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Stravito helps Delta democratize insights and supercharge its research potential

The Stravito enterprise insights platform has enabled Delta to democratize its insights and maximize its research potential, improving the flying experience for customers and employees alike




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Agentic AI?So hot right now!

We are in the earliest stages of Agentic AI, and, much like the early days of RPA and GenAI, there's a lot of excitement but also a lot of uncertainty. While the potential benefits are enormous? streamlined operations, lower costs, fewer human errors?there are equally important concerns about job displacement, bias in AI decision making, and a lack of transparency in how these systems operate.




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Conversational Agents and AI Transformation: Q&A with Rob Ryan, Head of Business Value and Thought Leadership, Workgrid

AI adoption as a whole is very fragmented depending on the organization, depending on the market business vertical. The real game changer of AI is embedding into those deeper systems of operations, not just surface level use cases of generate a blog, generate news. AI should be evolving with your organization, your culture, and your appetite for risk. That's where Workgrid certainly comes in. Workgrid's platform is built to meet you wherever you happen to be on that journey.




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The Key to Ultimate Weight Loss

In response to my recent success story I’ve been getting a lot of questions about exactly what I’m doing.  What is the Ultimate Weight Loss Program and how do I get started?  The “program”, as I usually refer to it, was originally taught as a multi-day seminar in-person by Chef AJ and John Pierre in Los […]



  • Health and Wellness

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Technical Lighting Artist: Xbox Game Studios

Turn 10 Studios has an exciting opportunity for a technical lighting artist to work alongside the team responsible for creating the top-selling and critically acclaimed Forza Motorsport franchise. A technical lighting artist is a key production conduit between our content lighting artists and our rendering engineers. We are looking for a passionate team member who will work closely with those two teams to help us build cutting-edge visuals that are driven through real-time graphics and technologies that lead our industry. This is an important role that provides the ideal candidate with an opportunity to be responsible for the technical implementation of lighting techniques to help us create a state-of-the-art product   Responsibilities Implement real-time game lighting using a variety of lighting techniques (pre-baked, dynamic real-time, light probe transfer / PRT) Primary support agent for the content team members; support for all core production lighting tasks from pre-production to final polish Lead the development of lighting tools and workflow in collaboration with lighting lead and engineering teams Continuously assess and clearly communicate potential concerns and blockers with engineering, tools and other development teams Work with engineering and tools team to optimize for scalable performance, simplify lighting workflows while still pushing the boundaries of visual quality Collaborate with a mix of production disciplines throughout the studio to (Tools, Gameplay, Design, Concept, VFX, and Environment) to collaboratively help develop areas of our game from early prototype, through to final polish and optimization Help to build our internal technical arts community by encouraging artistic development, showcasing workflows, artistic techniques, providing quality feedback, and mentoring other artists on the team Actively improve skillset by staying on top of industry trends and techniques, new software, and product evaluation Qualifications  Should have 3-5 years of professional experience in a lighting/look development role in games Experience with physically based lighting and shading strategies is required Experience with Autodesk 3DS Max required, other modeling packages also desired. Experience working with lighting elements, emissives, materials, shaders, and luminance values in a game environment required Experience with core applications such as Lightroom, Resolve, Photoshop, Substance Designer, Unreal Engine is highly preferred Experience with offline renderers such as V-Ray, MentalRay, Blender, or Renderman required Demo reel/portfolio must demonstrate a firm understanding of lighting and color theory Must be responsive to deadlines and work well under pressure Demo reel should include samples of work and an exact breakdown of your specific contribution to the material submitted along with resume featuring references.   Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances.  We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.




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On Kicking Ass and Using the Right Measuring Stick

Not only is it that time of year again (the one where we reflect on all the things we’ve done, and all the things we hope to do, while simultaneously being bombarded with “new year, new you” messaging, which is all just bullshit trying to get people to buy whatever weight-loss program/tea/diet crap is hip […]



  • On Kicking Ass
  • Stories about Telling Stories

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3M misconduct regarding knowledge of “forever chemicals”: As is so often the case, the problem was in open sight for a long time before anything was done

Horrifying story here from Sharon Lerner how chemical products company 3M (which has successfully branded itself as the cuddly people behind Post-it notes) polluted the world’s water supply and covered it up for decades. It features several issues we’ve discussed … Continue reading




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This one might possibly be interesting.

Bert Gunter points to this news article by Jeffrey Brainard that reports: Careful scientists know to acknowledge uncertainty in the findings and conclusions of their papers. But in one leading journal, the frequency of hedging words such as “might” and … Continue reading




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What if the polls are right? (some scatterplots, and some comparisons to vote swings in past decades)

There’s a lot of talk about how the polls can go wrong. Fair enough—I wrote an article a few years ago on failure and success in political polling and election forecasting, and a few years before that, Julia Azari and … Continue reading




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Divi Plugin Highlight: Divi Carousel Module 2.0

Carousels are a great way to interactivity to your website. With the Divi Carousel Module 2.0 plugin, you can create carousels for just about any type of content. Showcase client testimonials, images, logos, team members, and more with this intuitive tool. Read on to learn about its features, how to use it, and what it […]

The post Divi Plugin Highlight: Divi Carousel Module 2.0 appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.




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Supreme Court Clarifies Carrier's Rights, Obligations to Collect on Subrogation Lien

The Nevada Supreme Court overturned its own precedent and ruled that an insurance carrier does not need to intervene or otherwise participate in a worker’s third-party claim to recover on…




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Injury Claims Increase Slightly for Third Year

The total number of reported injuries increased for a third consecutive year in 2023, according to the latest annual statistical report published by the Nebraska Workers’ Compensation Court. The WCC said…




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The Decimal Point Is 150 Years Older than Historians Thought

The origin of the decimal point, a powerful calculation tool, has been traced back to a mathematician who lived during the Italian Renaissance




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Injured Firefighter Not Entitled to Reinstatement of Benefits

The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania ruled that an injured firefighter was not entitled to reinstatement of his benefits. Case: Marinack v. City of Pittsburgh (WCAB), City of Pittsburgh v. Marinack (WCAB),…




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Worker Gets PTD Benefits After Symptoms Shift From Left Side of Body to Right

The Iowa Court of Appeals upheld an award of permanent total disability benefits for a worker who experienced issues on his left side after a back injury before symptoms shifted to…




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Firefighter's Aortic Aneurysm Constitutes Presumptively Compensable Heart Disease

The Virginia Court of Appeals upheld a determination that a firefighter with an aortic aneurysm had presumptively occupational heart disease. Case: Hanover County v. Moore, No. 0715-23-2, 07/09/2024, unpublished. Facts: Scott Moore…




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Injured Flight Paramedic Fails to Prove Entitlement to Additional Awards

The Virginia Court of Appeals upheld benefit awards of closed periods for an injured paramedic, finding that she failed to prove her entitlement to additional compensation. Case: Martinka v. PHI Group Inc.,…




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DWC Raises Discount Rate Slightly

The Texas Division of Workers’ Compensation announced that any interest or discount rates used in the third fiscal quarter must be 8.57%, up from the 8.55% rate used for the…




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Court Overturns Jury Award to Flight Attendant for COVID-19 Infection

The Washington Court of Appeals overturned a jury verdict finding that a flight attendant was entitled to benefits for her COVID-19 infection, since the jury had been erroneously instructed on…




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Work Comp Matters - Free Weekly Podcast - Episode 77: Fighting Fraud

"Work Comp Matters" - the central location for all your workers' compensation, employment and labor law matters. Steve Appell hosts this weekly podcast from sunny southern California - presenting some…




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L&I: Felony Charges Filed After Claimant Seen Lifting Weights at Gym

A worker collecting benefits for a back injury is facing fraud charges after he was reportedly observed lifting weights at a gym that exceeded the five-pound restriction his physician imposed,…




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Cancer-Stricken Firefighter Gets PPD Award

An Ohio appellate court upheld an award of permanent partial disability benefits for a cancer-stricken firefighter. Case: State ex rel. City of Cincinnati v. Industrial Commission, No. 23AP-332, 10/17/2024, published. Facts: Michael…




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Injured Firefighter Successfully Challenges Reduction in Benefits

A Louisiana appellate court ruled that an injured firefighter’s benefits were wrongly reduced and that he was entitled to full reinstatement, plus an award of penalties and attorney fees. Case: Prevost…




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Analysis found weight-loss surgery may help people with obesity manage high blood pressure

Research Highlights: In an analysis of 18 randomized clinical trials, people with obesity and high blood pressure who underwent bariatric (weight-loss) surgery were almost three times more likely to achieve blood pressure remission, defined as...





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Ottawa Lumiere Festival of Lights – Full Camera Skills Needed


The Ottawa annual Lumiere Festival of Lights is not just a wonderful events for kids and spectators it's also a great chance to get some interesting and new photos for your collection.

 ISO 400; f6.3; 13 sec; -0.67ev; 123mm; tripod mounted; Nikon D300

This is my 3rd time attending this event and each and every time I go there is something new to see. The festival is all about light and for this event it means candle power. There are activities for kids in the leading-up week where they make wonderful colorful paper mache objects that have holders inside to take those small candles in metal cans. These candles go inside the object and are lit at dusk. This creates a wonderful glow emanating for the colorful paper mache objects.

ISO 2,500 f5.6; 1 sec;  48mm

Hundreds of these lit lanterns in the shape of many different forms from faces to animals line the many paths around New Edinburgh park in Ottawa.

For the photographer it's visually stunning but also provides many photographic challenges in order to capture the event as the night unfolds.

When you first arrive around 7:30pm, you are at the golden hour of light and normal settings gets most of these shots.  You may need a bit of fill light from your flash and here an attached strobe flash is necessary to get just enough light to fill area and the ability to reduce the exposure (-ev) so as to not over power the ambient light.  See image of man on stilts below.


 
ISO 200; f5.6; 1/60 sec; 40mm; Flash -1ev

With hundreds of kids moving around and depending on their activity in front of you, a long exposure shot may create interesting photo image. The children in the image below are playing a large chess game. I wanted to show motion blur to create effect of action within the photo.

ISO 80; f25; 3 sec; 32mm

As dusk starts to envelope a more  stronger flash is necessary to freeze motion and completely fill subject as with the Tango dancer.


ISO 200; f5.6; 1/60 sec; 100mm; Flash

There are other areas like the lit swans in the river where flash won't work and a long exposure is needed to amplify available light to avoid the noise of higher ISOs. But when there is some wind movement then you will need the higher ISOs as in the photo below. In these photos it's all about the soft glow of candle power.

ISO 2,500; f5.6; 0.3 sec;  -0.3ev; 190mm; tripod mounted



ISO 2,500; f5.6; 2 sec; -1ev; 28mm; tripod mounted

But a near full darkness only longer exposure times and a tripod will get you those interesting photos like the girls with their glowing and twirling hula hoops.

The main event at this festival is a giant maze on a baseball diamond (to reduce chance of grass fire) covered with lunch paper bags filled with a little sand for stability and then a small candle. There are hundreds of children walking around this maze but with long exposures they do not show up in the photo because of their darkness. It's only when they are carrying candles or light that they show up as a moving white line.


ISO 1,000; f5.6; -1ev; 3sec; 1230mm; tripod mounted

At this event I did use my new Nikon D800e and I found it worked well. I did forget to bring my small flashlight to light the buttons on the camera.  Thankfully there remained mostly the same from the D300 and I could with some ease figure where to press to make changes to seetings.

In summary for an event like this you need to be able to switch between:
Aperture, Shutter priority and Manual mode – Flash will freeze when necessary.
Low and high ISOs.
Normal shutter speeds and long exposures of 2-3 seconds.
Flash power adjustments for fill light strengths.
Hand-held and tripod shooting.

I do hope you all get a chance to try events like these or a an amusement park or fair ground.

Niels Henriksen




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Understanding cardiac arrest and emergency response following Damar Hamlin’s collapse during Monday Night Football

DALLAS, January 3, 2023 —While playing in the Buffalo Bills - Cincinnati Bengals game on Monday Night Football on January 2, Bills player Damar Hamlin suffered a cardiac arrest after a hit and was administered CPR on the field before being transferred to...




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Lightheadedness may be a symptom of atrial fibrillation, cardiomyopathy or stroke




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Create a Dark Night Hunter Scene with Photoshop

In this tutorial I'll show you how to create a dark night hunter scene. You'll learn how to combine different stock images together, turn a scene from day to night, add a moonlight, create a dark atmosphere as well as make some special effects. Along with this tutorial, you'll also learn how to work with groups, manage your layers and pay attention to the details.




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Computer Nightmares: 7 Effective Tips for Hard Drive Recovery

Looking for ways to perform hard drive recovery? Many things can go wrong while you’re using your device. A power surge can fry it and damage the motherboard, an outage can delete hours of progress if you didn’t save your work, and overuse will cause it to go haywire in the long run. While these won’t cause any permanent damage or loss, a hard drive crash can prevent you from getting your data. What’s worse is that the simplest things like an OS update can cause your system to crash. While there’s nothing you can do to prevent it when

The post Computer Nightmares: 7 Effective Tips for Hard Drive Recovery appeared first on Photoshop Lady.




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Create a breakout game with HTML, CSS, and vanilla JavaScript

Let’s create a Breakout game using Vanilla JavaScript. In a Breakout game, the player uses a paddle to bounce a ball and hit bricks, removing the bricks one by one.




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WordPress is the right choice for Business websites or blog – Facts and Figures

About 3 years back we as a Web Design and Development Company, decided to chose WordPress as the only platform we will develop blog/websites on. The progress since then proves that our decision was right. Some of the achievements of WordPress as underlined by Matt in the recent Wordcamp in San Francisco and what it […]




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How to Choose the Right Home Design Software: Essential Tools for Real Estate Developers and Builders

Top home design software for real estate pros: explore features, benefits, and tips to streamline project planning, design, and budgeting.





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Duotone Neon Light Space Poster Photoshop Tutorial

Follow along with this photo compositing Photoshop tutorial to create a surreal space scene with a vibrant neon light effect. We’ll use assets from a free sample pack of the Ultimate Universe Creator product that’s exclusively available for Spoon Graphics viewers to download. I’ll show you how to compose the various space-themed graphics to make […]

The post Duotone Neon Light Space Poster Photoshop Tutorial appeared first on Spoon Graphics.




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New Amazing Deals from MightyDeals!

New Amazing Deals from MightyDeals!. This time it’s about three offers that would definitely be useful for any passionate web designer, or simply design enthusiasts.

View and Vote




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A Brain Injury Does Not Mean a Person Loses His Civil Rights

The judicial system is very reluctant to deprive any individual of the freedom to make important financial and personal decisions.




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How to Do Lighthouse Photography: A Practical Guide

There’s a dance of light and shadow you can’t quite grasp until you’ve seen a lighthouse cut through the fog. Mastering lighthouse photography means capturing that silent symphony between nature and human ingenuity, each photo telling its own epic tale.

I remember setting up my tripod on rocky shores, waiting for that perfect moment when the sun dips low enough to paint everything in gold. You’ll get why timing is crucial, how early morning or late afternoon gives your shots character with just the right color wash over stunning structures.

This journey will equip you with gear know-how—like picking out wide-angle lenses for grand scenes or telephoto ones for details—and dive into camera settings so those beams look as majestic in photos as they do slicing through ocean mist.

Capturing the Romance of Lighthouses Through Photography

Lighthouse photography captures more than just a structure; it seizes the tales of human ingenuity and nature’s raw beauty. These coastal sentinels have long stood against time, their beams slicing through fog and darkness, guiding sailors home.

The Allure of Coastal Sentinels

There’s something inherently romantic about lighthouses.

Continue reading How to Do Lighthouse Photography: A Practical Guide




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English language requirement tightened for Student and Temporary Graduate Visa Applicants

The Australian Government has recently announced new English language requirements for Student and Temporary Graduate visa applications. These changes are intended to ensure that international students and graduates have a solid command of the English language to successfully participate in academic and professional settings in Australia. New English Language Requirements Under the updated visa application […]

The post English language requirement tightened for Student and Temporary Graduate Visa Applicants appeared first on Australian Visa Experts.





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Leaving Lightroom behind

As I stated in my Best of 2017 post, I didn’t get to take many photos this year – which also multiple times throughout the year made me think: why am I paying so much money for Lightroom for how […]




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Winterlichter Dec. 2022

Photos from my annual trip to see the christmas lights in the botanical gardens in frankfurt




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How (and why) I went from being a night owl to waking up at 5AM

I was born in the mid-80s, so I’m about as “90s kid” as you can possibly be. I grew up loving Nicktoons and TGIF, eating Dunkaroos and drinking Surge. I loved my SNES, but eventually became a Playstation kid. I may or may not have dreamed of being a Ninja Turtle. But when I was …

The post How (and why) I went from being a night owl to waking up at 5AM appeared first on Nathan Rice.




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12 thought provoking quotes to inspire gratitude and contentment

I love a good quote. There’s just something about finding a sentence or phrase that speaks directly to the part of your brain that needed convincing. So when I see a good quote, something that speaks to me or illuminates a concept that I needed to see more clearly, I take notice and try to …

The post 12 thought provoking quotes to inspire gratitude and contentment appeared first on Nathan Rice.







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How Generative AI Can Add Human Delight to Your Virtual Event

We just celebrated 24 years of Viget. That’s two dozen years! This year, our Spring TTT in celebration of “Viget24” was a virtual extravaganza. We’ve put on a lot of virtual events over the years. Some with really strong themes and swag bags; some that focus on simple, meaningful time together; and others that let us enjoy learning something new as a team. Regardless of the rest of the experience, a key component of all of our virtual events is joyachieved often through intentional levity. We think it’s important to laugh together! We see laughter as a way to expedite connection, and connection leads to rapport which makes us better at collaborating — and in turn leads to more quality products for our clients. 

Experimenting and iterating is a critical way we try to continually get delight right. We’re pretty pleased with one of our experiments from Viget24 that we called “Lovely Spring Day”.

A Lovely Spring Day

As we were brainstorming for this TTT, we thought about how to throw some joyful levity pizzazz into the pieces of our virtual events puzzle that have become pretty standard. How do we add lots of delight without adding lots of time to the action-packed schedule? We zeroed in on the virtual backgrounds we’ve been creating for every event — they add a layer of specialness. Of place. This isn’t any old virtual meeting. This is a TTT! 

A small collection of past event-specific virtual backgrounds

Another key consideration for our team is figuring out creative ways to tie in inspiration from our industry and our work. AI has been an obvious contender —  we’ve discussed it and tied it in to some extent for the past several TTTs. But this time, we wanted to see how we could use AI for delight — marrying it with virtual backgrounds felt obvious. And so, a ”Lovely Spring Day” was born. 

The TL;DR is that we generated custom virtual backgrounds for every Viget employee that encapsulates their “ideal spring day.” We then played a 15-minute guessing game where people tried to guess who the background “belonged to.” Then, people had access to the full folder of AI-generated virtual backgrounds to look through. Vigets could then choose the background that spoke to them most and set it as their background. 

Read on for more on how we put this together!

Pre-Event Survey

To support all of our TTTs, we send out thoughtful pre-event logistics surveys 2-3 weeks before the big day. The survey lets us know where folks are joining from (where can we send their activity + snack packages?) and gives folks a chance to provide input on how the People Team can help folks enjoy and be present for TTT. This time, we also snuck in three questions, just “for giggles.”

  • In one sentence, describe your ideal spring day.
  • List three things that spark joy.
  • What color do you think suits you best?

We did not share why we asked these questions. Sneaky, sneaky! When it’s low-key like this, the element of surprise is often a quick way to level up the delight.

Asking for a Friend

With rich data in hand about what makes people happy in spring, we were ready to generate the backgrounds. I was stoked! I’ve been experimenting with ChatGPT for some time, so it was fun to be able to use the DALL-E 3 side of OpenAI’s GPT-4 model

Who knew Prompt Engineering would be part of my role as a recruiter-who-helps-support-TTT-planning? I played around with a couple different prompts to generate these background images. Ultimately, my goal was to create backgrounds that were meaningfully different from one another but still felt good (i.e., something you might feasibly want to set as your virtual background and nothing freakily AI, like uncanny valley hands).

Here are the prompts I landed on that got me to our set of virtual backgrounds:

  • Please generate an image (dimensions of a virtual meeting background) that encapsulates the vibe of a day with [ BLANK ].
  • Please generate an image (dimensions of a virtual meeting background) that features [ BLANK ].

In the blanks, I wrote the things people included in their surveys. Those blanks were filled with everything ranging from dogs, cats, and friends to beverages, specific temperatures, yard games, carbohydrates, hammocks and more! Sometimes, I’d include a detail I knew about that person myself, even if it wasn’t in their survey. Yes, I occasionally editorialized for both clarity and whimsy! This was for delight purposes, but also helped serve my goal of having the backgrounds be “meaningfully different from one another.” It’s amazing how many people’s ideal spring day is as simple as having 1) moderate temperatures and 2) no pollen!

I generated 55 images. Throughout the process, DALL-E nailed it. I only needed to regenerate 2 or 3 images with clarifiers (and only because they included AI-specific outliers like disembodied hands). Huzzah!

Here are some of my favorites, along with their prompts in the captions. Can you guess who they belong to?

Please generate an image (dimensions of a virtual meeting background) that features an outdoor brewery/taproom in the appalachian mountains. There's a playground with kids in the very distance. In the foreground, frisbee, soccer, volleyball, etc. with friends and family.
Please generate an image that encapsulates the vibe of a day ending with an outdoor dinner with lights near an outdoor shower. There should be some hiking boots scattered about.
Please generate an image that features a nice hot bath after a cold but sunny day, with a beautiful mug of green tea and a box of takeout that looks really good. The calendar shows April 25th.
Please generate an image that encapsulates the vibe of sitting outside in a nice purple adirondack chair with buc-ees paraphernalia around.
Please generate an image that encapsulates the vibe of a sunny, 65 degree day with a slight breeze at the ballpark watching a game. The image should feature cats, baseball, and art.
Please generate an image that encapsulates the vibe of being outside in a canoe along with carbs, bad jokes, and games (video OR board games).
Please generate an image that features endless mountain bike trails, a blue bike with a cup of coffee in the cupholder, and roaming cats.

IRL

Ok, so for the actual activity we had the images ready to go in a private Google Folder. I took twelve of the images and put them in a very simple deck. I shared my screen, introduced the activity, and invited people to guess who they think each image belonged to in Slack. It was so fun seeing people throw out guesses and then narrow in with any verbal hints I gave!

Each image took about a minute. Then, we shared access to the Google Folder, gave folks a couple minutes to choose a background that called to them (their own image or someone else’s), and set it as their background. It felt like a magical moment to witness people finding and resonating with their own image or delighting in the ridiculousness of their coworkers’. We saved about 5 minutes for this piece, which felt right.

The whole Lovely Spring Day activity took just over 15 minutes! It was a perfect way to transition from a long meal break into our next grouping of content. And, we got to see the different backgrounds throughout the rest of the meeting.

Oh, the humanity!

I think this activity was successful for a couple of reasons.

1. People laughed! 

Color commentary in the #ttt Slack channel

2. People felt seen. Some of these backgrounds were incredibly on point. Some of that was due to key folks having well-documented interests and a Slack-Famous Dog. 

Laura Sweltz has a famous love of books and an incredibly iconic beagle named Phoebe.

But some of it was due to the People Team knowing about our people — our coworkers — beyond the sentence they wrote in. This uniquely human involvement helped me call an audible as needed and tweak prompts slightly to make the backgrounds feel even more relatable.

Steven, Carolyn, and Laura Sweltz felt seen.

3. We could commiserate about our eventual AI overlords. (Did you notice that I say “please” in my prompts?!) Listen, Viget has plenty of practical, healthily skeptical people who are dubious about AI. GenAI is not always a fun, lighthearted thing. But using it in a fun, lighthearted way to do something it’s really good at was a nice use case and thought-provoking exposure even for people who are not into it.

4. We could see where we all align, and where we differ! It was amazing to see just how many people love picnics, covet their caffeine, and appreciate a bike ride. It was also cool to see some unique folks who simply crave a rainy spring day, or some beloved Buc-ee’s. What a rich tapestry of individuals — literally!




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Motion Magic: Project Insights From My Viget Internship

When we open an app or website, we do so to accomplish a task or find information. A well-designed user experience ensures users can achieve their goals efficiently. But what keeps us engaged beyond basic functionality? What differentiates a mundane interface from an exciting one? In my opinion as an up and coming UI developer, one key element is motion.

During my summer internship at Viget, I had the opportunity to dive deep into the world of agency work. From getting the chance to contribute to client sites to participating in a hackathon and pursuing a personal project, I seriously leveled up my stack and gained valuable development experience. Not to mention the amount I learned from exceptional, dedicated mentorship and micro-classes on everything from React to SQL to business models. 

However, coming into the internship, I had the specific goal of learning how to add motion to my web projects. I walked in on day one with no idea where to start, and now I’m leaving my last week with a complex knowledge of Rive, canvas elements, JavaScript animation, GSAP, and more. Here’s how… 

Spinet

In this two week hackathon project, I worked alongside Faye and Paul, the Product Designer and App Developer interns, to create a spinning wheel name picker. During the first week, I took on branding and visual design work. 

I spent the second week implementing wireframes. Through this project I learned how to transform client specifications into design directions, a style guide, and ultimately, UI components.

For this app, the motion of the spinning wheel was critical to the experience. Initially, client feedback indicated that the spin felt too uniform. I adjusted the motion parameters by extending the slowdown time and changing the easing function from linear to cubic, which increased feelings of suspense at the end of the spin animation. 

To add a level of joy and celebration to the winner announcement popup at the end of a spin, I incorporated confetti animations. In doing so, I discovered the world of JavaScript animation libraries that make implementing animations as easy as simple as adding the script to my HTML and adjusting the timing and placement of the animation object. Finally, we had ultimately decided on a modern, clean-cut video game aesthetic for the branding, and pulled this in through inspired sound effects, the logo design, and a 3D button component with a click animation accomplished entirely through Tailwind. 

Luna chatbot

After the hackathon, I got the chance to work on a personal project of my choice: an AI mental health chatbot inspired by tools like Woebot and EarKick. I was motivated by the question of what could make conversational AI feel less intimidating and more empathetic. My answer was an AI support companion with an animated avatar to enhance feelings of emotional connection and understanding. 

To get started, I experimented with various chatbot APIs and found that the Llama3 model was the best at following system prompts and offered the most natural interactions. A huge part of this project was the chatbot’s expression animations. I surveyed several popular tools and found Rive was the best fit for this, offering intricate animation capabilities, easy web integration, and a state machine for managing overlapping states and complex transitions.

The first step of animating in Rive is to create a design. Luckily, Rive has a vibrant open-source community, and I learned a lot from examining and remixing community files. The second step was learning to create the animations themselves. This was my first time animating anything, but the concept of keyframes was relatively intuitive, and the UI reminded me of video editing software, like iMovie, I’d used in the past.

The third and most challenging step for me was making all the animations work together in a state machine. 

This is the logic that connects animations together, taking input values that determine when to transition between states. Getting smooth animations between emotional states required a lot of rewiring and experimenting. Finally, embedding the Rive file in my project and linking the emotion data from API responses to the animation inputs was relatively straightforward using vanilla JavaScript. 

In conclusion

Animations, whether simple or complex, add a layer of interactivity and visual interest to digital products. Over a short 10 weeks, my internship projects allowed me to explore UI development, modern animation tools, and motion using CSS and JavaScript.

If you’re interested in bringing ideas to life and sparking joy through motion design, then diving into a passion project, seeking inspiration from the community, and exploring tools like Rive and GSAP will definitely kickstart your journey!



  • Code
  • Internships and Apprenticeships

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Some Thoughts after a Major Ruby on Rails Upgrade

For the past few weeks, I've been upgrading an older, fairly large Ruby on Rails app from Rails 5.2 to Rails 7.1 and from Ruby 2.7 to Ruby 3.3. During this time, I have also made the switch from Webpacker to Vite for asset bundling and made various JS and CSS upgrades to go along with that change. Here are a few takeaways from the experience.

Upgrade Regularly #

First, I know I am probably preaching to the choir with this one, but just upgrading your tech as you go and whenever you can is great. It prevents you from being in the position that I was in–having to make such a big jump all in one go. It also makes sure you keep getting security upgrades, and more security is never a bad thing. If you are up for it, you can even automate the process like GitHub does for their Rails upgrades or by using something like Dependabot for notifying you on when to upgrade dependencies.

Commit Often #

This is good advice for any project, but I think it is specifically good when working through issues that arise from upgrading. Whenever I have done a larger upgrade, there’s always at least one tricky issue that takes time to diagnose. This leads to me experimenting and trying a few different things before I figure out the actual fix. Committing often allows me to reset back away from these false paths whenever I decide to go down a new one. But I could also commit these false paths if I'm stuck, store them away in a separate branch, and come back to them later if I feel like an approach is worth a second look.

Leave Code Comments #

If you have a particularly confusing piece of code where its purpose or function is unclear, leave a comment. This is another piece of advice that is relevant at any time, but I found those comments to be extra helpful during this latest round of upgrades. There were several instances of code that had not been touched in years (and never touched by me) causing errors after upgrading the underlying tech. Some of these were well commented, which made it much easier to understand their purpose and decide how to fix them—or even whether to keep them. On the flip side, there were some pieces of code that were not well documented, which made fixing the errors much harder.

Avoid Fancy Code #

As somewhat of an alternative to the code comments, you can also just avoid fancier code. Try seeing if any code that is fairly complex can be simplified into something a bit easier to understand. Also, you want to avoid calling any private APIs that might change out from under you during your upgrade process which can lead to all sorts of weird bugs and behavior. I'm not saying do this completely in place of relevant comments, but simplifying where you can will somewhat cut back the need for them.

Be Selective with Dependencies #

When upgrading a massive Rails app and the Javascript associated with said app, you are often going to have to upgrade some of your dependencies as well. The more of these you have to upgrade, the higher chance you have of breaking something, so it is important to be selective when choosing these dependencies. During these upgrades, I ran into several issues caused by a dependency that really was not doing much for us in the grand scheme of things, but was causing more than its fair share of issues. If you want to read more about how to go about choosing dependencies, feel free to reference my colleague Sol's article on the subject.

The End #

I don't think these insights are particularly original or profound, but hopefully they give you something to think about as you make major upgrades on your own app or as you think ahead to future upgrades.



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