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  librobotcontrol uses specific GPIO, I2C, SPI ports and the indexes all need to be updated to use the Cape Compatibility layer in a way that causes old BeagleBone Black + RC and BeagleBone Blue without the Cape Compatibility layer not to break.
  librobotcontrol uses specific GPIO, I2C, SPI ports and the indexes all need to be updated to use the Cape Compatibility layer in a way that causes old BeagleBone Black + RC and BeagleBone Blue without the Cape Compatibility layer not to break.
:-Jason Kridner
:-Jason Kridner
You have to write DT overlay for robotics cape and change the sysfs references in library.
:-Deepak Khatri

Revision as of 09:52, 12 April 2021

Proposal for librobotcontrol support and Robotics Cape Compatibility for Beagleboard AI

About Student: Dhruva Gole
Mentors: Jason Kridner
Code: librobotcontrol
Wiki: http://elinux.org/BeagleBoard/GSoC/ProposalTemplate
GSoC: GSoC entry

This project is currently just a proposal.

Completed all the requirements listed on the ideas page. The code for the cross-compilation task can be found here submitted through the pull request #149.

About you

IRC: dhruvag2000
Github: https://github.com/DhruvaG2000
School: Veermata Jijabai Technological Inst.
Country: India
Primary language : English, Marathi, Hindi
Typical work hours: 10AM - 7PM Indian Standard Time
Previous GSoC participation: I find embedded and IOT pretty interesting, given I have experience with ESP32, SIMCOM, ESP8266, Arduino UNO I think I will be able to excel in this project. This is the first time i am participating in GSoC.

About your project

Project name: librobotcontrol support for the Robotics Cape with the BeagleBone AI

BeagleBone gets used a lot in automation tasks, be they in industrial, building, home or otherwise. Software that helps enable individual hobbyists, but can bridge into professional automation tasks, is strongly desired. This is where the Robot Control Library comes into the picture.

Robot Control Library

The Robot Control Library package contains the C library and example/testing programs for the Robot Control project. This project began as a hardware interface for the Robotics Cape and later the BeagleBone Blue and was originally called Robotics_Cape_Installer. It grew to include an extensive math library for discrete time feedback control, as well as a plethora of POSIX-compliant functions for timing, threads, program flow, and lots more, all aimed at developing robot control software on embedded computers.

The Robotics Cape

The Robotics Cape (ref) brings the power of the BeagleBone Boards to your robotics projects with almost no setup time. Built by engineers for engineers, the Robotics Cape is loaded with innovative features and a library designed to effortlessly take your robotics concepts from design to reality. (source)
It has the following Technical Specifications :-

  1. 2 Cell Lipo Charging, Balancing, and Protection
  2. Battery Charge Inidcator LEDs
  3. 4 H-Bridge DC Motors Controllers 1.2A each
  4. 8-Channel Servo/ESC Output Enabled by PRU
  5. 6V 4A Regulated Power Supply to Protect Servos
  6. 9-Axis IMU: Invensense MPU-9250, and many more on-board peripherals that any robotic enthusiast or developer can want!
Why does incompatibility arise?

One may think that all BB Boards have the same form factor and run linux so where does the question of incompatibility arise right? To answer that question, let's just have a look at both their processors, the BB AI has am572x and the beagleboard Black/Blue have am372x, and these two being different processor altogether, don't exactly have the same pin-configurations(although somewhat similar).
Let's have a look at the led library file and line 54 of led.c file that help control the LEDs on BeagleBone Blue+Robotics Cape.

We initialize a single led file descriptor. like this,

SYSFS_LED_DIR "%s" BRIGHTNESS_FILE, paths[(int)led]

is /sys/class/leds/ and

is "/brightness" and

appends the LED number (eg. 0 for green) to the overall path string(Note That we have all of BB IO's accessible in the form of sysfs entries). Let's say that user wants to control RC_LED_GREEN, which is at suppose gpio1_0 in the BBBWL/BBB + Robotics Cape. But this may not be the case, as the green LED maybe at a different GPIO in the BBAI+Robotics Cape. (refer here).
Similarly, ADC, PWM, eCAP, LCD, etc. have differences in the way that their Header Pins are linked in the system. This can cause massive issues while using the current version of Robot Control Library, as it takes into account only the BBBWL/BBB pin configs. Thus it is essential that we modify the libraries and it also maybe necessary to write some DT overlays to support the BBAI+RC without breaking support for the BBBWL/BBB.
The main idea of this project which is to make the same user-space examples work with both BeagleBone Black and AI. Device tree overlays play a very important role to achieve this. The same references will be used in the drivers for peripherals assigned to the same pins between Black and AI. (ref)
Although this has partially been done as part of GSoC2020(by lorforlinux, project proposal ), DT Overlays for the Robotics Cape were yet to be written. This project aims at resolving all such issues and providing DT Overlays for the Robotic Cape on the BBAI. The most recent issue has been raised here which indicated the need of BBAI users to use the librobotcontrol package on the BBAI, for which it will be necessary to make few changes in the libraries and probably add a few more DT overlays to expand cape compatibility to the Robotics cape

Why to port it to the BeagleBone AI?

Built on the proven BeagleBoard.org® open source Linux approach, BeagleBone® AI fills the gap between small SBCs and more powerful industrial computers. Based on the Texas Instruments AM5729, developers have access to the powerful SoC with the ease of BeagleBone® Black header and mechanical compatibility. BeagleBone® AI makes it easy to explore how artificial intelligence (AI) can be used in everyday life via the TI C66x digital-signal-processor (DSP) cores and embedded-vision-engine (EVE) cores supported through an optimized TIDL machine learning OpenCL API with pre-installed tools. Focused on everyday automation in industrial, commercial and home applications.
It uses the Dual Arm® Cortex®-A15 microprocessor subsystem and further specs can be found on the official website

What I like most about librobotcontrol, is that it allows new users to get a very intuitive hardware interface for the board it is being used on. Currently it only supports Robotics Cape and the BeagleBone Blue and Black. But with the evolution of AI on the edge, porting this library to be used onboard the BeagleBone® AI will prove to be very useful to a lot of hardware enthusiasts, AI/ML developers and hobbyists to deploy edge computing solutions along with easy to program hardware. Robots that use Computer Vision/ speech recognition or other AI alongside performing Real-time tasks like self balancing will be in most benefit from this project.

Features to be implemented
  1. Implement the librobotcontrol package to support the BeagleBone® AI.
  2. Implement all the existing examples to run on BeagleBone® AI.
  3. Add the necessary docs on librobotcontrol website .

Details of implementation

The above cape needs the Robot Control Library (ref documentation) to function. Currently, this is only available for the BeagleBone Blue and Black.
However, the BeagleBone® Blue lacks TI C66x digital-signal-processor (DSP) cores and embedded-vision-engine (EVE) cores which the AI board has. This enables machine learning tools to be integrted with a device capable of programmable hardware IOs. However it still lacks a proper hardware interface which is where the need to provide librobotcontrol support comes in.
The beaglebone AI has many programmable PRU General-Purpose Output and Input pins as give on device docs page
Implement all libraries under Robot Control Library (repo here to simplify tasks like writing to a pin, reading from a pin, delay, motor control, etc. Most recent PR#183 that was merged to the official librobotcontrol repository has done addition of BeagleBone AI model in the makefile and model.h header files. Other than that it has been able to get adc, LEDs, and servos working under the version 1.1. This project aims to continue on those lines to support the rest of the cape support for BBAI.

Reimplement stock examples in librobotcontrol repository
  1. bare_minimum
  2. blink
  3. read and write operation of UART buses
  4. calibrate IMU
  5. Self Balancing.

I intend to port as many examples as the board can support using it's hardware to the examples directory.

The How

Inorder to accomplish the above tasks, I will go through the pins of the beagle AI and accordingly make changes in the header files. For this, I have familiarized myself with the device tree for BeagleBone® AI. Also, I will be using the SRM(System Ref. Manual) which is given on this page and the BeagleBone cape interface spec is here. This is a list of symlink interfaces based on BeagleBone Cape header pins.

  1. LEDs: The compatibility layer helps in connecting an LED driver to any GPIO pin and using the LED driver instance name to map to the same header pin, despite whatever GPIO it is on. (see here. For example, in the BBBWL/BBB, /sys/class/leds/led_P8_03 links to gpio1_6 whereas in the BBAI it is linked to gpio1_24. It is to be noted that pins gpio3_18,19,20 that are there in BBBWL/BBB are simply non existent in the BBAI.
  2. I2C, SPI, UART: Compatibility layer provides simple I2C,SPI,UART bone bus nodes for creating compatible overlays for BBBWL, BBB, & BBAI.
  3. PWM: The link /dev/bone/pwm/1 points to PWM1 in the BBB but to PWM3 in the BBAI (ref here)

and many more like timer PWM, ADC, eCAP, etc. have differences in the way that their Header Pins are linked in the system due to the difference in onboard processor. The current librobotcontrol version running with the Device Tree Overlay in place here seems to be causing issues with the PWM, eQEP, and i2c. Thus I will be working on adding more stability to the robotics cape compatibility and then once the interfaces (links) are stable, update the library. One can find the template for the Device tree overleays here. Only Pins that are being actively used are to be commented out.

DT Overlays level

Instead of altering the kernel source and rebuilding, it is possible for users to simply specify the driver to instantiate and provide all of the information needed to configure the driver in the device tree overlay fragement, as long as the driver or driver module is already built and included. (ref. from here)

It can be seen below from the device tree overlay syntax

bone_i2c_1: &i2c5 {
	symlink = "bone/i2c/1";

that at location bone/i2c/1 is the symbolic link pointing to i2c5 port. If you look this up Code:

&ocp {
    P9_18_pinmux { pinctrl-0 = <&P9_18_i2c_pin>; }; /* i2c sda */
    P9_17_pinmux { pinctrl-0 = <&P9_17_i2c_pin>; }; /* i2c scl */

In the BBB /dev/bone/i2c/1 points to I2C1, but in the BBAI to I2C5. The above overlay fixes that by using the DT Overlay mentioned above and this has already been done as part of last year's GSoC (2020). However, due to unavailability of the Robotics Cape, Overlays for it could not be written. Thus, the above mentioned issue#173 contains the following errors:

ERROR: i2c1 driver not loaded
ERROR: i2c2 driver not loaded

Upon further investigation, I was unable to find the proper code in the librobotcontrol repo that enables BBAI driver support. Also,

ERROR: ti-pwm driver not loaded for hrpwm0
ERROR: ti-pwm driver not loaded for hrpwm1
ERROR: ti-pwm driver not loaded for hrpwm2
ERROR: ti-eqep driver not loaded for eqep0
ERROR: ti-eqep driver not loaded for eqep1
ERROR: ti-eqep driver not loaded for eqep2

All these errors indicate that even though cape compatibility at the Device Tree Level has been brought to the BBAI to somewhat make it look like a BB Blue, there are still many changes lacking in the user space code that constrict the full usage of librobotcontrol package. Thus my work will aim at first creating the overlay for Robotics cape! and adding user space code in librobotcontrol,that will make drivers compatible with the BBAI. I will also be testing everything to ensure that no bugs are encountered after the period of my project gets over. Referring to the example devicetree overlay here and also referring to this instruction video, I will be writing the device tree overlay for Robotics Cape as follows.

Specifying compatibility
compatible = "ti,beaglebone", "ti,beaglebone-black","ti,beaglebone-AI";

Target Processor
target = <&am5xx_pinmux>;   //as the BBAI has the new am5X series processor

The overlay

<Offset address for the pins>, <PINMODE (GPIO/PWM/ADC/PULL UP/DOWN/etc.)> as follows: (just an example for a LED attached to P9_12)

 0x078 0x07

0x078 is the offset from base address, and it points to P9_12.
and 0x07 is the PINMODE corresponding to OUTPUT.

user space level

For example, if the code is built on a BBAI, the function

which prints the current BealgleBoard model the software is running on. I will add if conditions like

if(rc_model()==MODEL_BB_AI || rc_model()==MODEL_BB_AI_RC)

inside which will be code written specific for the BBAI keeping it's pins in mind. In the else condition will be the code for the regular Blue and Black, so that while adding BBAI support, the blue and black boards are not made incompatible. Let's have a look at the table describing Index, Header pin and the corresponding variable in BBB and BBAI: (taken from here)

Index Header pin BBBWL/BBB BBAI
0 P9_39 in_voltage0_raw in_voltage0_raw
1 P9_40 in_voltage1_raw in_voltage1_raw
2 P9_37 in_voltage2_raw in_voltage3_raw
3 P9_38 in_voltage3_raw in_voltage2_raw
4 P9_33 in_voltage4_raw in_voltage7_raw
5 P9_36 in_voltage5_raw in_voltage6_raw
6 P9_35 in_voltage6_raw in_voltage4_raw

As we can see, for example P9_35 of the BBB is accessed as in_voltage6_raw, but in BBAI is accessible as in_voltage4_raw. Inorder to take into account this mismatch, macros like

ADC2AI(x) (x==0?4:(x==1?6:(x==2?7:(x==3?5:(x==4?3:(x==5?2:(x==6?0:-1)))))))
/*(Inorder to understand the above syntax, one can refer https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/conditional-or-ternary-operator-in-c-c/) */

will have to be written, in this case the ADC2AI macro helps to match the BBAI pins. Another example would be to use the PWM pins correctly, let's refer the table below:

Bone bus PWM
Bone bus BBBWL/BBB BBAI A B Overlay
/dev/bone/pwm/0 PWM0 P9.22 P9.21 BONE-PWM0.dts
/dev/bone/pwm/1 PWM1 PWM3 P9.14 P9.16 BONE-PWM1.dts
/dev/bone/pwm/2 PWM2 PWM2 P8.19 P8.13 BONE-PWM2.dts

Inorder to map the PWM pins to the new BBAI, I have written the following macro:

#define PWM2AI(x) (x=1?3:(x=2?2:-1)) 	//here -1 indicates pwm pin unavailable in the AI

Similar steps will have to be followed to enable compatibility with the rest of the pins as well.

Software required and Programming Languages

The project requires the use of the device tree compiler (dtc) for compiling the device tree source (ex. *.dts, *.dtsi) files. It also uses the C programming language for re-programming the headers and source files and the gcc compiler along with other build tools will be used for compiling the C source code (*.c).

Hardware Level (testing and assembly)

For verifying rc_balance example, I am planning to use the Balboa 32U4 Balancing Robot Kit from pololu. This kit is however not directly compatible with the Beagle AI, hence certain makeshifts will have to be made inorder to mount the Robotics Cape+BBAI onto it's chassis. This means I will be completely bypassing the ATmega32U4 MCU, motor drivers, quadrature encoders, and a full IMU already onboard the Balboa control board, and instead use the robotics cape's on-board IMU and motor drivers.

Hardware required:

The hardware listed below will be necessary for testing that my code implementation work correctly on the hardware.

  1. BeagleBone AI.
  2. BeagleBone Robotics cape: Robotics Cape.
  3. Balboa 32U4 Balancing Robot Kit, and additional hardware for using it:
    1. JST SH Jumper 4 Wire and 6 Wire.
    2. Grove Universal 4 Pin to Beaglebone® 6 Pin Female.
    3. Grove Universal 4 Pin to Beaglebone® Blue 4 Pin Female.
    4. 6V Gearmotor with Extended Motor Shaft.
    5. Pololu Wheel 80×10mm Pair - Black.
    6. Six qty. of - Rechargeable NiMH AA Battery: 1.2 V, 2200 mAh, 1 cell.
  4. DC Motor (for testing basic motor driver code).
  5. Servo motor.
  6. USB A to Micro-B cable
  7. FTDI Serial TTL-232 USB Cable.
  8. SD Card Reader.
  9. SD Card
  10. 5V 3A USB type-C power supply
  11. Must have lab tools like:
    1. Solder, flux, and soldering iron.
    2. Screwdriver set.
    3. Tweezers and pliers.

May 17 Proposal accepted or rejected
  • Community Bonding Period and discussion on the project and resources available.
  • Setting up beaglebone-ai i.e flashing up to date Linux image and connect to local area network (LAN) via either Ethernet or WiFi and try to run bare_minimum code from this repository to test basic stuff is working.
Jun 07 Pre-work complete Coding officially begins!
  • All the boards and additional hardware will be available to me at this period of time and I should have set up my BeagleBone Black and Ai boards i.e flashing up to date Linux image and Testing user-led blink code :)
  • Initial checks for hardware like motors and other peripheral devices will be completed and all the soldering related work will be done.
  • A detailed spreadsheet will be created if not already available for cape pin mapping and referencing for further use during BeagleBone AI software development ease.

(above ref. from here )

June 17 Milestone #1
  • Introductory YouTube video
  • Testing and debugging the button.h and led.h libraries.
  • Implement and debug servo example that has been said to be working.
June 24 Milestone #2
  • Implementing rc_led_set, rc_led_cleanup, rc_button_cleanup and the rc_set_state functions specific to beagle AI.
  • Testing the above functions
  • Writing documentation describing the overall structure for the same in the form of videos/ slides/flowcharts/ pseudo-codes.
June 30 Milestone #3
  • Implementing rc/time.h library and it's functions rc_nanos_since_epoch(), rc_nanos_since_boot, rc_nanos_thread_time.
  • Porting the uart library
and implementing rc_uart_write, rc_uart_read_bytes
  • Testing the above functions
  • Writing documentation for same
July 12 -July 16 18:00 UTC Milestone #4 (Phase 1 evaluations)
  • Demonstrating use of implemented functions by creating and executing an example program to demonstrate use of LEDs and button handlers.
  • Demonstrating UART application by serially communicating with an external device (Can be a simple FTDI programmer attached to my PC).
  • Finalizing and documenting everything done till now, submitting first report for evaluation.
July 23 Milestone #5
  • Adding Linux I2C driver support on the Beagle AI
  • Add spi support
  • Testing examples that use above protocols with the Robotics Cape.
  • Writing documentation
July 30 Milestone #6
  • Start assembling the Balancing Robot kit for testing the self balancing codes.
  • Also debug and test the robotics cape on-board sensors, ADCs and motor drivers by running examples like rc_test_mpu,rc_test_adc, rc_check_battery, rc_test_motorsetc.
Aug 06 Milestone #7
  • Get the BBAI+Robotics Cape properly mounted on the chassis of the Balancing Robot Kit, and also try to power the Cape using batteries. (if batteries do not deliver enough current/provide enough voltage, then an external 12V adapter can be used instead).
  • Calibrate the IMU by running and debugging the rc_calibrate_gyro, accel examples.
  • Making Videos and documentation for above implemented examples.
August 10 Milestone #8 (Phase 2 evaluations)
  • Testing and debugging the rc_balance librobotcontrol example on the BBAI+Robo Cape on Balancing Robot Kit to prove implementation done so far.
  • Finalizing and documenting everything done till now, submitting second report for evaluation
August 16 - 26 18:00 UTC Final week: Students submit their final work product and their final mentor evaluation
August 23 - 30 18:00 UTC Mentors submit final student evaluations

Experience and approach

  1. I have used C++, C and Python programming languages over the past 3 years in a variety of projects involving embedded systems using the ESP32, Arduino UNO, ESP8266 and am also well-versed with freeRTOS.
  2. I have an aptitude for writing good reports and blogs, and have written a small blog on how to use a debugger.
  3. I recently did a project using ESP32, in which I used the DHT11 sensor to display humidity and temperature on a local HTML server . Other than that I have worked on developing hardware and making documentation for a 3 DOF arm based on an ESP32 custom board.
  4. I also interned at an embedded device startup where I
    1. Interfaced ADS1115 ADC with the ESP32 and used it to read battery voltage.
    2. Used UART for ESP32 and SIMCOM SIM 7600IE communication to gain LTE support.
    3. Published local sensor data to the cloud via LTE.
  5. I actively contribute to open source (most recently, I contributed to the ADS1115 library for ESP32 on the unclerus repo and can be seen here).
  6. Currently I am working on designing a Development board for the Raspberry Pico (RP2040) using KiCAD.
  7. I also do a lot of mini projects throughout the year, you can find my several more interesting projects at my github page

I believe that if I get stuck on my project and my mentor isn’t around, I will use the resources that are available to me. Some of those information portals are listed below.

  1. Derek Molly's beagle bone guide provides all the information needed for getting up and running with my beagle.
  2. Content on e-ALE.org is very useful for information that ranges from tutorials and walkthroughs to the level of very advanced stuff.
  3. BeagleBone cookbook from Mark A. Yoder & Jason Kridner is the best source for test projects during the prototyping period.
  4. The technical reference manuals provided by TI on am3358 and am5729 are the best source for getting the insights on the SoC used in Black and Ai. (above sourced are referred from here )
  5. Beaglebone: Introduction to GPIOs - Using Device Tree Overlays
  6. example of using capemgr and devicetree overlays to configure a pinmux on the BeagleBone

The most advanced robots are those controlled by AI that can learn from their environment and experience and then build on their capabilities based on that knowledge. The BBAI enables the AI aspect of such applications as other competing boards don't have as powerful cores. The Robotics Cape on top of it, gives scope to seamless motor control and sensor integration, thus enabling the hardware and electronics part of the Robot. Thus to encourage more developers and students to take advantage of this, comes the need of the librobotcontrol that allows developers to focus more on their robotics applications in a higher level language like C with very intuitively named and well documented functions.

librobotcontrol uses specific GPIO, I2C, SPI ports and the indexes all need to be updated to use the Cape Compatibility layer in a way that causes old BeagleBone Black + RC and BeagleBone Blue without the Cape Compatibility layer not to break.
-Jason Kridner


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My Writing Process

The lovely and supportive writer S.J. Maylee tagged me in a writing process blog hop.  I have four questions to answer, so let’s get started!

What am I working on?

My day job involves a fair amount of writing, but I won’t go into that.  The work closest to my heart is a novel set in 14th century France about the struggles of a young widow who runs a publishing concern.

A few days ago, I set this novel aside because I am so dissatisfied with my fiction writing. I have a novella simmering about a British WWII war bride, but I’m having trouble breathing her in right now.  I have therefore returned to a memoir I started writing as a NaNo rebel last November, but shelved in December.

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

My narrative non-fiction is more poetic or evocative than most, since I am allowed some of the little darlings that are edited out of fiction when they do not advance the plot or character arc.

My historical fiction is heavier on history, and tends more toward literary fiction, than that which leans to historical romance.

Why do I write what I do?

What else am I going to do with my graduate degrees in medieval literature? Seriously, I enjoy exploring the lives of strong women in a culture that was legally and socially set against them.

How does my writing process work?

I’m a plotter, although I often have characters who decide to take over, so I leave some flexibility in the outline.

I’m also an inveterate editor, so it’s hard to chain my infernal internal editor in the closet to let me write.  I often write a zero draft, then run through it, editing lightly as well as expanding and contracting where needed.  Then come the substantive edits.

In other words, lots of wash, rinse, repeat.

Thank you, S.J., for tagging me.  Who wants to carry on the torch?  If you want to post these questions and answers, let me know, and I’ll be happy to link to you.

8 thoughts on “My Writing Process”

  1. I enjoy exploring the lives of strong women in a culture that was legally and socially set against them. <- that is awesome.
    Thanks for sharing your process and good luck with your rebel NaNo project. I have one of those too. 🙂

    1. Tia, I fell in love with medieval literature sophomore year in college. One of my French professors called it “the starry night” of French literature, because life was so difficult, but the literature was so beautiful. So, I only got to teach it for a few years, but I’ve spent the last 4 decades studying medieval literature, and I still love it.

      I’m glad you liked the responses. When S.J. tagged me, I thought, I have nothing to say–I’m not really a writer. (I know, bad me!). As it turned out, I did have more to say than I thought!

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TV Show Review: Arrow, Season Five Episodes One Through Three

Arrow returns to the CW for its fifth season and it already feels better than last season. Arrow, for lack a better description, is pretty much Batman with arrows. Sticking closer to the street level, crime fighting aspect of the show is largely why this episode feel so much better.

At the end of last season, they just defeated the magic using Damian Dark and saved the city. This season begins with the Arrow squad all but disbanded (except Felicity) and Oliver on his own again, balancing his time between fighting crime and being the mayor of Star City. New gangsters and criminals move in and Oliver must build a new team of crime fighting allies in order to oppose the new enemies in his city.

There are a lot of new faces this season and they each bring new life to the series. Some bring comic relief, some bring a little more drama. I won’t go into the new team members because there hasn’t been enough episodes to explore each one. However, you can be sure that each will get an episode for the purpose of character development.

What I didn’t like was the formulaic stuff. New mystery villain, shoots arrows. Maybe the big reveal will be something more rewarding and less cheesy than having someone die and then having another misleading red herring every episode that someone is going to die.

Score: 6.8/10 Good start to the season. Looking forward to seeing more team dynamics play out, maybe some scenes reminiscent of what Joss Whedon has done.

TV Show Review: Supernatural, Season Twelve Episode One, “Keep Calm Carry On”

Supernatural… is one of my guiltiest pleasures. I am not the target demographic; I am not a fourteen year old girl. I am quite the opposite actually. However, after years of watching this show, from the very first episode even, I still enjoy this series despite the campy-ness present. I think it’s because I’ve gotten used to the format of the show.

As with many shows, there’s a few over arching plots throughout the season, but what I love most about this show are the standalone episodes and monsters of the week. Many popular new series have a long seasons where every episode is relevant to the overarching plot and which are meant to be binged watched. In this sort of climate, it’s nice to just be able to tune into a show with no idea what’s going on in the season, and still have a good time.

If you haven’t been following the series, God and the Darkness made up and the world was saved. In return, the Darkness brought Sam and Dean’s mom back to life. Additionally, the British arm of the Men of Letters showed up and kidnapped Sam. Not much else happens in this episode as Dean, Castiel and Dean’s mom try to track down Sam. Oh, and Sam get’s tortured a bunch.

It’s a fine premiere and pretty much stick to the Supernatural formula, which is really what we want to see. What I really enjoy is that this is a very street level bad guy, who isn’t necessarily a bad guy. They aren’t fighting Death, or God, or the Darkness, or Satan. It’s just some British people and there’s something nice that it’s just an episode that deals with ground level characters. All that fighting omnipotent entities really took away from the weaker baddies they normally fight.

Score: 6/10

TV Show Review: The Flash, Season Three Episode One and Two

My goodness Barry, you done screwed up the whole damn universe. The Flash returns and Barry has screwed up every damn thing. Unfortunately, by the end of episode two, most of the status quo return and most things are back to normal. It was still an enjoyable two episodes though.

In case you’re not caught up, at the end of last season, Barry had a nervous breakdown and went back in time, saved his parents, and changed everything. I could go further into what went on, but all that really matters is that by the end of the episode, Barry goes back in time, lets his parents die, and hopes that everything goes back to normal.

In the second episode, we learn that not everything has gone back to normal. Some changes that have occurred are the following:

  • Iris and her dad don’t get along. They make up by the end of the episode.
  • Cisco is depressed his brother died. He gets over it by the end of the episode.
  • The alternate timeline that was created because of Barry still exists somewhat and some people are retaining memories from both timelines.
  • Diggle’s child (from Arrow) is now a boy. Diggle had a daughter before.
  • Draco Malfoy (at least the actor who played Draco Malfoy) now shares office space with Barry and is another forensic crime person. Draco also hates Barry and you can almost hear the words “Potter” whenever he says Barry’s name.
  • Caitlin has ice powers now, but she hasn’t told anyone.

I think those are the most important parts. Oh, there’s a new villain for Barry and gang to fight all season.

Overall, I enjoyed the episode very much. It’s always fun to see what ifs play out and how the characters could be portrayed differently. In fact, I would be perfectly happy if they toned down the crime fighting and turned this into a show a la Quantum Leap. Barry could chase some villain through time and parallel dimensions or something like that.

Score: 7/10 Nice opening episode. I’m not looking forward to seeing more of Alchemy, the new villain. I hope they do more universe jumping and time travel instead.

TV Show Review: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season Four Episode One

Agents of SHIELD returns again for it’s fourth seasons and I am very hyped. This first episode reinforces the idea that Marvel’s next big initiative is towards the magical side of the Marvel universe and to promote the upcoming Doctor Strange movie with magic stuffs. I’m a little worried considering how the Inhumans movie kind of disappeared, but here’s hoping we see more of the mystical side of Marvel.

As for the episode, we start where we left off. S.H.I.E.L.D. is an official government organization, the events of Captain America: Civil War have transpired and enhanced persons must register with the government, and Coulson is no longer the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. Daisy/Sky/Quake has gone rogue (as spies often do) and is chasing bad guys on her own. This is where she comes across the Ghost Rider. For those familiar with the comics, this is not the motorcycle riding, Nicholas Cage iteration. This is the more contemporary Roberto Reyes version who drives a car. Most of the episode is spent with Coulson tracking Daisy and Daisy tracking the Ghost Rider. This episode was simply meant as a reintroduction back into this universe and the state of S.H.I.E.L.D.

There is a big fight scene between the Ghost Rider and Daisy which was pretty cool. Unfortunately, Daisy seems to have been powered down since she cannot use her powers without causing fractures to her bones. Boo. I liked all that power she had.

Score: 6.5/10 Fun episode. I’m looking forward to seeing more supernatural stuff and learning more about this Ghost Rider.

TV Show Review: South Park Season Twenty Episode One

I think the biggest problem with the last season of South Park was that the subject matter felt dated. I don’t know if there was a delay or if they just took too long writing episodes, but last season was not good. The issues touched upon occurred way before the relevant episode, leaving to a lot of episodes which I just did not care about. One of South Park’s main draws is to touch upon controversies that are immediately relevant. If the first episode of this season is any indication, then South Park is back on track and back on schedule because all the issues addressed were recent and very funnily addressed.

There were a ton of issues touched upon here, such as the presidential election, trolling on the internet, kneeling at the national anthem in protest, and J.J. Abrams constant rebooting of everything. What I love about South Park is its commentary on how ridiculous current events are and to take those events and dial them up to eleven in terms of ridiculousness. It was a really funny episode and I’m looking forward to how plot threads planted in this episode will play out in the rest of the season.

Score: 7.7/10


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Elton John World News: Beyond The Yellow Brick Road

Beyond The Yellow Brick Road-- Posted by This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Council Hopes to Name Street For Elton

Tuesday 23 June 2009 @ 16:16 - GMT

Elton is set to have a street named after him in his home town, it has been claimed.

The pop legend grew up in Pinner, near Harrow, before becoming an international music star.

According to the local council's own publication, Harrow People, the idea for the gesture is in the pipeline.

Officials in the Greater London town are said to be "considering plans to name a road after its most famous musical son."
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Image courtesy of Rob Cabellero

I am a terrible photographer. Really. For many years, I worked in the photographic industry as a sales person and trainer, but what I knew in my head about how a great image comes together never developed when it came time to push the shutter button. It still frustrates me. Sure, there are times I get a decent picture, but as the wise Doug Peterson once told me,

Screen Shot 2013-11-19 at 6.31.44 PM

It goes the same for writing. I have never been that great of a writer. It isn’t that I don’t have ideas, it is just that I often struggle to get those ideas down in words. What I hear in my head is nothing like what I often find thrown down on paper. To top it off, I teach writing in my EAP classroom. Just like photography, I understand the fundamentals, but in reality, I don’t do so well in production. Thankfully, I’m not paid to write.

In the past few weeks, our program has been working on implementing writing tutorials for students who are struggling in this area. For some of these individuals, the problems lie with their lack of language skills, whereas for others, it is in the academic part of the composition process. Either way, we are working on providing them support that will help them improve before they get left behind in the classroom.

This idea of writing tutorials brought be back to a book called Connecting speaking and writing in second language writing instructions by Robert Weissberg (2006). I read it for one of my MA TESOL courses and I don’t think I appreciated it as much as I do know. One of the chapters is on using dialog in the writing tutorial as a way of supporting the learner. To understand this better, Weissberg uses two terms for way of giving guidance or instruction: centripetal forces and centrifugal forces.

Centripetal comes from the Latin and means “to seek the centre”. Centripetal force draws an object towards the centre, much like gravity pulls an orbiting satellite. Centrifugal means “to flee the centre” and refers to the pull causing objects to move away from the centre, such as turn a corner sharply or a ride on the Tilt-A-Whirl. Weissberg agues that while traditional tutoring has used centripetal force to teach writing, such as the use of grammar and structure to normalize language, we should be using centrifugal force, that is the use of dialog and negotiation to help the students explore the dynamic variables of language.

The chapter is a fascinating read and explores the facets of the use of spoken language to help writers improve their work. While I won’t get into everything here, it is the idea of peer-tutoring that especially caught my attention. Typically, I have been known to have learners read other students’ work and provide feedback, mostly in the form of written text. The example Weissberg gives shows how having students work in dialog can be far more meaningful and can assist both learners in the process. The example he gives has one students (S1) giving feedback to another (S2) on his or her writing. S1 isn’t exactly sure what is wrong with one of the sentences, but, through the discussion with S2, is able to come up with a better sentence (actually S2 comes up with it, showing how well this system works). Together, they negotiate a solution by “drawing on their implicit knowledge of English Grammar” (Weissberg, 2006).

I thought about how the way that I have been doing peer-editing might be improved by shifting the feedback from a ‘centripetal’ to a more ‘centrifugal force’ solution. Maybe I will have students read their texts to each other, allowing them to stop and work through difficult parts together. They could read it out loud together while sitting side-by-side, instead of handing things back and forth.

I am sure there are others out there that can share their thoughts on this matter. I would love to hear from you. Please feel free to add your comments below so others can learn from you as well. Cheers!

Weissberg, Robert. (2006). Connecting speaking and writing in second language writing instruction. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press.

2 thoughts on “Tutoring

  1. I have to pick an argument with you about this post. You say:
    “I have never been that great of a writer”
    I try to read your blog as often as I can (I admit, I can’t keep up with your pace!) because you look at things in a refreshing way and WRITE NICELY!
    So give yourself credit!

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I can use C-x n s (org-narrow-to-subtree) to narrow the content to the current subtree, which is great. After doing that, I want to search a keyword in the current narrowed subtree(instead of the whole file). I tried opening org-agenda, and use the search functionality(s) in it. But it didn't work as expected. Org Mode searched the whole file for my keyword.

So my question is, how to only search in the current narrowed subtree?

  • 1
    Are you talking about some kind of special org-specific search feature? Because the normal isearch (C-s) or occur (M-s o) etc will work just fine in a narrowed buffer. – phils Dec 3 '20 at 5:39
  • @phils Yes, I'm talking about the search feature in org-mode. C-s isn't enough for me because I want to search the narrowed buffer but only show the result as an org heading list, C-s cannot do this. – Searene Dec 3 '20 at 6:05

Assuming that C-c a brings up the agenda dispatcher, you can restrict the agenda search by saying C-c a < s in the narrowed buffer. The dispatcher documentation says:

‘<’ Restrict an agenda command to the current buffer. If narrowing is in effect restrict to the narrowed part of the buffer. After pressing ‘<’, you still need to press the character selecting the command.

  • Thanks, it worked just as expected! Except that when the search result is shown, I was kicked out of the narrowed buffer. It would be better if I can remain in the narrowed buffer. That said, it's good enough since going into the narrowed buffer again isn't a hard thing. – Searene Dec 4 '20 at 3:33

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It’s A Small World After All

Tiny Planets, an iOS app developed by Infoding, creates some very interesting photo effects…

Independence Monument / Phnom Penh, Cambodia

San Francisco City Hall

Angkor Wat / near Siem Reap, Cambodia

Huntington Beach, USA

Royal Palace / Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Golden Gate Bridge / San Francisco, USA

Free Syria Rally in Union Square, San Francisco

SAN FRANCISCO, UNITED STATES – Protesters gathered in Union Square to speak out against the ongoing oppression by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and urged United States President Barack Obama to intervene and put an end to the violence being perpetrated by the Syrian military.


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Master Gardener Volunteers Tend to the Community

— Written By and last updated by
sign marking green beans in a garden

Extra vegetables were grown in community and private gardens in Watauga County to help with the need for food during the pandemic.

During the height of the pandemic, many more families experienced food insecurity. As a result, the community gardens tended by Extension Master Gardener℠ volunteers served as a critical source of fresh, healthy food.

man and woman on front porch

Extension Master Gardener volunteers of Burke County delivered fresh vegetables to seniors.

Meanwhile, the interest in growing food at home dramatically increased. Families that started gardening for the first time during the pandemic sought guidance from knowledgeable Master Gardener volunteers all across the state.

family looks at seed packets

A family in Wake County chose seeds from a free seed library established by an Extension Master Gardener.

Read more in this CALS Magazine article by D’Lyn Ford.


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What To Consdier If Opening A New Warehouse?

There are actually a bunch of elements that enter into enjoy with stockroom placement. Selecting one of the most necessary site is actually crucial to its capability to strengthen your international organization. Right here are some factors you need to take into consideration before closing the package on any sort of storehouse:

What Is Actually Your Incentive For Development And How Do You Strategy To Achieve It?

Every company possesses its personal explanations for stretching its business grasp to brand-new markets.

Whether they would like to enhance the loudness of company through providing even more items, outfitting additional clients, improving brand market value using advantageous locations, or even catching a brand-new market, they are all driven in the direction of one objective: development.

Based on your purposes and also finances, you can get or rent stockrooms in places that absolute best match your demands.

As an example, if you are a tiny supplier, possessing your storehouse closer to the manufacturing plant increases the efficiency of your manufacturing through ensuring a steady source of resources to the plant.

If, meanwhile, you are actually a multichannel homeowner, getting a storehouse at a well-connected hub in a location of higher need are going to equate to boosted customer support and lessened shipping prices that are linked with order gratification.

As you perform your research study and shop around for areas, see to it to maintain your development strategies in thoughts, as the method you decide on to extend can (and also ought to) inform the area you place your warehouse.

What Kind Of Items And Solutions Are You Considering To Provide?

Besides your development inspirations, the sort of goods as well as companies your provider handles will definitely also straight impact the location of your potential stockrooms.

If, for example, your business deals in subject to spoiling or even breakable goods, it is actually finest to have a storage facility that is nearer to both the resource of the goods and also the market place, in-order to lessen danger of wasting or even damages.

However, products that are actually potentially hazardous or harsh demand to become saved in more separated places, so in order to steer clear of any harmful contact with them.

Our company can easily observe how the type of goods marketed determines the greatest storage facility site– which, consequently, affects the results of an organization– by taking a deeper consider the sugarcane industry.

Post-harvest, the amount of walking stick deterioration that takes place relies greatly on an amount of factors: the BHTCD( burn/harvest to squash hold-up, or the amount of time interval between the harvesting as well as processing of sugarcane), the prevailing temperature and also humidity, and also exposure to bugs and conditions.

Both raisers as well as millers would certainly profit considerably if walking cane might be processed immediately after it is actually gathered. In South Africa, there is actually often a BHTCD of three to 4 days.

A boost in the BHTCD for raisers that are additionally far from factories may induce improved walking cane wear and tear, which causes an inferior high quality product.

Therefore, if you are actually a homeowner of sugarcane, having your storage facility or plant closer to the farm makes sure a much better quality assurance over your item and also perks your company generally.

The bottom product line is, if you want to see remodelings in quality control as your business increases, it is vital to maintain your center products and/or solutions in thoughts when opting for a storehouse site.

What Are Actually The Locations You Are Trying To Provide?

Just before you begin to grow your company to new places, you have to understand your target market so you may determine how to ideal use your facility to serve that market

The idea here is actually to determine suited sites that will definitely place you closer to your consumers, both the existing as well as new, in order that you may inevitably pull down your taking care of prices, shipping prices, and also order fulfillment opportunities.

If you want to a lot better know exactly how target audience as well as warehouse sites collaborate, look at the instance of American Bald eagle Outfitters, a retail titan that watched for a brand-new stockroom amenities to boost their purchase gratification opportunities as well as satisfy the increasing need for their items.

Researching their existing consumer foundation, order accounts, and also transit and also work costs allowed all of them to administer web site evaluations better.

They learnt that the majority of their client base, both online and also in retailers, was found on the East Shoreline.

This info eventually led all of them to acquiring an omni stations facility in the eastern, which has taken their organization closer to their consumers. Right now, they have the ability to improve the performance of their delivery process, satisfying more than 90% of direct orders within a span of two to three days.

This instance accurately shows something: taking a step back to survey your existing customer base as well as figuring out even more regarding your purchaser concentration can really settle when it involves locating prime warehouse places.

Therefore, the greatest technique would be actually to understand your existing market while likewise checking brand new markets to get more information concerning where they’re located, to obtain a warehouse at a location that is actually excellent for each your brand new and also present markets.

What Are Actually Your Work Criteria As Well As What’s The Accessible Work Capability?

Steve Jobs once stated,” Terrific factors in company are never ever carried out by one person, they’re carried out by a team of folks.” When it concerns your storehouse labor force, or even the staff of people you’ll need to manage your center, variables like the lot of skilled workers you require, your operations, and also the volume of your time the location will stay working day-to-day all impact which places are very most appropriate for your business’ storage needs.

One instance of criteria worth looking at is actually the development of the possible area for your storehouse– is this location non-urban, suburban, or city?

Each of these degrees of advancement can possess a special amount of influence on your ability to draw in new hires to your organization.

A stockroom that lies near developed locations or even trading centers has a higher possibility of bring in prospective staff members than a center found during no place. As you look for favorable areas, check out the community to see if there are actually rivals in shut closeness to your to-be-acquired storage facility, as this can additionally confine the supply of certified labor force.

It is actually additionally important that you take the warehouse’s range coming from some type of center of people into factor– the a greater distance your warehouse is located from society, the much more you need to purchase supplying ancillary centers, such as warehouse, and also additional services for your employees to assist their capability to operate completely.

These features can easily vary from something as easy as delivering snack foods in the office, to much more intricate and pricey incentives, such as residence down payments, transportation to and from work, and so on.

Always remember to always keep these additional expenses in mind when deciding on a storehouse location; or else, you might find yourself getting rid of excess money on structures and employee rewards that you can’t afford.

What Are Actually Your Choices?

Once you know your goal, consumer foundation, as well as products to become offered, it is actually time for you to examine the alternatives offered to you when it concerns putting together a storage facility.

Depending upon the above variables and also your finances, you can do the following: Acquire a personal storehouse that is constructed for the storage space of your goods.

These warehouses can be modified to the nature of the commodities to become stored. Chilly storing rooms are actually constructed for always keeping disposable items like fruits, eggs, meals, veggies, and so on Store retail store products a public warehouse for a nominal small storing

Cost These storehouses are actually certified by the state. Their methods of operation and rates of costs are handled and also managed by the authorities.

They are normally constructed at favorable places on train paths as well as primary streets, therefore that hassle-free transportation facilities are readily available to you.

Make use of the companies of a bonded warehouse, which are licensed by the federal government for taking of imported products to store. They are actually under the oversight and also command of the customized authorities of the nation where they lie.

The goods are launched to the importers the moment customized customs have actually been spent.

These stockrooms are actually very useful to sellers who import products coming from foreign nations, as they are demanded to be worthwhile duty just for the amount of items cleared away from these warehouses.

They deliver specific helpful companies such as bottling, racking as well as vetting liquid freight, combinationing and classifying certain items like herbal tea, as well as therefore on.

Inevitably, picking the most ideal place for your warehouse has to do with much more than the financial factors; you need to have to find the very best suitable for your business.

Make sure you perform your research so you can easily transform your brand new stockroom into an useful source. Be actually crystal clear regarding what your objectives are actually for a new warehouse.

If you recognize its own function, you’ll have a much better possibility of discovering the right area for it. Make sure that the new location is actually best for the products and also service that you are providing or even intending to give.

Your items impact the locations that will definitely help your warehouse. Examine markets and possible customers, and ask on your own what is actually the greatest place to possess my storage facility to ensure it offers certainly not simply present markets, however additionally the encompassing areas?

Your warehouse area needs to have to have long-term value for all your markets. Pick sites where you possess a higher possibility of locating the absolute most experienced staff for your organization.

Your warehouse will not run itself; you require to make sure you’re located in a location that employees can easily gain access to.

And finally, see to it to just keep your eyes available to what’s occurring around you! You may be actually stunned to find that somebody in the location might have a storage facility that may be rented out and also is perfect for your business needs.

If constructing a brand new storage facility is not a possibility for you presently, maintain your eyes open for warehouses that are actually accessible to be rented out!

You can find a viable means of leasing a resource that’s well-outfitted for your company prior to you construct your very own. So long as you keep these ideas in thoughts as well as do your study thoroughly, you’ll have the ability to locate a warehouse place that ideal suits the demands of your expanding organization.

Make sure to keep an eye out for the following write-up, where our experts are going to be actually talking about how our company may improve the products kept in our storehouse for an easy knowledge.

Keep In Mind

While you are on the lookout for your next storehouse, you should also deal with a proper purchase administration body (OMS) that can easily enhance your workflows.

To make it a little simpler on you, our experts have created an on the internet OMS that is actually helping countless small, tiny and medium services around the world streamline their inventory monitoring on a daily basis.

Being field agnostic, it can streamline stock across numerous business places, currencies and stations.

Read more: https://emilybrydon.com/packaging-for-small-business/

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The Male/Female Hand

writingI first posted this challenge in June, noting that, as authors, we share a common humanity, but that we write from a position limited by gender, social background, ethnicity, cultural environment and sexual orientation, as well as by our own life experience.

Of course, as storytellers, our words are designed to depart from fact and enter the realm of fiction. If we are writing memoir, our audience can reasonably expect an ‘authentic’ account but the realm of storytelling is the realm of imagination. The most commonly cited examples are the crime writer not having needed to have committed murder, and the science-fiction writer not having needed to have left the planet or to have travelled to the future.

Questions I’ve been pondering:

  • How effectively can a male author inhabit the female psyche, exploring a woman’s mindset? And vice versa.
  • Are there identifiable differences in the hand of male and female authors? (ie. how far is our writing style influenced by our gender – whether we define gender as a biological state or as a social/cultural construct)?
  • Also, importantly, as readers, do we make assumptions as to what we expect from the style of the male/female hand?

In pursuit of answers, I, and the authors of the extracts below (male and female) invited you to reflect on our various writing styles, challenging you to identify the gender of each author.  Answers are now at the foot of each extract: all extracts were chosen by the authors themselves, and from existing works (not written specifically for this challenge).

In reading them again, reflect on WHY we might reason in a particular way. Are we guilty of applying stereotypes, as to how we believe the male/female hand ‘should’ look?  Or, are there truly stylistic markers which reveal the gender of an author…?

Extract One

“Stop it!” she said, playfully hitting me with a pillow. I grabbed her wrist to stop her and we fell onto the bed, into an embrace, a clinch, a kiss, a roll, a wrestle, her on top, me on top, her beneath me and then me beneath her, tongues locked, hands exploring, heat rising. We stopped and pulled apart, staring at each other. A kind of awkward but hot realization of what was happening.
“Wow,” she said, and we both burst out laughing, kissing, laughing, kissing. Undressing.

The above extract is from a forthcoming work by Jonathan Kemp. Of six guesses, four surmised correctly that he is a man.

Extract Two

The temptation to hurt her is strong, to skewer her with more than his ready cock. His hand shakes as he battles impulse, corruption hot in his veins. He grips the blades wide. How easy it would be to plunge them into her. The viper within him hisses, wishing to split her with its venom, to see the spilling of her true self. Would death reveal some part of her so far hidden? A seductive secret?

There is her skin, and his, the prickle of primal impulses beneath the epidermis: skin deadClfSq-CVAAABzvG.jpg-large yet hypersensitive. Cloaking skin, skin wrapping the toxic. He wears his skin, as she wears hers. Peel it back and what will he see?

The above extract is by Emmanuelle de Maupassant, from the forthcoming ‘For the Men’ anthology. Of seven guesses, six surmised correctly that I am a woman.

Extract Three

“My husband sleeps with his back to me, but I don’t sleep at all. I lie here out of habit. The kind that’s easy to break but you just keep forgetting to get around to it until it becomes your life. I go back to his pathetic tantrum over the car and realize what felt so different this afternoon when he was yelling about nothing. I never got that clench of stress I always used to feel when we argue.
I begin to understand the systematic dissolution of love. We lie close but never touch, remembering vague glimpses of things we never mention. We only talk about necessities. 15847476He’s still a handsome man, with a talent for making money. Everything else is a blank form to be filled out with the shards of broken memories.”

The above extract is by Frank Lee, from Violet Rising. Of six guesses, only two surmised correctly that he is a man.

Extract Four

He has this thing about posture.
My husband will tell me to stand perfectly straight, ankles together, hands at my sides.
“Shoulders back and tits out,” he will say. He will correct my errors with the thin cane across my naked ass and I will secretly crave another, or across the fronts of my thighs, and I will not. But if I have an occasion coming up that will require me to wear shorts or a skirt, he will not hit my thighs. He knows my calendar better than I do.
“It’s all about the beauty of the female form,” he will tell me, “And working to achieve its utmost potential.” A slouching girl is just not as attractive as a statuesque one, her assets well displayed. Well, who could argue with that?

The above extract is by an anonymous male author. Of seven guesses, four surmised correctly that he is a man.

Extract Five

“Mm.” He kissed me. I mean a real kiss, slow and gentle and sweet. Nobody’d ever kissed me like that before. Didn’t take long before we was both using our tongues, and the deeper we went the tighter we hugged each other. I liked the feel of his bare skin against mine. I liked the way he smelled, all clean and spicy like a breeze through an orange grove down south, and kinda warm, too, like he was maybe just a little excited. I couldn’t get close 28807912enough to that.

The above extract is by Terrance Aldon Shaw, from Moon-haunted Heart. Of six guesses, only two surmised correctly that he is a man.

Extract Six

He didn’t say anything until a pair of drinks had been delivered to the table. Then he leaned forward, and his voice was a low growl when he answered, “You need to be bound. Bound to my whim and paraded on a lead throughout the Arena so that everyone knows you are mine. You need to be beaten, often and thoroughly, so that you never forget just how much regard I have for you and how dear to me you truly are. And you need to be taken, bent over a table and savaged until your screams of pleasure and your cries for mercy ring from the very rafters. That, my dear Iras, is what you need.” He sat back, raised his drink, and smiled. “Unfortunately, it’s not what I can give you. Not tonight. Would you settle for dinner?”

The above extract is by Elizabeth Schechter. Of six guesses, three surmised correctly that she is a woman.

Extract Seven

I tried not to fidget, but my bum insisted that it was simply not possible to find a comfortable way to sit on that horrid little stool. I was beginning to think of it as a hooker’s point-of-sale display stand. Its only purpose appeared to be to allow me to wave my legs around and attract attention. My legs tended to be noticed anyway, long and fairly shapely, even though I do say so myself. Della certainly liked them. Almost every man and quite a lot of the women gave them more than a passing glance.
I sipped at the colourful and tasty, but regretfully alcohol-free, concoction in my glass and looked around the gallery as casually as I could. I wasn’t normally nervous at a stake-out, but I was with a new team, in a public place and in the presence of some eager and enthusiastic amateurs.

The above extract is by Ian Smith. Of seven guesses, four surmised correctly that he is a man.

Extract Eight

Her confidant, Celine had listened to her complaints of her husband’s inability to satisfy her sexual needs, and had been truly sympathetic, as she patted her close friend’s hand. She had sipped her cognac and had then made a suggestion. One that had truly astonished and surprised Mathilde.

Celine confided her secret in a soft whisper, having made sure that no servants or other listeners were prowling the house.

“My dear Mathilde, you are no older than I, you are still of good looks and your body is most desirable to men. Perhaps you should take up my remedy for your problem. I assure you that it is a most satisfying one but you will need to be adventurous in its application.”

19301669“Oh Celine, please do not tease me so, I must know more. My excitement is growing as we speak. What are you suggesting?

The above extract is by Charlie B, from Monsieur Touton: Parisian Gigolo Extraordinaire. Of six guesses, only two surmised correctly that he is a man.

Extract Nine

With a small collection of outfits in hand, Devyn tugged Mary toward the dressing area and ushered her into their assigned booth, barely large enough for one and crowded with two…

Mary’s protest turned to a soft sigh as Devyn put her lips over the thin fabric covering her hidden treasure. With the moist heat of Devyn’s soft mouth, Mary’s nipples twisted into hard nubs, begging for more attention.
Mary struggled half-heartedly, an arrow of lust piercing her groin, as Devyn continued the oral torture.

“Are you two alright in there?” asked the disembodied voice of the attendant.
Devyn cackled as she wadded up Mary’s clothes, then threw them over the top of the door.
“Put these in the pile to go to Goodwill.”
Mary’s eyes nearly popped from her skull.
“Devyn,” she said in a whispered shriek.

The above extract is by Spencer Dryden. Of six guesses, three surmised correctly that he is a man.

Extract Ten

The parking lot overflowed at the Halloween Tree, one those stores that pop up in empty storefronts in the mall every year and then vanish right after the big night to come back the next year someplace else, like toadstools in the lawn.
The twins took off to find the “gross” masks in the back of the store, and Carolyn strolled down the props aisle with plastic hands, rats, and spiders, all the while being sonically accosted by yelling, flashing, and jiggling skeletons, ghouls, and tombstones when she walked past them.
“Hey, you’re here too,” Kathie said, also childless for the moment, until hers came back to drag her to see what she was not going to buy them. And what she might buy them, given the limits on the credit card and adult taste.
“Hi. Yes, it’s getting to be like Christmas at these places—more stuff every year to spend money on.”
“You said it, and they always get to have all the fun dressing up and all. But hey, this year will be different. Do you want to come with me to a grown-up party next weekend? Saturday night?”
“Oh, I haven’t been to a Halloween party without the kids in years. What do people even wear now?”
“As little as possible at this one, I’m sure. It will be at Susan and Paul’s new house, and they always have very adult themes. Remember that Christmas party a couple of years ago?”

The above extract is by T. J. Vermillion. Of six guesses, three surmised correctly that TJ is a man.

Extract Eleven

“Here’s the thing about Zelda. She’s always there. She’s never not there and she’s impossible to miss, but you have to pay attention, and most people don’t—pay attention, that is. The world, for most people, ends at their frontal lobe, which is pretty fucking limiting. Not that I’m complaining. It’s relaxing in a way. If there’s one thing you can count on, it’s a person’s self-interest.”

The above extract is by Malin James.  Of seven guesses, three surmised correctly that Malin is a woman.

gender in writing .png

(update – July 2015)

Where we do think we can identify a male/female hand, it’s interesting to ponder WHY we are reasoning in a particular way. See comments below for thoughts…

Feel free to add yours in light of the above reveal.

27 thoughts on “The Male/Female Hand

  1. I can’t believe I fooled anyone, even though I know both female characters very well. (extract 9) It gives me hope that the WIP from which my excerpt was derived might register with F/F women readers.

  2. A fascinating experiment, and I’m sure I’m going to do a bad job of guessing the gender of the writers. But here it goes:

    1. Male (the series of verbs pushed me to that side). 2. Male (the viper made me guess that). 3. Female (based on talk of habit). 4. Female (mention of calendar). 5. Male (a funny thought, as “before we was both” felt like a guy). 6. Female (seemed like it was written by a female submissive). 7. Female (the talk of legs). 8. Male (I don’t have a specific thing, just a feeling). 9. Male (“hard nubs” made me choose). 10. Female (based on the mention of “childless”). 10. Male (again, more of a feeling than a specific thing).

    I find my reasons funny, and they’re probably off the mark. It’s really curious what makes us think of masculine and feminine. It makes me wonder how much of that is based on what culture has fed me, and what I’ve learned from my own experience. Thanks for doing this experiment!

  3. My feelings are that many of these are quite typically either male or female in their voices – now you can tell me I’ve got them all wrong! I’m not sure if these are extracts of existing works or if you asked the people to write in a typical manner or if you’ve asked them to disguise the gender of their voices if they pleased, but my ‘inspired’ guesses are:

    1M. 2F. 3M. 4F. 5F. 6M. 7M. 8F. 9M. 10M. 11F

    1. Hi Mark
      The pieces are all from existing works, submitted by the authors, and not created for this challenge, so they should be fair representations.
      You did pretty well with your guesses: 7 correct.
      Which elements in numbers 4 and 5 made you decide the voice was female?

      1. Revisiting 4, I’d say it was written by a man. The lack of emotive content and qualifying adjectives suggest it’s not been written by a woman. I still think 5 was written by a woman, the non-visual descriptions are more like what I believe a woman would use.

  4. I wouldn’t like to hazard a guess on any of them. These are all short excerpts chosen by the writers, so they had the option to filter out the “will this give it away” material!

    I suspect that men and women can both write fairly convincingly in the other gender’s voice, but there will be some aspects of male and female “life experience” which differ. Additionally, they may have a male or female character who is atypical of gender stereotypes, at least in the situation described by the story. I suspect a writer really wanting to “get it right” would ask for advice too…

    Good fun and very interesting, especially seeing your “scores”.

  5. Clearly a skilled author can inhabit characters of any gender. However, many of the excerpts above struck me as typical of erotic romance (some to the point of being stereotyped) in their tone, subject matter and overall perspective. Although there are some male authors of romance, the majority are female. (I’ve notice, though, that some male romance authors emulate the style of female authors.)

    I’ll render a guess that only 1,7 and 11 were written by males. But this is really just a guess. A lot depends, Emanuelle, on whether you chose these excerpts to reveal or to mislead!

    1. Thank you Lisabet. I agree that a skilled writer can inhabit any character.

      The above authors chose the extracts themselves (all taken from existing works – rather than being written specifically for this ‘challenge’).

      Looking at number 7, which features ‘spoke’ male to you?

  6. With short excerpts like this, it is super hard to tell! In longer pieces, I think it is really a question of voice. If an author is a master of voice, they can become anyone. (Memoirs of a Geisha comes to mind… I keep on forgetting it was written by a white American man! He completely became the character for the duration of the story.) I will say that it’s fun to read erotica and romance by male authors, since so many tend to be women. Vive la difference!

    1. I had forgotten Memoirs of a Geisha, Fionna. When I read it some years ago I was convinced that it was an autobiography written by a woman, and was totally shocked at the end to find it was written by a man, and that it was a work of fiction, albeit based upon some stories that came from geishas. So clearly I am no judge of gender when it comes to reading someone’s work.

      1. Reading the ‘answers’ above I am sure that I would have got many of them wrong. If this teaches us anything it is that we should not rush to make snap judgements based on our perceptions and prejudices. A very interesting experiment, Emmanuelle. Thank you.

  7. Just going with my gut instincts and trying not to over analyze…this is tough because I really don’t pay attention to the writer while reading 😉

    M, F, F, M, F, M, M, F, M, F, F

      1. Just an instinctual guess…but here is my question. How are you categorizing the writers as male or female? Do you actually know them, or are you going by name or internet presentation? (I ask due to a spate of supposedly male writers turning out to be women)

  8. I enjoyed this thought. Personally, I think in writing, it is easier for the gender lines to blur. For a few reasons I suppose. One is the structure of written language as opposed to spoken language. Also, a transference of language that occurs as a reader.

    I have read a few female authors that write very strong male point of views (even if there are ‘tells’ if you look hard enough). While I believe this is true for male authors writing strong female POVs, I can only make that assumption.

    That all said, thanks for the thought-provoking post. Here are my guesses, for what they are worth. (BTW, I believe I had a more difficult time deciding these, because there was a erotic theme in each, so I had a bias to assume female for most. The statistician in my head getting in the way.) The ones marked with a ‘?’ as well are the one’s I felt had a better chance of possibly going the other way.

    1 F
    2 F?
    3 F
    4 M?
    5 F
    6 M?
    7 F
    8 F?
    9 F
    10 M
    11 F

      1. Oh, I am hardly worried that I only got 4 correct. If the pieces were longer or I spent a bit more time pondering it (versus a quick read and going with more of a gut feeling), I might have scored better. Yet, my initial point I think remains that some of the mechanics of writing to express language can buffer the gender of the writer a bit.

        I actually maked both 4 and 6 as on the fence, leaning toward male. And rereading 10, I am surprised I wasn’t a bit more on the fence as well.

        I think with 10, the dialogue feels more feminine, but the descriptors felt like they were written by a guy.

        Even though I was on the fence with 4 & 6; with 4, actually the first line made me think it was written by a woman, it was the rest of it that slowly changed my mind. With 6, it was similar. Both of those were tricky though because I completely lack a connection with the pain/discipline thrill so to speak. So, hard to say for me if that is how a man would completely think/feel about it, because I have a complete disconnect from it.

        Not sure if any of that helps your curiosity or research, but there it is for what it is worth.

  9. OK, I’m gonna play! 1. F 2. F 3. M 4. F 5. M 6. F 7. M 8. M 9. F 10. M 11. M

    I dithered over 7 and 8. The rationale behind all my guesses is top secret until I know how badly I performed!

      1. I was mainly trying to focus on syntax, rather than content, and thinking that men often have a more direct style of communicating than women (and there’s a huge history of gendered culture powering that). But my somewhat crass assessment criteria are not (please!) to be misinterpreted as “women are coy about sex and need it parceled up in love and narrative while men are devoid of nuance and sensitivity”!

        I also noted some phrases and structures that I felt were well worn, and I allocated those pieces ‘female’ points bc I think women are more likely to be reading erotica and perhaps unconsciously absorbing and repeating those prose tropes.

        Looking forward to reading the results and seeing where I missed the mark! (I also belatedly wondered how writers who don’t identify as binary might fit into this.)

  10. No idea, they all could be either and I would only be guessing. Just for fun I will try a couple.
    #2 Woman, #11 Man, #7 Woman, #4 Man. No particular reason for choosing other than a word choice here and there and an intuitive impression.

    We’re all the same and it really doesn’t matter what sex writes anything. Both can do it equally well or equally horrible! That’s what makes it fun.

      1. I thought #2 sounded like a man, but it may be a woman! “Princess Bride” Vizzini effect.

        For #11, it was just my impression of “frontal lobe…”

  11. I honestly don’t know which ones were written by female writers, and which ones by male writers. I have always assumed that women concentrate more on the emotional aspect of relationships, whereas men are more interested in actions, but that might just be my bias. I am firmly of the opinion that as a writer of fiction, nothing should be outside my remit to write about, whether it is in the realm of my experience or not. As you say, you don’t have to kill someone to write a good murder story.

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24 Elegant soldiers of the King, these elegant miniatures are wearing the Casquette and full dress.

These battalion pack comprieses of the following miniatures,
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19 Fusiliers ( carefully selected from 4 diffferent models)


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Daily Archives: July 9, 2008

Employee Tip: Document, Document, Document (And SAVE Documents!)

If you are an employee with concerns about your employer, or you think you may pursue a legal action someday, please know that the documentation you keep is critical.  Do not assume the employer or others will keep important documents and produce them to you later, or will agree with your undocumented recollections of events.

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Tag Archives: Unpaid Wages- Deadlines-Statutes of Limitations

Wage Issues? Tip #2: Know that Statutes of Limitations (Deadlines) Apply, and Are of Pressing Importance

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This post continues my series of tips, or things to consider, for workers with unpaid wages.Tip #2 is this: Know that statutes of limitations (deadlines) apply, and are of pressing importance.

Every situation that involves unpaid wages also involves a ticking clock.  That is, there are statutes of limitations, i.e. deadlines, that apply to your unpaid wages.

Many wage laws have a two (2)- year deadline, and that deadline likely only applies to a period before the complaint-filing date.  For example, Wisconsin wage law has a two-year deadline, and if a Wisconsin State wage complaint were filed in court on April 26, 2011, the worker could only seek unpaid wages for the two-year block dating back to April 26, 2009.  With each day that passes, in this example, a day’s worth of potentially recoverable unpaid wages is lost.

Please note that several laws, with several different deadlines, could apply to one situation of unpaid wages.  I have seen situations where over five (5) potential legal claims existed for one worker with unpaid wages.  Further, some laws (if you are fortunate enough they apply to you) provide for longer deadlines, ranging from three (3) to six (6) year deadlines, and in rare instances longer periods.

In sum, there can be multiple different laws, and multiple different deadlines, that can apply to one situation of unpaid wages.

Because such deadlines exist, if you have unpaid wages you should act promptly to (1) evaluate potential legal claims; (2) determine the potential claims’ merits and deadlines; and (3) if there are potential claims you feel are worth pursuing, take legal action (negotiate with the employer and/or file a legal complaint).

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Workplace Privacy

Employee privacy is an ever-changing, complex issue. On one hand, employers would like to know as much about their employees as needed to make the right personnel decisions. For instance, school districts need to know that they're bus drivers are not drinking alcohol before or during their shifts. Therefore, a preemployment drug and alcohol test -- and perhaps random tests during their employment -- makes good sense in that case. But it's probably not necessary (and illegal in some states) for a restaurant to check the credit scores of prospective wait staff.

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Privacy in the Workplace: Overview

An employee's right to privacy in the workplace is an increasingly controversial legal topic, especially in an age of increased reliance on computers and electronic mail to do business. Technology has enabled employers to monitor virtually all workplace communications made by employees using computers -- including use of the Internet and company e-mail. While employees may feel that this monitoring is a violation of their privacy rights, it is usually allowed under the law. Other employee activities (such as private conversations) and certain physical spaces in the workplace (like locked desk drawers) receive more privacy protections, while specific activities like drug use may lead to testing for substance abuse. Below is a discussion of employees' privacy rights in the workplace.

Internet Usage and Email

An employee's activities while using an employer's computer system are largely unprotected by personal privacy laws. Emails are considered to be company property if they are sent using the company's computer system. Employers generally have the right to monitor and view employee email, so long as they have a valid business purpose for doing so. Many employers now have email systems that copy all email messages as they pass through the system to check for productivity, illegal use, and other issues. Emails are frequently being used as evidence during trial to prove employee misconduct or wrongdoing.

In addition, employers have the right to track the websites visited by their employees, to block employees from visiting specific Internet sites, or to limit the amount of time an employee may spend on a specific website.

Phone Calls and Voicemail Messages

Employers use electronic surveillance practices, including monitoring employee phone conversations and voicemail messages, in order to keep tabs on their employees and their business operations. Generally, employers can monitor telephone calls to and from their locations, but there are legal limits.

The Electronics Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) places some limitations on an employer's right to monitor its employees' telephone usage at work. Under the Act, an employer may not monitor an employee's personal phone calls, even those made from telephones on work premises. An employer may monitor a personal call only if an employee knows the particular call is being monitored and consents to it. The ECPA also provides protection for an employee's voicemail messages at work. Employers face legal liability if they read, disclose, delete, or prevent access to an employee's voicemail messages.

Post-Hiring Drug Testing

An employer may be able to require its employees to submit to drug screening. However, a number of states' laws limit the circumstances in which an employer may test for drugs, and the methods they may use to perform such tests. An employer may generally test its employees for drug use if it limits its testing to:

  • Workers whose jobs carry a great deal of risk to themselves or others.
  • Workers who have completed a drug rehabilitation program or are currently enrolled in such a program.
  • Workers who have been involved in a work-related accident where drug use was suspected.
  • Workers whom management believe have been using drugs based on physical evidence or behavior (glassy eyes, slurred speech).

Employee Privacy in the Workplace - Get Legal Help

Employees have clear and specific rights to privacy in the workplace, but these rights are balanced against their employers' privileges to monitor their business operations. If you're an employee who believes that your employer may have overstepped legal boundaries in connection with your privacy rights, or if you just have questions about your right to privacy in the workplace, talk to a local employment lawyer who can clarify your rights.

Next Steps

Contact a qualified employment attorney to make sure your privacy rights are protected.

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