Using data from a large recruitment platform, researchers at ETH Zurich analyzed how recruiters selected candidates. They found that unconscious racial bias was more pronounced by the end of the workday when recruiters were tired or wanted to leave work.

Wow.

So, in addition to other approaches you may already be taking to combat bias during the recruitment process, consider reviewing resumes in the morning when you and your recruiting team are fresh.

Looking for more ideas to be more inclusive during the hiring process? Check out my second book, The Better Allies Approach to Hiring, listed as one of TeamBuilding’s 16 Best Recruiting Books to Read in 2021.

(Thanks to Women 2.0, who shared the ETH Zurich article in their weekly newsletter.)

Did you know that screen readers read a description of an emoji out loud when they come across one? For example, “Have a great day 😎” becomes “Have a great day smiling face with sunglasses.”

While it’s effective for a single emoji, imagine listening to, “Have a great day 😎😎😎😎😎.”

Over on Twitter, accessibility designer Anna E. Cook recommended against excessive emoji use:

“As a person using a screen reader on websites and on social media, I need to be able to read content that doesn’t use emojis excessively so that I can find what I’m looking for without having to wait through emojis.”

 — @annaecook

She also recommended reading Emojis and Accessibility: The Dos and Don’ts of Including Emojis in Texts and Emails on the Easter Seals blog. Check it out for more tips.

COVID-19 forced millions of women out of the workforce, many of whom are moms. Now, as the Marshall Plan for Moms website points out,

“It’s clear that the pandemic didn’t undermine a functioning system. Rather, it exposed what women have known for decades: work doesn’t work for moms, and work-life balance is an illusion. Too many employers continue to fail to provide the basic policies and practices moms need to thrive — at work and at home. Today, employers have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reimagine the future of work and participate in rebuilding our economy in a way that is inclusive, equitable, and values women’s labor.”

They recently published a free Marshall Plan for Moms playbook, which outlines ten things moms need to return to — and thrive at — work. While I recommend reading the full report, I’m highlighting one of their suggestions: Train managers to avoid making assumptions around which projects a new mom can take on.

Unfortunately, this happens all too often. When I was working in tech, I remember talking with a man on my staff who needed to fill a senior role on his team. When I asked if he planned to promote his top employee into the position, he replied that she had young children at home, and he felt sure that she wouldn’t want all the travel that would come with the promotion. I countered, saying that this was her decision to make, not his. (He decided to make her the offer, which she accepted. And she went on to do an outstanding job.)

One quick way to avoid making such assumptions yourself: Ask yourself, “Would I say the same thing to someone who isn’t a mom?” Kristen Pressner, a global HR executive, gave a TEDx talk on bias and recommended the “flip it to test it” experiment, saying:

“Maybe you are a superhuman person who manages to intercept those brain shortcuts at exactly the right moment to ensure you’re behaving bias-free and consistently with your values, and beliefs, and all of your actions. It could very well be. But what have you got to lose to double-check yourself? If we all started to flip it to test it, we might just be surprised at how often we would choose to behave differently. Because what if you’re missing an opportunity to see the world differently?”

Does your company or team have “core hours” for meetings? In Too Many Zoom Meetings? ‘Core Hours’ Keep Some Remote Workers Productive and Sane, Wall Street Journal reporter Aiyana Ishmael wrote about this growing trend:

“The tactic, called ‘core hours,’ sets times — say, between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. or 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. — when bosses require employees to be online and available for Zoom meetings, project collaboration and other exchanges. Any other time is a meeting-free zone.”

While it’s a good policy for caregivers, it’s something that could benefit all employees.

Are you wondering how to talk about people’s weight respectfully? Are you comfortable saying “fat people”? Or is your go-to language “plus-sized” or “overweight” or “obese” instead?

In last week’s newsletter, I provided some tips for how to be inclusive of fat people, and I received a lot of questions and feedback on my choice of words. Most were along the lines of “I’m surprised you used the word fat. Isn’t it insulting/derogatory?” Well, let me share what I have since learned.

As I read in an article in Teen Vogue by Charlotte Zoller, “Fat is a word that has been hurled around as an insult for decades. Now it’s a term that plus-size individuals are reclaiming as a neutral descriptor for themselves.”

An article in The Conversation explains, “‘Overweight’ carries an inherent judgement: ‘over’, above what you should be, thus the implication of a particular normal weight. Obesity is derived from the Latin obesus (‘having eaten until fat’) which directly — and problematically — correlates obesity with overeating.”

And here’s one more. In an op-ed for Self Magazine, author Aubrey Gordon shared that, because many people have been trained to understand the word as a deeply cruel one, we redact it from our everyday language. Yet,

“If someone is afraid to say ‘fat,’ chances are they’re not standing up for fat people. If simply naming our bodies is too much to bear, that’s a sign that one’s relationship to fat peope is far from neutral, much less accepting or supportive.”

Read Gordon’s entire piece to understand why “fat” can be a neutral, even affirming term: ‘Fat’ Isn’t a Bad Word — It’s Just the Way I Describe My Body. And then, more importantly, start thinking about how you can be a better ally for fat people and help create a workplace where they can thrive.

That’s all for this week. I wish you strength and safety as we all move forward,

— Karen Catlin, Founder and Author of Better Allies®

Copyright © 2021 Karen Catlin. All rights reserved.

Being an ally is a journey. Want to join us?

😍 Follow @betterallies on Twitter, Medium, Instagram, or Pinterest

✉️ This content originally appeared in our newsletter. Subscribe to “5 Ally Actions” to get it delivered to your inbox every Friday

📖 Read the Better Allies books

🔖 Join a Better Allies book club

👕 Get your Better Allies gear

📣 Tell someone about these resources

Together, we can — and will — make a difference with the Better Allies® approach.

Review Resumes in the Morning, and Other Actions for Allies was originally published in Code Like A Girl on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What do you get when you cross Harry Potter with Sherlock Holmes? You get Marion Lane and the Midnight Murder by T.A. Willberg. And with a name like T.A. Willberg, I would expect no less.

Walking through the new books section of the library I noticed an interesting cover with an interesting title. Picking it up, I opened the novel and started to read… Within the first few sentences I was snatched from the library aisle and into the heart of London, England. I could sense, see and smell the alley I was in. Who was this woman in red? What was she doing here? I had to find out! So, it would seem I had no choice but to borrow the book and keep reading.

The year is 1958 and Marion Lane is a first-year recruit at the very secret and literally underground “Miss Brickett’s Investigations & Inquiries”, a private detective agency that solves unsolvable crimes (or rather crimes Scotland Yard doesn’t deal with or won’t deal with). With their expertise, gadgets and cleverness they are the sluethiest sleuths to ever sleuth. And that’s saying a lot!

The story is interesting straight away with the appearance of the intriguing woman in red. And quickly after that we are witness to the murder of Michelle White, a filing assistant at Miss Brickett’s. The details surrounding her murder all point to an inside job, so to speak. When Marion’s colleague and family friend (the man who recruited her into the academy) becomes the main suspect, Marion has no choice but to find out who the real killer is.

This is a classic murder mystery, with all the twists and turns of plot you’d expect plus strange characters who all seem suspicious and suspect. However, the best part is the atmosphere. The secretive and elusive academy is situated underground through winding tunnels and hidden doorways. There’s a touch of magic to the place. Their gadgets are futuristic, mechanical and somehow magical.

Marion Lane and the Midnight Murder is a fun and whimsical read. The only thing that would have made this book better would have been if the writer spent more time on the academy – the atmosphere of the academy. I found myself transported to the place, and it would have been nice to spend a bit more time and imagination on the surroundings. Hopefully there will be more Marion Lane books to come and we can discover more of this whimsical world and follow Marion where she takes us!

— Shaye R.

Note: we’re excited to share that the sequel, Marion Lane and the Deadly Rose, will be available in February 2022

A very fast and expressive template engine.

Python 7.9k Updated Jul 30

The comprehensive WSGI web application library.

Python 5.8k Updated Jul 29

The Python micro framework for building web applications.

Python 56.2k Updated Jul 30

Foreman port to crystal.

Crystal 46 Updated Jul 29

A Node.js Version of Foreman

JavaScript 1.2k Updated Jul 29

Honcho: a python clone of Foreman. For managing Procfile-based applications.

Python 1.4k Updated Jul 30

TORONTO -- Garret Takamatsu had four of Toronto's 18 hits to help the Maple Leafs double the Kitchener Panthers 14-7 Wednesday night at Christie Pits. 

Takamatsu singled four times, driving in three and scoring twice. Jordan Castaldo went 2-for-5 with a solo home run. He scored three times. Justin Marra also went deep as part of a three-hit night. He had two RBI and four runs. Grant Tamane went 3-for-5 with a home run, two RBI and two runs, Johnathan Solazzo singled three times and had three RBI, Sean Reilly had a pair of hits and scored once, while Marcus Knecht, Chandler McLaren and Dan Marra all drove in a run. 

Kyle Perrett (1-0) made it five innings, allowing six runs on 10 hits with two walks and two strikeouts. Adam Marra earned his first save, giving up a run on three hits over four innings of relief. He walked one and struck out three. 

Toronto improved to 5-4. 

Ryley Davenport led the Panthers with a home run and four RBI. Blake Jacklin and Liam Wilson each had three hits and an RBI and combined to score three times, Jett Jarvis singled twice and scored twice, Stephen Whalen drove in a run, and Keegan Marsden had a pair of hits. 

Stephen Gade (0-1) took the loss, allowing two runs on three hits in 2.1 innings. He walked three and struck out one. 

Starter Matt Stoddart was pulled with two outs in the fifth, allowing nine runs (six earned) on 13 hits with four walks and two strikeouts. 

Kitchener fell to 5-2. 

Our next home game is tonight vs Hamilton, 7:30pm start time.

Looking to gain momentum in the marketing world? Learning to tell a good brand story is the key to success! Brand storytelling is using a narrative to connect your brand to customers, with a focus on linking what you stand for to the values you share with your customers. Research shows that when we hear a good story, the neural activity of our brains increases fivefold, like a switchboard has...

Source

nodejsscan is a static security code scanner for Node.js applications.

CSS 1.8k Updated Jul 30

Electronegativity is a tool to identify misconfigurations and security anti-patterns in Electron applications.

JavaScript 622 1 issue needs help Updated Jul 30

Download ScriptAnalyzer from PowerShellGallery

C# 1.2k Updated Jul 30

Security risk analysis for Kubernetes resources

Shell 539 Updated Jul 29

Security scanner for your Terraform code

Go 3.1k Updated Jul 30

a static analysis tool for finding vulnerabilities in C/C++ source code

Python 190 Updated Jul 30

♦

This will be the first Food Day Canada without its late founder, food activist and culinary icon, Anita Stewart. It will be a special one, therefore.

Canadians will be sharing good food and Canada will be lit up from coast to coast for this year’s Food Day Canada celebrations.

Almost 50 buildings and icons, from Government House in St. John’s Newfoundland to Niagara Falls, the Fairmont Banff Springs and up to the Kwanlin Dun Cultural Centre in Whitehorse, will be glowing with red and white lights to show our gratitude to all the good people who help get food to our tables.

Canada is rich in food and blessed to have all the incredible people who work in our food system, including farmers and fishers, chefs, researchers, food processors, restaurant and grocery frontline workers and more.

All Canadians are invited to celebrate Food Day Canada/Journée des terroirs on Saturday July 31, 2021.

“It’s our pleasure to invite all Canadians to take part in Food Day Canada celebrations, “said Crystal Mackay, Food Day Canada Coordinator.

“The harvest is in and there are so many options to enjoy anywhere and everywhere. Come together at backyard barbecues, picnics, potlucks, patios and kitchen tables, in person and online.”

How best to celebrate Food Day Canada?

How best to celebrate Food Day Canada?

— Take the pledge to shop, cook and dine like a Canadian on www.FoodDayCanada.ca.
— Shine a light — visit one of the icons lit up red and white near you, or do-it-yourself with lights at 9 p.m.
— Dine like a Canadian! Enjoy Canadian-grown, Canadian-made food and drinks made at home or support your local restaurants and favourite cooks. Look for the FDC partner restaurants and icons lit up on the map on the FDC site.
— Share like a Canadian: post your stories, menus, pictures with all Canadian using #FoodDayCanada and @FoodDayCanada. Follow along and join millions of Canadian conversations.
— Enter to win some fabulous giveaway prizes too!

As Food Day Canada Founder, the late Anita Stewart, always said, “Canada IS food and the world is richer for it.”

Show your Canadian pride and shine a light on Canadian cuisine near you.

Check out my latest post Food Day Canada is July 31 from Andrew Coppolino - World of Flavour.

I read this interview with Tasha Suri recently, and as a devoted fan of much of the speculative fiction Orbit and Tor publishes, I immediately smashed the “place hold” button on WPL’s catalogue for The Jasmine Throne, Suri’s first in a new epic romance-fantasy series that absolutely blew me away.

This intricately plotted, queer, Southeast Asian epic inspired fantasy novel is told from multiple characters’ points of view, but primarily focuses on Malini, an exiled and furious princess seeking revenge from her brother who cast her out, and Priya, a powerful priestess with a tragic past who is working as a maid in the desolate temple Malini has been exiled to. Their paths cross one fateful night and their entire worlds change.

The empire of Parijatdvipa, where our story takes place, is ruled by Malini’s tyrannical brother, and much of this novel’s conflict is centred on the brutality of empires and the poverty and violence that comes at the expense of exorbitant wealth and power. These are often themes explored in science fiction and fantasy, and Suri has done an incredible job at turning these age-old themes into something completely original and well crafted.

We begin with a slow introduction to the world, the characters, and the magic system, and it is so incredibly seamless and rich with detail. Suri has crafted an epic fantasy novel that is complex but understandable, equally plot and character driven, and just so full of hope in harnessing both anger and love to overthrow oppression.

Suri’s writing is gorgeous and definitely gets off to a slow start, but if you’re looking for a compelling, substantial, and engrossing fantasy novel to get lost in, you have to add this one to your list. Suri has also written the Books of Ambha series, which I will be promptly checking out as well.

— Jackie M.

… and proof that everyone wants to get their paws on the latest by Tasha Suri

♦

💻 htop-like system-monitor for Windows with Vi-keybindings.

C 538 Updated Jul 29

Glances an Eye on your system. A top/htop alternative for GNU/Linux, BSD, Mac OS and Windows operating systems.

Python 18.9k Updated Jul 30

Cross-platform lib for process and system monitoring in Python

Python 7.5k Updated Jul 30

My wife recently returned to work after a year of maternity leave. I figured that she might miss being home with me and our son, so I bought her a digital photo frame for our anniversary. To seal the deal, I dug back through all of our digital photos and selected a few hundred that I felt best represent the different stages of our relationship.

The frame that I chose is pretty bare bones. After some shopping, I settled on the Aluratek ASDMPF09. It’s a 10″ frame with 4GB of internal memory and a 1024×600 pixel display.

There’s not much to this device, but while researching, I found that the market leaders in this sector have gone full Internet of Shit in their offerings – Every device comes with a web service, cloud storage, and an email address. Some even require an internet connection to operate. And so I chose to stick with the low tech model in hopes of a better, more secure product, albeit with fewer bells and whistles.

What I didn’t bank on was this device’s absolute inability to rotate and resize images at display time. Here’s an example of what I mean:

At first, I thought that the problem was the height of the image. I figured that the frame was removing horizontal lines from the image to resize it to fit on the 600px tall screen. Perhaps in doing so, it decided to remove the same number of vertical lines from the image, causing it to look unnaturally squished in the horizontal direction. That would be stupid, but also understandable.

I tried to solve for this by resizing the source image such that it had a maximum width of 1024px and a maximum height of 600px, all while respecting the aspect ratio of the original image. In practice, this meant that the resulting image was either 800x600px or 600x800px, depending on its orientation.

Unfortunately, this did not solve the problem.

After a bit of digging, I remembered that older iPhone cameras used to save time when taking photos by writing files to storage in whatever orientation the phone happened to be in when the photo was taken. To compensate, they added an EXIF attribute to the file to indicate that the photo needed to be rotated at display time. Most devices, including Windows, implicitly handle this reorientation and you never notice that it’s happening. The digital photo frame that I purchased tries and fails, leaving the image stretched in nasty ways that make it look unnatural.

We can see this EXIF re-orientation magic happening in practice by running one of the affected photos through Phil Harvey’s excellent ExifTool. It spits out all of the metadata associated with the photo, including this attribute that instructs the display device to flip the image upside down:

Orientation: Rotate 180

To solve the problem, I can rotate the image such that the EXIF attribute is no longer necessary, and then remove that metadata so that the digital frame does not try to modify the image on the fly at display time. I actually wrote up a solution to this problem way back in 2016 when WordPress did not properly handle the issue. If you read that post back in the day, the rest of this one is going to look eerily familiar.

Then as now, the solution is to sprinkle a little bit of ImageMagick over my photos, resizing them to the dimensions of the digital photo frame while retaining their aspect ratio, re-orienting them as necessary, and stripping any unnecessary EXIF metadata along the way. The end result is an image that the device does not have to resize or rotate at display time.

With a little bit of help from StackOverflow and the folks on the ImageMagick forums, I figured out how to do all of this in a single command:

magick.exe convert -auto-orient -strip -geometry 1024x600 input.jpg output.jpg

This operation is pretty straightforward. Let’s break it down into pieces:

• convert: tells ImageMagick that we want to modify the input image in some way, making a copy in the process
• -auto-orient: rotates the image according to the EXIF Orientation attribute if present, effectively undoing the iPhone’s laziness
• -strip: Removes any unnecessary EXIF data, including the Orientation attribute that is no longer required to correctly display the image
• -geometry widthxheight: allows us to specify the desired width and height of the output image, in this case 1024×600. By default, this option preserves the input image’s aspect ratio
• input.jpg: is the path to the file that we want to resize
• output.jpg: is the path to write the resized image to. Note that this operation will not modify input.jpg

One thing that you’ll notice is that this command only resizes a single photo. Since I have an entire directory full of photos that I need to process, it would be ideal to batch them out. Unfortunately, ImageMagick’s convert utility can only operate on single files. No matter, though – I’m on Windows, so I can wrap the operation in a Powershell command that enumerates all of the files in the current directory and pipes each filename into the ImageMagick convert command for processing:

Get-ChildItem -File | Foreach {magick.exe convert -auto-orient -strip -geometry 1024x600 $_ resized\$_}

You need to run this operation from within the directory that contains all of the images that you want to process, since the Get-ChildItem -File command lists every file in the current directory. We pipe that list into the Foreach command, which loops over every file in the list, substituting its name in for every instance of $_ in the {} braces that follow.

The result is a resized and correctly oriented copy of every image, each with its original filename, all in a directory called resized that resides within original directory of images. One nice side-effect of this operation is that the 300 or so photos that I wanted to put on the frame shrunk in size from 1.7GB to around 80MB. That’s means that I can put significantly more photos on the device than expected, which is a bonus.

The post Holiday hours appeared first on Grand River Rocks Climbing Gym.

The post Holiday hours appeared first on Grand River Rocks Climbing Gym.

♦

Focaccia [foh-KAH-chyah]
In a world of flatbreads — Persian, Indian, Salvadoran — surely the focaccia is among the tastiest, especially with its rosemary accenting.

The pizza-like dough, thick and airy, gets a good dose of olive oil and salt that settle into rows of finger-made depressions before it gets baked.

Liguria, whose coast is the Italian Riviera in the northwest of the country, is a strong contender for where the bread originated; it’s also a place where pizza might be also called focaccia.

This now artisanal and “crafted” bread was once considered quite humble and has been described as one of “the nourishing basic dishes of a poor and isolated population.” But that is harsh.

It might be classified as a “hearth cake” — the word focaccia likely deriving from the Latin word “focus” or “hearth.”

It’s likely related to the wonderful fougasse of Provencal. Try it with whipped ricotta.

Check out my latest post The Wednesday Word is … focaccia from Andrew Coppolino - World of Flavour.

July 27, 2021

BARRIE -- Stephen Whalen's solo home run with two out in the top of the eighth was the difference in the Kitchener Panthers' 3-2 win in Barrie Tuesday night. 

Whalen sent Aidan Rossel's first pitch over the Coates Stadium fence for his third hit of the night as the first-place Panthers improved to 5-1. Jason Kauffeldt had Kitchener's other RBI, while Andy Leader picked up a pair of hits and a steal atop the lineup. 

Jacob Douglas (1-0) struck out eight and didn't issue a walk in 4.1 no-hit innings of relief. Ryan Douglas started and went 4.2 innings, allowing two runs on three hits with five walks and a strikeout.

For Barrie (3-5), David LeBlanc and Jeff Cowan each singled and drove in a run. The Baycats only had three hits in the game. 

Rossel (0-1) only allowed the home run in two innings. He struck out two. Starter Juan Benitez struck out seven over seven innings. He gave up two runs on nine hits with three walks.  

♦

When I was a small child, a very small child, my parents took me to the library to get my first library card. It was very exciting as my big sister (2 years older) already had one so of course I wanted one too! I was allowed to borrow a couple of books and, as my Mum tells me, I was immediately drawn to the little Beatrix Potter books. They were the first books checked out on my library card.

My parents, especially my Dad, were big readers and we made weekly visits to our library. Apparently on every visit, I could be found clutching Beatrix Potter books in my hands, making my selection swiftly. To this day I love Potter’s illustrations and charming stories. So, on what would have been her 154th birthday, I thought I’d take a look back at the beloved illustrator and writer’s life.

Helen Beatrix Potter was born in Brompton in South-West London on July 28, 1866. Her father, Rupert, was a barrister and her mother, Helen, the daughter of a wealthy cotton merchant and shipbuilder. Both of Beatrix’s parents were artistic, with her father not only being creative but very clever in finance and, by the early 1890s, he has amassed great wealth for his small family.

Beatrix was educated by governesses, with the final one, Annie Moore, becoming a lifelong friend. In fact it was Moore who later suggested to Potter that the illustrations in the letters she received from her friend would be wonderful in children’s books.

♦The Potter family were greatly interested in nature and loved exploring the great outdoors. Many holidays were spent at an estate in Perthshire, Scotland but, when the estate was no longer available for their use, the family visited Wray Castle in the Lake District in the north-west of England. On this holiday, Potter met Hardwicke Rawnsley, the Vicar of Wray (who would later become the founding secretary of The National Trust) whose passion for nature and country living would have a lasting impact on her life.

Potter’s parents valued education for both men and women, which was not entirely common at that time. Potter was fascinated by all areas of natural science, collecting fossils and studying and illustrating fungi to aid in identification for scientists.

In the 1890s, Potter and brother Walter decided to make their own Christmas cards, using the illustrations of their many pets, especially Benjamin Bunny. The illustrations sold quickly, making Potter more determined to, one day, write and illustrate her own children’s books. In 1902 this dream came true when The Tale of Peter Rabbit was published and hugely successful.

Peter Rabbit was followed by The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin, The Tailor of Gloucester and 23 other little books, each featuring those charming illustrations and delightful animal characters we all know so well.

♦Over the years Potter had fallen completely in love with the stunning Lake District in England. In 1905, she used some of the income from her books to purchase Hill Top Farm (now owned by The National Trust and open for tours) near Lake Windermere. A tenant farmer managed the property for her, but Potter was very hands-on, learning the techniques of fell farming and raising livestock, including a prize-winning flock of sheep. Through the purchase of the farm, she met solicitor William Heelis, whom she married in 1913.

Potter and Heelis had a happy marriage, celebrating 30 years together. Beatrix Potter died in December 1943, leaving the illustrations for her children’s books, an incredible 4000 acres of land, cottages, sixteen farms, and herds of cattle and sheep to The National Trust. Heelis died less than 2 years later, and he left the remainder of their property to The Trust.

There are many ways to get your Beatrix Potter fix, or to learn more:

• if you love the stories, watch the adaptations on DVD, including more traditional Potter fare and the new Peter Rabbit and Peter Rabbit 2 : The Runaway
• read a biography, including At Home With Beatrix Potter, Over the Hills and Far Away, and Beatrix Potter, a Life in Nature
• try The Cottage Tales series by bestselling author Susan Wittig Albert. These cozy mysteries feature Potter and are set in the Lake District.
• read one of her children’s stories, original or updated

I’ve never been able to pick just one of Potter’s tales as my all-time favourite. My Mum loved Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, my sister, Benjamin Bunny, and a dear friend, The Tale of Two Bad Mice. If pressed, it would either be Squirrel Nutkin or the Flopsy Bunnies, with the beautiful illustrations of Mr McGregor’s garden.

Beatrix Potter once said “If I have done anything, even a little, to help small children enjoy honest, simple pleasures, I have done a bit of good.” I would say she accomplished more than “a bit”.

— Sandi H.

Packaged version of ultralytics/yolov5

Python 57 1 issue needs help Updated Jul 29

Python library and shell utilities to monitor filesystem events.

Python 4.9k Updated Jul 30

I wake up at 7 a.m. and check my phone. I get an email notification that reads, “Congratulations, you have been accepted as a mentor for Open Source Day 2021!”.
I’ve constantly been checking my phone for the past few days to know the status of my application. To see if I’ll get accepted. This is one of the best things that has happened to me in 2021.

Open Source Day (OSD) is an all-day hackathon (including workshops) conducted by AnitaB.org. Participants of all skill levels learn about Open Source while contributing to projects designed to solve real-world problems. The goal of OSD is to promote Open Source contributions by women in tech.

You will have a list of projects to which you can contribute your code during Open Source Day. Participants will have the chance to attend hands-on workshops. These workshops will help participants overcome the first barriers of open source contribution: the technical gap of using the tools and the fear of actually having your name associated with a commit. Contribution can be in resolving an issue, fixing bugs, the addition of a new feature, or documentation of a process. There will be participants from different skill levels and experiences. There will be mentors helping you throughout the process.

I applied to be a mentor on the AnitaB.org website. If you are interested, you can review the expectations for mentors on this page and apply using this link given at the bottom of the page.

So the first step would be to fill up your basic information and share your Github profile. Then you need to pick a project that interests you from the list of Open Source projects. These projects can be in the following categories: humanitarian projects, Female led projects, or just interesting projects that have partnered with OSD. If you are not an active contributor to the project, you need to contribute to the project, raise a pull request, and attach the same to your application. If you do not know where to start with, you can take a look at the issues marked as “good first issue,” fix one of them and raise your pull request. These are simple but can give you a basic understanding of the project setup and structure.

Mentorship is a great way to give back to the community you are a part of, and becoming a mentor makes you eligible to receive a free vGHC 2021 ticket!

So, that’s about it. I will be mentoring for a project called Backdrop CMS as a part of Open Source Day and during vGHC’21. Let’s catch up if you participate. If you have any questions or want to know more about OSD, please leave a comment or reach out to me. I’ll be more than happy to answer. :)

How I got selected as a mentor for Open Source Day 2021. was originally published in Code Like A Girl on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

While murder isn’t comical, fictional murder mysteries are sometimes written with a strong thread of humourous happenings and funny, quirky characters running through them. Author Darynda Jones shares “13 Must-Read Laugh-Out-Loud Mysteries” on CrimeReads.com

Announcing the Midwestern Ontario Bearcats PBLO Program

The Inter County Baseball Association (ICBA) is proud to announce a new Premier Baseball League of Ontario (PBLO) offering for 2022. Bringing together our top athletes from Brantford, Cambridge, Guelph, Kitchener, Stratford, Waterloo and Woodstock, the Midwestern Ontario Bearcats will be rostered Baseball Ontario teams out of Kitchener, Ontario.

“Over the last several months we have worked together at the ICBA table to bring forward this unique opportunity for the best players in our league starting at 14U. Players will proudly represent their local centre as a member of their Bearcats team.” – Brian Hawley, ICBA Chair, 14U Retention & Competition Committee

The Bearcats will offer the following teams in 2022:

14U Academy (2008 born players)

15U Elite (2007 born players)

16U Elite (2006 born players)

In the years ahead, the program will grow to include a 17U and traditional 18U offering. All teams will roster with Baseball Ontario to compete each summer in provincial qualifying tournaments, and in elimination tournaments at 15U and 18U, using the best indoor and outdoor facilities in the region.

“The opportunity to participate in provincials and nationals was a key factor in our decision to join the PBLO as residency teams rostered with Baseball Ontario, out of Kitchener. KMBA is proud to collaborate with our ICBA partners and provide administrative support for the program.” – Ron Mooibroek, KMBA President

“All seven ICBA centres are at the table, working together to provide a wide range of options for our athletes. Whether it is our new Bearcats program, a local house league program, or anything in between, baseball in our region is flourishing and we look forward to sustained growth in the years to come.” – Mark Schram, ICBA President

“Kitchener is a natural landing spot for this evolving PBLO,” said PBLO president Don Campbell. “Ask anyone who has been involved in top level baseball in Ontario and mention Kitchener and you immediately think of their long and storied tradition.

“The PBLO is on a mission to build a true Ontario league offering kids and parents an affordable top-flight league with experiences of playing throughout our vast province so the kids can see it and experience quality baseball on the field.

“And we also want to offer a product where kids can pursue their goals and ambitions while enjoying everything playing Ontario-wide has to offer while encouraging tournaments to the States when it becomes safe.”

For more information visit our website: www.mobearcats.ca/

The post Announcing the Midwestern Ontario Bearcats! appeared first on Kitchener Minor Baseball.

Making decisions is never easy, and having to make a group decision that impacts an organization further complicates the matter.  University of Waterloo students Greg Maxin and Ahmed Hamodi recognized this problem and sought to find an innovative solution to help organizations to save time, remove bias, and make informed group decisions. After this recognition, they began development on a new venture and started working on DecisionHub (previously known as Arbitrium). Through their hard work, dedication, and perseverance they created a promising decision making platform. Their idea gained enough traction and impressed our judges so much that, they were able to win the Winter 2021 Concept $5K Finals.  

 Since their win, they entered the Concept Cornerstone program and further developed their platform, while acquiring a deeper understanding of their customers’ needs. After completing the program, we sat down with Greg and Ahmed to talk about their experience and what’s next for DecisionHub.  

A: After we had the initial idea, we put in a lot of work behind the scenes on developing it. We lacked some of the skills that were highlighted in the program and wanted to further improve these to better set us up for future success. We also wanted to go beyond the product development and further improve our knowledge and understanding of the business elements and how we could bring this venture to life.  

A: The marketing and sales portion of the program was super helpful. We were a bit inexperienced with sales pitches and this portion of the program taught us some best practices and different ways to approach sales. On top of that, we got some great feedback about our market size and the market space we were in and started to realize that we may need to start targeting a different market segment.  

A: The product itself saw little change, but the market we were addressing did. Initially we were focused on the not-for-profit space, but we sensed there was more opportunity if we shifted our focus elsewhere. We learned a lot of different paths we can take with this idea along with the pros and cons for each. This understanding and recognition will allow for our future decisions to be much more well informed.  

A: We learned just how much some of our potential customers valued DecisionHub. This showcased a real need and helped us to better understood and implement our pricing strategy. We were undervaluing our idea so this helped us realize the monetary value being provided.  

A: We connected with the coaches that involved in the program, but also with some of their networks. The Coaches were super helpful in not only suggesting people for us to connect with, but also introducing us to people they knew that would be helpful and we were able to connect with them. 

A:  During this program we held a sales meeting, that was pretty big milestone for us. We also completed the coding and implemented a big feature into our product offering and launched our website. 

A: Go for it. There is a lot of value you can get if you put the work and time in. Getting critiques and feedback from the experienced Coaches and Velocity Business Advisors in our meetings was incredibly helpful. You definitely get out what you put into it, so if you want to make the most of the program you need to put in the time and commit to it. It was a lot more practical than some courses and provided really useful feedback that was specific to our business, market and our technology.  

You can check out DecisionHub and follow along with their progress on their website, or if you would like to chat with the team further, reach out by email.

To see other UWaterloo teams with promising startup ideas and the right teams to take them to market, check out this semester’s Concept $5K Finals on July 29, 2021. DecisionHub was a Winter 2021 $5k Grant Winner!

If you are interested in the Cornerstone program, be sure to follow along with our Instagram and Twitter and sign up for our newsletter to be the first to know about the upcoming cohorts. 

The post The Many Decisions that led to DecisionHub appeared first on Concept UWaterloo.

The Kitchener Panthers scored three times in the ninth inning to take the win in Hamilton Sunday

By: Mark Pare

A comeback win for the Kitchener Panthers.

The Panthers scored three times in the ninth inning to defeat the Cardinals in Hamilton 10-8 Sunday afternoon.

Blake Jacklin led the way with three RBI, while Ryley Davenport went three-for-four with two runs batted in.

Adam Robertson went four innings in his first start of the season, giving up six runs (four earned) on six hits.  He walked two and struck out four.

Matt Stoddart collected the win for Kitchener, giving up two hits but got the last four outs.

It improved Kitchener's record to 4-1 on the year, and they're in Barrie Tuesday night.

However, the Panthers win streak could've been cut short Saturday in London.

The Majors led 12-3 in the bottom of the fourth inning, before the game was suspended due to rain and thunder.

The game will resume on August 20.

www.kitchenertoday.com/local-sports/panthers-run-win-streak-to-four-games-3984440?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Email

♦

I love a reflective moment, sitting on a patio in the warm sunshine (or even a cloudy, rainy day), with an affogato.

It’s relatively simple preparation that’s a flavoursome combination of a bold and slightly tart bit of acidity against a sweet and exultantly creamy texture, taking two relatively commonplace ingredients and melding them into a decidedly sensuous taste experience.

To read more about a visit to Mon Ami Pizza Kitchener for their affogato (and others), click here.

Check out my latest post Affogato: drink or dessert? from Andrew Coppolino - World of Flavour.