort Extreme's DNS Servers Meet Your Macinstructor Matt Cone, the author of Master Your Mac, has been a Mac user for over 20 years. A former ghost writer for some of Apple's most notable instructors, Cone founded Macinstruct in 1999, a site with OS X tutorials that boasts hundreds of thousands of unique visitors per month. You can email him at: matt@macinstruct.com. Full Article
9 Time Machine: Smallpox epidemic hit Meskwaki hard in 1901 By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Wed, 06 May 2020 18:51:24 PDT At the turn of the 20th century, a vaccine had been developed for smallpox, a virus that killed millions in the 1800s. Those who survived the disease were often left badly scarred or blind. The vaccine’s protection, though, lasted only five years and had to be renewed. And people forgot to do that, leading to occasional epidemics, including a serious outbreak on the Meskwaki Settlement near Tama.In February 1901, three dozen Iowa communities reported smallpox outbreaks. When Des Moines reported 200 smallpox cases in late February, the mayor closed the schools and prohibited public gatherings. Still, no one died. That would not be the case at the Meskwaki Settlement.Meskwaki OutbreakOn Oct. 22, 1901, an area resident told Dr. Benjamin Thompson of Tama, “I believe the Indians have the smallpox.” Thompson went to the nearby Meskwaki Settlement, home to 309 people, to investigate. He learned that an Indian from the Winnebago tribe had visited the settlement Sept. 23. He had become ill, but no doctor was called and he continued meeting with tribe members. Two weeks later, the Meskwaki were becoming ill. Thompson went back to the settlement with Dr. George Carpenter of Toledo. The first wickiup they visited had four active smallpox cases and three people recovering from the virus. Two Meskwaki who’d lived there had died.The doctors found another five cases and were told of two other deaths. The doctors that night reported to a joint meeting of the boards of health in Tama, Toledo and Montour.William Malin, the Interior Department’s Indian agent for the settlement, insisted there was no problem. But after another medical visit to the settlement, the three cities quarantined themselves.By Nov. 2, 70 Meskwaki had smallpox, and nine members of the tribe had died. Two weeks later, the totals had risen to 90 Meskwaki with smallpox and 35 deaths. To complicate matters, the Meskwaki declined offers to go to the hospital, they refused smallpox vaccinations and they refused to stay on the settlement. If they became sick, they would hide from the doctors.The Tama Herald reported, “It looks as though the disease must run its course through the tribe, carrying off the aged and the infirm and weakening the constitution of those who may survive.”Quarantine EnforcedThe Iowa governor appealed to Interior Secretary Ethan Hitchcock for authority to enforce the quarantine among the Meskwaki. Hitchcock complied, giving the state the authority to “take any necessary action.” National Guard hospital tents and cots were shipped to the settlement. The Meskwaki were vaccinated, and they acquiesced to the quarantine.The local towns began raising money for medicines and provisions not covered by the federal government.Meanwhile, Congress appropriated $50,000 — more than $1 million in today’s dollars — to eradicate smallpox on the settlement. The bill gave the Interior Department the authority to quarantine the village and, if necessary, burn Meskwaki wickiups and clothing to halt the contagion.The state of Iowa chipped in another $7,000 to burn the clothing, blankets, wickiups and other property belonging to the Tama tribe and to provide replacements for the Meskwaki. The money paid for disinfectants — formaldehyde gas and corrosive sublimate fluid — to bathe tribal members and their dogs. Members of the tribe were forced to move to a camping ground while their village was decontaminated.Malin, the Indian agent, reported to the Interior Department it took seven days to clean and renovate “the Indian camp.”“During this process, a large number of the wickiups, where the disease had been prevalent, also large quantities of clothing, bedding and other infected property, were committed to the flames and new goods of similar character supplied,” he reported. “Twenty-four new board houses, built of good lumber, and some 2,700 square yards of very heavy duck for tents, to those who preferred tents to houses, were given in lien of the wickiups destroyed. ... The Indians emerged from the trying ordeal through which they had passed and came out into the world again, after having been confined to the limited area of their camping grounds ... with a higher and better conception of the white man’s civilization.”That assessment aside, the Meskwaki Settlement survived and grew. It now covers 8,000 acres and is home to 800 of the tribe’s 1,300 members.It wasn’t until 1980 that smallpox was declared eradicated worldwide. l Comments: d.fannonlangton@gmail.com Full Article Time Machine
9 Trucker from Iowa charged in 1990s slayings of 3 women By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Wed, 06 May 2020 21:01:58 PDT IOWA CITY — Investigators on Wednesday arrested a long-haul trucker from Iowa who they say is linked by DNA evidence to the killings of three women whose bodies were dumped in Wyoming and Tennessee in the early 1990s.Police arrested Clark Perry Baldwin, 58, at his home in Waterloo, Iowa, on murder charges filed in Wyoming and Tennessee in the deaths of the women, including two who were pregnant. Investigators said they were looking into whether Baldwin could be responsible for other unsolved slayings.Baldwin was arrested after investigators used semen and other material recovered from the victims to develop DNA profiles of their perpetrators, according to court documents in Wyoming. Last year, they learned that the same profile matched all three cases.Investigators zeroed in on Baldwin after finding DNA in commercial genealogy databases of someone related to the suspect’s profile, court documents say. Last month in Waterloo, the FBI secretly collected DNA from Baldwin’s trash and a shopping cart he used at Walmart and it matched the profile.In Wyoming, Baldwin is charged in the deaths of two unidentified women whose bodies were found in 1992 roughly 400 miles apart.A female trucker discovered the nude body of the first victim in March 1992 near the Bitter Creek Truck turnout on Interstate 80 in southwestern Wyoming. An autopsy determined the woman suffered head trauma consistent with strangulation and her body had likely been in the snow for weeks.A month later, Wyoming Department of Transportation workers found the partially mummified body of a pregnant woman in a ditch off of Interstate 90, near Sheridan in northern Wyoming.An autopsy didn’t determine the cause of death but found the victim had an injury potentially consistent with suffering a blow to the head. Investigators never identified the women and referred to them as “Bitter Creek Betty” and “I-90 Jane Doe.” Both were believed to be in their late teens or early 20s, Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation Cmdr. Matt Waldock said.In Tennessee, Baldwin is charged with two counts of murder in the 1991 killing of a 32-year-old pregnant woman from Virginia, Pamela McCall, and her fetus. McCall was found in woods off Interstate 65 in Spring Hill, Tenn., in March 1991. An autopsy determined McCall had neck injuries and died of strangulation. Sperm was recovered from pantyhose worn by McCall, who was last seen at a Tennessee truck stop days earlier.Court documents say that Baldwin allegedly raped a female hitchhiker in Wheeler County, Texas, at gunpoint in his truck in 1991. The 21-year-old woman told police that Baldwin struck her on the head, bound her hands and mouth and tried to choke her to death. He allegedly admitted to the assault but was released pending grand jury proceedings. Court documents do not indicate whether he was charged or prosecuted.Baldwin, who has previously lived in Nashua, Iowa, and Springfield, Mo., was a cross-country truck driver for Marten Transport at the time.Baldwin’s name also surfaced during a 1992 homicide investigation in Iowa. His ex-wife told police then that Baldwin once bragged about “killing a girl out west by strangulation and throwing her out of his truck,” court documents say.Waldock said investigators were “hopeful” to solve other cases with Baldwin’s arrest.One case of interest is the 1992 death of Tammy Jo Zywicki, 21, an Iowa college student who was last seen after her car broke down on an Illinois highway. A white man who was driving a semi-trailer was seen near her vehicle. Zywicki’s body was found in rural Missouri, stabbed to death.Another is the 1992 killing of Rhonda Knutson, 22, a truck stop convenience store clerk in northern Iowa who was bludgeoned to death during an overnight shift. Investigators have released sketches of two men who were in the store, including one trucker. Baldwin lived in nearby Nashua then.In 1997, Secret Service agents raided Baldwin’s apartment in Springfield, Mo., after learning he was making counterfeit U.S. currency on a personal computer. He and two female associates were indicted on counterfeiting charges. Baldwin was sentenced to 18 months in prison and released in 1999.In 2008, a fire destroyed a Nashua building where Baldwin operated a candle business and damaged two adjacent buildings, including one that housed the town’s newspaper. The cause of the fire was never determined.Baldwin is being held at the Black Hawk County jail pending extradition to Tennessee.The charges stunned Jazz Baldwin, 32, of New Hampton, Iowa, who said she learned two years ago that Baldwin was her father after he purchased a DNA test kit. The two had been in contact over Facebook since then, she said.“I heard rumors about his ‘possible crimes’ but always thought they were bogus,” she wrote in a Facebook message. “Murder was NOT on the list of things we thought he had done and gotten away with.” Full Article Public Safety
9 Marion coronavirus recovery task force wants residents to come out of this healthy and to ‘a vibrant economy’ By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Wed, 06 May 2020 19:57:10 PDT MARION — Marion’s 14-member COVID-19 Economic Recovery Task Force is beginning to work on recommendations of how to get people back to work, while keeping everyone safe.“It’s hard to know right now at the beginning the various outcomes that are going to come out of this,” Marion Mayor Nick AbouAssaly told task force members in a meeting held this week via Zoom. “Community sectors will work independently and report to the steering committee with ideas, strategies or policy recommendations,” he said.In turn, the task force will consider recommendations to the Marion City Council, and AbouAssaly said he will update the council on the task force meetings. “Unfortunately, we have to accept that the virus is here to stay,” AbouAssaly said. “It’s part of our life for the time being. We have to be able to plan for getting back to doing things and leading our lives in a way that allows us to exist with the virus in our community.” Elizabeth Cwik, a Marion resident who works for the Greater Cedar Rapids Community Foundation, said there’s a “strong interest” among task force members to provide accurate information to the public about the virus. “I see clear, consistent messaging from a variety of sectors from the schools, government, businesses and nonprofits. Then that message gets through,” Cwik said. “If that message is, ‘We care, and we want you to come out whole, and we want there to be a vibrant economy to be continued with every citizen’s effort,’ I think that’s a valuable contribution to the recovery.” In joining the task force, Dr. Jaclyn Price said she hopes to dispel inaccurate information about the coronavirus and help businesses find ways to safely bring their employees back to work. “I anticipate businesses will be operating at reduced capacities,” she said. “Maybe doing appointments rather than walk-in business, and cleaning more routinely.”If businesses require employees and customers to wear masks, it will protect others from asymptomatic spread of the virus, she said. “We will still see virus activity until we get a vaccine or herd immunity,” Price said. “This is going to be a problem for months to come. We’re trying to find ways to open slowly, but also understanding if we reopen everything and have to close it again, that could be more detrimental to people’s psychology or finances of businesses.”The Rev. Mike Morgan of Marion United Methodist Church said “greater conversation” with government, business, education and health care leaders will help. “Marion has become a town that is proactive,” Morgan said. “We really seek to have good things happen to our citizenry rather than let things happen and we react to them. ... As a person in the faith community, it’s important for us to be tending to people’s emotional, psychological, spiritual and, to some degree, physical needs.” Comments: (319) 368-8664; grace.king@thegazette.comMARION TASK FORCEThose serving on the Marion COVID-19 Economic Recovery Task Force, all Marion residents and volunteers, are:• Nick AbouAssaly, Marion mayor• Jill Ackerman, president, Marion Chamber of Commerce• Shannon Bisgard, Linn-Mar schools superintendent • Amber Bisinger, communications officer for the city• Elizabeth Cwik, Greater Cedar Rapids Community Foundation• Lee Eilers, executive committee member, Marion Economic Development Corp.• Nick Glew, president, Marion Economic Development Corp.• Amber Hoff, marriage and family therapist• Steve Jensen, Marion City Council member• Mike Morgan, pastor, Marion United Methodist Church• Brent Oleson, Linn County supervisorLon Pluckhahn, Marion city manager• Jaclyn Price, M.D., Mercy Clinic-Marion• Brooke Prouty, program director, Marion Chamber of Commerce Full Article Government
9 Coronavirus closes the Iowa Writers’ House — for now By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Thu, 07 May 2020 15:34:18 PDT IOWA CITY — Once upon a time, there was a house in a city that loved literature. It was a quaint, two-story home in the heart of the historic district with brick stairs, pale yellow siding, a hipped red roof and a rich history: Its original owner was Emma J. Harvat, who in 1922 became the nation’s first female mayor for a city of more than 10,000.Nearly a century later, in 2014, Andrea Wilson was working in advertising in Florida and pined for a more “altruistic purpose” for her life. So she planned a return to Iowa, where she grew up in Columbus Junction. But this time Wilson would live in Iowa City, known for — among other things — pioneering academic creative writing pursuits at the University of Iowa’s famed Writers’ Workshop.Wilson wanted to write and found the idea of the historic Harvat house so charming she bought it “sight unseen” from down in Miami, aiming to run it as a bed-and-breakfast. But when she arrived, Wilson discovered a need in her new community she aimed to fill. It had a surprising dearth of literary resources for those outside the university. “There wasn’t any place for the public to take a class or meet other writers or really be part of a writing community where people could just express their humanity through words,” she said. “It became my passion project — to try to create that for this community. I thought if anywhere should have a place like that, it would be America’s only UNESCO City of Literature at the time.”So in March 2015, Wilson debuted Iowa City’s first community-based literary center for writers — or those aspiring. She had hoped to open a communal writing space closer to downtown but didn’t have the funding. So she gave her home a third identity: the Iowa Writers’ House. She continued to live there and maintain her bed-and-breakfast business, which funded the writing endeavor and kept its cozy corridors bustling with interesting characters.Famed visiting writers included Leslie Jamison, American novelist and essayist with works on the New York Times bestseller list; Hope Edelman, whose six non-fiction books have published in 17 countries and translated in 11 languages; Alison Bechdel, an American cartoonist and MacArthur fellow; and Piedad Bonnett Velez, Colombian poet, playwright and novelist of international acclaim.And over the years, the Iowa Writers’ House connected, served and motivated thousands with its workshops, seminars, readings and summer camps. It offered editing services, founded a Bicultural Iowa Writers’ Fellowship, and — among other things — inspired a growing network of friends and creatives to value their own stories and the stories of others. “I said yes to everything anyone ever asked of me,” Wilson said. “We gave tours. I received visiting scholars. We hosted dinners for visiting poets and writers for the university. And a lot of that was all volunteer. We never had a steady funding stream like most literary centers do.”So when the coronavirus in March reached Iowa City, later shuttering storefronts, canceling events, curtailing travel plans and crippling the economy, the Iowa Writers’ House momentum stopped, too. “Once COVID hit, because all of our programming is live and people come to the house, we had to cancel it,” Wilson said. She dropped most of the organization’s spring season. She lost all her projected bed-and-breakfast business. And in a message posted to the Iowa Writers’ House website last month, Wilson announced her hard but unavoidable news. “As the situation pushes on, and with no programming in the foreseeable future, we must make drastic changes,” she wrote. “Organizations must weather the storm or adapt, and in the case of this little organization with a big heart, evolution is the only option.”And so after five years of intimate conversations, communal meals, singing, laughing, crying and lots and lots of writing and reading — all done in the shadow of Harvat — the organization is leaving the historic space and “taking a break to assess our mission and consider our best options for the future.”Wilson said she plans to focus on her own writing. And the Bicultural Iowa Writers’ Fellowship program will continue — allowing for the release later this year of a third volume of “We the Interwoven: An Anthology of Bicultural Iowa,” including six new authors with multilingual stories of living in Iowa.News of the goodbye — at least for now — has been met with an outpouring of support and testimonials of the impact the Iowa Writers’ House has had,“I grew up without a writing community, and it was a very lonely experience,” Erin Casey wrote to Wilson after learning of its pause. Casey — on the Iowa Writers’ House team and director of The Writers’ Rooms, an offshoot of the house — said her involvement in the project shaped not only her career but her personal growth.“You, and the Iowa Writers’ House, helped me become a stronger person who felt deserving of companionship, respect, and love,” she wrote. “Watching the house grow, the workshops fill, and the stories come in about how much the IWH touched people’s lives added to the joy. I finally found a place to call home.”Casey said that while the future is unknown, its legacy is not. “The IWH will live on in the hearts of the people you touched,” she wrote. “Writers have found friends, support, guidance …”Although the project isn’t getting a fairy-tale ending, Wilson said the story isn’t over. “The organization is leaving the space. I’m leaving the space. We’re going on an organizational break so we can determine what a sustainable future might be,” she said. “But it’s really the end of a chapter. And we don’t know what the next chapter will be.”Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com Full Article Education
9 Ahead of VP Pence’s Iowa visit, Joe Biden’s campaign calls out ‘consequential failure’ of Trump coronavirus response By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Thu, 07 May 2020 17:09:44 PDT Vice President Mike Pence owes Iowans more than a photo-op when he visits Des Moines today, according to Joe Biden’s campaign.“Iowans are seeing up close the most consequential failure of government in modern American history,” said Kate Bedingfeld, spokeswoman for the former vice president and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. “With nearly 300,000 Iowans filing for unemployment, rural hospitals on life support, Latino communities disproportionately suffering and workers on the job without sufficient protection, Mike Pence owes Iowans more than a photo-op — he owes them answers,” she said.Pence, head of the White House coronavirus task force, is scheduled to meet with Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds and U.S. Sens. Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst, all Republicans, as well as with faith, farm and food production leaders. Pence will talk to faith leaders about how they are using federal and state guidelines to open their houses of worship in a safe and responsible manner. Later, he will go to Hy-Vee’s headquarters in West Des Moines for a roundtable discussion with agriculture and food supply leaders to discuss steps being taken to ensure the food supply remains secure.Pence has called Iowa a “success story” in its response to the COVID-19, but Bedingfeld said the Trump administration failed to protect Iowa families from the virus that has claimed the lives of 231 Iowans.“From devastating losses across the state, at meatpacking plants to rural communities, one thing is clear — it’s Iowans and the American people who are paying the price for the Trump administration’s denials and delays in response to this pandemic,” she said. “Instead of listening to our own intelligence agencies and public health experts, Donald Trump was fed dangerous propaganda from the Chinese Communist Party — and he bought it,” she said. “Iowans deserve better — they deserve Joe Biden.”For his part, Grassley said he welcomes the discussion with Pence.“There’s much work to be done, and the pandemic is disrupting all of our communities,” Grassley said. “It’s important to hear directly from those who help feed the nation and the world.”Ernst also is looking forward to the discussion of how Iowa is working to protect the health and safety of Iowa’s families and communities while reopening the state’s economy.“We continue to take an all-hands-on-deck approach to tackling this pandemic,” she said. “Together, we will get through this.” Comments: (319) 398-8375; james.lynch@thegazette.com Full Article Government
9 ‘Death stalked swiftly’ in 1918. What will we remember now? By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Thu, 07 May 2020 21:01:29 PDT In August 1919, the Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette opined in favor of the passage of a $5 million congressional appropriation to “investigate influenza, its cause, prevention and cure.”“We all remember without effort the darkness and terror which engulfed the land last fall and winter as death stalked swiftly from seaboard to seaboard, into crowded city and unto lonely plain, sparing not the cottage of the poor nor the mansion of the rich,” the editorial said. “In four short months, influenza claimed a half million lives and pressed millions of others onto beds of sickness, suffering and helplessness. The nation’s mortality rate leapt high and with astounding speed. The nation was unprepared to cope with a disease calamity such as it has never known.”The Gazette lamented that billions of dollars in loss were wrought by the pandemic of so-called Spanish influenza, compared with only $5 million being spent to investigate the virus. “More has been spent in studying diseases of hogs,” the editorial argued.Just less than a year earlier, The Evening Gazette did not see “darkness and terror” coming. A front page, above-the-fold story Sept. 25, 1918, asked: “Spanish Influenza just the old-fashioned grippe?” “Grippe” is an old-time term for the flu, by the way.“As a matter of fact, in the opinion of City Physician Beardsley, and a good many other Cedar Rapids men in the same profession, Spanish influenza is just another name for the regular old fashioned influenza and is no different from the influenza we have always had. A bad cold is a bad cold, and a worse cold is grippe, which covers a multitude of things ...,” The Gazette reported, optimistically. An earlier strain of influenza in the spring of 1918 had been less virulent and deadly. But the second wave was no ordinary grippe.By mid-October, according to reports in The Evening Gazette, influenza caseloads exploded. On Oct. 12, 1918, the local health board shut down pool rooms, billiard halls and bowling alleys. It pleaded with store owners to avoid allowing crowds to linger. On Oct. 16, stores were ordered to discontinue any special sales that might draw more shoppers. Restrictions tightened as the pandemic worsened. Death notices were stacking up on Gazette pages, in rows reminiscent of small tombstones. Many victims were cut down in the prime of life by a virus that struck young, healthy people hardest. Mothers and fathers died, leaving young children. Soldiers serving in World War I died far away from home. Visitors to town never returned home. Young brothers died and were mourned at a double funeral. A sister who came to care for a sick brother died, and so did her brother.Ray Franklin Minburn, 24, died of influenza, leaving behind six sisters and two brothers. “Mr. Minburn was a faithful son, a devoted companion, a good neighbor,” concluded his death announcement on Oct. 21, 1918. On the same page that day came news, tucked among the tombstones, reporting that Iowa Gov. William Harding had recovered from influenza, in the midst of his reelection campaign, and was back in the office. You might remember Harding as the governor who banned German and other languages during World War I and who was nearly impeached for bribery in 1919. Not far from Harding’s update came news from the prison in Anamosa that “whisky and quinine” were being deployed to attack the grippe. The pages of The Evening Gazette also were dotted with advertisements for supposed cures and treatments. “Danger of infection from influenza or any contagious disease can be eliminated by using preventive measures,” prescribed by Ruby S. Thompson, chiropractor and naturopathic physician. Those included “Sulphur-vapor baths, Carlsbad mineral bath.”You could build up your blood using “Gude’s Pepto-Mangan,” the “Red Blood Builder.” Keep your strength up with Horlick’s Malted Milk. One ad looked exactly like a news story, carrying the bold headline “Druggists still asked to conserve stocks of VapoRub needed in ‘flu’ districts.” In a tiny notation at the end of the “story” were the words “The Vicks Chemical Co.” That August 1919 Gazette editorial I mentioned makes me wonder what we’ll be writing in a year or so after our current pandemic. Death stalking us swiftly from seaboard to seaboard in an unprepared nation, preceded by the casual insistence it’s no worse than the seasonal flu, sounds eerily familiar in 2020. More attention is being paid to hogs than the health of humans working in meatpacking plants.Will we be writing in 2021 how reopening states and counties too soon led to our own second wave? Here in Iowa, reopening began before we had a fully working predictive model to chart the pandemic’s course and before new testing efforts had a chance to ramp up. Will decisions made without crucial information look smart in 2021? Or will we wish we’d waited just a couple more weeks?What of the protesters demanding liberation? What about the president, running for reelection in a nation harmed by his crisis mismanagement? What will a new normal look like? Will there be newspapers around to editorialize in the aftermath? After all, most of the pitches for fake cures are online now, some even extolled at White House briefings.And will we be better prepared next time? I bet editorial writers in 1919 figured we’d have this pandemic response thing down to a science by now.Little did they know that in 2020 we’d have so little respect for science. And after a century-plus, the darkness and terror apparently slipped our minds. (319) 398-8262; todd.dorman@thegazette.com Full Article Staff Columnist
9 For Mercy employee on COVID-19 floor, isolating from family is best Mother’s Day gift she can give By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Fri, 08 May 2020 13:03:41 PDT This Mother’s Day, April Kelley just wants to give her daughter Jessica Kelley a hug. But she can’t. Jessica, 21, works on the COVID-19 floor at Mercy Medical Center in Cedar Rapids. To protect her family and still do her job, Jessica is living full time at the hospital, which has made housing available to staff who need to isolate from their families during the pandemic. “Just based on the floor I’m on, I don’t want to put my family at risk. It’s not worth it,” she said. Her mother has an autoimmune disorder, adding another layer to Jessica’s worries. Though she does not interact with patients with the coronavirus directly, she still knows exposure is a risk. “It wasn’t too hard of a decision, but it’s hard on me sometimes,” she said. “I really miss her.” Jessica is a telemetry monitor technician. For her eight- to 12-hour shifts, her job is to watch heart monitors of patients in the hospital’s intensive care unit. If any patient starts to have cardiac distress or irregular heart rhythms, she and her fellow technicians are the first ones to notice and can notify the doctors and nurses in the main ward. “It was her choice to either work at the hospital or come home, which was really difficult for her,” April Kelley said. “She’s only 21, so I was pretty proud of her for choosing to help. I don’t think people realize the sacrifice people are making to be there, working in the hospitals right now.” Jessica is finishing her junior year as a nursing student at Mount Mercy University in Cedar Rapids. When classes moved online and the dorms closed, she had to figure out what to do. While many of her classmates moved back home with their families, doing so would have meant quitting her job. Right now, she said, that job feels more important than ever. In addition to being a full-time student, she works 32 to 36 hours a week at the hospital. She spent about a week at home with her mother and brother in Humboldt after the dorms closed, but even then, she stayed in her mother’s finished basement and didn’t interact directly with her. Her older brother, 26, is staying at home with their mom, and she misses him, too. Jessica said to stay connected, she does FaceTime with her mom, a social worker, almost every day. “She’s definitely one of my best friends, one of my biggest supporters. She is a single mom, and she’s worked two jobs for the last 12 years,” Jessica said. “She always provides for us, and she’s just wonderful in every single way. She’s very caring, she takes care of everybody, no matter where you are.” This Mother’s Day, those roles have reversed. Now, Jessica is protecting her mother instead of the other way around. “She said, ‘Mom, I just can’t come home again, I couldn’t put you in that kind of danger,’” April said. “I’m extremely proud of the young lady she is and how responsible she is, and what she is doing during this time, to make sure other people are safe.” Jessica’s interest in nursing came from her family. Her grandmother, aunt and cousin are all nurses. She also had an experience as a child that stuck with her and inspired her current career goal of becoming a pediatric intensive care nurse after graduation. In the second grade, she had encephalitis. At first, she said, doctors didn’t believe she was actually sick. Her mother had to take her to a different hospital to get help. “They said I was making it up, that my screaming and vomiting was just trying to get attention. They said I was faking it,” she said. “At one point, I really did not know who my mom was, and that’s the scariest part, to have someone tell you that’s not real. That’s just not right, and I don’t want other people, especially children to have to deal with that.” She became interested in the telemetry job after touring the hospital as a student. She said watching the monitors can be surreal, knowing each line she watches represents a patient she may never meet but whose life she is responsible for. “You see their heart, but you don’t see them,” she said. “Sometimes you watch them die, but never see them. Other times, you see someone going into a fatal rhythm, and you call the nurses ... and when they finally get that person stabilized, you know they might not have made it if we weren’t there. It’s very rewarding.” April stressed the need for people to follow public health guidelines on social distancing to stay healthy. “I know they’re starting to open back up and people are eager to get on with their lives,” she said. “But there are a lot of people putting their lives on the line right now ... and I would hate for Jessica to have to go back and self-isolate again if there was a second wave.” April’s sad she can’t spend this Mother’s Day with her daughter, but right now, that’s not what is important. “Remember, there’s going to be another Mother’s Day, she said. “We all just have to take care of our people.” Comments: (319) 398-8339; alison.gowans@thegazette.com Full Article
9 Pence’s Iowa visit underscores coronavirus worry By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Fri, 08 May 2020 09:27:02 PDT DES MOINES — In traveling to Iowa to call attention to the burdens COVID-19 brought to religious services and the food supply, Vice President Mike Pence unwittingly called attention to another issue: whether the White House itself is safe from the disease.So far this week, two White House aides — President Donald Trump’s valet on Thursday, and Pence’s press secretary on Friday — have tested positive for the virus.On Friday morning, Pence’s departure to Des Moines was delayed an hour as Air Force Two idled on a tarmac near Washington. Though Pence’s press secretary was not on the plane, White House physicians through contact tracing identified six other aides who had been near her who were aboard, and pulled them from the flight. The White House later said the six had tested negative.Trump, who identified the Pence aide as press secretary Katie Miller, said he was “not worried” about the virus in the White House.Nonetheless, officials said they were stepping up safety protocols and were considering a mandatory mask policy for those in close contact with Trump and Pence.The vice president and 10 members of his staff are given rapid coronavirus tests daily, and the president is also tested regularly.Miller, who is married to Trump adviser Stephen Miller, had been in recent contact with Pence but not with the president. Pence is leader of the White House coronavirus task force and Katie Miller has handled the group’s communications.After landing in Des Moines, Pence spoke to a group of faith leaders about the importance of resuming religious services, saying cancellations in the name of slowing the spread of the virus have “been a burden” for congregants.His visit coincided with the state announcing 12 more deaths from the virus, a total of 243 in less than two months.Pence spoke with the religious leaders and Republican officials during a brief visit. He also spoke later with agricultural and food company executives.“It’s been a source of heartache for people across the country,” Pence told about a dozen people at the Church of the Way Presbyterian church in Urbandale.Pence told the group that continued efforts to hold services online and in other ways “made incalculable difference in our nation seeing our way through these troubled times.”Iowa is among many states where restrictions on in-person services are starting to ease. GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds, who joined both of the state’s Republican senators at the event, has instituted new rules that allow services to resume with restrictions.At Friday’s event, some religious leaders expressed hesitation at resuming large gatherings, while others said they would begin holding services soon,“We are pretty much in a position of uniformly believing that it’s too early to return to personal worship. It’s inadvisable at the moment particularly with rising case counts in communities where we are across the state,” said David Kaufman, rabbi of Temple B’nai Jeshurun in Des Moines.The Rev. Terry Amann, of Church of the Way, said his church will resume services May 17 with chairs arranged so families can sit together but avoid the temptation to shake hands or offer hugs. He said hand sanitizer will be available.A new poll by The University of Chicago Divinity School and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows just 9 percent of Americans think in-person services should be allowed without restrictions, while 42 percent think they should be allowed with restrictions and 48 percent think they shouldn’t be allowed at all.Pence later met with agriculture and food industry leaders. Iowa tops the nation in egg production and pork processing and is a top grower of corn and soybeans.Meatpacking is among the state’s biggest employers, and companies have been working to restart operations after closing them because hundreds of their workers became infected.As Pence touted the Trump administration’s announcement of the reopening of 14 meatpacking plants including two of the worst hit by coronavirus infections in Perry and Waterloo, the union representing workers called for safer work conditions.“Iowa’s meatpacking workers are not sacrificial lambs. They have been working tirelessly during the coronavirus pandemic to ensure families here and across the country have access to the food they need,” said the United Food and Commercial Workers Union in a statement.The Associated Press and the McClatchy Washington Bureau contributed to this report. Full Article Government
9 Mother’s Day, Birthdays, Anniversaries: Celebrating during a pandemic By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Fri, 08 May 2020 13:10:23 PDT A 10th wedding anniversary traditionally is celebrated with a gift of aluminum or tin.For Sondy Daggett, her 10th year of marriage to Liz Hoskins was marked with a gift of Champagne and chocolate-covered strawberries shared through a window.Employees at Bickford of Marion, the assisted living and memory care center where Hoskins is a resident, surprised the couple with the anniversary gift on May 1. Despite the current coronavirus-related mitigation practices, the staff had created a special moment for the couple, who have been partners for 24 years. Daggett burst into tears as employees played their wedding song — Billy Joel’s “The Longest Time.”“It just touched my soul,” Daggett said.Across the state, moments like this are relegated through windows or over a phone call. As the novel coronavirus pandemic sweeps through the country, long-term care facilities have locked down in an effort to keep residents healthy, which means their families are no longer able to hug their loved ones, or sit with them in their rooms.For many families, the feelings at such times this time are conflicted. Typical Mother’s Day celebrations have been placed on hold, and recent milestones have been missed by those living in long-term care facilities. Simple visits through windows feel distant.“Those are the moments you remember and you miss,” said Daggett, recalling memories of visits to Bickford of Marion from Hoskins’s grandchildren and family gatherings during the holidays. Hoskins, who has dementia, has been a resident at Bickford since August 2019.“The pandemic has taken this away,” Daggett said.But beyond this new dynamic with which family members are left to grapple, they also have the constant worry that their loved one could fall ill.So far, Bickford of Marion has not seen any cases.“Every time you read about another outbreak — whether it’s close to home or anywhere in the country — it brings home how fortunate we are so far,” said Matt Hoskins, Liz Hoskin’s son. “I can’t imagine the anxiety the residents and staff are having once it breaks through the wall.”As of Friday, 29 long-term care facilities across the state, which includes skilled nursing facilities and senior living centers, among others — have reported outbreaks of COVID-19 among hundreds of their staff and residents.As a result, for some Iowans, that fear has become a reality.‘I have to trust’Ruth Brackett’s son Jamie Degner, a 38-year-old resident at Harmony House Health Care Center in Waterloo, tested positive for COVID-19 this past week.Degner, who has severe autism and intellectual disabilities, has been a resident there since he was 15 years old.More than 60 residents and staff have tested positive for COVID-19 at Harmony House, an intermediate care facility. It’s one of two long-term care facilities in Black Hawk County reporting an outbreak, defined as three or more positive tests among residents.Degner received his test results on Tuesday. He’s had lower-than-normal oxygen levels, but otherwise has recorded his usual vital signs and has not experienced symptoms.Brackett said it is “unbelievably difficult to not be able to go be with him through this.”As with many facilities across the state, Harmony House closed its doors to visitors in early March, when the first cases of COVID-19 began being reported across Iowa and the nation. Brackett said her son’s cognitive abilities make it impossible for him to understand that she is unable to visit because she might make him sick, so the staff instead tell Degner his mom is “at work.” While she’s optimistic he’ll improve, Brackett worries whether Degner’s virus would take a turn for the worse. “It’s tough because I have to trust” the staff, Brackett said. “There’s nothing I can do, so I can’t spend a lot of time dwelling on what I might do differently.”The families that spoke to The Gazette believe the leadership at long-term care facilities are doing what they can to keep its residents safe and healthy. At Bickford of Marion, officials have taken the unique step of promising public transparency of possible COVID-19 cases in its facility. On the website of every Bickford location is a feature recording the number of residents who have tested positive for COVID-19.“Whether it’s COVID-19 or not, we want to be transparent with families about their loved ones’ care,” Bickford of Marion Executive Director Jacobi Feckers said. “I don’t know why other nursing homes haven’t taken that step because I haven’t spoken to other facilities, but I’m thankful that’s the route we’ve taken.”It’s not just families who are placing their trust in management. Ron Moore is an independent living resident at Cottage Grove Place, one of the largest senior living centers in Cedar Rapids that has reported an outbreak of COVID-19 this past week. According to the latest data from public health officials, five residents and staff there have tested positive.The outbreak originated in the skilled nursing unit, and officials said they are working to ensure the virus doesn’t spread to the assisted-living and independent-living portions of the facility. They restricted movement between the facilities and conduct frequent temperature checks of staff.So far, the general feeling among residents at Cottage Grove Place’s independent-living housing is that management has “done a good job” of controlling exposure.“The feelings of the residents here are positive,” Moore said. “They appreciate what management has done to protect us.”‘Any opportunity to celebrate’Still, life looks much differently at Cottage Grove Place. Moore said his schedule typically is packed with weekly book clubs and coffees with friends. Now he and his wife take walks, or try to connect with friends over email.“I’ve found (residents) are not depressed at this time,” he said. “But in the future, if this goes on for many months? My prediction is yes, depression will be a serious thing.”Local senior living centers have come up with unique ways to allow visitors to see their loved ones. Gina Hausknecht, a 55-year-old Iowa City resident, was able to see her mother in person for the first time in weeks after her assisted-living home, Oaknoll Retirement Community in Iowa City, created a “drive up” visit option this past weekend. While Hausknecht sat in the car, she was able to speak with her mother, 93-year-old Ellen Hausknecht, for an hour outside the facility. Before this, it had been emotionally difficult for Hausknecht not to see her mom weekly as she usually does“It sunk in that I don’t know when I’m going to see my mom again, and that felt really terrible,” Hausknecht previously told The Gazette.Hausknecht said she hopes to take this year’s Mother’s Day as an opportunity to do something special, particularly given the difficult past few weeks.“Our family isn’t super-big on these kinds of holidays but we do like to acknowledge them, and this year it feels important to take hold of any opportunity to celebrate,” she said.Other facilities, including Bickford of Marion, also have eased restrictions on sending food and gifts to residents in time for Mother’s Day. Matt Hoskins, Liz’s Hoskins’ son, said the family’s usual Mother’s Day plans are impossible this year, so they hope to send Liz’s Hoskins artwork from her grandchildren along with other gifts. Brackett, who will be apart from her son Degner this year, said she hadn’t planned anything for the holiday. She looks forward to her first in-person visit with him after the pandemic, when she will bring his favorite meal from McDonald’s and a new deck of Phase 10 cards. Despite the feelings of being separated, their wedding anniversary on May 1 likely is something Daggett will cherish, she said. With Daggett acting as Hoskins caregiver since her dementia diagnosis in 2016, their wedding anniversary has been something the couple hasn’t celebrated in a significant way in some time, she said.But that worry still creeps in the back of her mind. Daggett said she’s trying to remain “as confident as anyone can at this point.”“I learned a long time ago you can’t worry about what you can’t control,” Daggett said. “But does that mean I still wake up at 2 in the morning worried about it? Of course I do.”Comments: (319) 398-8469; michaela.ramm@thegazette.com Full Article Health
9 Coronavirus in Iowa, live updates for May 9: 214 more positive tests reported By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Sat, 09 May 2020 08:03:28 PDT 11 a.m. Iowa sees 214 more positive tests for coronavirusThe Iowa Department of Public Health on Saturday reported nine more deaths from COVID-19, for a total of 252 since March 8.An additional 214 people tested positive for the virus, bringing the state’s total to 11,671.A total of 71,476 Iowans have been tested for COVID-19, the department reported.With Saturday’s new figures from the Department of Public Health, these are the top 10 counties in terms of total cases:• Polk — 2194• Woodbury — 1554• Black Hawk — 1477• Linn — 819• Marshall — 702• Dallas — 660• Johnson — 549• Muscatine — 471• Tama — 327• Louisa — 282. Full Article Health
9 Bob's Lawn Care By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Fri, 19 Jun 2015 19:12:07 -0500 Posted on June 19, 2015 Bob's Lawn Care Photo Info & Viewer Comments Tweet Full Article Signs
9 Cockscomb Flower (Celosia cristata) at Trauger's By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Wed, 26 Aug 2015 15:37:45 -0500 Posted on August 26, 2015 Cockscomb Flower (Celosia cristata) at Trauger's Photo Info & Viewer Comments Tweet Full Article Farm Life
9 Raub's Island By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Mon, 31 Aug 2015 15:59:48 -0500 Posted on August 31, 2015 Raub's Island Photo Info & Viewer Comments Tweet Full Article The Delaware River
9 Why's it so hard to get the cool stuff approved? By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Thu, 27 Feb 2020 00:00:00 -0500 The classic adage is “good design speaks for itself.” Which would mean that if something’s as good of an idea as you think it is, a client will instantly see that it’s good too, right? Here at Viget, we’re always working with new and different clients. Each with their own challenges and sensibilities. But after ten years of client work, I can’t help but notice a pattern emerge when we’re trying to get approval on especially cool, unconventional parts of a design. So let’s break down some of those patterns to hopefully better understand why clients hesitate, and what strategies we’ve been using lately to help get the work we’re excited about approved.Imagine this: the parallax homepage with elements that move around in surprising ways or a unique navigation menu that conceptually reinforces a site’s message. The way the content cards on a page will, like, be literal cards that will shuffle and move around. Basically, any design that feels like an exciting, novel challenge, will need the client to “get it.” And that often turns out to be the biggest challenge of all. There are plenty of practical reasons cool designs get shot down. A client is usually more than one stakeholder, and more than the team of people you’re working with directly. On any project, there’s an amount of telephone you end up playing. Or, there’s always the classic foes: budgets and deadlines. Any idea should fit in those predetermined constraints. But as a project goes along, budgets and deadlines find a way to get tighter than you planned. But innovative designs and interactions can seem especially scary for clients to approve. There’s three fears that often pop up on projects:The fear of change. Maybe the client expected something simple, a light refresh. Something that doesn’t challenge their design expectations or require more time and effort to understand. And on our side, maybe we didn’t sufficiently ease them into our way of thinking and open them up to why we think something bigger and bolder is the right solution for them. Baby steps, y’all. The fear of the unknown. Or, less dramatically, a lack of understanding of the medium. In the past, we have struggled with how to present an interactive, animated design to a client before it’s actually built. Looking at a site that does something conceptually similar as an example can be tough. It’s asking a lot of a client’s imagination to show them a site about boots that has a cool spinning animation and get meaningful feedback about how a spinning animation would work on their site about after-school tutoring. Or maybe we’ve created static designs, then talked around what we envision happening. Again, what seems so clear in our minds as professionals entrenched in this stuff every day can be tough for someone outside the tech world to clearly understand. The fear of losing control. We’re all about learning from past mistakes. So lets say, after dealing with that fear of the unknown on a project, next time you go in the opposite direction. You invest time up front creating something polished. Maybe you even get the developer to build a prototype that moves and looks like the real thing. You’ve taken all the vague mystery out of the process, so a client will be thrilled, right? Surprise, probably not! Most clients are working with you because they want to conquer the noble quest that is their redesign together. When we jump straight to showing something that looks polished, even if it’s not really, it can feel like we jumped ahead without keeping them involved. Like we took away their input. They can also feel demotivated to give good, meaningful feedback on a polished prototype because it looks “done.”So what to do? Lately we have found low-fidelity prototypes to be a great tool for combating these fears and better communicating our ideas. What are low-fidelity prototypes?Low fidelity prototypes are a tool that designers can create quickly to illustrate an idea, without sinking time into making it pixel-perfect. Some recent examples of prototypes we've created include a clickable Figma or Invision prototype put together with Whimsical wireframes: A rough animation created in Principle illustrating less programatic animation: And even creating an animated storyboard in Photoshop: They’re rough enough that there’s no way they could be confused for a final product. But customized so that a client can immediately understand what they’re looking at and what they need to respond to. Low-fidelity prototypes hit a sweet spot that addresses those client fears head on. That fear of change? A lo-fi prototype starts rough and small, so it can ease a client into a dramatic change without overwhelming them. It’s just a first step. It gives them time to react and warm up to something that’ll ultimately be a big change.It also cuts out the fear of the unknown. Seeing something moving around, even if it’s rough, can be so much more clear than talking ourselves in circles about how we think it will move, and hoping the client can imagine it. The feature is no longer an enigma cloaked in mystery and big talk, but something tangible they can point at and ask concrete questions about.And finally, a lo-fi prototype doesn’t threaten a client’s sense of control. Low-fidelity means it’s clearly still a work in progress! It’s just an early step in the creative process, and therefore communicates that we’re still in the middle of that process together. There’s still plenty of room for their ideas and feedback. Lo-fi prototypes: client-tested, internal team-approvedThere are a lot of reasons to love lo-fi prototypes internally, too! They’re quick and easy. We can whip up multiple ideas within a few hours, without sinking the time into getting our hearts set on any one thing. In an agency setting especially, time is limited, so the faster we can get an idea out of our own heads, the better.They’re great to share with developers. Ideally, the whole team is working together simultaneously, collaborating every step of the way. Realistically, a developer often doesn’t have time during a project’s early design phase. Lo-fi prototypes are concrete enough that a developer can quickly tell if building an idea will be within scope. It helps us catch impractical ideas early and helps us all collaborate to create something that’s both cool and feasible. Stay tuned for posts in the near future diving into some of our favorite processes for creating lo-fi prototypes! Full Article Design & Content
9 So You've Written a Bad Design Take By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Tue, 05 May 2020 08:00:00 -0400 So you’ve just written a blog post or tweet about why wireframes are becoming obsolete, the dangers of “too accessible” design, or how a certain style of icon creates “cognitive fatigue.” Your post went viral, but now you’re getting ratioed by rude people on the Internet. That sucks! You were just trying to start a conversation and you probably didn’t deserve all that negativity (except for you, “too accessible” guy). Most likely, you made one of these common mistakes: 1. You made generalizations about “design” You, a good user-centered designer, know that you are not your user. Nor are you every designer. First of all, let's acknowledge that there is no universal definition of design. Even if we narrow it down to software design, it’s still hard to make generalizations. Agency, in-house, product, startup, enterprise, non-profit, website, app, connected hardware, etc. – there are a lot of different work contexts and cultures for people with “designer” in their titles. "The Design Industry" is not a thing, but even if it were, you don't speak for it. Don’t assume that the kind of design work you do is the universal default. 2. You didn’t share enough context There are many great design books and few great design blog posts. (There are, to my knowledge, no great design tweets, but I am open to your suggestions.) Writing about design is not well suited to short formats, because context plays such an important role and there’s always a lot of it to cover. Writing about your work should include as much context as you would include if you were presenting your portfolio for a job interview. What kind of organization did you work for? Who was your client and/or your stakeholders? What was the goal of the project? Your timeline? What was the makeup of your team? What were the notable business rules and constraints? How are you defining effectiveness and success? Without these kinds of details, it’s not possible for other designers to know if what you’ve written is credible or applicable to them. 3. You were too certain A blog post doesn’t need to be a dissertation. It’s okay to share hunches and anecdotes, but give the necessary caveats. And if you're making claims about science, bruh, you gotta cite your sources. Be humble in your takes. Your account of what worked for you and why is more valuable to your peers than making sweeping claims and reheating the same old arguments. Be prepared to be told you’re wrong, and have the humility to realize that your perspective is just your perspective. Real conversations, like good design, are built on feedback and diverse viewpoints. — Together, we can improve the discourse in our information ecosystems. Don't generalize. Give context. Be humble. Full Article Design & Content User Experience
9 Coronavirus (COVID-19) and Visas for Australia By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Tue, 17 Mar 2020 00:35:01 +0000 The World Health Organization has announced that Coronavirus (COVID-19) is a pandemic. The migration situation is changing rapidly throughout Australia. As an Australian citizen or permanent resident, can I still enter Australia? There is no restriction on Australian citizens or permanent residents entering Australia at this stage. However, those arriving in Australia will be required […] The post Coronavirus (COVID-19) and Visas for Australia appeared first on Visa Australia - Immigration Lawyers & Registered Migration Agents. Full Article Immigration News australia coronvirus australian migration corona virus covid-19 immigration Australia no further stay No further stay waiver conditions 8503 No further stay waiver conditions 8534 No further stay waiver conditions 8535 offshore visa onshore visa permanent resident travel bans virus australia
9 What can I do if I am on a working holiday or seasonal worker visa in the Coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis? By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Tue, 14 Apr 2020 01:10:49 +0000 Seasonal Worker Programme and Pacific Labour Scheme workers can extend their stay for up to 12 months to work for approved employers as long as pastoral care and accommodation needs of workers are met to minimise health risks to visa holders and the community. Approved employers under the Seasonal Worker Programme and Pacific Labour Scheme […] The post What can I do if I am on a working holiday or seasonal worker visa in the Coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis? appeared first on Visa Australia - Immigration Lawyers & Registered Migration Agents. Full Article Student Visas 444 visa access superannuation Acting Minister Tudge agricultural workers Australian welfare payment Coronavirus covid-19 department of education international students JobKeeper payment labour market testing new zealand citizens pacific labour scheme seasonal worker programme seasonal worker visa student visa temporary skilled visa visa application commitment visa holders visa status WHM worker visa working holiday working holiday makers
9 Employer sponsored temporary work visas (482 and 457) and Coronavirus (COVID-19) By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Thu, 16 Apr 2020 20:10:00 +0000 If you’re a Temporary Skill Shortage visa holder – what should you do if you have been stood down or your work hours are reduced by your employer? The Australian Government has announced that Temporary Skill Shortage visa holders who have been stood down, but not laid off, will maintain their visa validity and businesses […] The post Employer sponsored temporary work visas (482 and 457) and Coronavirus (COVID-19) appeared first on Visa Australia - Immigration Lawyers & Registered Migration Agents. Full Article Employer Sponsored Visas AGEE Australian Government Endorsed Agreement Event breach visa conditions business employers Coronavirus covid-19 covid-19 pandemic temporary activity visa employer obligations Employer sponsored temporary work visa extend your visa extended visa labour agreement nominated salary reduced work hours sc 408 sc 457 sc 482 stood down subclass 408 Subclass 457 subclass 482 Temporary skill shortage TSS visa conditions visa holder visa validity
9 Student visa holders and New Zealand citizens in Australia and the Coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis? By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Sun, 19 Apr 2020 20:30:00 +0000 International students who have been in Australia for longer than 12 months who find themselves in financial hardship will be able to access their Australian superannuation. The Government will undertake further engagement with the international education sector who already provide some financial support for international students facing hardship. International students working in supermarkets will have […] The post Student visa holders and New Zealand citizens in Australia and the Coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis? appeared first on Visa Australia - Immigration Lawyers & Registered Migration Agents. Full Article Student Visas aged care Australian welfare payments Coronavirus covid-19 extended hours international students JobKeeper payment new zealand citizens nurses special category subclass 444 subclass 444 visa conditions working hours
9 9 Things You Can Do To Your WordPress Website During Quarantine By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Tue, 07 Apr 2020 18:15:25 +0000 If you’d have told us at WPZOOM about the current situation we find ourselves in six months ago, we wouldn’t have believed you. It’s all we can see if we turn on the TV and it’s clear right now, humanity has taken a break. Worrying about loved ones, ensuring we stay safe, and for heaven’s sake, stay inside. Staying inside […] Full Article News
9 Why's it so hard to get the cool stuff approved? By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Thu, 27 Feb 2020 00:00:00 -0500 The classic adage is “good design speaks for itself.” Which would mean that if something’s as good of an idea as you think it is, a client will instantly see that it’s good too, right? Here at Viget, we’re always working with new and different clients. Each with their own challenges and sensibilities. But after ten years of client work, I can’t help but notice a pattern emerge when we’re trying to get approval on especially cool, unconventional parts of a design. So let’s break down some of those patterns to hopefully better understand why clients hesitate, and what strategies we’ve been using lately to help get the work we’re excited about approved.Imagine this: the parallax homepage with elements that move around in surprising ways or a unique navigation menu that conceptually reinforces a site’s message. The way the content cards on a page will, like, be literal cards that will shuffle and move around. Basically, any design that feels like an exciting, novel challenge, will need the client to “get it.” And that often turns out to be the biggest challenge of all. There are plenty of practical reasons cool designs get shot down. A client is usually more than one stakeholder, and more than the team of people you’re working with directly. On any project, there’s an amount of telephone you end up playing. Or, there’s always the classic foes: budgets and deadlines. Any idea should fit in those predetermined constraints. But as a project goes along, budgets and deadlines find a way to get tighter than you planned. But innovative designs and interactions can seem especially scary for clients to approve. There’s three fears that often pop up on projects:The fear of change. Maybe the client expected something simple, a light refresh. Something that doesn’t challenge their design expectations or require more time and effort to understand. And on our side, maybe we didn’t sufficiently ease them into our way of thinking and open them up to why we think something bigger and bolder is the right solution for them. Baby steps, y’all. The fear of the unknown. Or, less dramatically, a lack of understanding of the medium. In the past, we have struggled with how to present an interactive, animated design to a client before it’s actually built. Looking at a site that does something conceptually similar as an example can be tough. It’s asking a lot of a client’s imagination to show them a site about boots that has a cool spinning animation and get meaningful feedback about how a spinning animation would work on their site about after-school tutoring. Or maybe we’ve created static designs, then talked around what we envision happening. Again, what seems so clear in our minds as professionals entrenched in this stuff every day can be tough for someone outside the tech world to clearly understand. The fear of losing control. We’re all about learning from past mistakes. So lets say, after dealing with that fear of the unknown on a project, next time you go in the opposite direction. You invest time up front creating something polished. Maybe you even get the developer to build a prototype that moves and looks like the real thing. You’ve taken all the vague mystery out of the process, so a client will be thrilled, right? Surprise, probably not! Most clients are working with you because they want to conquer the noble quest that is their redesign together. When we jump straight to showing something that looks polished, even if it’s not really, it can feel like we jumped ahead without keeping them involved. Like we took away their input. They can also feel demotivated to give good, meaningful feedback on a polished prototype because it looks “done.”So what to do? Lately we have found low-fidelity prototypes to be a great tool for combating these fears and better communicating our ideas. What are low-fidelity prototypes?Low fidelity prototypes are a tool that designers can create quickly to illustrate an idea, without sinking time into making it pixel-perfect. Some recent examples of prototypes we've created include a clickable Figma or Invision prototype put together with Whimsical wireframes: A rough animation created in Principle illustrating less programatic animation: And even creating an animated storyboard in Photoshop: They’re rough enough that there’s no way they could be confused for a final product. But customized so that a client can immediately understand what they’re looking at and what they need to respond to. Low-fidelity prototypes hit a sweet spot that addresses those client fears head on. That fear of change? A lo-fi prototype starts rough and small, so it can ease a client into a dramatic change without overwhelming them. It’s just a first step. It gives them time to react and warm up to something that’ll ultimately be a big change.It also cuts out the fear of the unknown. Seeing something moving around, even if it’s rough, can be so much more clear than talking ourselves in circles about how we think it will move, and hoping the client can imagine it. The feature is no longer an enigma cloaked in mystery and big talk, but something tangible they can point at and ask concrete questions about.And finally, a lo-fi prototype doesn’t threaten a client’s sense of control. Low-fidelity means it’s clearly still a work in progress! It’s just an early step in the creative process, and therefore communicates that we’re still in the middle of that process together. There’s still plenty of room for their ideas and feedback. Lo-fi prototypes: client-tested, internal team-approvedThere are a lot of reasons to love lo-fi prototypes internally, too! They’re quick and easy. We can whip up multiple ideas within a few hours, without sinking the time into getting our hearts set on any one thing. In an agency setting especially, time is limited, so the faster we can get an idea out of our own heads, the better.They’re great to share with developers. Ideally, the whole team is working together simultaneously, collaborating every step of the way. Realistically, a developer often doesn’t have time during a project’s early design phase. Lo-fi prototypes are concrete enough that a developer can quickly tell if building an idea will be within scope. It helps us catch impractical ideas early and helps us all collaborate to create something that’s both cool and feasible. Stay tuned for posts in the near future diving into some of our favorite processes for creating lo-fi prototypes! Full Article Design & Content
9 So You've Written a Bad Design Take By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Tue, 05 May 2020 08:00:00 -0400 So you’ve just written a blog post or tweet about why wireframes are becoming obsolete, the dangers of “too accessible” design, or how a certain style of icon creates “cognitive fatigue.” Your post went viral, but now you’re getting ratioed by rude people on the Internet. That sucks! You were just trying to start a conversation and you probably didn’t deserve all that negativity (except for you, “too accessible” guy). Most likely, you made one of these common mistakes: 1. You made generalizations about “design” You, a good user-centered designer, know that you are not your user. Nor are you every designer. First of all, let's acknowledge that there is no universal definition of design. Even if we narrow it down to software design, it’s still hard to make generalizations. Agency, in-house, product, startup, enterprise, non-profit, website, app, connected hardware, etc. – there are a lot of different work contexts and cultures for people with “designer” in their titles. "The Design Industry" is not a thing, but even if it were, you don't speak for it. Don’t assume that the kind of design work you do is the universal default. 2. You didn’t share enough context There are many great design books and few great design blog posts. (There are, to my knowledge, no great design tweets, but I am open to your suggestions.) Writing about design is not well suited to short formats, because context plays such an important role and there’s always a lot of it to cover. Writing about your work should include as much context as you would include if you were presenting your portfolio for a job interview. What kind of organization did you work for? Who was your client and/or your stakeholders? What was the goal of the project? Your timeline? What was the makeup of your team? What were the notable business rules and constraints? How are you defining effectiveness and success? Without these kinds of details, it’s not possible for other designers to know if what you’ve written is credible or applicable to them. 3. You were too certain A blog post doesn’t need to be a dissertation. It’s okay to share hunches and anecdotes, but give the necessary caveats. And if you're making claims about science, bruh, you gotta cite your sources. Be humble in your takes. Your account of what worked for you and why is more valuable to your peers than making sweeping claims and reheating the same old arguments. Be prepared to be told you’re wrong, and have the humility to realize that your perspective is just your perspective. Real conversations, like good design, are built on feedback and diverse viewpoints. — Together, we can improve the discourse in our information ecosystems. Don't generalize. Give context. Be humble. Full Article Design & Content User Experience
9 Let's Encrypt Everything By blog.codinghorror.com Published On :: Wed, 23 Nov 2016 00:03:31 GMT I'll admit I was late to the HTTPS party. But post Snowden, and particularly after the result of the last election here in the US, it's clear that everything on the web should be encrypted by default. Why? You have an unalienable right to privacy, both in the real world Full Article
9 I'm Loyal to Nothing Except the Dream By blog.codinghorror.com Published On :: Mon, 30 Jan 2017 09:19:56 GMT There is much I take for granted in my life, and the normal functioning of American government is one of those things. In my 46 years, I've lived under nine different presidents. The first I remember is Carter. I've voted in every presidential election since 1992, but I do not Full Article
9 The Cloud Is Just Someone Else's Computer By blog.codinghorror.com Published On :: Sun, 17 Feb 2019 02:15:26 GMT When we started Discourse in 2013, our server requirements were high: 1GB RAM modern, fast dual core CPU speedy solid state drive with 20+ GB I'm not talking about a cheapo shared cpanel server, either, I mean a dedicated virtual private server with those specifications. We were OK with that, Full Article
9 Creating Choropleth Map Data Visualization Using JavaScript, on COVID-19 Stats By www.anychart.com Published On :: Thu, 07 May 2020 15:08:00 PDT https://www.anychart.com/blog/2020/05/06/javascript-choropleth-map-tutorial/ Full Article
9 Want to help the USPS and vets? Buy a 'Healing PTSD' stamp By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Thu, 30 Apr 2020 12:02:25 EDT Support two entities with the price of one. Full Article
9 Own This Extensive Font Library Worth $4265 for Just $29 By blog.spoongraphics.co.uk Published On :: Wed, 15 Apr 2020 07:00:40 +0000 High-quality fonts can be really expensive and are often the most costly tool a designer needs, so when a massive saving like this comes along it’s hard to let it pass by! This brand new bundle contains 16 hand-picked typefaces, containing hundreds of individual fonts, chosen specifically for their quality and versatility. These fonts are […] The post Own This Extensive Font Library Worth $4265 for Just $29 appeared first on Spoon Graphics. Full Article News bundle deal design cuts fonts
9 Want to help the USPS and vets? Buy a 'Healing PTSD' stamp By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Thursday, April 30, 2020 - 12:02pm Support two entities with the price of one. Full Article
9 9 Best Laptops for Photography By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Wed, 25 Mar 2020 03:08:31 +0000 You enjoy photographing in the field, whether its landscapes or events. When it comes to viewing your captured images, polishing them up and showing to people, you need a laptop to make this possible, especially when you are far from home or office. But you are not a techie and Cores make your head spin! How do you decide on Continue Reading The post 9 Best Laptops for Photography appeared first on Photodoto. Full Article Cameras & Equipment laptops for photography
9 6 Must Have Developer Tools and Services for Your Projects in 2019 By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Tue, 20 Aug 2019 00:17:03 +0000 This is it! Your one-stop shop for developer tools and resources. Designed to save you time and money, streamline project workflows, boost productivity, or all the above, Choosing the right tool for the job is never easy for several reasons. There’s a huge number to choose among, you have to know what to look for, […] The post 6 Must Have Developer Tools and Services for Your Projects in 2019 appeared first on WebAppers. Full Article Best Collections
9 9 Simple CSS Image Filters By webdesignerwall.com Published On :: Thu, 01 Dec 2016 11:00:05 +0000 CSS image filters are a quick way to tweak images in the browser without resorting to Photoshop. This simple reference gives you 9 CSS filter shorthands that provide an excellent way to maintain style consistency across visual content on your site, or just add a little fun to image hovers. CSS filters are most commonly […] The post 9 Simple CSS Image Filters appeared first on Web Designer Wall. Full Article Tutorials CSS
9 30 Best WordPress Themes of 2019 By webdesignerwall.com Published On :: Thu, 28 Feb 2019 13:00:47 +0000 WordPress is a perfect example of how the web has evolved from static to interactive, a shift driven by our desire to share thoughts and a great opportunity to promote our goods. A truly good WordPress theme goes beyond simply looking good to offer solid core functionality and administrative features. There are hundreds of WordPress […] The post 30 Best WordPress Themes of 2019 appeared first on Web Designer Wall. Full Article Design Trends WordPress
9 Blog Project: Your Best Photos From 2019 By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Tue, 17 Dec 2019 06:05:42 +0000 It is time to kick off the 13th annual best photos of the year blog project! I’m proud to say over the years that hundreds of photographers have taken part (see Best Photos of 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008 and 2007). It’s great to see the community of photographers that have developed around this blog project. As always I hope the exercise of picking your best photos helps improve your photography (10 Ways to Top Your Best 20xx Photographs). So without any further delay here is how you take part to submit your best photos of 2019. How to Participate (Read Carefully) Review & select your best photos from 2019. Note: Photo edit carefully narrowing down your results to your best 10 or 5 photos. Reference Pro Tips: Photo Editing with Gary Crabbe for pointers. Create a blog post on your website or a Flickr set containing your best photos from 2019. Complete the form below by Sunday JANUARY 5th at 11:59PM PST to take part. The following Tuesday, or thereabout, I’ll post a link to all submitted sites and photos on my blog. Throughout the week I’ll also share the results across all my social media accounts. Spread the Word! Feel free to spread the word of this project on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, photo forums you frequent and/or your blogs. All who are interested in taking part are invited. Loading… Full Article Featured Photography Updates & Announcements Best of 2019 Best of Photos Blog Project
9 Best Photos of 2019 by Jim M. Goldstein By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Wed, 01 Jan 2020 15:00:22 +0000 Thanks for checking in to see my best photos of 2019. This year for a variety of reasons I didn’t have many opportunities to get out and pursue photography to the degree I’d have preferred. Some of the reasons why were good (new house, settling in, kid activities with both boys being in elementary school for the first time, etc.) and some were downright bummers (passing of my grandfather, getting used to this aging thing, etc.). Through it all though I got the kids out on some bigger trips this year beyond our regular trips to Yosemite. We drove from California to Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming and Glacier National Park in Montana. With my focus on the boys having a great experience my normal serious photographic endeavors were kept on the sideline. As always I felt good with that decision after hearing how much they loved Glacier National Park, especially given Glacier it is a personal favorite of mine. In 2020 I’m looking forward to exploring more of my favorite locations with them and seeing it all a new through their eyes. All that being said enjoy my best of the year… Landscapes & Wildlife Much of my time outdoors this year was spent showing the boys more of my favorite locations and experiencing the great outdoors while indulging them with great views and of course many evenings of campfires and s’mores. The following view at Two Medicine lake in Glacier National Park was incredibly memorable as we explored the shore and skipped rocks. Of all my time at Glacier National Park I’ve never once seen a Pika… until this year. Not only are they well camouflaged and hard to see, but they’re incredibly fast. Being small even photographing them with a 400mm lens isn’t nearly enough magnification. The first photo below is a severely cropped photo taken at 400mm. The uncropped photos, 2 down, is included to give you an idea of how hard it is to find them in a rock pile. Add in their constant state of running, to forage food for the winter, you have an even tougher subject to photograph. That said I do have a good number of Pika butt photos now. While in Glacier National Park it’s always fun to see marmots scurrying about. On a hike at Logan Pass my boys and I saw several. One of the more interesting was perched in a tree surveying his territory. Adventures with the Kids My boys enjoying a brief encounter with a curious ground squirrel was amusing. Even more amusing was the play structure my youngest son built for him with rocks near his den. My youngest still has not shaken his interest in photography. While he wasn’t as steadfast about using a tripod this year he still seemed to enjoy taking some ‘serious’ photos. A brief moment my kids weren’t a blur from running around, tackling each other, and/or tackling me. A personal favorite of mine taken by a passing hiker. Thanks unknown hiker, I salute you and your ability to capture a well framed photo while maintaining focus. You’d be surprised how hard it is to get that even with an iPhone. Thanks for checking in and Happy New Year! Full Article Photography Best of 2019 Best of Photos
9 Best Photos of 2019 by JMG-Galleries Blog Readers By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Thu, 16 Jan 2020 08:13:58 +0000 I’m excited to share the results of my 13th annual Best of Photos project. 112 photographers from around the world (amateur and professional alike) have shared their best photos of 2019. I’m always amazed at the quality of work shared and I hope it’s a source inspiration to you for the coming year. For those who are new to my blog project, photographers taking part span the gamut of photo enthusiasts to professionals. The great thing about photography is that no matter what your skill level we all can relate equally in our love for the art of photography and visually exploring. With that in mind I encourage you to reach out to photographers whose work you enjoy to keep sharing & growing as an artist. I am incredibly thankful that this tradition has been embraced and enjoy seeing how familiar faces have evolved their work & grown over the years. I hope reviewing your best photos of the year and comparing them to years pasts keeps you inspired and aware of your progress as a photographer. If you’d like to take part next year and be informed when submissions open for the “Best Photos of 2020” blog project add your name to my mail list. You won’t be spammed. I send out newsletters quite infrequently. Thank to everyone who took part! I invite you to visit each link below as I have and introduce yourself to many of the participating photographers. Best Photos of 2019 Best Photos of 2019 – JMG-Galleries – Jim M. Goldstein My Top 10 Photographs Of 2019 – Michael Russell My Ten Favorite Photos of 2019 – ADVENTR – Randy Langstraat Favorite Photos of 2019 – T.M. Schultze My Favorite Photos from 2019 – Alexander S. Kunz Best of 2019 – Dave Wilson Harold Davis—Best of 2019 – Harold Davis 2019: A Photographic Retrospective – Johann A. Briffa Top 10 Favorites of 2019 – Stefan Baeurle My Best Natural History Photos of 2019 – Phil Colla My Best Photos From 2019 – Daniel Brinneman Best Photos of 2019 – Peter Tellone Rétrospective des meilleures photos de l’année 2019 – Francis Gagnon Best of 2019 by Rachel Cohen – Rachel Cohen Photo Highlights 2019 – Alan Majchrowicz My Top 10 Nature Photos of 2019 – Greg Vaughn 2019 – The Year in Pictures | Russ Bishop Photography – Russ Bishop 2019 Favorites – A Split Year – Joseph Smith My 12 Favorite Photos of 2019 – Chuq Von Rospach Wild Drake Photography – Drake Dyck Matt Payne Photography – Matt Payne My Favorite Images Of 2019 – Werner Priller Favourites from 2019 – Bryn Tassell My Favorite Photos of 2019 – A Year-End Retrospective – Gary Crabbe / Enlightened Images 2019 Favorite Photographs – Pat Ulrich Without reflection we go blindly on our way – Bjorn Kleemann 2019 – Ten moments – Ramen Saha top photos :: 2019 – Denise Goldberg Changing Perspectives – Best of 2019 – Jenni Brehm Island in the Net – Khürt Williams Best Photos of 2019: My Favorites of the Year – Todd Henson My Ten Best of Images of 2019 – Mike Chowla 2019 Favorite Photos – Alan Dahl Tech Photo Guy – Best Photos 2019 – Aaron Hockley 2019 Favorites – Martin Quinn Best of TheDarkSlides 2019 – TheDarkSlides 2019 Jim Goldstein Project – J.J. RAIA My Favorites of 2019 – Rich Greene My Favorite Images of 2019 (aka ‘Best of 2019’) – Pete Miller 2019 Year in Review, Decade in Review – Robin Black Photography Under Pressure Photography – Scott McGee My favorite Slovenia photos of 2019 – Luka Esenko 5 Moments in Time – 2019 – Gavin Crook My favorite photos of the decade – Matt Payne My Ten Favourite Images of 2019 – Jens Preshaw 2019 in Pictures – Milan Hutera Twelve from 2019 – Tom Whelan My Favorite Photos of 2019 – Jeff Hubbard 2019 Favorites – Rick Holliday Best of the Best 2019 – Richard Valenti Best Landscape and Nature Photos of 2019 – Clint Losee Best of 2019 – My Favorite Images of the Year – Rob Tilley 2019 Year in Review – Greg Russell | Alpenglow Images Best of The Decade Including 2019 – Adrian Klein Best of 2019 – Brian Knott Natural History Photography – Highlights from 2019 – Gabor Ruff Best of 2019 – Jeff Dupuie Top 2019 – Eric Chan Best of 2019 – Greg Clure Twenty Nineteen: In retrospect – Charlotte Gibb Favorite Blog Photos of 2019 – Jim Coda My Favorites 2019 – Beth Young Living Wilderness: Best of 2019 – Kevin Ebi 2019 Favorites – Mike Cleron Best of 2019 – Romain Guy 2019 Favorite Images – Sam Folsom Michael Katz Photography – Michael Katz Twenty Nineteen – Mark Graf 2019 in Review – and Happy New Year” Photography & Travel – brent huntley Top 10 Favorite Images from 2019 – Derrald Farnsworth-Livingston My Photo Highlights of 2019 – Caleb Weston Lagemaat Photography – Best images of 2019 – Jao van de Lagemaat Favorites from 2019 – Kyle Jones A Baker’s Dozen – Mike Christoferson 10 Favorites of 2019: An Amazing Year – Kurt Lawson Top 20 Photographs of 2019 – Year-End-Retrospective – Landscape Photography Reader/David Leland Hyde Favorite Photos of 2019 – Deb Snelson Favorites – 2019 – Daniel Leu Best of 2019 – Steve Cozad Fog from Above in 2019 – Andrew Thomas Favorites of 2019 – Mick McMurray Some Favorites from 2019 – Josh Meier Top 10 Images of 2019 – Stephen L. Kapp Top Ten of 2019 – Holly Davison Best 2019 – Barbara Michalowska The Creative Photographer – Andrew S. Gibson My Favorite Photos of 2019 – Patricia Davidson A Thousand Words – Lucy Autrey Wilson 2019 Top Twelve Photographs – David J Grenier Urban Dinosaurs – Steven M. Bellovin Best of 2019 – Thomas Yackley Carol’s Little World – Best of 2019 – Carol Schiraldi My favourite shots of 2019 – Catalin Marin Top 2019 Photos – Matt Conti Top Ten 2019 – Phyllis Whitman Hunter Favorites from […] Full Article Photography Updates & Announcements Best of 2019 Best of Photos Blog Project
9 From The Archives: Toronto, Canada 2019 By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Fri, 20 Mar 2020 09:22:56 PDT Parkdale. Toronto, Canada 2019 Follow me @benhuang.photography Full Article From The Archives benhuangphotography canada landsdowne parkdale residential streetphotography toronto winter カナダ トロント パークデール ランスドーン 住宅区 冬 街撮り
9 From Instagram Apr 05, 2020 @ 19:44 By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Sun, 05 Apr 2020 17:11:49 PDT Dear pigeons, Self-isolation does not mean you can SHIT on my BALCONY!!! ハトへ 外出自粛だからこそ勝手に俺のベランダでウンコするってゆるさん!🤬 Full Article From Instagram balcony birdshit covid19 selfisolation torontolife コロナウイルス トロント生活 ベランダ 自粛生活 鳥糞被害
9 From The Archives: Rikuzentakata, Japan 2019 By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Fri, 17 Apr 2020 12:51:27 PDT Seagate. Rikuzentakata, Japan 2019 Follow me @benhuang.photography Full Article From The Archives benhuangphotography coast gate iwate Japan landscape lindustrial rikuzentakata seawall Tohoku 岩手 日本 東北 水門 沿岸 防潮堤 陸前高田 風景写真
9 From Instagram Apr 21, 2020 @ 19:42 By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Tue, 21 Apr 2020 16:42:59 PDT Found the culprit! (犯人発見!) Full Article From Instagram balcony covid19 pigeon selfisolation torontolife コロナウイルス トロント生活 ハト ベランダ 自粛生活 鳥糞被害
9 9 Ways To Start Promoting Your Content Now By justcreative.com Published On :: Tue, 28 Apr 2020 04:10:18 +0000 Your ability to create and promote content is critical to your business' success. Here are 9 ways to set up a framework for content promotion immediately. Full Article Blogging & Content Marketing Guest Articles Content Content Marketing Content Strategy
9 Loosening the Caregiver's Grip By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Monday, June 11, 2018 - 12:47pm It happens slowly, like that metaphorical frog you’ve heard about. Possessiveness and controlling behavior in TBI caregivers is something that creeps up on you, and I suspect it is common — not because people are trying to be annoying, but because they care so much and want to see that their loved one is treated well in every respect. Full Article
9 Never Stop Asking 'What If?' By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Monday, July 16, 2018 - 6:26am We imagine the what-ifs as a worst case scenario, our worst nightmare happening to us, our life falling apart. But here’s another way of looking at it. Full Article
9 Comparing Covid-19 models By flowingdata.com Published On :: Tue, 05 May 2020 07:44:30 +0000 FiveThirtyEight compared six Covid-19 models for a sense of where we might be…Tags: coronavirus, FiveThirtyEight, modeling Full Article Statistics coronavirus FiveThirtyEight modeling
9 Why's it so hard to get the cool stuff approved? By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Thu, 27 Feb 2020 00:00:00 -0500 The classic adage is “good design speaks for itself.” Which would mean that if something’s as good of an idea as you think it is, a client will instantly see that it’s good too, right? Here at Viget, we’re always working with new and different clients. Each with their own challenges and sensibilities. But after ten years of client work, I can’t help but notice a pattern emerge when we’re trying to get approval on especially cool, unconventional parts of a design. So let’s break down some of those patterns to hopefully better understand why clients hesitate, and what strategies we’ve been using lately to help get the work we’re excited about approved.Imagine this: the parallax homepage with elements that move around in surprising ways or a unique navigation menu that conceptually reinforces a site’s message. The way the content cards on a page will, like, be literal cards that will shuffle and move around. Basically, any design that feels like an exciting, novel challenge, will need the client to “get it.” And that often turns out to be the biggest challenge of all. There are plenty of practical reasons cool designs get shot down. A client is usually more than one stakeholder, and more than the team of people you’re working with directly. On any project, there’s an amount of telephone you end up playing. Or, there’s always the classic foes: budgets and deadlines. Any idea should fit in those predetermined constraints. But as a project goes along, budgets and deadlines find a way to get tighter than you planned. But innovative designs and interactions can seem especially scary for clients to approve. There’s three fears that often pop up on projects:The fear of change. Maybe the client expected something simple, a light refresh. Something that doesn’t challenge their design expectations or require more time and effort to understand. And on our side, maybe we didn’t sufficiently ease them into our way of thinking and open them up to why we think something bigger and bolder is the right solution for them. Baby steps, y’all. The fear of the unknown. Or, less dramatically, a lack of understanding of the medium. In the past, we have struggled with how to present an interactive, animated design to a client before it’s actually built. Looking at a site that does something conceptually similar as an example can be tough. It’s asking a lot of a client’s imagination to show them a site about boots that has a cool spinning animation and get meaningful feedback about how a spinning animation would work on their site about after-school tutoring. Or maybe we’ve created static designs, then talked around what we envision happening. Again, what seems so clear in our minds as professionals entrenched in this stuff every day can be tough for someone outside the tech world to clearly understand. The fear of losing control. We’re all about learning from past mistakes. So lets say, after dealing with that fear of the unknown on a project, next time you go in the opposite direction. You invest time up front creating something polished. Maybe you even get the developer to build a prototype that moves and looks like the real thing. You’ve taken all the vague mystery out of the process, so a client will be thrilled, right? Surprise, probably not! Most clients are working with you because they want to conquer the noble quest that is their redesign together. When we jump straight to showing something that looks polished, even if it’s not really, it can feel like we jumped ahead without keeping them involved. Like we took away their input. They can also feel demotivated to give good, meaningful feedback on a polished prototype because it looks “done.”So what to do? Lately we have found low-fidelity prototypes to be a great tool for combating these fears and better communicating our ideas. What are low-fidelity prototypes?Low fidelity prototypes are a tool that designers can create quickly to illustrate an idea, without sinking time into making it pixel-perfect. Some recent examples of prototypes we've created include a clickable Figma or Invision prototype put together with Whimsical wireframes: A rough animation created in Principle illustrating less programatic animation: And even creating an animated storyboard in Photoshop: They’re rough enough that there’s no way they could be confused for a final product. But customized so that a client can immediately understand what they’re looking at and what they need to respond to. Low-fidelity prototypes hit a sweet spot that addresses those client fears head on. That fear of change? A lo-fi prototype starts rough and small, so it can ease a client into a dramatic change without overwhelming them. It’s just a first step. It gives them time to react and warm up to something that’ll ultimately be a big change.It also cuts out the fear of the unknown. Seeing something moving around, even if it’s rough, can be so much more clear than talking ourselves in circles about how we think it will move, and hoping the client can imagine it. The feature is no longer an enigma cloaked in mystery and big talk, but something tangible they can point at and ask concrete questions about.And finally, a lo-fi prototype doesn’t threaten a client’s sense of control. Low-fidelity means it’s clearly still a work in progress! It’s just an early step in the creative process, and therefore communicates that we’re still in the middle of that process together. There’s still plenty of room for their ideas and feedback. Lo-fi prototypes: client-tested, internal team-approvedThere are a lot of reasons to love lo-fi prototypes internally, too! They’re quick and easy. We can whip up multiple ideas within a few hours, without sinking the time into getting our hearts set on any one thing. In an agency setting especially, time is limited, so the faster we can get an idea out of our own heads, the better.They’re great to share with developers. Ideally, the whole team is working together simultaneously, collaborating every step of the way. Realistically, a developer often doesn’t have time during a project’s early design phase. Lo-fi prototypes are concrete enough that a developer can quickly tell if building an idea will be within scope. It helps us catch impractical ideas early and helps us all collaborate to create something that’s both cool and feasible. Stay tuned for posts in the near future diving into some of our favorite processes for creating lo-fi prototypes! Full Article Design & Content
9 So You've Written a Bad Design Take By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Tue, 05 May 2020 08:00:00 -0400 So you’ve just written a blog post or tweet about why wireframes are becoming obsolete, the dangers of “too accessible” design, or how a certain style of icon creates “cognitive fatigue.” Your post went viral, but now you’re getting ratioed by rude people on the Internet. That sucks! You were just trying to start a conversation and you probably didn’t deserve all that negativity (except for you, “too accessible” guy). Most likely, you made one of these common mistakes: 1. You made generalizations about “design” You, a good user-centered designer, know that you are not your user. Nor are you every designer. First of all, let's acknowledge that there is no universal definition of design. Even if we narrow it down to software design, it’s still hard to make generalizations. Agency, in-house, product, startup, enterprise, non-profit, website, app, connected hardware, etc. – there are a lot of different work contexts and cultures for people with “designer” in their titles. "The Design Industry" is not a thing, but even if it were, you don't speak for it. Don’t assume that the kind of design work you do is the universal default. 2. You didn’t share enough context There are many great design books and few great design blog posts. (There are, to my knowledge, no great design tweets, but I am open to your suggestions.) Writing about design is not well suited to short formats, because context plays such an important role and there’s always a lot of it to cover. Writing about your work should include as much context as you would include if you were presenting your portfolio for a job interview. What kind of organization did you work for? Who was your client and/or your stakeholders? What was the goal of the project? Your timeline? What was the makeup of your team? What were the notable business rules and constraints? How are you defining effectiveness and success? Without these kinds of details, it’s not possible for other designers to know if what you’ve written is credible or applicable to them. 3. You were too certain A blog post doesn’t need to be a dissertation. It’s okay to share hunches and anecdotes, but give the necessary caveats. And if you're making claims about science, bruh, you gotta cite your sources. Be humble in your takes. Your account of what worked for you and why is more valuable to your peers than making sweeping claims and reheating the same old arguments. Be prepared to be told you’re wrong, and have the humility to realize that your perspective is just your perspective. Real conversations, like good design, are built on feedback and diverse viewpoints. — Together, we can improve the discourse in our information ecosystems. Don't generalize. Give context. Be humble. Full Article Design & Content User Experience
9 METAL INJECTION LIVECAST #535 - Liddle' Ditch By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Tue, 01 Oct 2019 23:53:36 +0000 We kick things off with Rob talking about his favorite albums of the year. We then discuss the shocking news... The post METAL INJECTION LIVECAST #535 - Liddle' Ditch appeared first on Metal Injection. Full Article Metal Injection Livecast
9 METAL INJECTION LIVECAST #537 - Hootie and the No Fish with JINJER's Tatiana Shmayluk By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Tue, 15 Oct 2019 23:57:50 +0000 We have a very special guest, Jinjer vocalist Tatiana Shmayluk called into the show. She talked about the band's upcoming... The post METAL INJECTION LIVECAST #537 - Hootie and the No Fish with JINJER's Tatiana Shmayluk appeared first on Metal Injection. Full Article Metal Injection Livecast