There’s something to see in every season at Seedskadee National Wildlife Refuge in Wyoming. Summer brings over 113 bird species to the refuge, where they breed and raise their young. After wildlife viewing during the day, stick around for stellar nighttime scenes like this pic of a stormy summer sky. A 30-second exposure captured the light of the stars and moon, along with lightning coloring the clouds from a passing storm. Photo by Tom Koerner, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.
Homes in this week’s roundup from each of the USA’s 50 states are in tiny Rhode Island, and include a cluster of barn-shaped volumes clad in wood and a black weekend retreat with pyramid-like skylights (+ slideshow). (more…)
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What does it take to become a successful entrepreneur? A good idea? A great team? Or none of the above?
One thing successful entrepreneurs all have in common is that they read. In case you’re looking for a great place to start, here are the 5 most recommended business books by today’s entrepreneurs as well as the best tips you can learn from each of them.
Traditional management consists of developing a strategy and overseeing the people executing it.
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The manager creates a plan, sets milestones, and delegates. Startups, on the other hand, can’t predict their own future because they have no past. They don’t know what their customers want, and they don’t know which approaches are best for finding customers that can make the business sustainable.
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Startups need an entirely different approach, and that’s where Eric Ries’s book, The Lean Startup, is valuable. The Lean Startup method helps companies develop sustainable business models by encouraging continuous product creation while concentrating on consumer feedback.
Ries, as an entrepreneur, bases the method on two important business concepts: lean manufacturing and agile development. And it’s not just a product of experience; it’s actually backed by several case studies which have been pulled together from the last few years.
In keeping with the lean protocol, Ries’s top piece of advice is this: don’t waste time on developing a product in the beginning. Instead, launch a basic model and see if it will sell. If not, iterate, iterate, and iterate some more.
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Rework is not your traditional business book. Instead of advising you to run your business the conventional way, it offers unorthodox strategies in communicating and crafting your products.
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These tricks come from people who know what they’re talking about. Jason Fried is one of the original founders of 37signals. His co-founder, David Heinemeier Hansson, is the creator of Ruby on Rails—the scaffolding for Twitter, Hulu, and thousands of other web services.
Fried and Hansson based Rework’s lessons on their own journey- from starting up to upscaling their business to the point where it generates millions of dollars annually.
One important concept that the duo highlights in Rework is that you actually need less than what you think to start your own company—have it less figured out, fewer resources, and basically less of everything.
Fried recommends adding value for your customers by knowing what not to sell. You don’t need to offer every feature out there; instead, focus on what you do great and get rid of the “nice-to-haves.” You’ll be surprised at how that will transform your business.
You’ve probably already heard the name Dale Carnegie.
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He was an American speaker and consultant on communications and motivation. He also happens to be known as the creator of the self-development genre—a title he earned by writing the bestseller How to Win Friends & Influence People.
Even today, Carnegie’s book keeps on flying off of shelves and it’s actually isn’t surprising. It’s full of lively anecdotes featuring people like Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt.
It’s very relatable as well. Carnegie offers up a lot of great, common sense tips in his book. One of the most useful nuggets is this: never openly criticize people.
And it’s not because you’ll hurt people’s feelings (though well you might); it’s actually more about being strategic and practical. Carnegie learned that when you criticize people, they’ll never change their behavior. To have a successful interaction, the book encourages you to empathize, forgive, and accept their shortcomings instead.
Journalist and advisor to President Franklin Roosevelt, Napoleon Hill, was asked by industry magnate Andrew Carnegie to investigate the methods of the 500 most successful people of his time. Hill talked to the world’s richest men, top politicians, famous inventors, writers, and captains of industry—and then wrote the book.
Among other things, Hill learned a lot about the importance of the company you keep. He hypothesized that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.
Naturally, it’s important to surround yourself with intelligent, positive, and supportive people. Hill even had a name for this: the Brain Trust.
Hill held that if two or more people who work well with one another combine their skills, talents, specialist knowledge, experiences, relationships and all other resources and use them to accomplish the same shared goal, the result will be more than just a sum of its parts: it’s a surplus with which you can achieve things you could have never achieved alone.
American entrepreneur and writer, Tim Ferriss, wrote this controversial classic based on his own experience in remaking his life. After founding a company in 2001, he worked so hard that a burnout forced him to take a break.
He then took off to travel the world and was surprised to find how he could run a profitable business from anywhere in the world – and with only a few hours of work per week. He wrote The 4-Hour Workweek and shared those secrets.
In the book, Ferriss advocates abandoning the traditional 9-5 job as a modern desk slave. Instead, he encourages living a life that concentrates on enjoying while still achieving big goals.
How do you exactly do that?
One of its critical aspects is learning to let go of the things you don’t really need to do, like, for example, micromanaging. A great tip from Ferriss’ book is this: Don’t babysit your team.
Instead, only get involved in exceptional cases. By giving them freer reign, you don’t only empower them but you also get to have more time for yourself to do the things you want to do.
As much as possible, try to read these books in one week. If you liked what you read but would like to know more about the key concepts from these books before you buy them, I recommend trying out Blinkist. They’ve condensed the five books above—plus about 1,500 more—into bite-sized reads for mobile devices.
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Our friends at Sketchfab have noticed a recurring trend: among the many 3D scans shared on their platform, a significant number are of historical doorways. Often neglected in today’s designs, doors and doorways are essential physical and mental transition points between the interior and the exterior of a building. While Mies van der Rohe’s strive for visual continuity and the use of glass doors has some critical advantages, it is not applicable – or only poorly applicable – to every design case. Fortunately, history shows that visually and spatially differentiating doors and doorways from the rest of a facade can be a resourceful alternative.
With this set of 3D models selected by Sketchfab, viewers can explore historical doorways online and discover the spatial sequences that they can offer. From framed, indented, raised, lowered, protruding and ornamented doors, these models clearly showcase the various design strategies available for you to keep your doorway design options open.
One of the most popular options is to frame doors with classical architectural elements. This approach, that became increasingly popular in the Quattrocento, is well exemplified at the Florence Baptistery, where Lorenzo Ghiberti’s well-known eastern doorway – the “Gates of Paradise” – is framed by two composite columns and an entablature. The doors, made of bronze, have been gilded at their center where 10 biblical scenes are represented. The exposed bronze on the doors’ edges acts as a dark-colored frame that is complemented by the use of dark stones for the capitals and entablature.
A similar technique of framing is used at the Colonial Bank Doorway in Melbourne, where two telamones (male column-figures) are placed on each side of the arched entrance.
Framing can also be made with several pairs of columns to give an entrance depth and perspective. From the outside to the inside, columns shift inwards and form horizontal indents. They are also usually superposed with successive round arches, as seen on this Roman door.
With this technique, the recessed doorway becomes an increasingly important focal point of a building’s exterior, as illustrated by the archway facade of Fountains Abbey in the UK.
Staircases are used to magnify both a physical and a symbolic transition from a lower level to a higher one, or from higher level to a lower one. As the North door of the Concatedral de Castellón in Spain exemplifies, churches often feature staircases in front of their doors, meaning that during a religious procession people literally and figuratively rise into the sacred place.
Descending staircases highlight an opposite hierarchy of structure. For instance, at the Nimrod Fortress Doorway on Mount Hermon in Lebanon, soldiers placed at the top of the fortress have more visibility and technical advantages over their rivals. The staircases placed within the passageway illustrate this hierarchical order in architectural terms. The “lowered” effect is further enhanced by the repetition of arches and their difference in heights.
Another strategy is to design a doorway protruding from the facade. Protrusions can be a very simple and efficient design strategy – something well-exemplified by the door of this vernacular and uncluttered Newstyle Church in Scotland.
But protruding doorways can also be more elaborate. Designed for the 1900 Universal Exhibition in Paris, the Petit Palais features a protruding facade and staircase, with arrivals to the palais beginning with a rising procession towards the entrance. The staircase is flanked by sculptures on pedestals, and at its top, pairs of columns and arches receding in space frame the doorway.
Ornaments have regularly been used on Church facades. The tradition stems from the Middle Age when iconographic content was used to illustrate the symbolic values and specific devotion of a church to its often illiterate laymen. At the Saint George Covenant in Prague, the entrance door is framed and indented. The composite columns surrounding the wooden door support an arched pediment depicting St George slaying the dragon, along with an accompanying inscription on the entablature.
Notre Dame’s “Portail du Jugement Dernier” in Paris similarly conveys a religious message. For this indented doorway, the vaultings were adorned with numerous small-scale figures of angels, prophets, martyrs and virgins among others. The last judgment – a passage from the Gospel of Matthew – is depicted on the arched pediment, showing once again that framed and indented doorways can be intensified with the use of ornament.
The Shah Mosque in Isfahan also show the use of ornaments in religious settings, this time with calligraphic inscriptions and seven colors of mosaic tiles. The portal visually differentiates itself from the rest of the structure as it is higher and framed by two minarets. On the portal itself, verses of Mohammed and Ali are inscribed, further outlining the large pointed archway. In the recessed transition space before the entrance door, pointed arches and “Muqarnas” typical of Persian architecture’s vaulted ceilings bring a feeling of depth.
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You’ll probably agree with this one:
Hiring and managing freelancers is a tough job.
Well, is it?
Outsourcing your project to freelancers shouldn’t be difficult. In fact, it should make your job a lot easier. They should be able to take some of the load off of your shoulders and get your business to run more effectively and efficiently.
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But, how exactly do you hire and manage freelancers? Here’s a quick rundown of the things you need to know.
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• If you’re upscaling your business, there’s a good chance you’ll be needing extra hands to cover the additional jobs. Resorting to hiring freelancers is not only a great solution to meet your goals, but it can also help you cut cost, particularly if you can’t afford to hire new people to go full time in your company.
• Adding someone new to your project can give it the fresh take you’re looking for. Since freelancers aren’t tied up to strict schedules, they can get the job done efficiently and creatively.
• Freelancers are mostly time-bound when it comes to their tasks. If you need to get something done quickly, they are the best people you can turn to.
• They are experts in their fields. Some of them could even be honing their crafts longer than your business. They can help you rethink your tactics and strategies to boost your earnings.
See Also: Why You Need to Delegate More
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One of the best things about hiring freelancers is that you never run out of sources. Unfortunately, however, it’s also one of the most common pitfalls of the process. Because there are a lot of options to choose from, you can end up going through a series of trial-and-error before you can find the right person for the job. This approach isn’t only time consuming; it can also burn holes in your wallet.
Fortunately, however, that’s not always the case. Here are some of the best ways you can source your new writer.
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Freelance Platforms
Going through freelance platforms gives you the opportunity to find writers that match your project. Once you’ve set your project, freelance writers can start posting their bids. You can go through their profiles, feedbacks and rates before you make the final call.
• Workfast: Getting your writer in Workfast can help you avoid the costly hiring process most platforms require. It offers flexibility so you can hire a writer to work for you on an hourly, a daily or even on a long-term basis.
• Upwork: This is another reliable freelancing platform with lots of great people to complete your project. The problem with the platform, however, is that its freelancers tend to charge high, especially after the implementation of its new sliding fees.
• Freelancer: It works very similar with Upwork but with different rates and charges. You post your project and sort through profiles and feedbacks to find the right match for the job.
Consider referrals
Referrals and recommendations are good options if you have friends or colleagues who have hired good people to work for them before. Since freelancers will be recommended, you can be sure that they can deliver quality work.
Aside from friends, you can also ask the people you’ve already hired if they can refer other freelancers to join your team. Since they are a close community, referring other people with the same caliber can’t be that hard.
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There is no rocket science equation about successfully managing your freelancers, but there are three things you need to have if you want to bring the best out of them.
Accountability
If you’re planning to build a team of freelancers, it’s a good idea if you can be clear about their roles. One of the best ways to achieve this is to establish milestones and metrics. Breaking down the project into different stages and setting one freelancer or a set of freelancers in charge of each stage can help ensure that the project runs smoothly.
Openness
Communication is critical to the success of any project. You need to know when and how to communicate with your freelancers before, during and after their tasks. This will save you time and energy in following up reports and demanding changes.
You can set regular monthly meetings in Skype or any other platform to keep track of your project’s milestones. Requiring your freelancers to create daily or weekly reports can also make you more aware of the progress of the project. From time to time, do an update on your goals and provide feedbacks to motivate your freelancers to do better. You can also encourage participation by asking for their opinions once in a while.
Clarity
Before you even let your freelancers start with the project, make sure you are clear about what you want and when you expect to have it. Give as much information to your freelancers as possible to eliminate confusions and frustrations along the way. Sketch out your deliverables and include the names of the people who will be in charge of completing them. It can also help if you can be clear about what criteria you’ll be using to measure their results.
Handing out content briefs for your writers, for example, is one good way to ensure that they create optimum articles that will match your site. You can also create spreadsheets, video tutorials and presentations to make tasks even clearer.
See Also: 5 Steps to Do Less in Life
Freelancers, no matter what their expertise are, can greatly help you reach your business goals with less stress and hassle. Although the process can require a bit of work, particularly during the initial stages, completing your to-do list should be a breeze once you’ve set your eyes on the most qualified individuals. The key thing is to outsource from the best hiring platform and manage your freelancers in a way that would encourage them to grow professionally
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White Lodge is part of a group of houses along the Upper Richmond Road better known as ‘Captains’ or ‘Nelson Houses’. Built in the 1860s, the name is attributed to the former landowner who developed the land, who married Francis Bolton, daughter of Thomas Nelson, 2nd Earl Nelson and also great niece of Admiral Horatio Nelson.
Studio Octopi were commissioned to extend and refurbish the private house in 2013. The design brief asked for the addition of two bedrooms, playroom and resolution of the disjointed ground floor plan. The completed works have extended the house to 250sqm, a 100sqm basement and 65sqm rear extension.
The kitchen extension replaces a 1990s conservatory and unifies the rear elevation and relationship with the rear garden. Taking reference from the existing late Georgian gault brickwork, the new 21” long, Petersen ‘Kolumba’ handmade bricks were chosen to emphasise the broad width of the property. The extension’s flank walls are set in from the boundary, the eastern elevation retaining access to link front and rear gardens. By spanning the width of the house the new extension links all the ground floor living spaces which were previously fragmented. A sliding picture window is set within the brickwork and provides views to the garden from an intimate snug area. By contrast, the kitchen and dining areas open onto the new elevated garden terrace via a 7.5m fully glazed door. The head of the glazing overlaps the roof construction, increasing the connection with the landscape and referencing mid-century modern houses so admired by the client. The delicacy of the glazing creates a striking counterpoint to the mass of the brickwork.
Full height glass screens enclose the internal stair to the basement. This vitrine provides acoustic separation between the kitchen extension and basement playroom. Over the stair is one of the three extension roof lights. Each rooflight is lined out in anodised aluminium panels. The panels reduce the apparent depth of the reveals whilst also providing a shimmering light, capturing the acute early morning sunlight in this north facing extension. The timber stair to the basement has a bead blasted stainless steel handrail and exposes a panel of existing London Stock brick which is up-lit from within the floor.
The basement has two bedrooms, shower rooms, playroom and kitchenette. Generous natural lighting was a key component of the design brief. Front and rear lightwells connect to outside spaces. From the playroom, recessed glazed doors and a broad landscaped stair connects with the garden. The recessed sliding/folding doors create shelter under the overhead brickwork but also the illusion of weightlessness to the extension.
Bad sportsmanship is not confined to either camp. Lets have more signs of mutual respect across the divide
I’m trying to cure this summer’s unattractive impulse before it turns into a bad habit. Whenever I see someone doing something stupid or self-harming like jumping an orange light on a bike or getting tattooed from neck to ankle, I want to shout: “Brexit voter.”
It’s not nice and it’s not fair. I’m trying to stop. As Theresa May’s divided cabinet meets to decide where to go next, ministers and demoralised Whitehall officials should refrain from recrimination too. The “phoney war” lull before the negotiation storm is about to end.
Politics blog | The Guardian http://ift.tt/2cbudIf
Another test based on our sight and on the perception of the reality. This time is about what we want most; our secret desire, the one that influences our minds without us even realizing it. The one that makes us see what we want to see.
Can you tell what it is in your case? Have you ever thought about it? Let’s see how good do you know yourself!
Take now this quick, easy and fun quiz and find out what is your dominant desire based on what you see.
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An innovative new housing model dubbed ReGen Villages (short for regenerative) has been developed in response to some of the world’s most pressing environmental, social and economic issues. Helmed by Dutch holding firm ReGen Villages B.V. and Copenhagen-based architecture firm EFFEKT, the new model facilitates off-the-grid, self-sustaining communal neighborhoods that can be deployed across the globe. The first project site will be in Almere, the Netherlands, with work starting this year.
The increasingly unavoidable facts about global warming, population growth, global food crisis and scarcity of resources lead the project team to consider how a holistic development could offset the dangerous consequences of human inhabitation. One of the largest drivers of environmental destruction and the loss of biodiversity remains the agricultural industry, and so the project team has used a sustainable agricultural model to drive forth the input based system of design.
Urban dwellers across the world work hard to pay the commodities of their homes, such as mortgage, energy, water and heating, cooling and food. We envision homes that work for you, producing clean energy, water, food off the grid at affordable land prices outside our big cities, says Sinus Lynge, co-founder of EFFEKT.
The concept combines a variety of innovative technologies, such as energy positive homes, renewable energy, energy storage, door-step high-yield organic food production, vertical farming aquaponics/aeroponics, water management and waste-to-resource systems. Lynge explained in a press release: “ReGen Villages is all about applied technology. We are simply applying already existing technologies into an integrated community design, providing clean energy, water, and food right off your doorstep.”
Whilst half of the global population currently lives in cities, the efficiency of the ReGen systems could reduce a household’s dependency on high-frequency urban living. This would open up a new wave of peri-urbanism and rural development, allowing a more sustainably distributed density of people across the planet’s surface. This distribution would also ease the burden on municipal and national governments who are currently buckling under the pressure of their overpopulated areas.
This redistribution of density fosters “a model that adds not only environmental and financial value but also social value by creating the framework for empowering families and developing a true sense of community, reconnecting people with nature and consumption with production.” It brings back a sense of achievement that accompanies the environmental and social benefits, making it a more sustainable long-term model.
After enlisting the backing of sovereign wealth funds looking for sustainable investments, ReGen will acquire suitable areas of land and begin contracting local consultants to help tailor the model to the local environment. The housing model is therefore optimized for the conditions at hand, with different technologies being applied accordingly.
After featuring in the Danish architectural pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale, the first ReGen Village pilot community is to be developed in Almere in Netherlands, with 100 homes breaking ground in 2016. Other project sites in the near future include Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Germany, with plans to expand onto multiple continents – into countries that feel vastly different consequences from the global crises – in the very near future.
News via EFFEKT.
💙 Flamingos on 500px by Hasan Baglar, Cyprus☀ Canon EOS 5D Mark… http://ift.tt/1QcxW2O
Sig Nordal 