Although on Facebook, social media, and in movies I see the act of gratitude and a display on intense and meaningful family love, I rarely experience this in real life or hear about it from my clients. The holidays can be fun or uneventful, but more often than not feelings that have been lingering under the rug for years can be brought to the surface with one passive aggressive comment or judging attitude. Even if it's not super dramatic, most people seem to have difficulty finding and practicing gratitude after holiday get togethers and family time.
How much of this is because of our attitude going into the event? I think we tend to set ourselves up to experience drama or ill feelings towards a family member by thinking too much about it or getting mentally ready days before the event. We create a self fulfilling prophecy by making predictions about what will happen and how terrible it will be. Then it doesn't really matter what mom's attitude is or how dad asks a question, we read it as negative and respond negatively back. It really is important to go into situations with as few expectations as possible to prevent yourself from either seeing everything through a negative lens or setting yourself up for disappointment.
Sometimes it won't matter how positive you are or how strong your boundaries are, how compassionately you communicate or how clear you assert yourself – there will still be sensitivities and discomfort at times with family. Think about what you can control versus what's out of your control. You can't control distasteful questions or judgy eyes staring you down, but you can control your response and how you communicate a boundary around asking such questions or your feelings about being judged. And when you've done everything you can do, it still may not be enough to break through to your family or get the respect you've been waiting for. In those moments, all you can do is sit with the discomfort and flip the script.
Flipping the script is thinking about what you are able to gain from these experiences and how it can help you become a better person. For example, maybe you didn't realize there was a sensitivity or shame attached to a certain issue, and your aunts invasive questions have allowed that feeling to be brought to the surface so now you can face it and learn to deal with it. That's something to be grateful for even though it's difficult in that moment. Maybe solidifying the idea that certain relationships will not change and you can now label them as toxic and work to get them out of your life. It could be that you've gained insights as to why you are the way you are, or you have opportunities to practice empathy and compassion (or self-compassion). If you allow it and are open to flipping the script, any interaction or moment no matter how horrible it feels at the time can become meaningful or helpful, and that is something to be extra grateful for.
If you are looking for someone to help you understand yourself better, help with conflict resolution with your partner, or need a listening ear in regards to infertility, postpartum depression and anxiety, new parenthood, or perfectionism, please know I am here for you. My practice is located in League City, Tx and I offer couples therapy, individual therapy, and online therapy. Call me for a free 15 minute phone consultation at (832) 827-3288 so we can talk more about how therapy works and determine if we are a good fit.
As the holidays approach, I can hear and feel the anxiety levels rising in my clients, friends, and family. The holidays can be a time for gratitude, family gatherings, parties, and my personal favorite, lots of good food. But the holidays are also a triggering time of the year for a lot of people. And the main thing I tend to hear about from my clients are those well-meaning, personal, cringe worthy questions that everyone in the family seems to bust out right before dinner.
With my specialty in infertility counseling, I hear about so many uncomfortable and unpleasant situations that start with questions about when they are having kids and why it hasn't happened yet, and worst of all whose fault it is. But honestly, I hear these stories from almost every single one of my clients, those going through divorce, couples having relationship struggles, new parents who are just happy to have showered today, people dealing with chronic illness, anyone going through something difficult and painful (so isn't that everyone really?). I often spend a few sessions preparing clients for holiday events and encourage my couples to come up with a code or agreed upon phrase that will signal to their partner they need extra support to get through an overwhelming situation. Notice I didn't say to avoid, escape, sugarcoat, or lie, which I've noticed people tend to do.
Why Do These Questions Bother You?
I also think it's important to ask yourself why these questions are bothersome, and why we have the desire to avoid them. I've been there myself too, frozen or immediately anxiety ridden when that hard question comes at me and I don't know how to answer it. It's pretty easy to put the blame on the question asker, because how dare they ask such an insensitive and invasive question? In reality, there's probably some truth to the idea that the other person isn't aware of your pain, doesn't have good boundaries, doesn't care about your feelings, or is completely aloof. I think it's imperative at that moment, you shift the focus from why or what the question is to yourself and what's going on for you. Try to lean into the pain that comes up, because it can be very damaging to you if you don't.
Typically, the difficult questions are asked, we aren't ready to talk about it, we feel anxious, and we shut down the conversation by saying "everything's fine", avoiding the question, changing the subject, or flat out lying. These can be effective strategies…in the short term. But when we do this, we shut down any opportunity to be vulnerable with ourselves and others, and we've begun the process of burying our emotions and building up guards to protect ourselves. This process can have major effects down the road, or even 30 minutes later if someone says the wrong thing at dinner and there's an explosion or misplaced anger (this one happened to me, I'll write about that another time).
What I've found helps clients the most is preparing for going into these events and having an understanding of what questions may be asked, and then thinking about how to respond using my mantra "Transparent but Vague". Don't bury or avoid or sugarcoat because that's not being clear or honest with yourself and enhances and feeds uncomfortable emotions such as guilt and shame. Instead find ways to be transparent and forthcoming about how you're feeling. For example, if you're undergoing infertility treatments, it's ok to say you're having difficulty getting pregnant or you're struggling with how hard the process has been. If you're having relationship troubles you can be honest that things have been rough and you're working hard to repair the relationship. You can say you're having trouble figuring out how to take care of yourself and that you've trying to focus on discovering what you need and that's why you've pulled back, but that you appreciate the support. I hope you'll notice that these examples are very simple, short, and really to the point of your pain instead of long, drawn out, and beating around the bush of what's actually going on.
So here comes the "vague" part. You don't have to, nor do you need to in my opinion, give everyone all the nitty gritty details of what you're going through at Thanksgiving dinner or a Christmas cocktail party. Spending time and energy describing every appointment, all the medical treatments, every divorce proceeding, or detailing a fight you had yesterday is not going to put you in the best place, it's not setting up the other person for success in providing support, and you're at risk to be misunderstood and not validated. When we feel like the other person doesn't understand us or doesn't give our emotions any consideration or value, it's easy to put the blame on someone else and redirect all the feelings we don't actually want to experience and place them on the person standing in front of us who is saying all the wrong things. It's truly a distraction from experiencing and processing our own feelings, again shutting down vulnerability and keeping you stuck.
You are not obligated to give details, and no one is entitled to knowing any information you're not ready or willing to share. You owe no explanation, you can voice a need, you do not have to engage right at that moment. I'm not saying to never have in depth conversations or dive deeply into these issues, sometimes we need to vent and go through the details. I'm just saying Thanksgiving dinner with your aunt may not be the best place and time to do that and preparing for that and using this mantra can help you get through these anxiety provoking situations easier.
"It's been more difficult than we expected to get pregnant and that's been hard on us, but we're starting the process to figure things out." Transparent but vague.
"There's been unexpected struggles since I got divorced and I don't always know how to deal with it, but I'm working on reaching out to people for support when I need it." Transparent but vague.
"We've been dealing with a lot lately and this is a difficult season in our marriage. We've seen we have to learn to be more open with each other." Transparent but vague.
"I'm struggling with being a new mom. I didn't know it would be this hard." Transparent but vague.
"I need help. I'm not ready to talk about it right now, but I'd love to have lunch next week and tell you more about it then." Transparent but vague.
Be honest. Be kind. Be transparent. Be vague. It's all ok, and you will be too.
If you're struggling with relationship issues, conflict, infertility, postpartum depression/anxiety, becoming new parents, perfectionism, or not feeling good enough, I'm here to help. I love working with clients not only to get through difficult moments in time, like the holidays, but to address all the underlying stuff that contributes to your pain. I want to help you get past it so you can feel better and live a more meaningful life. My office is located in League City and I also provide online therapy in the State of Texas. Give me a call at (832) 827-3288 for a free 15 minute phone consultation to see if we're a good fit.
In these initial weeks following Hurricane Harvey, many people are trying to figure out what our new normal will be. Some are headed back to work, some are helping with clean up and recovery, some are still in the midst of dealing with their devastation. I think most of us are left with the question, "what the hell do we do now?"
From what I've heard, seen, and been involved with, people have jumped into problem solving, fixing, and helping mode. Over the last week homes have been stripped, laundry done by the masses, donations made, and volunteer hours served. Everyone has been doing what they could to help. People with damage have been calling insurance companies, having cars picked up, finding places to stay, and picking up the pieces of their lives. Slowly our city is returning somewhat to normal operations. Most businesses are open and people are back at work talking about their experiences. It's a lot to process.
How do we move forward from such a traumatic event? The good news is that most people - and I mean the vast majority - will recover from this disaster, even those directly affected. People are inherently resilient and able to utilize their strengths and coping skills to get through such an event. We know this to be true from research, and so I've been exploring the idea of getting back to basics. Right now the best way to help yourself and others move forward is to access simple ways to recover so you can reset your mind, body, and spirit.
After all, this recovery process will take a long time. We cannot expect that anyone could keep up this pace of triaged care and resources for the long haul. I'm sure you've heard, it's a marathon and not a sprint, so we need to train and prep now for the journey we're going on.
So what does back to basics practically look like?
Watch my video here that discusses why you've been experiencing sleep disturbance in the last couple of weeks and maybe for the next few weeks. It's fascinating stuff and there are some good tips to get you back into regular sleep patterns so your brain and body can reset.
We need to flush out our stress hormones and chemicals that have backed up in our system from the last couple of weeks, and replenish our organs back to optimal functioning. Being in survival mode for so many days takes a toll on the nervous system.
I think you get where this is going...restoring our bodies and brains to the best possible condition and functioning will reset everything.
Yes, again, to get the stress chemicals out of the body but also to bring about more balance. Many people got stuck inside their homes and experienced a higher than normal amount of worrying and anxiety lately. This takes place in the thinking part of our brain, and you can alleviate some of those symptoms by activating the moving part of the brain, allowing the different parts of the brain to have balance and work together giving you access to more of your coping skills. Cool huh?
These substances all create a boost those chemicals that are keeping your body in overdrive. I know you think they're helping, but they're actually prolonging your sleep and appetite disturbance.
This will help your body know what to anticipate and prepare your organs and brain for the activity you are going to complete. Did you know if you go to the gym at the same time on specific days that your body starts to produce enzymes and chemicals that prepare the body and enhance your work out? Same concept here as your mind and body are recovering.
Remember that most people will return to normal functioning in a relatively short amount of time and that the reactions you are experiencing now are most likely normal. Everyone experiences situations and reacts differently, and that's ok. You don't need to worry if you experience it one way and your friend is having a different response. The range of normal reactions is huge! The more you worry, the longer it will take to see the symptoms go away. Give yourself time and permission to react however you are naturally, and be patient and mindful with what you need.
For additional ideas, support, or to have a free 15-minute phone consult with me, call (832) 827-3288. I'd love to hear from you and explore together how I can help. I'm a Marriage and Family Therapist in the Clear Lake area of Houston, Texas. I offer couples therapy, individual counseling, online sessions, and in home support.
Have you considered yourself or your mental health during the holidays? It's such a great time of the year, but it can be stressful and bring up painful and uncomfortable emotions as well. I'll give you 9 concrete strategies for managing your stress levels and finding ways to enjoy this time.
You can probably list a million things you love about the holidays, and a million things that bring you down. It's normal to experience a mix of pleasant and uncomfortable emotions during the holiday season. How much avoiding are you doing, and how much are you missing what's important? I go through 3 easy steps you can take to make the absolute most of your holiday.
What if you can't think of a single thing to put on your gratitude list this year? When you're going through something hard, being grateful can be draining and feel impossible. I explore the role of pain, gratitude, and numbing in my latest post, and how to make the most of these feelings as the holidays approach.
What I Learned About Therapy by Googling "How to Apply Lipstick"
Have you ever been afraid to ask a stupid question? If everyone else just knows how to do something, what does it mean about you that you don't know how to do it? And even more, what if it's something really simple? This week I'm diving into a personal experience of googling "how to apply lipstick" and diving into the lessons I learned about therapy from this experience. Asking for help can be hard, especially when it's something we feel like we should know. A couple of take aways from my experience, you are not alone (wait until you learn how many results came up from my google search), no one takes what you know and where you are in that process for granted, and gaining support is essential.
Have you ever asked your therapist if you're allowed to curse in therapy? Or apologized when you started crying? I encourage my clients to express themselves the way they need to in that moment. Anything else is guarded and gets in the way of therapy. In my latest post I talk about some other reasons this is important and why being your authentic self will help.
How Do I Know If Therapy is Working?
Ever wonder how you should be measuring progress in therapy? How will you know if therapy is working? What are the signs? After all, you don't want to be in therapy forever, so you need to know when it is working, when it's worked, and when it might be time to look at another therapist or treatment option. This post explores some things you will notice as a client if therapy is successful.
In part 1, I discussed common fears people have about going to therapy. In part 2, I'll talk about the 8 reasons to process and overcome those fears, and go to therapy anyway. It can make such an impact on your life. Do the benefits outweigh the risks for you?
I hear people tell me all about their fears of going to therapy and reasons why they haven't scheduled that first appointment. It's normal to be apprehensive about therapy, after all, it's a new experience and you'll be talking to a complete stranger about your secrets. In part one, I'll be discussing 4 common fears about going to therapy, and briefly introduce the 8 reasons you should do it anyway.
Have you started the process of looking for a therapist? You may think it doesn't matter who the person is, or that it's ok to just pick the first person that has appointments during times you're available. I will explain why it's important to find the right therapist for you, and offer tips about how to do that in this post. Hope you find it helpful.
Parents are always looking for ways to be better parents. Many are also coming up with goals/resolutions for the New Year. I discuss my experience over the past year and tell you the most important thing you need to know as a parent going into 2016. Happy New Years!
Unfortunately, tragedies and challenges are part of our lives. Many people lose hope in the face of difficult times. I would like to share a bit of a personal story about a recent event in my life and some ways to begin the healing process. There can't be a rainbow without a storm.
Do Therapists Have Perfect Lives?
I get asked often if my life and marriage are perfect because I'm a therapist. The short answer is definitely no. In this post I explore more about what it means to have a relationship with a therapist who is human, not perfect, and able to truly understand your pain.
Mental health professionals are often misunderstood and misrepresented in the media. Recently Jeb Bush's statements about higher education, specifically psychology majors, has led to the #thispsychmajor Twitter and Facebook campaign. In this post, I talk about different ways to enter the psychology field, various issues that therapists and counselors work with, and have quotes from therapist's from around the country explaining how they help people change their lives.
Have you ever felt like you and your partner were engaged in DEFCON 5 over what new couch to buy? What was that fight really about? And how do you normally argue with your partner? My guess is, it wasn't really about the couch at all.
Have you heard of self-compassion? In short, it's a way of understanding the human experience of pain and suffering, knowing that everyone suffers, and being compassion about your own inadequacies or short comings. For me, I feel like the language of self-compassion can be hard to connect with, but the ideas are so amazing! Here I break down some of the ideas in a real way that you can embrace.


A love to eat and drink was a good enough reason for John Lee to start his own restaurant in the middle of Sydney's Chinatown.
Since swinging the doors open in February, Masu Izakaya has been dishing up yakitori, with tsukune (chicken meatballs) being the specialty, and pouring a selection of imported boutique sake for Sydneysiders.
Lee said aside from seeing a gap in the Sydney food scene, which is evident by the Dixon Street affair of Chinese and Malaysian cuisine, he was always impressed by Japanese food.
"I just like the flavours; they keep it simple, they don't do too much, it's not too complex, and everything is always fresh. I think their cooking techniques are one of the best in the world, and the way they match ingredients is just amazing and it's stuff you never think of," he said.
At the same time, Lee, who has travelled a handful of times to Japan including for "research" purposes, has a fond appreciation for sake, with it being his drink of choice, because "it goes with everything".
"I find that with wine, for example, there is too much of 'you shouldn't have it with this' or 'you shouldn't have it with that'. There are just too many rules. But with sake, you're friends with everyone: You can eat it with salty stuff, raw stuff, grilled stuff, spicy stuff, and it's easy to drink," he said.
But Lee said he won't be pouring the popular sake, he's more interested in specialising in sake from boutique brewery companies, as an attempt to replicate the experience people would get in Japan.
"I'm not a very conventional guy and I think my restaurant is the same," he said.
While Lee is no chef, and admits to cooking very little – aside from dishes in the oven and stews because they're easy – he recruited chef Yujiro Kuremoto for the job in the kitchen after realising they both shared a common interest: Lee wanted a restaurant, and Kuremoto wanted to be his own boss.
Although opening up his own yakitori joint wasn't an overnight decision for Lee, rather it was an idea simmering for years. Lee said even his mum acknowledged that plans were going to see daylight.
I use to say I wanted to open up my own yakitori bar and sell lots of sake," he said.
Singaporean-born Lee grew up eating plenty of humble Singaporean street food, such as oyster omelette and curry puffs.
"Singapore is really a mix of food: Chinese, Malay, and Indian. But it's still very original because they don't tweak it. For example, the Chinese like to use the chilli the Indians use, but they use it with different ingredients. So growing up was a lot of quick, cheap, good, and tasty food," he said.
But of course nothing could ever beat mum's cooking, especially her version of popiah that uses bamboo shoots instead of turnip, Lee said. He recalled if there were any leftovers, it'd be frozen, and then later taken out and deep-fried.
"I miss my mum's popiah. If I have the choice to eat out or eat at home, I'd choose to eat at home," he said.
But upon discovering Japanese food, he came to realise how quite the opposite it was to Singaporean food. He said unlike the way Singaporeans eat where it's often one plate before you dash, Japanese are well paced where "you can take your time, eat, drink, and order a bit more".
As for what he has learned since opening his own restaurant, with a background in economics and as a co-owner of an import, export business in Taiwan, China, and Australia, Lee said the hospitality industry is completely different.
"This is totally new to me. I've learnt that if you're an employee you come into work, you get ready for the stuff in the kitchen, and you clock out. But here, when you're done cleaning, you check stock, order stock, and then we do schedules for next week, count pay. I went home quite early yesterday at 1 a.m.," he said.
But lessons like these won't dampen Lee's ambitions to open a second, third, and even fourth restaurant.
Lee sounds like a strong personality judging from the quotes. I think anyone with that sort of ambition and conviction has to be doing something worth a trip to the city. Love you work Aimee!


Hey whatever you're doing right now probably isn't nearly as cool as this, the first glimpse of the cast of The Lion King hanging out. So drop what you're doing and look at it real quick. And no, there's no Beyoncé, so you can stop screaming. But look: there's a Jon Favreau, a Seth Rogen, a Billy Eichner, and a Donald Glover, which gives you Lion King bingo anyway. Glover, who is voicing Simba, is even rocking a Donald Duck sweater, because all the coolest kids are Disney kids, okay? The photo was shared on Favreau's Twitter account Wednesday evening. It may even actually be a peek at the recording of "Hakuna Matata," since Rogen and Eichner are voicing Pumbaa and Timon respectively. But look, that's just a theory. A very, very, very exciting theory.


Become a chief marketing officer (CMO) that gets results and thrives in a time of ambiguity and uncertainty. Get guidance and tools to face the challenges of the modern marketing landscape, and win the hearts and minds of stakeholders. Marketing leadership expert Lisa Nirell starts this course by introducing the common hurdles that marketing leaders face in today's information-saturated world, where marketing departments aren't always given the budget they deserve. Lisa then introduces a toolkit that allows CMOs to plan and measure their impact in the role. She explains how the CMO works with the board and the C-suite, and provides tips to build influence and impact with other executives. Finally, Lisa shares the tried and true methods from super CMOs, and techniques for mapping out your future as a marketing leader.
- As a marketing leader, do you feel you're thriving, or surviving? The world around us is moving at breakneck speed. Uncertainty is at an all-time high, and technology is changing the way we live and work. How can you rise above the noise while staying focused and strategic? Hi, I'm Lisa Nirell. I'm the president of Energize Growth, a marketing and strategy consultancy. Companies such as Hilton, USA Today, and Google have hired me to help them accelerate growth in marketing innovation.
I've published books and written hundreds of articles on marketing and leadership topics. In this course, we'll talk about the hurdles facing modern CMOs. I'll give you specific guidance and tools on them. You'll also learn proven strategies to win the hearts and minds of your stakeholders. Finally, I'll give you a lens into what it takes to be a super CMO and design an exciting future as a marketing leader. Join me, and let's unleash your true marketing leadership potential.


On the farm, in the kitchen, around the table.
Taste the Sicilian landscape. At Case Vecchie, home to the Anna Tasca Lanza Cooking School, immerse yourself in typical Sicilian food traditions with our tailored cooking experiences. From one day to one week, inspire the senses by following flavors from field to fork, dirt to dish with our unique "arm-to-table" cooking approach.
See Sicily's food traditions through a new lens. Go beyond the plate and join us at Case Vecchie for exclusive workshops with a special twist. Yoga, photography, sketching, olive oil, tomato paste and more, all complemented by good food in a striking environment.
Unearth the true Sicilian food landscape with our educational programs. Both our signature ten-week winter Cook the Farm program and our fall weeklong seminar provide students with a comprehensive appreciation of food production that leads to a critical perspective on food, empowering awareness of self and surroundings in relation to food.


Welcome to Deep Journeys, dedicated to the ongoing conversations among Buddhism, Christianity and Depth Psychology.
Deep Journeys as a connecting metaphor for inner and outer processes of transformation arose at a time in my life when I embarked on two new adventures simultaneously: scuba diving and Zen practice. Just as scuba diving takes one into the depths of the ocean, so the practice of Zen meditation takes one into the depths of the self. My first Zen teacher, John Daido Loori, would constantly urge me to "go deeper, go deeper." In addition, I had often considered my work with patients in psychotherapy to be akin to diving into the water together and seeing just how deep into themselves and their own psyche a person was willing to go. That is why the schools of the unconscious, developed by Freud, Jung and their followers, are called Depth Psychology.
In its first incarnation, therefore, Deep Journeys was a retreat in which I would take people to the Florida Keys or the Caribbean and lead them in scuba diving, Zen meditation and group psychotherapy. The underwater experience became a way of learning about ocean and coral reef ecology, and thus became its own immediate experience of what Arne Naess termed Deep Ecology. Although I myself was motivated to scuba dive as a way of escaping life on the surface, I discovered an empty Budweiser beer can on one of my first dives, and realized that there is no escape, that "wherever you are, you can't leave yourself behind," and in the most literal sense, all things are connected. What we do with our garbage– internal as well as external—affects life above and below the surface everywhere.
In religions, this dimension is the realm of the transcendent, whether named God, Christ, Buddha, Allah or Vishnu. In psychology, the dimension of depth refers to the sub-conscious and unconscious as explored by Freud, Jung and their followers. By using the metaphor of depth, we find the underlying unity of all things, in contrast to the metaphor of height, which tends to lead to dualism. As applied to religions, to speak of their depth dimension is not only to point to the realm of the unconscious, but to the fact that for all religions–however they may construe the realm of the transcendent– their basis, origin and meaning comes from human experience. This does not by any means reduce religion to an individual person's private experience, nor to a phenomenon of collective consciousness or unconsciousness. It simply points to the fact that the many dimensions of reality are only known and experienced through us as living human beings.
Meanwhile, we are all on our own life journeys, reaching, walking, running, sometimes away from ourselves, sometimes to ourselves, stumbling, falling, and rising again.
Please feel free to respond to what you find here, either to me via email, or on Facebook under Deep Journeys.
May your life go well.


Multi-day & Extended Tours, The tour will depart in Fa'a'a to This tour ends in Fa'a'a, Tahiti so you will need to consider your onward journey.
ReturnsThis tour ends in Fa'a'a, Tahiti so you will need to consider your onward journey.
Locations: 4 Locations (Papeete, Moorea, Fare Hape, Teahupoo)Tour Length: 10 days / 9 nightsStart Day: Friday - lots of start dates still available for 2018 and well into 2021Finish Day: The tour will end Sunday in Papeete CityVolunteer Work: Ocean conservation and community developmentArrival Airport: Fa'a'a airport (PPT)Departure Airport: Fa'a'a airport (PPT)Group Size: Maximum 12Traveling Solo?: over 70% of those on our tours start off as solo travelersLet our experienced, local guides take you on an amazing off-the-beaten-track adventure through Tahiti. On the way you'll be seeing 4 different locations with breathtaking beaches, swim with sharks and rays and experience some of the local culture in Fare Hape!
Flights to/from the start point.


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Edraw BCG Matrix maker is used to help visually represent business products' priorities portfolio of your company's products and decide which product will do best depending on the product positioning. It's widely used in brand marketing, product and strategic management and portfolio analysis. The four quadrants in the Matrix represent four kinds of business units respectively, which is illustrated below.
Cash Cow - A mature unit which has a large market share, growing slowly. It needs little investment but generates cash which can be used in other units.
Star - A unit with large market share, growing fast, requires investment to maintain its lead. A star may become a cash cow when it becomes mature if managed successfully.
Question Marks - This unit has low market share compared with competitors, but it is doing business in high-growth market. It is also called Problem Child vividly. This market is growing with opportunities as well as risk involved with investing, so these businesses are called question marks. Question Marks require continuous investment and improvement for their development and growth.
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Since ending its casino monopoly, Macau has overtaken Las Vegas as the gambling capital of the world. US casino operator Las Vegas Sands began the gold rush when it opened Sands Macao in 2004. Macau passed Las Vegas in 2006, the year Wynn Resorts opened the Special Administrative Region's first Las Vegas style resort. Barely half the size of Manhattan, Macau tallied gross gaming revenue of $45.1 billion last year, almost seven times that of the Las Vegas Strip.
Las Vegas Sands and Wynn get a far bigger chunk of their profits from Macau than Las Vegas. MGM Resorts International, which opened MGM Macau in 2007, makes more from that one property than from MGM Grand Las Vegas, Mandalay Bay and Bellagio, its top three Vegas moneymakers, combined. Macau has thrived largely thanks to Mainland Chinese players.
While Macau thrived, Las Vegas dived. Profits from Macau helped keep its American companies afloat as Las Vegas was hit hard by the 2008 Great Recession. Now Las Vegas is coming back, with key contributions from Chinese players at the tables and behind the scenes.
Las Vegas actively courts Chinese visitors. The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority has offices in Shanghai and Hong Kong. In 2012, the most recent year for which figures are available, 263,000 Chinese visitors came to Las Vegas, 39% more than the year before. Chinese New Year celebrations have become a Vegas staple. In January, Mainland China produced "Panda!" opened at The Palazzo, a LVS resort, and most Strip properties now include dining and entertainment aimed at Chinese visitors.
On the casino floor, baccarat, the preferred game for Chinese high rollers, has gone from a sideshow during the early 2000s to Nevada's top revenue producer among table games. Last year statewide baccarat revenue was $1.6 billion, or 37.5% of all table game revenue. The impact of baccarat is most pronounced on The Strip, which rakes in all but $7.5 million of statewide baccarat revenue, accounting for 45.2% of its table game revenue. In the first half of this year, baccarat on the Strip grew 14%, according to Morgan Stanley. Analysts say baccarat play is heavily concentrated at LVS, Wynn and MGM properties.
Though Macau and even Singapore, where LVS and Malaysia's Genting Group run the world's most profitable casino resorts largely thanks to spending by mainland Chinese, are easier to reach and more culturally attuned to them, Chinese players remain drawn to Las Vegas, Lam observes.
To serve the growing number of Chinese visitors, new Asian oriented resorts are being developed, breathing fresh life into the Strip with profits from booming gaming markets across the Pacific. Last year, Genting said it would spend up to $4 billion to complete Boyd Gaming's abandoned Echelon resort. Boyd stopped construction on the project in August 2008, and the rusting girders provided a graphic reminder that Las Vegas was one of the US regions hit hardest by the 2008 economic crisis. Genting plans to rebrand the property as Resorts World Las Vegas and create reproductions of China's Great Wall and Terra Cotta warriors. The company even hopes to convince Beijing to provide pandas.
In July, Australia's Crown Resorts, a partner in Melco Crown Entertainment that operates Macau's City of Dreams and Altira, spent $280 million to acquire a 34.5 acre (14 hectare) prime site on the Strip that had lain vacant since late 2007, when investors demolished the New Frontier Hotel then abandoned the project in the wake of the 2008 recession. Crown chairman James Packer, the son of legendary Vegas high roller Kerry Packer, shifted the family billions from media to gaming and has made Crown Australia's most successful casino company, largely by attracting Chinese VIPs. Crown aims to repeat the formula in Las Vegas.
Wealthy Chinese are also moving to the other side of the table, increasingly investing in Las Vegas casinos and other properties, often utilizing the US EB-5 visa program that grants residency for investments of $500,000 for job creation or in economically depressed areas, such as Las Vegas since 2008.
"The EB-5 program has transformed Las Vegas and many other destination cities into a gateway for hundreds of Chinese immigrants to get their foot in America's door," Global Market Advisors partner Andrew Klebanow says, noting that 85% of EB-5 investors are Chinese. "Some of the biggest Las Vegas developments over the past five years have tapped the EB-5 program for hundreds of millions of dollars, including $100 million from Chinese investors for the Downtown Grand and $150 million from Chinese and Thai investors in SLS Las Vegas." The $300 million Dynasty resort project says Chinese form the majority of 300 investors waiting to invest $500,000 in the project through the EB-5 program.
From every angle, Chinese money is making the neon in Vegas shine brighter again.


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A long weekend in Freetown
Posted on September 15, 2016 by Andy McFarlane
Freetown might seem an odd destination for a long weekend but it's certainly doable, as our friend just proved.
I picked up our old housemate Tim – or Topsy Tim, as the Flump named him (her first CBeebies in-joke) – from the SeaCoach terminal at 6am on Friday.
He'd enjoyed a trouble-free overnight flight until the passport officer stamped him in and then asked for money for a drink. Being a kindly soul, and having nothing smaller, Topsy handed over a fiver (Sterling), enough to fund a decent night out.
We aimed to show Tim as much of what Sierra Leone had to offer as is possible inside four days.
So after a quick breakfast at our place, we took to the mountain road to give him a taste of life here from the comfort of the passenger seat.
The route climbs away from the city through early Krio villages, skirts the rainforest – edges eaten away by deforestation – before meeting the stunning coastline.
All the gates, pillars and slabs you could wish for [Photo: T.Bowen]
En route, you pass Africa's oldest stone church and the village of Grafton – famed for spring water – where hawkers line the road flogging it in bottles. Next comes Waterloo, a hive of activity where timber, plastics and concrete products are piled high in roadside yards.
As usual, I got stuck behind a stationary poda-poda while negotiating the chaotic street market and then enraged the massed shoppers, vendors, motorists and police alike with my clumsy overtaking.
The road follows part of the old railway, on which trains once chugged at 15mph along 365km of narrow gauge track spanning the breadth of the country. These days, the station platform signs greet the arrival of road traffic to Hastings and Waterloo.
My favourite sight on this journey is a petrol station faithfully painted in the livery of British supermarket Asda. (Note National Lottery and Wall's ice cream boards) [Photo: T.Bowen]
We parked up at Kent beach, leaving the car in the care of willing minders, and caught the boat to our overnight stop at Banana Islands. About 20 minutes in to the half-hour journey, the little vessel's outboard motor started making odd noises, causing the captain to begin taking apart the plastic engine housing.
As we bobbed aimlessly, some distance from land, it struck me that this was Topsy's "Welcome to Africa" moment. He'd had it too easy until then.
There were a few other boats within frantic waving distance but we didn't need rescuing. The skipper diagnosed an oil shortage and simply adopted a gently-does-it approach to the rest of the journey, depositing us on the little beach in front of Dalton's Banana Guesthouse.
"Engine trouble? I'm off."
The three Banana Islands – named after their shape – make up an archipelago at the foot of the Western Peninsular. Fittingly for Tim, we were staying on the largest, Dublin (pron: Doo-blin), the namesake of his home county.
The island, a longstanding expat getaway, showed signs of decay. Gregory, the Greek owner of Daltons said Ebola had wiped out his staple market of young NGO workers seeking a budget base for beery weekends snorkelling or diving.
During the outbreak, demand changed. Emergency workers wanted luxury lodges and cocktails to de-stress. Now things are returning to normal, he says. However, a neighbouring high-end "glamping" establishment has gone bust, and the once highly-rated community-run bungalows lie empty and overgrown.
No doubt Greg's friendly but frank attitude – that if you want luxury you should pay more elsewhere – creates a hostel-type atmosphere that I really enjoyed. "Don't thank me now," he'd say, "you don't know what's going to go wrong tomorrow."
Not much of a looker but this room-mate snored less than the missus
The bungalows housed comfortable mattresses on concrete slabs, although ongoing renovations meant dingy lighting and sharing a shower with huge and shadowy creepy-crawlies. The food – served together with other guests – was delicious: fresh yellowfin in garlic sauce with pasta, or blue-boned grouper grilled with bread.
The locals seemed chilled out; not so desperate to sell you stuff as on the mainland. This laid-back vibe was doubtless helped by the quantity of pungent marijuana being smoked on its shores.
Dublin offers a small glimpse of Sierra Leone's history. A few wrought iron lamp-posts, left by 17th century Portuguese settlers, remain standing, while rusting cannons and a grand but overgrown graveyard are remnants of the Royal Navy's anti-slavery mission a couple of centuries later.
In between, the island was used as a sort of holding camp for slaves captured on the mainland before they were shipped across the Atlantic. We're told these country folk would have been so terrified of the sea that they'd board slave ships without a fight just to keep their feet dry.
An overgrown jungle path leads to the next island, Ricketts. But we were carrying a toddler where a machete was needed, so turned back to a lovely little beach known as Big Sands.
17th Century lamp-post, foreground, with 21st Century equivalent at rear
This would have been the perfect castaway beach, had the weather not churned up such a lot of seaweed. Oh, and had it not featured a naked man talking on his phone.
Still, the water was perfect for swimming and – for once – the Flump's enthusiasm for the sea was matched by our own.
After a little more than 24 hours of playful relaxation, with no shortage of boozing, we headed back to the mainland. We'd timed our beach visit well, as the weather turned on the way home.
Topsy and I sought sanctuary in one of our local bars, where things were warming up nicely as we arrived, including – sadly – our bottles of Guinness Foreign Extra.
To the uninitiated, this African-brewed version – popular, I supsect, due to previous dubious claims about "strength" tapping into the African psyche – weighs in at 7.5%. Tim declared Salone's version to taste "nothing like" its more famous Nigerian cousin. To me it was like a bizarre treacle-vodka cocktail, though I didn't let that deter me.
I was delighted when Thomas – our neighbour who I run with – joined us, meaning Tim got to enjoy some genuine no-strings craic with the locals. We also roped in Thomas to join Topsy's 20-mile run the next morning.
You can take the white boy out of Doo-blin…
His New York Marathon training plan* meant this was an immovable fixture on our itinerary. Rising at 6am after another boozy night proved a challenge but fortunately heavy rain woke me, meaning Tim and I hit the streets by half-past.
I'd mapped out a picturesque 10-mile route, intending to accompany Tim for one lap before leaving him to complete a solo second. Unfortunately, the stunning vistas were obscured by the weather and – in any case – we looked out for little other than our footing.
After five miles, Thomas joined us. I was grateful as, once we hit the wind-whipped beachfront, I was dropping off the pace. After seven miles, I lost sight of them.
After plodding wearily home, I showered and dashed back out to try to get a souvenir photo of Tim training in Africa.
By that stage, even poor Thomas was suffering. Topsy, meanwhile, ignored the rising temperatures to up the pace.
Running is a great way to take in a new place and he got to see one of the mass jogging groups, half shuffling-half dancing behind a van as it blared music, as well as the numerous impromptu beach football matches.
Salonean cuisine is a perfect recovery meal, so we headed out to try fish cooked in the traditional cassava leaf, groundnut and onion sauces before our next stop: Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary.
Just a few miles out of the capital, this rainforest retreat felt a world away from its bustle as we arrived for the 4pm tour. Of 21-55,000 of the western subspecies of these endangered apes in existence, some 5,500 are thought to live in Sierra Leone. More than half are outside protected areas, at the mercy of bushmeat hunters.
"I'm not sure about that banana gag." [Photo T.Bowen]
Those at Tacugama – whose founder fought for protected status for the surrounding rainforest – are mostly rescued from captivity. Now they live in a range of accommodation. The sickest are treated in zoo-style cages, exercising in large pens, while others roam "semi-wild" in rainforest with tree-free border zones and wire fences marking their boundaries.
Though a little light on information, the tour showed off an impressive set-up and proved particularly memorable for everyone politely pretending not to notice one adult male's state of high excitement at the commencement of feeding time.
This impromptu revelation of a surprisingly small banana by such a large mammal made us men walk a little taller.
Our beds for the night were in an "eco-lodge" high in the forest canopy. From its balcony, we stretched our legs, listened to the calls of myriad birds and watched a monkey scramble across the treetops.
On the way to dinner, an owl swooped over Tim's head and we watched it perch for nearby. Whether it was an African wood owl or one of its rufous fishing relatives remains a matter for debate.
A morning tramp proved more successful in terms of identification, as we spotted an impressive red-bellied paradise flycatcher and a striking western black-headed oriole after drinking in the views from the falls below nearby Kongo Dam.
The walk left us filthy and sweaty on departure and we felt a bit rough dining at possibly Freetown's classiest venue, the Country Lodge, which offers spectacular views over the city's Western edges.
The hotel is surrounded by Krio wood shingle homes – built on steel stilts to keep them cooler – which housed the European administrators of the early colony of freed slaves.
Later, we saw less grand – but just as characterful – examples of this architecture as we took a walk downtown, where the colourful buildings appeared to lean on more modern neighbours for support.
Modern, brutalist or traditional Afro-Jamaican? Take your pick. [Photo: T.Bowen]
The One With The Common Sense and I had yet to explore the area around the State House and the impressive Cotton Tree, under which much of Sierra Leone's history has unfolded.
The usual weekday bustle can make this feel an intimidating place but we were pleasantly surprised at how relaxing we found our stroll on what was a bank holiday Monday, with the Flump gaining her usual army of admirers.
Unlike our West End neighbourhood, in this poorer district, there are no iron gates sealing people into compounds. Here, scenes of people gathering to eat, drink and chat amid the decaying grandeur are reminiscent of central Havana.
We decided to mark Tim's last hours here with a final stroll along Lumley Beach, where limited parking provoked a marital dispute between weary driver and as-yet-unlicensed wife conducting proceedings from the back seat. Thankfully, old housemate Tim had enough experience of our volatility to let it wash over him until we parked up for a better-tempered stroll.
More by luck than planning, his visit coincided with Eid celebrations so the beachfront atmosphere was even headier than usual.
The promenade was packed with revellers, many enjoying drinks from carboot coolboxes, while we even spotted a "street food" van of the sort you'd find in London's trendier nightspots.
Plenty of kids were still up, meaning a double-shift for the man who walks around all day selling squeaky inflatables, so it felt like an occasion for everyone to enjoy.
After a quick beer, it was home for Tim to enjoy one last quintessential West African experience: jollof rice. This sweet, stodgy and lightly spiced rice dish is the source of much friendly banter across the region about who makes the original/best. Sadly, I'd wager the one we had wouldn't win that argument.
At midnight – just 90 hours after picking him up – I deposited Topsy with a manhug or two back at the SeaCoach station.
It had been a whistlestop tour and I was pretty shattered. So, when overtaking a taxi, I noticed too late that it had stopped at a police checkpoint, rather than to collect passengers.
Cue noisy accusations of "driving badly" and my now stock response of going on the offensive while keeping my banknotes buried in my pockets. I feared this time I might not get away with it.
However, after some discussion about exactly what offence I was alleged to have committed, a senior officer told me it was a holiday, a happy day, and that I should head home.
I did, relieved to let my head hit the pillow.
It had indeed been a long weekend – but a great one with it.
* I should explain that it was me who introduced Topsy to running with the gentle assurance that he "wouldn't finish last" at parkrun. Not only did the swine beat me but he's since gone on to numerous podium positions and a sub-2:40 marathon. The fecker.
This entry was posted in Running, Sierra Leone and tagged Sierra Leone, Travel by Andy McFarlane. Bookmark the permalink.
6 thoughts on "A long weekend in Freetown"
Amy on September 16, 2016 at 11:45 am said:
Fantastic read as always, I did chuckle at SL's ASDA. I like the sound of the Eco-lodge in the rainforest 🙂
Isreal Ojekeh Parper on September 16, 2016 at 12:43 pm said:
Beautiful, enjoyable story well told!!
Rich on September 16, 2016 at 4:32 pm said:
Your posts need more mention of Guinness.
It should be a regular thing. Subliminal advertising and all that.
Adwoa-Kitiwa Bultman on September 17, 2016 at 9:15 am said:
Quite an enjoyable read. It's amazing how other people appreciate the little things in life, while others take such things for granted. Sierra Leone could be a wonderful, safe, resilient and habitable country if only the politicians could do their job properly by helping to build the country than squandering the resources. That's my take !!
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


The Penguins have been hoping to overtake the Islanders and/or Rangers in the Metropolitan Division to improve their playoff seeding. Now, they'll be hoping they can fight to save their playoff lives as Evgeni Malkin will miss the next 6-8 weeks with an undisclosed upper body injury. The Penguins had struggled earlier in the season when Malkin missed 10 games with a lower body injury, and the hopes were that Malkin's return, along with the rest of the forward depth, would help propel the team back up the standings.
With a month to go before the playoffs start, the Penguins will be in a bitter fight just to make the postseason. Malkin was injured in behind the net collision during last night's game against the Columbus Blue Jackets when Dalton Prout checked Malkin in the board. It seemed like an innocuous hit, but Malkin seemed to have hurt his left hand or wrist on the play. He managed to return to assist on Carl Haglin's game winning goal, but he left the game immediately after and did not return.
Without Malkin, the Penguins will have a serious hole in the lineup to plug. It's unknown whether the team will go back to Matt Cullen centering the 2nd line as they did earlier in the season or if they'll continue with Nick Bonino as they did last night. The Penguins are currently sitting in the second wild card spot in the Eastern Conference with 78 points. They're one point behind the Detroit Red Wings with a game in hand, and they sit 3 points ahead of the Philadelphia Flyers with an additional game played. If the Penguins make the playoffs, they'll likely need to win at least one round if they hope to have Malkin back before the end of the year. It becomes even more imperative that the Penguins finish as the first wild card, as they'll likely need to face off against the Atlantic Division to have a chance to last until Malkin is able to return to the lineup.


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Q: Retrieving Client Information from server end Using C# .Net Framework I want to retrieve the client PC information at the sender end. When a client sends a request/message at client end in simple socket programming lets say, i want that client to retrieve the information of client PC e.g like which windows is client using , what is the name of client's PC etc.
I have retrieved client IP address using
connectionSocekt.RemoteEndPoint.ToString();

I have searched whole internet and YouTube But i couldn't find any where how to retrieve other information of client PC. Kindly help me with this thing.

A: There are many ways to get information about a remote host on your local network.
You will NOT necessarily get it from some arbitrary "sockets" program: a basic TCP/IP connection simply doesn't have that information .
A client request to a web server, however, might have some of what you're looking for.  Look at HTTP headers, particularly the User-Agent header.
Since you're on Windows, you should also look at WMI: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/wmisdk/wmi-start-page

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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Diane Abbott went on TV to defend Jeremy Corbyn and it didn't go well
Jeremy Wilson
Diane Abbott.
REUTERS/Neil Hall
One of Jeremy Corbyn's closest allies has been called a "sell out" after criticising the MPs who resigned over Labour's shadow cabinet reshuffle.
Speaking on Wednesday to the BBC's Newsnight, Diane Abbott, shadow secretary of state for international development, accused Labour MPs who quit following the shadow cabinet reshuffle of being former special advisers (SpAds) who "came up under a certain system."
In effect, she was accusing them of being career politicians — people who don't have life experience outside of politics.
You can watch what she said below.
Diane Abbott on those who have left the front bench: "They're all special advisers." https://t.co/vAiTfVWTMJ
— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) January 6, 2016
When you look at some of the other people, when you look at Jonathan Reynolds, if you look at Mr Dugher, if you look at some of these others, what do they have in common? They're all former Special Advisers. And what you're seeing is people who came up under a certain system. You did politics at university, you became a special adviser, you became an MP, you became a minister, who are rightfully upset, because Jeremy has brought a whole lot of new energy and new people into politics.
As you can see below; Jonathan Reynolds and Stephen Doughty, who resigned over the reshuffle, didn't take Abbott's remarks very well.
Reynolds hit back at the claim he was a SpAd, telling Abbott that she should Google him before "slagging" him off.
Is this what she said? At least Google us before slagging us off https://t.co/6v8a9Sso8m
— Jonathan Reynolds MP (@jreynoldsMP) January 6, 2016
For the record @HackneyAbbott, I was a trainee solicitor when elected, having gone to law school as a mature student and single parent (1/2)
He then called Abbott a "total sell-out," and attacked her for sending her son to a £10,000-a-year private school.
@HackneyAbbott And I think you're a total sell-out for sending your own kids to private school (2/2)
Doughty told Abbott that what she said was "nonsense"
Nonsense @HackneyAbbott I worked 7 yrs for @Oxfam @worldvision SPAD 18 mths at @DFID_UK u'd think Shad Int Dev Sec might know #bbcnewsnight
— Stephen Doughty (@SDoughtyMP) January 6, 2016
One of the reasons that Reynolds and Doughty were so offended is that they are MPs from the North who are considered to be "working class", making them a rarity in Labour. Abbott, on the other hand, is a north London politician who was a press officer for former London Mayor Ken Livingstone, head of PR at Lambeth Council, and a Labour councillor before she became an MP.
The other reason Reynolds and Doughty were annoyed is that Abbott used to have a second job as a pundit on the BBC's This Week programme where she regularly criticised her own party; this makes her widely unpopular with some MPs who also resent her influence with Corbyn. This attitude towards her can be summed up by this tweet from Labour MP Tom Blenkinsop.
@jreynoldsMP @SDoughtyMP I wouldn't be bothered getting slagged off by an MP who derived 2nd income from being disloyal on ThisWeek 4 years.
— Tom Blenkinsop (@TomBlenkinsop) January 7, 2016
Abbott is also perceived by some Labour MPs as being an incompetent media operator and they are getting increasingly frustrated she is getting so much air time — as this retweet from Labour MP John Spellar shows.
Screenshot/Twitter
Some Labour MPs are particularly unhappy that Corbyn's cabinet is losing Northern and working class MPs and gaining London MPs whom they consider to be from a liberal elite. Reynolds himself has warned that Labour is becoming "too London centric," telling The Independent that the shadow cabinet is geographically unbalanced.
You need to make sure you're balancing not just politics but gender, geography, to make sure you're getting that balanced so the nation looks at Labour and says 'these people understand my life and they are the right people for me; I want them to be the government for the country.'
After Abbott's appearance on Newsnight, Labour MP Graham Jones tweeted that he had tried to bring up the issues of the lack of working class MPs with Abbott.
Still v disappointed @MichaelDugher sacking. Spoke w/ @hackneyabbott last nt abt lack of w/class Lab MPs. Just 3%. https://t.co/jLuovXdEHG
— Graham Jones MP (@GrahamJones_MP) January 6, 2016
He then tweeted that Corbyn had replaced the sacked working class Michael Dugher with a "liberal Islington millionaire" — a reference to new shadow culture secretary Emily Thornberry. Jones deleted the tweet a minute after sending it.
The way Labour MPs are openly criticising each other shows that there is more fallout from Corbyn's shadow cabinet reshuffle to come. Before the reshuffle there was a widely held attitude within Labour that they needed to try and make the best of things with Corbyn. By sacking popular MPs like Dugher, Corbyn has opened up a divide that he will find hard to bridge.
NOW WATCH: Inside London's 'slim house' that is narrower than a Tube carriage and could sell for £1m
More: Diane Abbott Labour Party Jonathan Reynolds Stephen Doughty


Artist Alex Chinneck is well-known for his mind-bending architectural illusions. This time, he unzipped a soon-to-be-demolished office building in Ashford, Kent, UK. Talking about the ephemerality of his artwork, he mentioned, "I think something has got a heightened chance of legacy if it's only there for a shorter period of time."


Snapdeal, India's second-largest homegrown online retailer, has launched its own private cloud platform christened Snapdeal Cirrus which the firm hopes will help save costs and offer performance gains across its applications.
Cirrus, built entirely on open source, will help Snapdeal handle its long-term growth in traffic and analyse big data to build personalised and relevant experiences for its consumers. It will also ensure that the firm's business growth is augmented with platform speed, security and stability, the company said in a statement.
The hybrid cloud architecture expands seamlessly to public and allows various applications to be dynamically assigned to run in different parts of the cloud, it said.
"Snapdeal was born in the cloud, but public clouds stop being cost efficient after a scale, which became the case for Snapdeal sometime last year. In a short span of 10 months, we have succeeded in building a resilient, scalable and secure solution," said Rajiv Mangla, chief technology officer at Snapdeal. Cirrus spans across three data centre regions, with a server architecture of 100,000 cores, 16 PB of storage and 100G SDN infrastructure.
According to research firm Canalys, worldwide expenditure on cloud infrastructure services is estimated to be at $8.2 billion in Q1 2016, which is a 53% increase from the previous year. It is expected that the total expenditure will exceed $38 billion in 2016.
Snapdeal's homegrown rival Flipkart, which used to work with outsourced data centre services providers like NetMagic, began moving its data centres in-house a year ago to build its own network of server farms. Just like Amazon's cloud-computing arm Amazon Web Services (AWS), which recently unveiled its first data centre location in India, Flipkart may offer its network for other online firms in the future.
According to Gartner's Magic Quadrant for cloud infrastructure services in Q2 2016, AWS topped the list followed by Microsoft, IBM and Google. In fact, AWS contributes over 50% of Amazon's profits, becoming its most profitable division.


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How a college grad without programming experience started a Y Combinator company and created a blog with hundreds of thousands of readers
By Andrew C. • Updated: March 1, 2021 • 18 min read • 1 Comment
Paul Graham was like, "This could be the Altair Basic." – Jason Shen, Ridejoy
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How this White House intern landed a job in the West Wing as Deputy Associate Director of the National Economic Council, and then founded a venture-backed company worth millions
"If you make a line from the Oval Office to people's offices in the West Wing, and you measure that distance, there is definitely a correlation with IQ." – Jonathan Swanson, former White House staffer
Tagged With: AARP, academia, acquire, acquire users, administration, advertise, advocacy, amazon, ambitious, angel investor, angel investors, Angie's List, antiquated, army base, aspirations, August recess, authority, back office, Ben Bernanke, Bernanke, bid, big company, bill, bills, bittersweet, Bloomberg, boss, bosses, bottleneck, brainstorming, browse, bulletin board, business, business plan, Capitol Hill, caterer, Chairman Bernanke, challenged, challenges, channel, city, CNBC, competitors, Congress, connected, Connecticut, connection, connections, conservative, consumer, consumer internet, consumer web, consumers, country, craft, create, creativity, credit card, CRM, culture, customer acquisition, customers, D.C., data analysis, DC, decades, decisions, dedication, Democrat, Democrats, Deputy Associate Director, destiny, detail, dictated, digital storefront, DJ, dog walker, donors, ebay, economic advisors, economic crisis, economic issue, economic office, economic policy, economics, economist, Eisenhower Executive Building, electrician, empowering, encouraging, engineer, engineers, entitlements, entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, events, Excel, exciting, Fannie Mae, faster, finances, financial integrator, financial markets, flyers, focus, Ford Motor, foreign policy, Freddie Mac, friends and family, future, generation, generous, Grover Norquist, handyman, Hank Paulson, healthcare, healthcare reform, Henry Paulson, hire, home improvement, home improvement services, house painter, human machine, industries, influence, information, inspiring, instinct, intellectual, interests, intern, internet, internship, interview, intoxicating, introduction, invoicing, journalism, Karl Rove, lead generation, Lehman Brothers, liberal, libertarian, local services, locksmith, majority leader, marketing, marketplace, markets, meetings, membership, mentorship, meritocracy, Midwest, Mint, Mint.com, Mississippi Banker's Association, moderate, monetization, monetize, money, moving company, narrow interests, nation, National Economic Council, new york times, news, newspaper, newspapers, non-profit, online, op-ed, operations, organization, organizations, Oval Office, partisan, Paulson, payments, perseverance, Philosophy, pictures, plumber, policy, political, political junkie, politics, position, power, president, President Bush, President Obama, pressure, pressured, prestige, process, processes, productive, products, profile, promoted, public policy, purchase decision, quarterly, quotes, rallies, receptive, rejected, reports, representative, representatives, Republican, Republicans, request for quote, research, resources, responsibilities, responsibility, retirees, return on investment, reviews, right-wing conspiracy, Rock the Vote, role, roofer, san francisco, scale, scheduling, scrappiness, scrappy, Secretary Paulson, seed funding, seed round, Senator, senators, service, service provider, services, set goals, shameless, shared interests, silicon valley, skeptical, small businesses, soccer, social issues, social security, Social Security Administration, SoMA, Speaker of the House, speech, speed, startup, startup world, stressful, student, student advocacy, student loan, summer, superficial, taxes, team, tech company, think tank, Thumbtack, thumbtacked, time, tools, traction, training, transaction, user acquisition, users, validating, validation, vision, volunteer, wall street, Wall Street Journal, Washington, Wednesday morning meeting, weekly, West Wing, White House, world, yale, Yellow Pages, Yelp, young people, youth
Why this engineer and beauty pageant winner left McKinsey to pursue acting and modeling (and how she got her foot in the door while working full-time at McKinsey)
"Acting for me is the craft of self-exploration, and it's the study of human nature." – Melanie Kannokada, actress and model
Tagged With: ABC, absorb, academics, act, acting, acting classes, action, actor, actors, actress, AFTRA, agencies, agency, agent, ambiguity, ambiguous, American, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, American society, Angelina Jolie, artist, arts, audience, audition, auditions, Bare Escentuals, believe, benefits, big budget, bollywood, book, booked, booking, Brad Pitt, brand, breakdown, Broadway, cable, career path, casting, Caucasian, CBS, champion, character, characters, childhood, childhood dream, class, classic, classy, coaching, comedy, commercials, commitment, consulting, consulting firm, contacts, content, content deal, control, craft, create opportunities, create opportunity, creative, creativity, credits, curiosity, curious, cushion, dance, dance company, dancer, daughter, David Spade, day rates, digital media, direct, director, directors, doctor, doctors, dues, East Asians, ebb and flow, ebbs and flows, educate, Emma Stone, energized, engineer, engineering, engineers, entertainment, entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, ethnic, excitement, exciting, executive producer, feature film, film, film festival, filmmaker, filmmakers, filmmaking, focus, follower, followers, game plan, gig, gossip, guest star, headshot, healthcare, hiking, hollywood, Hollywood studios, host, hosting, human nature, income, independent film, independent films, Indian, instability, instinct, intellectual, invest, jaded, January, knowledge, law, lawyer, lawyers, leading, leading character, los angeles, love, Love Lies and Seeta, magical, mainstream, major network, make-believe, management consulting, manager, market, math, Mayfield Fellows, mckinsey, McKinsey & Company, meals, mechanical engineering, media, meeting, mentor, Meryl Streep, Midwest, Mila Kunis, Miss India America, model, modeling, modeling agency, money, movie, movie star, movie stars, movies, mystery, Natalie Portman, national, navigate, NBC, network, networking, new york, new york city, niche, Nine Lives of Chloe King, non-union, optimism, optimistic, overachiever, overtime, pageant, painter, painting, Parenthood, passion, perform, performance, performing, photo shoot, picture, pictures, pigeonhole, pigeonholed, pilot season, plan, portfolio, practical, press, proactive, produce, producer, producers, producing, product, production, production company, professional, professionalism, project, project manager, public, public eye, Rajiv Satyal, reel, relationship, relationships, reputation, residual, residuals, role, roles, Rules of Engagement, SAG, SAT, save, saved, schedule, science, Screen Actors Guild, Seeta, self-exploration, self-submit, shoot, shooting, show, sitcom, sketches, smart, South Asian, South Asians, stable, stage, standardize, stanford, Stanford University, star, star cast, stars, startup, strategic, structured, student film, student films, student loans, studio, success, successful, supporter, supporters, talent agency, talented, taxi driver, taxi drivers, television, television commercial, television network, television show, Thailand, theater, traction, training, transition, transportation, tutoring, TV, TV commercial, TV credits, TV network, TV series, TV show, TV studios, union, unpredictable, visibility, visualize, wage, William Morris, William Morris Endeavor, win, winning, woman, work hard, workshop, write, writer, writers, writing, yoga, younger generation, YouTube, YouTube star, YouTube stars, Zoe Saldana


When I attended the helping pregnant women Open Hearts, Open Minds and Fair Minded Words conference last fall, pro-choice and pro-life attendees alike expressed frustration with politicians who talked a good game about protecting human life but then tried to cut funding to programs that help women choose life for their children.
We're told that the government doesn't need to help people, because that's what private charity is for. But private charity can't do the job alone. Crisis pregnancy centers rely not only on volunteers and donations, but on referring clients to government assistance programs such as Medicaid and WIC. Medicaid pays for more than 40% of births in the United States. Ask a crisis pregnancy center volunteer how much harder their job will get if Medicaid is cut.
Please urge your members of Congress to reject Medicaid cuts.


text:
SPONG goes public - Virtual Boy news
Jorge and I have released both the playable ROM and source code of our first VUEngine multiplayer demo on our Patreon page. The ROM is almost identical to that released last year, but it has slightly different physics and updated credits.
For those of you who weren't able to see the original, Patron-only release post for "SPONG", it is a multiplayer top-down Pong variant for the Virtual Boy that supports the link cable. It's meant as a rather simple demo project for the engine's multiplayer capabilities.
We have moved away from further developing this game due to people's interests in other projects, so we think that it is time to release the sources to give developers some solid sample code at hand that shows how to implement multiplayer game logic using VUEngine's CommunicationManager class. Please, find the sources in the link below:
https://bitbucket.org/vuengine/spong
more here https://www.planetvb.com/modules/new...hp?storyid=461 ...
83% of gamers potentially interested in streaming services
A new study has found that a majority of gamers are interested in using streaming services like Stadia or Xbox's Project xCloud -- but some will be unable to use them.
The news comes from a study conducted by Broadband Genie and our sister site Eurogamer, which found 83% of 3,142 people were keen on playing games via streaming.
Of these Eurogamer readers, only 21% were "absolutely" interested, while another 17% would "probably" use such a service. A further 17% expressed no interest, leaving 45% potentially interested depending on a number of factors.
Looking into those factors, the most common (71%) was concern that performance or visual quality might be compromised by the reliance on a solid internet connection. 34% said they prefer a tangible product, while 26% doubted their broadband would be able to handle such a service.
Just shy of half the people surveyed reported they were on fibre optic connections, with a further 22% specifically on Virgin Media fibre. However, 20% of people were still on ADSL broadband, with a further 2% reliant on 4G.
Google has previously said players will be best served on Stadia with a 35 Mbps connection, which will deliver 4K streaming at 60 frames per second. The minimum requirement is 10 Mbps for 1080p resolution, with Google warning this will be scaled down to 720p on slower connections.
ADSL broadband averages at around 10 MBps, although they can often fall below this, depending on how many devices and users are using yur connection at the time. This means players would be unable to experience Stadia as its minimum setting unless they upgrade to fibre optic.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...aming-services ...
NPD: Nintendo likely to end the year as best-selling publisher
Following E3 2019's annual deluge of game announcements, NPD analyst Mat Piscatella has outlined his predictions for game sales in 2019, including Call of Duty: Modern Warfare as the year's top seller and Nintendo as best-selling publisher.
In a blog post, Piscatella outlined his takeaways from the show's major exhibitors. Despite E3's seemingly heavy focus on streaming and subscription services, he feels the audience was left with more questions than answers, and doesn't see Stadia or Project xCloud making a significant market impact in 2019. However, he predicts xCloud will have an impact on ongoing Xbox hardware sales and Game Pass subscriptions.
"Nintendo Switch is the most important piece of video game hardware in the market right now," he says of Nintendo's presentation, saying he expects its hardware sales to continue in strength and for Nintendo to wrap up the year as the best-selling publisher, with sales driven largely by Pokemon Sword & Shield (which launch in November).
Overall, Piscatella sees a stronger-than-usual line-up for the "transition year" between console generations, though with no major end-of-year release akin to 2018's Red Dead Redemption 2, a number of other titles could slip into the top 10 unexpectedly.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...ling-publisher ...
Cemu v1.15.8
Cemu v1.15.8 is released. Cemu is a Nintendo Wii U emulator that runs commercial games. Highly experimental software to emulate Wii U applications on PC.
Cemu v1.15.8 Changelog:
general: Updated language files
overlay: Added an option to scale the text size
overlay: Moved some options into a separate notification overlay
Also added new notification options:
- The amount of shaders compiled while playing (#40)
- Friend list information (friend requests, online/offline notifications) (#72)
debug: Added debug option to dump nlibcurl HTTP/HTTPS requests
GX2: Improved accuracy of streamout cache
This addresses the following known issues:
BotW - Particles drifting/warping to wrong positions
Tekken Tag 2 - Corrupted colors/textures on character models
GX2: Resolved an issue where GX2SurfaceCopy() calculated the wrong destination mip level for GPU-side copies
This fixes corrupted textures in:
Lost Reavers, Devil's Third, Ninja Gaiden and Transformers RotDS
nlibcurl: Fixed a potential crash in curl init methods
nlibcurl: Improved accuracy and behavior of read callbacks
This fixes a crash when uploading levels in Super Mario Maker (#68)
coreinit: Implemented OSConsoleWrite(). Any console output will be printed to log.txt
vpad: Fixed VPADControlMotor using the wrong pattern length (#60)
vpad: Fixed a rare crash caused by rumble
(#xx) refers to bug tracker issues fixed by this change. See http://bugs.cemu.info/projects/cemu/
http://www.emucr.com/2019/06/cemu-v1158.html ...
My Nes v7.5.71
My Nes v7.5.71 is released. My Nes is a portable open source NES/FAMICOM emulator written in C#. It's EXACT nes cycle emulator, very accurate and uses exact ppu scanline timing. My Nes compatibility is very high, and most of the games that supported run perfectly.
My Nes Features:
- Roms browser with bility to disblay additional information of each rom like snapshot and info.
- Save/Load state in defferent 9 slots or in file using save/load state as feature.
- Sound recorder which record sound of current playing rom in wav format (Mono, 44100 Hz, pcm 16-bit).
- Developer console with full access emulation commands.
- Support INES (*.nes) file format.
- Can read from archive (*.zip, *.7z and *.rar)
- Profiles for control mapping.
- CPU :All 6502 opcodes (with the undocumented opcodes), IRQ and NMI.
- PPU :8x8 and 8x16 sprites with transparency and priority, background tiles and sprites evulation, internal ntsc palette generator, default PAL palette, Cycle based ppu, real scanline and scancycle timing, Emphasis and monochrome effects.
- Sound : all the 5 channels, MMC5, SS5B and VRC6 external sound channels. Format: MONO PCM 16 BIT 44100 Hz.
- Systems : PAL , NTSC
- Mappers : # 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 32, 33, 34, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47,48, 49, 50, 51, 57, 58, 60, 61, 62, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 82, 83, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 97, 105, 112, 113, 114, 115, 117, 118, 119, 133, 140, 142,159, 180, 182, 184, 185, 187, 188, 189, 193, 200, 201, 202,203,204,205, 212,213, 225, 226, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232, 233, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244, 245, 246, 248, 249, 251 and 255. Almost full set !!
My Nes v7.5.71 Changelog:
- Added: enable filters in Audio option.
- Improved: sound playback quality (both renderers) by configuring buffer size and latency (buffer options are removed).
Core Version 7.5.7100.447; Built at 10, Jun, 2019 00:14.
- Fixed: Square sound channels sequencers (wrong counting through the look-up table).
- Fixed: sound aliasing by implementing proper low-pass filter for down-sampling.
- Improved: sound quality by adding the proper filters as described in nes wiki.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mynes/
http://www.emucr.com/2019/06/my-nes-v7571.html ...
melonDS 0.8.1 released!
melonDS 0.8.1 is out, and that fixes some of the issues that were discovered in 0.8 (mostly stupid oversights, heh), but also adds a few other features and fixes. Let's see.
Input upgrade
The input code has been reworked to be more pleasant to deal with, especially with regards to adding hotkeys. In less nerdy terms, what does this mean?
It is now possible to map keys with modifiers, like Ctrl+Z or Shift+R or even combinations like Ctrl+Alt+Q. It is worth noting that during mapping, you should use left-hand Ctrl/Alt/Shift keys for these mappings. However, ingame, both sets of keys should work. This feature may not be too useful for DS input, but it should be more handy for hotkeys. It is also possible to delete a key mapping by pressing the Backspace key during the mapping process.
I have also been upgrading joystick support. You can now choose which joystick to use, and can map axes to buttons/hotkeys.
The twist to this is that I liked the old "axis maps to DS dpad" feature, and how it could be used alongside regular button/hat controls. I didn't want to lose the ability to use both, but I also wanted to make it, well, not a hardcoded mapping. So instead, you can map both a button/hat direction and an axis to each control. When mapping a joystick control, pressing a button/hat direction keeps the axis mapping intact, and vice-versa. You can delete both mappings by pressing Backspace during the mapping process.
The aforementioned axis support should also be able to support analog triggers, which are typically exposed as axis controls.
I also added support for multiple hat controls.
This new, optional feature shows some short, temporary status messages onscreen. For example, when loading or saving savestates, pausing, resuming...
The idea is to give some visual feedback about these operations, rather than, say, have savestate loads just appear to do nothing because the slot is empty.
You can disable the OSD if you find it to get in the way.
New hotkeys
You might remember that some early melonDS versions had a secret hardcoded fast-forward hotkey. This seems to have appeared in version 0.3, but eventually disappeared with the UI revamp in version 0.5.
Well, now, with Ace4896's contribution, this feature is back with a proper hotkey mapping. There is also a 'toggle' hotkey that enables or disables the framerate limiter.
I also added hotkeys for pausing and resetting emulation.
OpenGL fixes
Several of the crashes and rendering errors that appeared in 0.8, stemming from the new OpenGL support, have been fixed in this version.
I also added a little hack to support line triangles in OpenGL, and a preliminary implementation of edge marking, which you can see demonstrated in one of the screenshots above.
There's also a bunch of little fixes and optimizations, as usual. Enjoy!
melonDS 0.8.1, Windows 64-bit
melonDS 0.8.1, Linux 64-bit
If you're feeling generous, if you want to help us take this OpenGL renderer further: here's our Patreon
http://melonds.kuribo64.net/comments.php?id=93 ...
Nintendo pledges continued support for the 3DS
Nintendo has pledged to continue its support for the 3DS, despite having no new games to announce for the platform at E3.
Speaking with Time, Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser responded to a direct question about "the fate" of the 3DS, which was conspicuously absent from the E3 Nintendo Direct.
Bowser admitted that Nintendo had "no games to announce on 3DS at this show," but he claimed that the absence of 3DS titles was down to a calculated decision to focus on the Switch.
"But our 3DS business continues to do quite well. Retailers continue to support both the hardware and the software," he said. "And as long as there's consumer demand for 3DS, we'll continue to support it.
"In fact, we believe it's a great entry point for young gamers. A 2DS at $79 with a game included is a great value proposition for a young gamer coming into the Nintendo ecosystem."
This pledge of support comes at a time when many believe that the 3DS is close to redundant. Our own Chris Dring recently looked back on the legacy of the handheld, due to Nintendo indicating that no first-party 3DS software was due before the end of this fiscal year -- despite forecasting 100,000 unit sales of the device, and 500,000 software sales.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...rt-for-the-3ds ...
Konami to launch TurboGrafx-16 Mini console
Konami has announced a mini version of the TurboGrafx-16, more than 30 years after the console first launched in Japan.
The TurboGrafx-16 Mini follows on from similar hardware released by Nintendo and Sony, though in this case the original hardware is unquestionably more niche.
Konami did not offer a release date, or even a release window, but the Japanese company said that the new version will, "fit in the palm of your hand and feature a full-sized controller."
Six games have been announced for the TurboGrafx-16 Mini: R-Type, New Adventure Island, Ninja Spirit, Ys Book I & II, Dungeon Explorer, and Alien Crush. More will be announced in the near future.
Konami intends to launch the hardware in North America, Japan, and "certain regions of Europe," and it will have a different design and name in each territory; TurboGrafx-16 Mini in North America, PC Engine Core Grafx Mini in Europe, and PC Engine Mini in Japan.
The TurboGrafx-16 console first launched in Japan in 1987, before rolling out to North America and Europe from 1989.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...6-mini-console ...
Game streaming has not arrived
Think of the most personally exciting things you've seen from this year's E3 so far. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that "on-demand game streaming" is not among them.
Despite that, when the E3 show recaps are written this Friday, the push for streaming services will doubtless be among the top stories, right up there with Keanu Reeves and that sequel/remake of that classic game you loved. And when we look back on E3 2019 in years to come, Stadia, Project xCloud, and Orion may be the most industry-shaping things shown here.
It's certainly understandable. The biggest industry shifts aren't always the sexiest ones. I recall no chants of "digital distribution" during the Microsoft press briefing of E3 2005.
"In many ways E3 is about building hype, but streaming is a difficult thing to build hype for"
Of course, streaming is in a different position than digital distribution was back then. It has the potential to be just as disruptive, but it also has deep-pocketed backers, powerful companies putting plenty of money behind their own attempts to disrupt the status quo to their own advantage.
When it came to digital distribution, the big players were comparatively timid. They were publicly ambivalent about how customers would get their games, perhaps in deference to the concerns of retail partners. They tinkered with it as a side business, rolling out Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, and WiiWare not as alternative ways to buy retail games but as entirely separate catalogs of smaller original experiences.
On the other hand, it looks like the streaming companies are going to push more aggressively to have streaming as a direct competitor/alternative to non-streaming purchases for customers. When Stadia launches, it will feature new games like Doom Eternal, Ghost Recon: Break Point, and Borderlands 3. Microsoft hasn't said much about the particulars of Project xCloud, but it's widely expected to integrate with the Xbox Game Pass in some way, which already gives subscribers Microsoft's biggest AAA blockbusters and a selection of indie titles on day one.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...as-not-arrived ...
PS3HEN 2.2.1 released – PSP ISO Launcher support, improved compatibility with multiMA
Thanks to the concerted efforts of numerous PS3 developers, PS3HEN has been receiving numerous updates which are making noCFW PS3s (Late Slim/Super Slim) closer to CFW-compatible PS3s functionality-wise. This time, PS3HEN got another update bringing it up to version 2.2.1 which comes with PSP ISO Launcher support, improved compatibility with multiMAN and a lot of other things!
PS3HEN 2.2.1, which was released a few hours ago, is a pretty significant update and it brings about a lot of new features including:
PSP ISO Launcher support which means that you can play games by just copying them over rather than having to rely on PKGs (Remasters/Minis)
Now, you can play PSP games like "Adventures Of Gurumin" on your PS3HEN-ed PS3 by simply copying over the ISO. Make sure to check the compatibility list first though!
Not all PSP games work properly on PS3. This list should be consulted before trying to run a game
Compatibility with programs such as multiMAN, and others which replace syscall 6-10, has been improved
The stackframe and PS3HEN bin files have been merged into one file named PS3HEN.BIN
The in-game screenshot feature has now been enabled
You now get a notification with the PS3HEN version currently installed when you boot up your PS3
On-the-fly PS2 Classics Launcher activation
Self Threading support which fixes issues with some games like Splinter Cell Trilogy
A HEN installer feature has been added and some appearance changes
Numerous fixes and improvements relating to memory management, kernel plugins larger than 64KB are now supported and some technical improvements like a fail-safe for stage0 if stage2 isn't found among other things detailed in the link below
In order to install this updated version of PS3HEN and make use of the new features, you can update through the HEN Updater found in Network->Hybrid Firmware Tools->PS3HEN Updater->Update PS3HEN which takes care of the updating for you as long as you're connected to the internet. If you don't have PS3HEN installed, you have to follow the installation instructions found in the link below
For more information, you can check out the links below:
PS3HEN 2.2.1 release thread (+ Download Link/Changelog): https://www.psx-place.com/threads/up...-models.23955/
http://wololo.net/2019/06/08/ps3hen-...ment-and-more/ ...