Viral marketing is different from conventional marketing in that it contains elements that are exceedingly attractive to the audience and compel those exposed to it ...

The post 10 Sure-fire Viral Marketing Tips That Will Get You Noticed appeared first on Saleschase Stories.

To imagine our worlds as settled in some aspects, to understand that some people dear to us are no doubt now part of our pasts, that while we may correspond  we will never be in each others’ physical presence again, yet still we shall continue to speak to and share in each other in all other […]

1. Shah slams Bengal govt for 'not allowing' migrant trains; Centre lying, says TMC  Times of India
2. Not Allowing Migrants' Trains "Injustice": Amit Shah To Mamata Banerjee  NDTV
3. TMC releases 'proof' after Centre alleges blockade of migrant transport in West Bengal  TIMES NOW
4. News updates from Hindustan Times: Have 7-stage plan to bring back migrants, says TMC on Amit Shah’s...  Hindustan Times
5. Bengal Says 8 Trains to Bring Back Migrant Workers Scheduled as Amit Shah Writes to Mamata on 'Injustice'  News18
6. View Full coverage on Google News

1. Not anticipating worst situation in India: Harsh Vardhan on Covid-19 pandemic  Hindustan Times
2. Health ministry says learn to live with coronavirus as India's COVID-19 count crosses 56,000  India Gone Viral
3. Government Tweaks Rules For Testing As COVID-19 Cases Rise. Details Here  NDTV
4. 80 per cent of Telangana will be rid of coronavirus soon: Eatala  The New Indian Express
5. ‘We must learn to live with the coronavirus,’ says health ministry  Scroll.in
6. View Full coverage on Google News

(via HN)

A nice collection of quotes on notation as a tool of thought. Mostly not programming related, which actually makes them more interesting, offering a richer diversity of examples. We used to have quite a few discussions of notation in the early days (at least in part because I never accepted the prevailing dogma that syntax is not that interesting or important), which is a good reminder for folks to check the archives.

Look what I found!

Some time ago, I posted every page of the Image Notebook I created to help me imagine the world and people of Industrialized Faerie for The Iron Dragon's Mother. What I didn't mention was that it was actually the second such notebook I'd made. The first notebook I lost--forever, I thought. But as it turned out, it had been misfiled in my office.

This is why you should clean your workspace at least once a decade.

The Zero Notebook, as I think of it, was begun all the way back in 2009. I pasted images from magazines and newspapers into it, created collages, some of which I altered, sought inspiration from the uncanny but visualizable. The end result is something very close to (but not identical with) outsider art.

I'll spare you the bulk of the images. But starting today I'll be posting ten images from the notebook. One on each weekday when I don't have any other news to pass along. This is the first one: the notebook's cover.


And what, you ask, does it mean . . . ?

The eye, of course, represents the eye of a dragon. It's slashed across the oval to create a zero.  The dot to the lower right is meant to suggest that the glyph represents the letter Q.,  though, of course, not exactly. That's because I wasn't looking for Answers. Just Questions.

There are a few (not many) words in the notebook. Here's an entry I ran across that begins with (almost) the cover glyph:

Q. What does the Goddess want?
A. Wrong question.

All of the above carried through into the novel and became a major, if close to undetectable, theme. The Iron Dragon's Mother would have been a very different book if I had started it with a different image.

The crinkly stuff is wide transparent tape, used to seal the image onto the cover. If this notebook ever winds up in somebody's collection, that's going to be a major conservation issue. Not my problem.


Above: First image. Nine to go.

Here on the inside cover of the Zero Notebook is a first glimpse of Caitlin. It's a photograph of a young Russian doctor and, although it misrepresents Caitlin's ethnicity entirely, it does capture her innate seriousness. Added to which are birds in flight, because flight is in her nature, and a miniature of a painting by Lucian Freud. This last was included for its lack of glossy magazine glamor but also, with a touch of irony, because I knew that the novel would be going deep into Carl Jung territory.


And what, you ask, does it mean . . .?

It doesn't. The page is a first, fumbling-in-the-darkness attempt to find the heart and soul of the novel.


Above: Second image. Eight to go.

Excerpt 3 from the Zero Notebook for The Iron Dragon's Mother.  Jinx is a pretty neat character. I'm sorry I couldn't find a place for her in the novel. She looks like trouble, doesn't she?


And I have to apologize . . .

I promised to post these on every day I didn't have news and then got so caught up on writing chores I lost track of the blog entirely. My bad. I'll do better, I promise.

For a while, anyway. 


Above: Third image. Seven to go.

Another character that didn't make it into The Iron Dragon's Mother. Industrialized Faerie is a rich world. The three novels I've set in it can only only hint at how rich and strange it is.

This image, for a rarity, was hardly altered at all.


And where, you ask, did I find this. . . ?

The image came from the Body Works show that toured the world some years ago. A large number of corpses were flayed and then carefully preserved, in order to display the wonders of anatomy. The show was controversial at the time because the corpses came from China and there were those who claimed the bodies hadn't been voluntarily donated but those of criminals who had died in prison. The truth of the matter was impossible to ascertain.

The show, however, was extremely popular. My son, Sean Swanwick, worked for a summer as a guide when it was displayed at the Franklin Institute and he told me that they had to watch the people touring it like hawks... Every now and then, someone would try to snap off a finger or other appendage to take home as a souvenir.


Above: Image five. Five more to go.

She never appears in person in The Iron Dragon's Mother, but Mother Eve is central to the entire enterprise. Unsettling, isn't she?

Judith Berman once told me that most of the First People have Trickster tales. But of the hundreds of tribes in North America, only two--and they small tribes--have a female trickster. The female trickster is, apparently, difficult for people to imagine.

So you can imagine my delight when I found one right inside my own culture.


But what, you ask, does it mean . . .?

Trickster is a strange and difficult character, neither a good guy nor an evil one. She exists somewhere in between, a creator of chaos and a provider of a special Something that it seems human beings require. It might be corn and it might be fire. Trickster gets blamed for a lot of the woes of existence, but it seems that without him/her, we're skunked.

I wonder if Pandora was originally a Trickster,  before they allegorized her to hell and back? It bears thinking on.


Above: Image Six. Four to go.

Introducing Helen. There's more to her than meets the eye.

Written upside-down--so they won't necessarily be taken as gospel by any readers are three quick notes scrawled to myself:

Mother as Mind Spider

Storyteller as Spider & Weaver

Chrone as Spider

I apologize for the misspelling of "crone." But I was writing (and thinking) too fast to care much for accuracy.


But what, you ask, does it mean . . . ?

The influence of Louise Bourgeois is pretty obvious here. Late in life, she created those wonderful, terrifyingly realistic giant spiders with long steel needles at the end of their legs and said that they were all about her mother. Who made a living repairing tapestries, using long steel needles. So it's not the slap in her face it might seem.

I liked the spider representing the archetypal woman-as-maker, which fit Helen right down to the ground. I was also fighting a fight all the way through with received archetypal images of women were were almost all pretty or dainty or passive. I wanted to get at that primal fierceness that lurks inside us all.

And, ounce for ounce, you don't get much fiercer than a spider.


And tomorrow and Friday . . .

There will be news.


Above: Seventh image. Three to go.

Originally, this was going to be a character named Frog--one who never materialized in The Iron Dragon's Mother. A wood-fey, obviously, and possibly a marsh-weller.

But look at that wistful, lost expression. I think this guy eventually became Fingolfinrhod. I really do.


Above: Image Eight. Two more to go.

Dragons are, as everybody knows, half fighter jet and half fire spirit.

Here's the skull of one.


Above: Image Nine. One more to go.

Our revels now are ended. These our images, as I foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air...

But before we go, one more page, the back inside cover to be specific. It contains two more images of Helen. One is a publicity shot from a period she was going to leave out of the autobiography she never wrote, when she made a brief, ill-fated stab at acting. The other is from a dark period in her middle age.

She was far better-looking than she'd ever admit to being.


And what, you ask, does it mean . . . ?

To find that out, you're just going to have to read The Iron Dragon's Mother, now aren't you?


Above: Tenth image. Tout finis!

Keesmaat’s Next Venture, Shitty Architecture Men, Mod Squad, Presto Problemo, Bench Press, and more in this debut edition.

Another Glass Box is a weekly roundup of urban design news in Toronto (and occasionally beyond), in bite-size pieces. It’s curated by Dan Seljak, who’s done marketing and communications work for architecture and construction companies for the last seven years—and who still loves this city enough to line up for brunch.  Content warning: some of the […]

The post Introducing: Another Glass Box, a new weekly architecture feature appeared first on Torontoist.

Mayoral foibles, Google's urban charm offensive, finalists for George Brown's new wood building, and how many avocado toasts will you need to give up?

1 Please don’t poke the mayor – Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson found himself criticized in light of calling George Bemi’s award-winning Ottawa Library a “Stalin-ist bunker”. Watson’s rebuke wasn’t so elegant, but the following debate explored how contemporary ideas of wellness and accessibility requires real investment in restoration and renovation. Here in Toronto, Mayor John […]

The post Another Glass Box: The Stalinist “Bunker” Edition appeared first on Torontoist.

 This time I started earlier in the day while the little chap was watching TV,  rather than nod off, I thought I would activate and tackle those projects that have been waiting to be completed. The ECW regiments were long over due, time to get the Flock box out again.


 As I want these units to be nice and quick and not too taxing, I’m going for a few layers of flock to base them. Dark earth, light earth, 2mm static grass then a longer mix of 4/6mm static grass. Maybe some flower tufts thrown in here and there too. Nice and quick with no painting going on.

Experimenting with different techniques with this second batch. The strong tone brown is quite dark so is great for clothes but I feel some areas of the mini need a stronger contrast. So with this second group I gave their muskets a wash of black. Also their equipment is very dark too so while I had the ink on the brush I tried on their blue uniforms and a little on their faces. Watching a lot of references and from my own re-enactments, I know the black power gets all over the face with biting cartridges etc, so a bit of black contrast on the face wouldn’t go a miss.

This extra shade on the face did bring out the expressions and characters of the figures a lot more. Again, really quick to do and gave another level of detail to the mini. I will compare the two batches at the end and see which I prefer.

I’m finding that painting them in little strips of five or six minis is actually really fun and gives a much more instant and rewarding experience.

As I paint these guys I try to use the brush in such a way that I leave areas of black undercoat still showing in the recesses. This should help the should help the shading later with the brown tone.

There is one more technique I would like to try on a third batch, using two tones of Army Painter at the same time. A black Dark tone for the equipment/uniform areas and a Strong tone for the trousers etc.

Backlinks are one of the keys when it comes to how to promote your website. More backlinks equals more traffic to your website, and more traffic to your website equals better search engine results which equal even more traffic to your website….so you can never have enough backlinks.

One of the ways to get people to notice your site is to comment on other blogs and websites. The benefits of leaving good comments are that you not only get to add your two cents about a topic, you can also gain valuable links pointing to your site. Sounds easy right, and for the most part it is, but when selecting blogs or websites to comment on you need to consider some things. First try to find sites related to your niche, while you can comment on any site you want you stand a better chance of getting traffic from that site if it’s a related site. You also want these sites if possible to be on the number one page of Google for keywords you’re trying to rank for

1. Coronavirus restrictions to lift in NSW from Friday, but will not be following all National Cabinet measures  ABC News
2. Berejiklian's roadmap to freedom in NSW  Sydney Morning Herald
3. Mother's Day state by state: What can and can't you do?  The Canberra Times
4. Permission to mingle: NSW will ease lockdown laws on Friday  Daily Telegraph
5. NSW to ease lockdown restrictions from Friday  The Age
6. View Full coverage on Google News

I mentioned a couple weeks ago that it’s always a good idea to pick colors you enjoy embroidering with. If …

DiversityJobs recently analyzed race, gender, and LGBTQ+ wage gaps. We now dive into ageism in the workplace along with age-related wage gaps and find that – compared with similarly-qualified men – women experience pay disparity that increases with age. Retirement is tricky these days. You might be ready to retire at 65 and have the […]

The post Is the “age wage gap” just the “gender wage gap” by another name? appeared first on DiversityJobs.com.

According to a new report. READ MORE...

Dear all, It gives me untold amounts of pleasure to announce that the Letters of Note website has been given its first facelift since I naively launched it in 2009 using a bog-standard Blogger template. I would like to thank, profusely but from a very safe distance, the patient team of wizards over at Automattic

Home not Housing was one of five Scottish Universities Insight Institute programmes on Wellbeing. A set of ideas workshops explored the concept of ‘home’ from the perspectives of various academic disciplines – housing, planning, social work, healthcare – in order to develop a common vocabulary that will better inform policies relating to house-building, home-working, home-care and general place liveability. This blog records the discussions and findings of the workshops.

PotterCast is back for episode 248! LeakyCon major announcements! What did you think of the Chamber of Secrets update to Pottermore? LeakyNews roundup includes chat on the new Spiderman as well as Legend of Korra!

 

Episode 248 — Starkid or not a Starkid

Find the latest episode and explore PotterCast interviews, discussions and more at PotterCast.com

Visit the-leaky-cauldron.org for the latest and greatest from Harry Potter's Wizard World.

The PotterCast crew gets into it on the Fantastic Beasts extra scenes (part 1)...

- Leta and the Case of Did No One Realize This Was a Different Baby?

- Dumbledore's lumbago

- Is It A Dumbledore Part Sixty Six Thousand

...and a lot more!

Edited by: Adam Molina

Associate Producer: Kylie Madden

From an email from Paul Foster: From my perch, there are two primary reasons the right doesn’t more passionately oppose child abuse. The first has to do with parents’ rights. The general conservative view of the child welfare system is of a group of liberal ladies who think they know better than parents and who […]

The post Why is child abuse not opposed more passionately on the Right appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

There is much to fear, especially for minority and young voters, with a switch to all-mail voting — unless our system is fixed. Palast and Fox discuss the challenges our democracy faces during the coronavirus pandemic and what we need to do to

The post Palast on Staying Home with Josh Fox: Let voters choose the politicians not other way around appeared first on Greg Palast.

I suppose I really don't. It's a horrible situation and even the supposed "good guys" at the federal level, who don't run things entirely but who aren't entirely powerless, have shown no signs of having any sense of the catastrophe that is unfolding. "No one" panics unless stonks are tanking, and the Fed is making sure that doesn't happen.

As long as "the market" is happy, rich people are happy, "everybody" is happy.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Microsoft-Xbox-One-X-1TB-Black-Console-as-is-for-repair-or-parts-only/264227168298

 

YMMV obviously--I ordered two of these a month ago and they have been running fine for me.  All I had to do was reinstall the newest system update and they have both been fine with no issues.  One system's issue noted was "freezes" and the other was "no video". 

 

It says he has only 2 in stock, but I bought two a while back and the listing has remained active for the entire time with stock available, so he probably leaves the number low to keep demand going. This is probably a bulk buyer who doesn't extensively troubleshoot the systems.  I am not affiliated with the seller.  Cosmetically, the systems are nice enough to trade in without taking a refurb fee when stores re-open for business.