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Private bodyguard services in London

Bodyguarding, often known as close protection, is a service that requires both competence and experience, particularly when handling London as a working jurisdiction. From celebrities and sports stars to politicians and c-suite executives, the city serves as a nexus for the world’s elite, who reside, work, and often visit. It, along with our safe and modest approach to closing proximity protection, provides clients superior peace of mind without interfering with their daily lives. Whether you want a single bodyguard or a team of shielding private security in London, our central location quickly pulls together and installs your preferred operators throughout London and beyond.

The cost of hiring a bodyguard:

Unfortunately, many believe hiring a personal bodyguard is unreasonably expensive, exposing themselves, their families, or their businesses to possible injury or harm. The truth is that hiring a private security in London isn’t as expensive as you think. The cost is due to your security requirements. If you need a bodyguard to assist you with travel money or significant object from one location to another for a short time, you won’t have to pay thousands of dollars.

security services company

You may require the services of a bodyguard during a domestic conflict. You may work with a security business that hires bodyguards to establish the optimum periods for protection, which can help you save money. If you want 24-hour security in numerous locations, a reputable security firm will assist you in developing a budget that provides enough protection at a fair cost.

During a significant event or in your business, you may require a bodyguard for a shift or two to prevent prospective crooks or troublemakers. Hiring a bodyguard to offer protection for a potentially contentious political meeting or event is probably not as expensive as you think. The truth is that the bodyguard services are dependent on your demand for protection and your budget. A professional security firm will sit with you and set up a budget considering your need and money. If you need the services of a bodyguard for whatever reason, you should deal with a security company. It provides highly experienced and trained professionals to give you the personal security you require.


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Human factor

#13 PODCAST: Heading for change – gender equality at sea

At the moment, the traditionally male-dominated maritime industry is moving into a new, more diverse era. Like other industries, the maritime industry has only benefited from this transition towards a more heterogeneous workforce, where all participants have equal opportunities and everyone’s contribution is weighed in and utilized.

To get an insider’s view on things, we invited Malin Andersson to join us. Malin has worked at sea as a captain, an occupation which still continues to be male-dominated. We feel Malin Andersson is a good role model, since she chooses not to see herself as a female captain, but simply as a captain who cares for her crew and who stands up for fairness and takes action when someone is treated wrongly. Tune in when we broadcast one of our favourite conversation from 2020 a second time!

1:15 The interview begins
1:50 Malin’s background
3:09 Why are most captains male?
5:26 Resistance against females in top positions
9:03 Coping with harassment
9:56 The upsides of working at sea
12:02 A captain’s role
15:07 #metoo/ #anchoraweight
17:22 Fighting for fair treatment
20:53 The family life of a seafarer
29:23 The view of gender equality in shipping over time
33:41 Other problems to be solved in shipping
35:28 Final words of advice

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Dealing with the Covid Cult

If you’re informed and thinking clearly, you’ll have stopped believing in the Covid Cult – if you ever did. I’m not going to repeat all the reasons why I’m unconvinced as I’ve posted previously about them. I’ve explained the links of this cult to Big Business (mostly Big Pharma and Big BioTech) and, steering clear of wild conspiracy theories, I’ve laid out what I’ve learned from independent journalists Spiro Skouras and Whitney Webb about a larger global agenda hidden in plain sight: citizen surveillance and data harvesting. AKA Dystopia.

Due to the economic disruption of the plandemic, I’ve advised that we Dig for Victory and grow our own food. The state control of our lives extends to controlling our bodies and I’ve linked sex and the shutdown to the various preparedness plans that you can see for yourselves being roleplayed by top global officials since 2001.

I’ve also given gentle helpful advice for those (unconvinced or not) emerging from lockdown – and blogged about how to deprogramme yourself from the blatant propaganda that is everywhere, all the time. For those who have already done that, I’ve shared my thoughts on how to survive an apocalypse.

All that’s fine and dandy – but how do we deal with members of the Covid Cult? Especially when the ones destabilising our lives and perhaps even putting us and our loved ones in danger are members our own family, our close friends and work colleagues. As well as all the other Cult members we encounter in person (at a distance) and online, including officials.

First of all by realising that the acceptance of Covid-19 is a belief system, not a scientific proof or even a rational hypothesis. Core Cult beliefs are not open to discussion, they are accepted as self-evident. Attempting to confront them head-on means you’ll be labelled as Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know. (Yes, this does sound like a lot of other things and, yes, they mostly all benefit Big Pharma.)

Next you should know that most Covid Cult members couldn’t articulate clearly what they do believe, as the official hypothesis constantly alters to explain away inconsistent data – and even when Cult medical researchers say that they have no idea what’s going on but they know ventilators kill rather than cure, ordinary Cult members are still clamouring for more intubation, more morphine-induced coma, more HIV chemo drugs (yes, you read that right). That’s also the case with the hugely inconsistent data on death rates.

The typical Covid Cult Credo goes something like this:

We believe in one Virus,
Covid, the Almighty,
destroyer of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.

We believe in [insert names of Head of State/ PM/ FM],
who rule us by Divine Right
God from God, Light from Light,
Always right (in the end and better than our neighbours’).

They will be elected again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and their kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Mainstream Media, the Lords, the givers of life,
who proceed from the Rulers and the Scientists.
With the Doctors and Nurses they are worshiped and glorified.
They are the Prophets.
We believe in one holy sterile and antisocial Cult.
We acknowledge any vaccine [at all] for the prevention of sins.
We look for the quick disposal of the dead,
and the unlife of the Brave New World to come. Amen.

I mean no disrespect to Christians. I’m one. But here’s the difference between Cult members and most religious people:

Rational religious people don’t report non-believers to the police or attempt to have them sectioned under the Mental Health Act. (I’m not making this up!)

Cult members do not respect your right to think for yourself, do not admit any discussion of their beliefs, resist any contrary proof or inconsistency – and respect no boundary at all. With mandatory contact tracing and the ability of the state (even without 5G) to see through walls, that kind of fanaticism eradicates citizen privacy entirely.

So how do we deal with members of the Covid Cult in a way that doesn’t put us or our loved ones at risk?

  • Be firm but gentle – many of these people genuinely feel they’re doing the right thing.
  • Inform yourself about your legal rights.
  • If they display any signs of rationality, ask them to state what it is they believe about the virus – then ask how they square the inconsistencies.
  • If they repeat mantras like “better safe than sorry”, ask them how that squares with prioritising an unproved hypothesis over the certain harms of lockdown and aggressive, invasive and unnecessary medical procedures – not to mention the dangers of untested vaccines from companies under no legal liability to adhere to safety standards or quality control.
  • Finally ask them how they would feel if everyone was forced by law to snitch on their neighbours if they weren’t following a particular religion.
  • Take this wise advice by @WillowWyse on Twitter:

“Vet your contacts if you don’t want abuse of your data by the NHS. Socially shun contacts who won’t respect your privacy. They can tell you if they are diagnosed and you can do the right thing without govt agencies flogging your data right? Block the NHS number 0300 013 5000”

Remember that you don’t have to agree with every aspect of the politics of others who are resisting the Cult. I doubt very much that this writer and I agree on much but his website is a useful placeholder for resistance.

Apart from all that (which can be exhausting) contact and meet up regularly with others who have freed their minds from the influence of this destructive Cult.

And, whatever your own faith or philosophy, try to spend some time each day in prayer or mediation or contemplation of the benevolent principles that inform your core values.

This too will, eventually, pass. The Covid Cult is built on nothing but fear. So oppose it with hope, compassion, sanity and cheerfulness.

Thanks to Alex Borland for releasing the image Red Hypnotic Background into the Public Domain.


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Girish Mahajan (Editor)

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Aquaculture, also known as aquafarming, is the farming of fish, crustaceans, molluscs, aquatic plants, algae, and other aquatic organisms. Aquaculture involves cultivating freshwater and saltwater populations under controlled conditions, and can be contrasted with commercial fishing, which is the harvesting of wild fish. Mariculture refers to aquaculture practiced in marine environments and in underwater habitats.

According to the FAO, aquaculture "Farming implies some form of intervention in the rearing process to enhance production, such as regular stocking, feeding, protection from predators, etc. Farming also implies individual or corporate ownership of the stock being cultivated." The reported output from global aquaculture operations in 2014 supplied over one half of the fish and shellfish that is directly consumed by humans; however, there are issues about the reliability of the reported figures. Further, in current aquaculture practice, products from several pounds of wild fish are used to produce one pound of a piscivorous fish like salmon.

Particular kinds of aquaculture include fish farming, shrimp farming, oyster farming, mariculture, algaculture (such as seaweed farming), and the cultivation of ornamental fish. Particular methods include aquaponics and integrated multi-trophic aquaculture, both of which integrate fish farming and plant farming.

The indigenous Gunditjmara people in Victoria, Australia, may have raised eels as early as 6000 BC. Evidence indicates they developed about 100 km2 (39 sq mi) of volcanic floodplains in the vicinity of Lake Condah into a complex of channels and dams, and used woven traps to capture eels, and preserve them to eat all year round.

Aquaculture was operating in China circa 2500 BC. When the waters subsided after river floods, some fish, mainly carp, were trapped in lakes. Early aquaculturists fed their brood using nymphs and silkworm feces, and ate them. A fortunate genetic mutation of carp led to the emergence of goldfish during the Tang dynasty.

Japanese cultivated seaweed by providing bamboo poles and, later, nets and oyster shells to serve as anchoring surfaces for spores.

Romans bred fish in ponds and farmed oysters in coastal lagoons before 100 CE.

In central Europe, early Christian monasteries adopted Roman aquacultural practices. Aquaculture spread in Europe during the Middle Ages since away from the seacoasts and the big rivers, fish had to be salted so they did not rot. Improvements in transportation during the 19th century made fresh fish easily available and inexpensive, even in inland areas, making aquaculture less popular. The 15th-century fishponds of the Trebon Basin in the Czech Republic are maintained as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Hawaiians constructed oceanic fish ponds. A remarkable example is a fish pond dating from at least 1,000 years ago, at Alekoko. Legend says that it was constructed by the mythical Menehune dwarf people.

In first half of 18th century, German Stephan Ludwig Jacobi experimented with external fertilization of brown trouts and salmon. He wrote an article "Von der künstlichen Erzeugung der Forellen und Lachse". By the latter decades of the 18th century, oyster farming had begun in estuaries along the Atlantic Coast of North America.

The word aquaculture appeared in an 1855 newspaper article in reference to the harvesting of ice. It also appeared in descriptions of the terrestrial agricultural practise of subirrigation in the late 19th century before becoming associated primarily with the cultivation of aquatic plant and animal species.

In 1859, Stephen Ainsworth of West Bloomfield, New York, began experiments with brook trout. By 1864, Seth Green had established a commercial fish-hatching operation at Caledonia Springs, near Rochester, New York. By 1866, with the involvement of Dr. W. W. Fletcher of Concord, Massachusetts, artificial fish hatcheries were under way in both Canada and the United States. When the Dildo Island fish hatchery opened in Newfoundland in 1889, it was the largest and most advanced in the world. The word aquaculture was used in descriptions of the hatcheries experiments with cod and lobster in 1890.

By the 1920s, the American Fish Culture Company of Carolina, Rhode Island, founded in the 1870s was one of the leading producers of trout. During the 1940s, they had perfected the method of manipulating the day and night cycle of fish so that they could be artificially spawned year around.

Californians harvested wild kelp and attempted to manage supply around 1900, later labeling it a wartime resource.

21st-century practice

Harvest stagnation in wild fisheries and overexploitation of popular marine species, combined with a growing demand for high-quality protein, encouraged aquaculturists to domesticate other marine species. At the outset of modern aquaculture, many were optimistic that a "Blue Revolution" could take place in aquaculture, just as the Green Revolution of the 20th century had revolutionized agriculture. Although land animals had long been domesticated, most seafood species were still caught from the wild. Concerned about the impact of growing demand for seafood on the world's oceans, prominent ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau wrote in 1973: "With earth’s burgeoning human populations to feed, we must turn to the sea with new understanding and new technology.”

About 430 (97%) of the species cultured as of 2007 were domesticated during the 20th and 21st centuries, of which an estimated 106 came in the decade to 2007. Given the long-term importance of agriculture, to date, only 0.08% of known land plant species and 0.0002% of known land animal species have been domesticated, compared with 0.17% of known marine plant species and 0.13% of known marine animal species. Domestication typically involves about a decade of scientific research. Domesticating aquatic species involves fewer risks to humans than do land animals, which took a large toll in human lives. Most major human diseases originated in domesticated animals, including diseases such as smallpox and diphtheria, that like most infectious diseases, move to humans from animals. No human pathogens of comparable virulence have yet emerged from marine species.

Biological control methods to manage parasites are already being used, such as cleaner fish (e.g. lumpsuckers and wrasse) to control sea lice populations in salmon farming. Models are being used to help with spatial planning and siting of fish farms in order to minimize impact.

The decline in wild fish stocks has increased the demand for farmed fish. However, finding alternative sources of protein and oil for fish feed is necessary so the aquaculture industry can grow sustainably; otherwise, it represents a great risk for the over-exploitation of forage fish.

Another recent issue following the banning in 2008 of organotins by the International Maritime Organization is the need to find environmentally friendly, but still effective, compounds with antifouling effects.

Many new natural compounds are discovered every year, but producing them on a large enough scale for commercial purposes is almost impossible.

It is highly probable that future developments in this field will rely on microorganisms, but greater funding and further research is needed to overcome the lack of knowledge in this field.

Aquatic plants

Microalgae, also referred to as phytoplankton, microphytes, or planktonic algae, constitute the majority of cultivated algae. Macroalgae commonly known as seaweed also have many commercial and industrial uses, but due to their size and specific requirements, they are not easily cultivated on a large scale and are most often taken in the wild.

The farming of fish is the most common form of aquaculture. It involves raising fish commercially in tanks, ponds, or ocean enclosures, usually for food. A facility that releases juvenile fish into the wild for recreational fishing or to supplement a species' natural numbers is generally referred to as a fish hatchery. Worldwide, the most important fish species used in fish farming are, in order, carp, salmon, tilapia, and catfish.

In the Mediterranean, young bluefin tuna are netted at sea and towed slowly towards the shore. They are then interned in offshore pens where they are further grown for the market. In 2009, researchers in Australia managed for the first time to coax southern bluefin tuna to breed in landlocked tanks. Southern bluefin tuna are also caught in the wild and fattened in grow-out sea cages in southern Spencer Gulf, South Australia.

A similar process is used in the salmon-farming section of this industry; juveniles are taken from hatcheries and a variety of methods are used to aid them in their maturation. For example, as stated above, some of the most important fish species in the industry, salmon, can be grown using a cage system. This is done by having netted cages, preferably in open water that has a strong flow, and feeding the salmon a special food mixture that aids their growth. This process allows for year-round growth of the fish, thus a higher harvest during the correct seasons. An additional method, known sometimes as sea ranching, has also been used within the industry. Sea ranching involves raising fish in a hatchery for a brief time and then releasing them into marine waters for further development, whereupon the fish are recaptured when they have matured.

Commercial shrimp farming began in the 1970s, and production grew steeply thereafter. Global production reached more than 1.6 million tonnes in 2003, worth about US$9 billion. About 75% of farmed shrimp is produced in Asia, in particular in China and Thailand. The other 25% is produced mainly in Latin America, where Brazil is the largest producer. Thailand is the largest exporter.

Shrimp farming has changed from its traditional, small-scale form in Southeast Asia into a global industry. Technological advances have led to ever higher densities per unit area, and broodstock is shipped worldwide. Virtually all farmed shrimp are penaeids (i.e., shrimp of the family Penaeidae), and just two species of shrimp, the Pacific white shrimp and the giant tiger prawn, account for about 80% of all farmed shrimp. These industrial monocultures are very susceptible to disease, which has decimated shrimp populations across entire regions. Increasing ecological problems, repeated disease outbreaks, and pressure and criticism from both nongovernmental organizations and consumer countries led to changes in the industry in the late 1990s and generally stronger regulations. In 1999, governments, industry representatives, and environmental organizations initiated a program aimed at developing and promoting more sustainable farming practices through the Seafood Watch program.

Freshwater prawn farming shares many characteristics with, including many problems with, marine shrimp farming. Unique problems are introduced by the developmental lifecycle of the main species, the giant river prawn.

The global annual production of freshwater prawns (excluding crayfish and crabs) in 2003 was about 280,000 tonnes, of which China produced 180,000 tonnes followed by India and Thailand with 35,000 tonnes each. Additionally, China produced about 370,000 tonnes of Chinese river crab.

Aquacultured shellfish include various oyster, mussel, and clam species. These bivalves are filter and/or deposit feeders, which rely on ambient primary production rather than inputs of fish or other feed. As such, shellfish aquaculture is generally perceived as benign or even beneficial.

Depending on the species and local conditions, bivalve molluscs are either grown on the beach, on longlines, or suspended from rafts and harvested by hand or by dredging.

Abalone farming began in the late 1950s and early 1960s in Japan and China. Since the mid-1990s, this industry has become increasingly successful. Overfishing and poaching have reduced wild populations to the extent that farmed abalone now supplies most abalone meat. Sustainably farmed molluscs can be certified by Seafood Watch and other organizations, including the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). WWF initiated the "Aquaculture Dialogues" in 2004 to develop measurable and performance-based standards for responsibly farmed seafood. In 2009, WWF co-founded the Aquaculture Stewardship Council with the Dutch Sustainable Trade Initiative to manage the global standards and certification programs.

After trials in 2012, a commercial "sea ranch" was set up in Flinders Bay, Western Australia, to raise abalone. The ranch is based on an artificial reef made up of 5000 (As of April 2016) separate concrete units called 'abitats' (abalone habitats). The 900-kg abitats can host 400 abalone each. The reef is seeded with young abalone from an onshore hatchery. The abalone feed on seaweed that has grown naturally on the abitats, with the ecosystem enrichment of the bay also resulting in growing numbers of dhufish, pink snapper, wrasse, and Samson fish, among other species.

Brad Adams, from the company, has emphasised the similarity to wild abalone and the difference from shore-based aquaculture. "We're not aquaculture, we're ranching, because once they're in the water they look after themselves."

Other groups

Other groups include aquatic reptiles, amphibians, and miscellaneous invertebrates, such as echinoderms and jellyfish. They are separately graphed at the top right of this section, since they do not contribute enough volume to show clearly on the main graph.

Commercially harvested echinoderms include sea cucumbers and sea urchins. In China, sea cucumbers are farmed in artificial ponds as large as 1,000 acres (400 ha).

Around the world

In 2012, the total world production of fisheries was 158 million tonnes, of which aquaculture contributed 66.6 million tonnes, about 42%. The growth rate of worldwide aquaculture has been sustained and rapid, averaging about 8% per year for over 30 years, while the take from wild fisheries] has been essentially flat for the last decade. The aquaculture market reached $86 billion in 2009.

Aquaculture is an especially important economic activity in China. Between 1980 and 1997, the Chinese Bureau of Fisheries reports, aquaculture harvests grew at an annual rate of 16.7%, jumping from 1.9 million tonnes to nearly 23 million tonnes. In 2005, China accounted for 70% of world production. Aquaculture is also currently one of the fastest-growing areas of food production in the U.S.

About 90% of all U.S. shrimp consumption is farmed and imported. In recent years, salmon aquaculture has become a major export in southern Chile, especially in Puerto Montt, Chile's fastest-growing city.

A United Nations report titled The State of the World Fisheries and Aquaculture released in May 2014 maintained fisheries and aquaculture support the livelihoods of some 60 million people in Asia and Africa.

National laws, regulations, and management

Laws governing aquaculture practices vary greatly by country and are often not closely regulated or easily traceable. In the United States, land-based and nearshore aquaculture is regulated at the federal and state levels; however, no national laws govern offshore aquaculture in U.S. exclusive economic zone waters. In June 2011, the Department of Commerce and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released national aquaculture policies to address this issue and "to meet the growing demand for healthy seafood, to create jobs in coastal communities, and restore vital ecosystems." In 2011, Congresswoman Lois Capps introduced the National Sustainable Offshore Aquaculture Act of 2011 "to establish a regulatory system and research program for sustainable offshore aquaculture in the United States exclusive economic zone"; however, the bill was not enacted into law.

China overwhelmingly dominates the world in reported aquaculture output, reporting a total output which is double that of the rest of the world put together. However, there are some historical issues with the accuracy of China's returns.

In 2001, the fisheries scientists Reg Watson and Daniel Pauly expressed concerns in a letter to Nature, that China was over reporting its catch from wild fisheries in the 1990s. They said that made it appear that the global catch since 1988 was increasing annually by 300,000 tonnes, whereas it was really shrinking annually by 350,000 tonnes. Watson and Pauly suggested this may be have been related to Chinese policies where state entities that monitored the economy were also tasked with increasing output. Also, until more recently, the promotion of Chinese officials was based on production increases from their own areas.

China disputed this claim. The official Xinhua News Agency quoted Yang Jian, director general of the Agriculture Ministry's Bureau of Fisheries, as saying that China's figures were "basically correct". However, the FAO accepted there were issues with the reliability of China's statistical returns, and for a period treated data from China, including the aquaculture data, apart from the rest of the world.

Mariculture refers to the cultivation of marine organisms in seawater, usually in sheltered coastal waters. The farming of marine fish is an example of mariculture, and so also is the farming of marine crustaceans (such as shrimp), molluscs (such as oysters), and seaweed.

Mariculture may consist of raising the organisms on or in artificial enclosures such as in floating netted enclosures for salmon and on racks for oysters. In the case of enclosed salmon, they are fed by the operators; oysters on racks filter feed on naturally available food. Abalone have been farmed on an artificial reef consuming seaweed which grows naturally on the reef units.

Integrated multi-trophic aquaculture (IMTA) is a practice in which the byproducts (wastes) from one species are recycled to become inputs (fertilizers, food) for another. Fed aquaculture (for example, fish, shrimp) is combined with inorganic extractive and organic extractive (for example, shellfish) aquaculture to create balanced systems for environmental sustainability (biomitigation), economic stability (product diversification and risk reduction) and social acceptability (better management practices).

"Multi-trophic" refers to the incorporation of species from different trophic or nutritional levels in the same system. This is one potential distinction from the age-old practice of aquatic polyculture, which could simply be the co-culture of different fish species from the same trophic level. In this case, these organisms may all share the same biological and chemical processes, with few synergistic benefits, which could potentially lead to significant shifts in the ecosystem. Some traditional polyculture systems may, in fact, incorporate a greater diversity of species, occupying several niches, as extensive cultures (low intensity, low management) within the same pond. The term "integrated" refers to the more intensive cultivation of the different species in proximity of each other, connected by nutrient and energy transfer through water.

Ideally, the biological and chemical processes in an IMTA system should balance. This is achieved through the appropriate selection and proportions of different species providing different ecosystem functions. The co-cultured species are typically more than just biofilters; they are harvestable crops of commercial value. A working IMTA system can result in greater total production based on mutual benefits to the co-cultured species and improved ecosystem health, even if the production of individual species is lower than in a monoculture over a short term period.

Sometimes the term "integrated aquaculture" is used to describe the integration of monocultures through water transfer. For all intents and purposes, however, the terms "IMTA" and "integrated aquaculture" differ only in their degree of descriptiveness. Aquaponics, fractionated aquaculture, integrated agriculture-aquaculture systems, integrated peri-urban-aquaculture systems, and integrated fisheries-aquaculture systems are other variations of the IMTA concept.

Netting materials

Various materials, including nylon, polyester, polypropylene, polyethylene, plastic-coated welded wire, rubber, patented rope products (Spectra, Thorn-D, Dyneema), galvanized steel and copper are used for netting in aquaculture fish enclosures around the world. All of these materials are selected for a variety of reasons, including design feasibility, material strength, cost, and corrosion resistance.

Recently, copper alloys have become important netting materials in aquaculture because they are antimicrobial (i.e., they destroy bacteria, viruses, fungi, algae, and other microbes) and they therefore prevent biofouling (i.e., the undesirable accumulation, adhesion, and growth of microorganisms, plants, algae, tubeworms, barnacles, mollusks, and other organisms). By inhibiting microbial growth, copper alloy aquaculture cages avoid costly net changes that are necessary with other materials. The resistance of organism growth on copper alloy nets also provides a cleaner and healthier environment for farmed fish to grow and thrive.

If performed without consideration for potential local environmental impacts, aquaculture in inland waters can result in more environmental damaging than wild fisheries, though with less waste produced on a per kg on a global scale. Local concerns with aquaculture in inland waters may include waste handling, side-effects of antibiotics, competition between farmed and wild animals, and the potential introduction of invasive plant and animal species, or foreign pathogens, particularly if unprocessed fish are used to feed more marketable carnivorous fish. If non-local live feeds are used, aquaculture may introduce plant of animal. Improvements in methods resulting from advances in research and the availability of commercial feeds has reduced some of these concerns since their greater prevalence in 1990s and 2000s .

Fish waste is organic and composed of nutrients necessary in all components of aquatic food webs. In-ocean aquaculture often produces much higher than normal fish waste concentrations. The waste collects on the ocean bottom, damaging or eliminating bottom-dwelling life. Waste can also decrease dissolved oxygen levels in the water column, putting further pressure on wild animals. An alternative model to food being added to the ecosystem, is the installation of artificial reef structures to increase the habitat niches available, without the need to add any more than ambient feed and nutrient. This has been used in the "ranching" of abalone in Western Australia.

Fish oils

Tilapia from aquaculture has been shown to contain more fat and a much higher ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 oils.

Impacts on wild fish

Some carnivorous and omnivorous farmed fish species are fed wild forage fish. Although carnivorous farmed fish represented only 13 percent of aquaculture production by weight in 2000, they represented 34 percent of aquaculture production by value.

Farming of carnivorous species like salmon and shrimp leads to a high demand for forage fish to match the nutrition they get in the wild. Fish do not actually produce omega-3 fatty acids, but instead accumulate them from either consuming microalgae that produce these fatty acids, as is the case with forage fish like herring and sardines, or, as is the case with fatty predatory fish, like salmon, by eating prey fish that have accumulated omega-3 fatty acids from microalgae. To satisfy this requirement, more than 50 percent of the world fish oil production is fed to farmed salmon.

Farmed salmon consume more wild fish than they generate as a final product, although the efficiency of production is improving. To produce one pound of farmed salmon, products from several pounds of wild fish are fed to them - this can be described as the "fish-in-fish-out" (FIFO) ratio. In 1995, salmon had a FIFO ratio of 7.5 (meaning 7.5 pounds of wild fish feed were required to produce 1 pound of salmon); by 2006 the ratio had fallen to 4.9. Additionally, a growing share of fish oil and fishmeal come from residues (byproducts of fish processing), rather than dedicated whole fish. In 2012, 34 percent of fish oil and 28 percent of fishmeal came from residues. However, fishmeal and oil from residues instead of whole fish have a different composition with more ash and less protein, which may limit its potential use for aquaculture.

As the salmon farming industry expands, it requires more wild forage fish for feed, at a time when seventy five percent of the worlds monitored fisheries are already near to or have exceeded their maximum sustainable yield. The industrial scale extraction of wild forage fish for salmon farming then impacts the survivability of the wild predator fish who rely on them for food. An important step in reducing the impact of aquaculture on wild fish is shifting carnivorous species to plant-based feeds. Salmon feeds, for example, have gone from containing only fishmeal and oil to containing 40 percent plant protein. The USDA has also experimented with using grain-based feeds for farmed trout. When properly formulated (and often mixed with fishmeal or oil), plant-based feeds can provide proper nutrition and similar growth rates in carnivorous farmed fish.

Another impact aquaculture production can have on wild fish is the risk of fish escaping from coastal pens, where they can interbreed with their wild counterparts, diluting wild genetic stocks. Escaped fish can become invasive, out-competing native species.

Coastal ecosystems

Aquaculture is becoming a significant threat to coastal ecosystems. About 20 percent of mangrove forests have been destroyed since 1980, partly due to shrimp farming. An extended cost–benefit analysis of the total economic value of shrimp aquaculture built on mangrove ecosystems found that the external costs were much higher than the external benefits. Over four decades, 269,000 hectares (660,000 acres) of Indonesian mangroves have been converted to shrimp farms. Most of these farms are abandoned within a decade because of the toxin build-up and nutrient loss.

Pollution from sea cage aquaculture

Salmon farms are typically sited in pristine coastal ecosystems which they then pollute. A farm with 200,000 salmon discharges more fecal waste than a city of 60,000 people. This waste is discharged directly into the surrounding aquatic environment, untreated, often containing antibiotics and pesticides." There is also an accumulation of heavy metals on the benthos (seafloor) near the salmon farms, particularly copper and zinc.

In 2016, mass fish kill events impacted salmon farmers along Chile's coast and the wider ecology. Increases in aquaculture production and its associated effluent were considered to be possible contributing factors to fish and molluscan mortality.

Sea cage aquaculture is responsible for nutrient enrichment of the waters in which they are established. This results from fish wastes and uneaten feed inputs. Elements of most concern are nitrogen and phosphorus which can promote algal growth, including harmful algal blooms which can be toxic to fish. Flushing times, current speeds, distance from the shore and water depth are important considerations when locating sea cages in order to minimize the impacts of nutrient enrichment on coastal ecosystems.

The extent of the effects of pollution from sea-cage aquaculture varies depending on where the cages are located, which species are kept, how densely cages are stocked and what the fish are fed. Important species-specific variables include the species' food conversion ratio (FCR) and nitrogen retention. Studies prior to 2001 determined that the amount of nitrogen introduced as feed which is lost to the water column and seafloor as waste varies from 52 to 95%.

Genetic modification

A type of salmon called the AquAdvantage salmon has been genetically modified for faster growth, although it has not been approved for commercial use, due to controversy. The altered salmon incorporates a growth hormone from a Chinook salmon that allows it to reach full size in 16–28 months, instead of the normal 36 months for Atlantic salmon, and while consuming 25 percent less feed. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration reviewed the AquAdvantage salmon in a draft environmental assessment and determined that it "would not have a significant impact (FONSI) on the U.S. environment."

Animal welfare

As with the farming of terrestrial animals, social attitudes influence the need for humane practices and regulations in farmed marine animals. Under the guidelines advised by the Farm Animal Welfare Council good animal welfare means both fitness and a sense of well being in the animal's physical and mental state. This can be defined by the Five Freedoms:

  • Freedom from hunger & thirst
  • Freedom from discomfort
  • Freedom from pain, disease, or injury
  • Freedom to express normal behaviour
  • Freedom from fear and distress
  • However, the controversial issue in aquaculture is whether fish and farmed marine invertebrates are actually sentient, or have the perception and awareness to experience suffering. Although no evidence of this has been found in marine invertebrates, recent studies conclude that fish do have the necessary receptors (nociceptors) to sense noxious stimuli and so are likely to experience states of pain, fear and stress. Consequently, welfare in aquaculture is directed at vertebrates; finfish in particular.

    Common welfare concerns

    Welfare in aquaculture can be impacted by a number of issues such as stocking densities, behavioural interactions, disease and parasitism. A major problem in determining the cause of impaired welfare is that these issues are often all interrelated and influence each other at different times.

    Optimal stocking density is often defined by the carrying capacity of the stocked environment and the amount of individual space needed by the fish, which is very species specific. Although behavioural interactions such as shoaling may mean that high stocking densities are beneficial to some species, in many cultured species high stocking densities may be of concern. Crowding can constrain normal swimming behaviour, as well as increase aggressive and competitive behaviours such as cannibalism, feed competition, territoriality and dominance/subordination hierarchies. This potentially increases the risk of tissue damage due to abrasion from fish-to-fish contact or fish-to-cage contact. Fish can suffer reductions in food intake and food conversion efficiency. In addition, high stocking densities can result in water flow being insufficient, creating inadequate oxygen supply and waste product removal. Dissolved oxygen is essential for fish respiration and concentrations below critical levels can induce stress and even lead to asphyxiation. Ammonia, a nitrogen excretion product, is highly toxic to fish at accumulated levels, particularly when oxygen concentrations are low.

    Many of these interactions and effects cause stress in the fish, which can be a major factor in facilitating fish disease. For many parasites, infestation depends on the host's degree of mobility, the density of the host population and vulnerability of the host's defence system. Sea lice are the primary parasitic problem for finfish in aquaculture, high numbers causing widespread skin erosion and haemorrhaging, gill congestion, and increased mucus production. There are also a number of prominent viral and bacterial pathogens that can have severe effects on internal organs and nervous systems.

    Improving welfare

    The key to improving welfare of marine cultured organisms is to reduce stress to a minimum, as prolonged or repeated stress can cause a range of adverse effects. Attempts to minimise stress can occur throughout the culture process. During grow out it is important to keep stocking densities at appropriate levels specific to each species, as well as separating size classes and grading to reduce aggressive behavioural interactions. Keeping nets and cages clean can assist positive water flow to reduce the risk of water degradation.

    Not surprisingly disease and parasitism can have a major effect on fish welfare and it is important for farmers not only to manage infected stock but also to apply disease prevention measures. However, prevention methods, such as vaccination, can also induce stress because of the extra handling and injection. Other methods include adding antibiotics to feed, adding chemicals into water for treatment baths and biological control, such as using cleaner wrasse to remove lice from farmed salmon.

    Many steps are involved in transport, including capture, food deprivation to reduce faecal contamination of transport water, transfer to transport vehicle via nets or pumps, plus transport and transfer to the delivery location. During transport water needs to be maintained to a high quality, with regulated temperature, sufficient oxygen and minimal waste products. In some cases anaesthetics may be used in small doses to calm fish before transport.

    Aquaculture is sometimes part of an environmental rehabilitation program or as an aid in conserving endangered species.

    Global wild fisheries are in decline, with valuable habitat such as estuaries in critical condition. The aquaculture or farming of piscivorous fish, like salmon, does not help the problem because they need to eat products from other fish, such as fish meal and fish oil. Studies have shown that salmon farming has major negative impacts on wild salmon, as well as the forage fish that need to be caught to feed them. Fish that are higher on the food chain are less efficient sources of food energy.

    Apart from fish and shrimp, some aquaculture undertakings, such as seaweed and filter-feeding bivalve mollusks like oysters, clams, mussels and scallops, are relatively benign and even environmentally restorative. Filter-feeders filter pollutants as well as nutrients from the water, improving water quality. Seaweeds extract nutrients such as inorganic nitrogen and phosphorus directly from the water, and filter-feeding mollusks can extract nutrients as they feed on particulates, such as phytoplankton and detritus.

    Some profitable aquaculture cooperatives promote sustainable practices. New methods lessen the risk of biological and chemical pollution through minimizing fish stress, fallowing netpens, and applying Integrated Pest Management. Vaccines are being used more and more to reduce antibiotic use for disease control.

    Onshore recirculating aquaculture systems, facilities using polyculture techniques, and properly sited facilities (for example, offshore areas with strong currents) are examples of ways to manage negative environmental effects.

    Recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) recycle water by circulating it through filters to remove fish waste and food and then recirculating it back into the tanks. This saves water and the waste gathered can be used in compost or, in some cases, could even be treated and used on land. While RAS was developed with freshwater fish in mind, scientist associated with the Agricultural Research Service have found a way to rear saltwater fish using RAS in low-salinity waters. Although saltwater fish are raised in off-shore cages or caught with nets in water that typically has a salinity of 35 parts per thousand (ppt), scientists were able to produce healthy pompano, a saltwater fish, in tanks with a salinity of only 5 ppt. Commercializing low-salinity RAS are predicted to have positive environmental and economical effects. Unwanted nutrients from the fish food would not be added to the ocean and the risk of transmitting diseases between wild and farm-raised fish would greatly be reduced. The price of expensive saltwater fish, such as the pompano and combia used in the experiments, would be reduced. However, before any of this can be done researchers must study every aspect of the fish's lifecycle, including the amount of ammonia and nitrate the fish will tolerate in the water, what to feed the fish during each stage of its lifecycle, the stocking rate that will produce the healthiest fish, etc.

    Some 16 countries now use geothermal energy for aquaculture, including China, Israel, and the United States. In California, for example, 15 fish farms produce tilapia, bass, and catfish with warm water from underground. This warmer water enables fish to grow all year round and mature more quickly. Collectively these California farms produce 4.5 million kilograms of fish each year.

    Aquaculture Wikipedia


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When the Going Gets Tough

For the past week, working on my novel has brought a sensation similar to extensive dental work. My 500 word goal, once easy to surpass, has become difficult to come close to.

I stayed up late the other night, just trying to force a few words down, but it was such a struggle. I was exhausted after a hundred words or so. And then something occurred to me that hasn’t yet in the course of writing this novel:

Why don’t I just give up?

What scared me most about the question was not that I asked it, but that it made sense.

Things have gotten hard. Life has gotten busy. My room has become a mess.

I’ve let so many things distract me, fill my time, and take my energy that I have not given myself any space to be creative.

It’s draining.

I have filled my time with good things, things that need to be done. But am I making time to do the work I was called to do?

Probably not.

For me, what does this mean? It means I need to be more intentional about how I spend my time. Working part-time from home, I will have to have set hours for work and set hours for writing, and I can’t take from one to give to the other. I will have to set aside moments for house work while still guarding those moments for creativity.

I also need to stop suppressing creative urges just because they are not convenient. For whatever reason, I have stopped carrying around my beloved notebook and I’m seeing how my creativity is suffering because of it. I am not providing a way to capture my ideas. That’s not fair to my work or my sanity.

So no, I am not giving up. I have made it this far and have too many cheerleaders willing to help me along. I can’t ignore either of those things. This novel will get written, but I need to make that a possibility.

Some re-prioritizing is in order.

What about you? When it gets hard to complete something that you’re passionate about, how do you push onward? I’d love to hear so please comment!

4 thoughts on “When the Going Gets Tough

  1. Oh I loved this. I have a post on “simplicity” coming up on MOHL, and this very thing was crossing my mind as I typed it. Where do we find a place for our creativity in the already crowded world of legitimate responsibility. I seriously don't have time for Pinterest anymore, with all the important things that take up my time and heart. And my creative and spiritual life both suffer for it. But I've found when I commit an affectionate amount of time for the latter (spiritual), there's a miraculous plenty of hours to devote to the rest. If I make time for quiet moments of intentional prayer and Bible reading, my responsibilities and creativity don't suffer! It's amazing. I'm still struggling at this. But knowing the struggle–and the cure–is half my battle here. 🙂

    P.S. Hence the crowded world of responsibility, I've missed you, friend! Your writings and social media fellowship are a blessing to me.

  2. AHHHHH!!!! It's so wonderful to hear from you once again! I've been praying for you and yours as you come to mind.
    Isn't it wild how time spent in quiet with the Lord suddenly brings priorities to order and creates space for all our callings? I love it. It's always a challenge to resist the temptation to ignore the needs of my soul because I “don't have the time.” That's where I struggle.
    God's grace is great and he blesses creativity in beautiful ways.
    I'm looking forward to reading your MOHL post. My life could always use more simplicity.

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Welcome to ALH Building Systems

Since 1973, ALH has been serving the custom framing and building needs for both residential and commercial projects. Below is a brief description of our family of companies, where all your custom framing and building needs will be met with seasoned experience, expertise and warm personal service.
ALH Building Systems brings you the total package of framing materials, and is a premier manufacturer of Wood Floor Trusses, Roof Trusses, and Wall Panel Systems. We custom build every building per your blueprints.
Affordable Luxury Homes is our custom packaged home division. Each home is completely customized to your specifications. We help you design, plan and create your custom dream home every step of the way, while YOU remain in charge of your project!

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University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY
Click on the button below to watch a time lapse video of the project, that includes the framing stage with wall and truss components fabricated by ALH Building Systems!


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Posts Tagged ‘font matrix

The first question is “Are there any font managers for linux?”. Here I mean an application for sorting and categorising fonts that presents ready previews and allows for easy font selection. Of course there are lots of other useful features, like creating printable “font books” … The answer is that there doesn’t seem to be […]

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• Pangong Lake, Spituk Gompa
  • 6 Nights / 7 days

Day 1 Leh

Welcome to Leh airport, where you will be met and assisted by our representative with transfer to your hotel. You have rest of the day at leisure to acclimatize yourself to the high altitude of Ladakh. Overnight in Leh.

Meals: Dinner

Day 2 Leh – Monastery Tour and Leh Sightseeing

After a leisurely breakfast, we drive to visit Hemis Monastery situated 45 kilometers west of Leh; Hemis is the largest and the wealthiest monastery in Ladakh. From Hemis, you are driven back taking the same route to visit Thiksey Monastery, located on a hill-lock with formidable views of the Indus valley. Thiksey is especially noteworthy for its gigantic seated statue of the Maitreya and is also known for its (Dukhang) assembly hall which houses hundreds of rectangular prayer books, stacked between wooden covers and bound in silk. After that we continue to drive through series of chortens to visit Shey Palace the former summer palace of the King of Ladakh. 3 Idiots School Campus and Sindhu Darshan visit. In the evening visit Leh Palace overlooking Leh town and Shanti Stupa (Japanese Peace Pagoda). Overnight in Leh.

Meals: Breakfast, Dinner

Day 3 Leh – Nubra Valley ( 1 night )

After breakfast drive to Nubra Valley via Khardungla Pass(Highest Motorable road in the World, 18,380 ft) Arrive at Nubra Valley by afternoon. Arrive in Nubra and proceed for a visit to the sand dunes at Hunder.Overnight stay at the camp / Hotel in Nubra Valley.

Meals: Breakfast, Dinner

Day 4 Nubra Valley – Leh (3 Nights)

After Breakfast drive to visit Diskit Monastery and drive back to Leh by same route, crossing Khardungla Pass. Reach Leh by afternoon. Overnight in Leh.

Meals: Breakfast, Dinner

Day 5 Leh

Hall of Fame, Spituk Gompa, Magnetic Hill, Gurudwara Shri Patthar Sahib, Confluence of Zanskar and This morning after breakfast visit Hall of Fame : A glorious museum constructed by the Indian Army and worth a visit for every citizen. Spituk Monastery: 8 kms from Leh, this gompa stands prominently on top of hillock housing collection of ancient masks, antique masks and antique arms. Magnetic Hill : Defying the Law of gravity, This place is close to the Gurdwara Shri Patthar Sahib. It has been noticed that when a vehicle is parked on neutral gear on this metallic road the vehicle slides up-hill that’s the Believe it or not of Ladakh. Gurudwara Patthar Sahib: Gurudwara Pathar Sahib stands at the place where Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikh religion and the first guru, is believed to have vanquished a demon and finally visit the confluence of Zanskar – Indus rivers. Overnight in Leh

Meals: Breakfast, Dinner

Day 6 Leh –Pangong Lake – Leh

Today after breakfast, proceed for your excursion to Pangong Lake , situated at 14,000 feet. A long narrow basin of inland drainage, hardly six to seven kilometers at its widest point to which foreigners are permitted, is only some seven km along the southern shore from the head of the lake, but it affords spectacular views of the mountains of the Changchenmo range to the north, their reflection shimmering in the ever-changing blues and greens of the lakes brackish water. Above Spangmik are the glacier and snow-capped peaks of the Pangong range. Overnight in Leh.

Meals: Breakfast, Dinner

Day 7 Leh – Airport

Today after breakfast, transfer to Leh airport to board your flight to your hometown. Holiday Concludes. Let’s stay in touch on Facebook\email and meet again on another memorable Holiday. See you soon!

Meals: Breakfast

Meals – Breakfast, Dinner as specified in the itinerary.
Travel by comfortable A/c or Non A/c coach / Vehicle as per the tour itinerary.

Airfare /Railway Fare.
Any up gradation in hotel room category,Entrance fees of all sightseeing places to be visited from inside.
Any items of personal nature like tips to guides, drivers,laundry,telephone charges,shopping, wines & alcoholic beverages, mineral water (unless specified), and food and drink which is not part of set group menu.
Any optional tours, excursions, supplement costs, services and activities not mentioned in the itinerary inclusions.
Any other meals than those mentioned above.

Please Note:

Under unavoidable circumstances itineraries may be changed or reversed, however all inclusions in the itinerary will remain same.
Vehicle is not at disposal. Additional charges for extra usage or sightseeing has to be paid for.
Personal identification is mandatory to carry on tour for Air Travel, Hotels for security reason like: election card, Driving License, Passport. Itinerary is subject to change.
Hotel check in is 14:00 hrs and checkout would be 10:00 hrs. Early check in and late check – out subject to availability.
Confirmation of Hotels and other services is subject to availability. If the above hotels are not available similar category hotels will be used.
All arrangements made by us are in the capacity of a ground handling agent only. We will not be liable for claims or expenses arising from circumstances beyond our control such as accidents, injuries delayed or cancelled flights & acts or forces of nature


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Writing for Designers

A note from the editors: We’re pleased to share an excerpt from the Introduction of Scott Kubie’s Writing for Designers, from A Book Apart.

Shit. The writing. We forgot about the writing. The thing, the design thing…it needs words! Oh man, so many words. I thought somebody…wasn’t the client going to…shit. We’ve got to get the writing done. We’ve got to get the writing done! How are we going to get the writing done?!

Article Continues Below

Don’t worry, friend. I’m here. We’ll get the writing done. The first step is to accept a hard truth: someone has to do the writing.

Some teams seem to build their whole process around not writing. They fill wireframes with lorem ipsum (that fake Latin text that confuses stakeholders) and write CTA goes here on their buttons. I’ve been handed my share of comps where anything remotely word-based was represented by a bunch of squiggly lines.

You know that comic about how to draw an owl? Step one: draw some circles. Step two: draw the rest of the fucking owl. That’s you with your squiggly lines. Rude.

Everything left unwritten is a mystery box of incomplete design. These mysteries beget other mysteries, and pretty soon you’ve got dozens of screens of things that kinda-sorta-maybe make sense but none of them can really be final because you never wrote the words.

Choosing words and writing what appears in an interface forces us to name components, articulate choices, and explain things to the user. It’s part of design.

We know this, don’t we? We knew it at the beginning of the design project, and yet here we are. Why did we wait?

Writing is part of design#section2

Words are one of the most powerful design materials available. They convey deeply complex meanings in a compact space. They load fast. They’re easy to manipulate and easy to transmit. And the best part is, you don’t have to invent any of them! You just have to use them.

Sometimes words get written off (see what I did there) as mere “details” in our designs. True details can wait until the end of your design process. Words, however, are deeply integrated throughout the user’s experience of your design. Look at your favorite app, site, or interface. Take all the words away and what do you have? Not much!

Even if the particular thing you’re designing seems light on words, take a broader view and you’ll find words hiding everywhere:

  • error messages and recovery flows
  • confirmation screens
  • user-visible metadata like page titles and search engine descriptions
  • transactional emails
  • in-app user assistance
  • support documentation
  • changelogs
  • feature descriptions and marketing copy

These are as much a part of the design as the layout, graphics, and animations. Designs depend on words.

Even if your design were simple, beautiful, and intuitive, writing can take it one step further. Writing can reinforce how you want users to think about your design. Writing can explain the approach or philosophy that underpins your design. Writing can guide users through complex processes. Writing can even help cover for the quirks and compromises in our designs—hopefully not our first resort, but valuable nonetheless.

Sometimes the writing isn’t done because we’re trying to solve everything with “pure design.” Supposed UX thought leaders throw around baloney like “Good design doesn’t need explanation” and “If you have to use words, you’ve failed.” Come on. I hope my pilot knows what all those switches in the cockpit do, but I also hope they’re labeled, just in case.

To keep things simple in this book, we’ll be talking about three general categories of writing you might have to do to support your design work:

  • Interface copy: Often referred to as UI copy or microcopy, this is the text that’s deeply integrated within the interface, like labels for form fields, text on buttons, navigation labels on a website, error messages, and similar. It’s often made of single words or short phrases. If the interface would “break” or be extremely hard to use if you removed this text, we’ll call it interface copy.
  • Product copy: Writing that’s integral to the function of the site/product/app/experience, but not necessarily a direct part of the interface—the body of an onboarding email, for instance, or a description of updates to an application in a changelog. This is content focused on helping/supporting the reader.
  • Marketing copy: Longer-form writing that is primarily filling a sales or promotional sort of role. This is content focused on persuading the reader.

Depending on your product and organization, you might have many more buckets of content, or you may find the lines especially blurry even between these three. That’s okay! These buckets will just make things easier while we talk about writing in this book. Cool? Cool.

(Oh, and “copy” is just a way to distinguish words written by a designer from the more generic idea of “text,” which could be just about anything in your system, including user-generated input.)

Writing is always hard#section3

If you know someone who makes writing look easy, you’re right. They make it look easy. You can’t plan well for a difficult journey if you assume it’s going to be an easy journey. Accepting that writing is hard is an important step toward making it easier and getting it done.

Writing is hard because it’s personal. Even if you’re writing about something you don’t feel strongly about, or even something you disagree with, it’s still your writing. The words you write carry a little echo of you. To get the writing done, you’re going to have to be a little vulnerable. Maybe a lot.

Writing is even hard for writers—and since most people don’t realize that, they make it even harder on writers. They don’t give writers enough time to write. They don’t provide enough information to work with. They say things that minimize the difficulty of the task and the skill required to complete it. “You’re so creative! This should be easy, right? Shoot me something back before lunch.” Ugh.

Unfortunately, there’s no special potion you can take to help you get the writing done, and even the most beautifully retro hipster typewriter still needs you to operate the keys.

Workflow gets the writing done#section4

So if magic won’t help you get the writing done, what will? In design contexts, a useful way to think about writing is workflow. Workflow is a big-picture idea that accommodates all kinds of different processes, techniques, and tools.

If following a recipe is a process, making dinner is a workflow. A dinner-making workflow has obvious phases—plan the meal, prep the ingredients, mix and cook things, finish and serve the meal. The specific steps and outcomes vary depending on the meal, but the basic workflow remains the same.

This is also a useful way to think about design writing. No matter what you’re cooking up—no matter how custom the request and how many dietary restrictions your stakeholders might have—you’ll follow the same basic workflow each time you do the writing:

  1. Prepare (to write)
  2. Compose (the words)
  3. Edit (what you wrote)
  4. Finish (the damn writing)

Planning your workflow means choosing the tools, techniques, people, and processes that will be part of each of these four phases. Until this framework becomes old hat, I recommend explicitly planning your writing workflow. Planning is how you avoid getting stuck. You might not immediately know every single tool, step, and person you’ll need to get the writing done. But knowing even a few things, and giving yourself a basic map to follow to get the writing done, will help you learn what’s missing.

Planning your workflow doesn’t need to be a long process—or even something you share with other people. You can create a formal, structured worksheet to plan it out (Fig 0.1), you could sketch it out on a whiteboard or in a notebook (Fig 0.2), or simply make some notes at the top of a new document. The important thing is to think about how you’re going to get the writing done before you start writing.

An example of a structured worksheet with the assignment and writer details at the top, and space to add details for preparation, composition, editing, and finishing including tools, steps, processes, and more.
Fig 0.1: A structured worksheet can help you plan your writing workflow before you start, and serve as an anchor in the storm throughout the project. If you go this route, I recommend customizing it to suit the particulars of your organization.

A simpler example of a simpler workflow with four quadrants for preparation, composition, editing, and finishing handwritten on a piece of paper.
Fig 0.2: Planning your workflow on paper doesn’t have to take long, and it’s a nice break from staring at screens. Plus, you can cross things off as you go! (Always satisfying.)

You can write#section5

Mr. Hays, my high school choir teacher, was a great recruiter. When he’d ask people to try out for choir, they’d protest with some version of “Oh, no, I can’t sing.” Nonsense, he’d say: “If you can talk, you can sing. It’s all the same muscles!” And, more often than not, he’d pull that student right over to a piano and demonstrate to them that they could, in fact, sing.

In case you’re skeptical, worried, or unsure about whether or not you can handle this, here’s my pitch for writing: writing is just thinking plus typing. You can think. You can type (or otherwise get text into a computer). So yes, you can write.

We’re going to get into all kinds of methods about how to compose and refine text throughout this book. But at the end of the day, writing is just thinking plus typing. Have some thoughts in your head, then write them down. Do this over and over until the writing is done. Every other tip, trick, method, and process is just an improvement or distillation of this basic approach.

And more good news: writing is more like design than you might think. Common design activities like framing the problem, identifying constraints, and exploring solutions are part of writing, too. Many of the methodologies one might use in UX work can be part of a writing workflow: stakeholder interviews, user research, content auditing, ideation workshops, critiques, and more.

Writing is always hard, yes. But it gets easier.

Good? Good. We’re making progress already. It’s time to Prepare.

About the Author

Scott Kubie

Scott Kubie is a designer and digital strategist living in Minneapolis, where he works as lead content strategist at Brain Traffic. His first bit of published writing was a fan letter in the LEGO catalog. Scott can be found online at and in person at various grungy rock clubs around the Twin Cities. Since 2010, Scott has delivered over sixty public talks and workshops on writing, content strategy, and user experience design for audiences of designers, developers, marketers, artists, makers, and more. He loves a good framework and finding ways to make esoteric design topics a bit more practical.

3 Reader Comments

  1. Great article Scott! I particularly liked “writing is just thinking plus typing” and your line “I hope my pilot knows what all those switches in the cockpit do, but I also hope they’re labeled, just in case.” made me laugh out loud.

    I run a website design company in the UK and work with a number of great copywriters. The content for a site is always the hardest part for the client so we always help with that, whether it’s writing the main content for the site or creating monthly blog posts.

    A good design is just a framework to hold great words, the two are totally reliant on each other and should be designed and written together as you quite rightly say.

    P.S. You would say writing is easy because you’re bloody good at it!

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