A great hobby that I enjoy very much is scuba diving. Most people when they hear the word scuba diving think of snorkeling, but snorkeling and scuba diving have a big difference if you compare them together. The people that think of snorkeling don’t understand the concept of scuba diving. When I hear the word scuba diving I think of seeing the underwater world and how different it is compared to the world above the sea. I really enjoy scuba diving, the only problem I have is a fear of sharks. From past experiences of movies, as well as video games they always interpret a shark as a terrible animal that only wants to rip off your legs or eat you alive and that always freaked me out. I have snorkeled with nurse sharks, although that was a little scary those sharks didn’t have teeth, so it wasn’t that bad. Anyways the first time I went scuba diving I was down in Turks and Caicos and loved it when I went down. After that vacation my whole family went scuba diving on another vacation we went on. After that, we all got certified as open water divers. The process was long and the test was hard, but once we all passed the test we then went to get our five open water dives done. To pass the test we had to know the scuba diving gear like the back of our hands. We had to know that you need goggles with a nose plug, a BCD, A respirator, a secondary respirator, down to your flippers, weights, etc. After passing the test we had five open water dives. Going down to around 40 feet deep for the first couple of dives, we would spend about an hour underwater practicing emergency techniques etc. One of the dives we were sitting down about 60 feet deep on some sand, in a circle and each and everyone of us had to take off our goggles, and put them back on as well as emptying the water from inside of our goggles after we put them on, we also had to throw our respirator out of our mouth and calmly put it back in safely. Once everyone was done with those procedures my cousin asked my brother (with hand motions) to loosen his goggles, knowing my brother instead of loosening he tightened them so hard that they broke 60 feet below sea level! Luckily Our instructor was prepared and had an extra pair with him. After all of those training procedures we finally got our certificate! I feel proud to accomplish something as great as that!
Month: February 2016
Future Career
Many people ask me what I have planned for the future. My plan for a future career isn’t specifically finding an office job, or anything like that. Instead my future plan is real estate business. My entire family has apartments all around Sioux Falls. I know for sure that if I have a question about something that I will have mentors right there to help me at any point. I’ve taken simple classes in high school that included drywalling, painting, staining, and even wiring. Some extra classes I took was wood tech as well as welding. Those classes have have a big impact on me for being such little classes, they’ve taught me a lot of information needed to get started. My plan includes getting a loan from the bank. A small loan, just enough to purchase a small house. What specifically I’m looking for is a small, beat up house that nobody would want. It would be hard to house flip as well as work a full time job, so that said I am most likely focusing on house flipping only. Some options would be to hire a crew and get this house done a lot faster than I would if I were to rebuild it by myself, but the downside of that option is I would have to figure out wages, and with little profit I will obtain over a flipped house I would rather do it myself. Once I become experienced in this type of work I could buy more houses to flip. After that I will be taking a big risk and getting a loan from the bank to start of apartments. My estimate of building apartments would take around three to four years all depending on whom I hire for my crew, weather they work hard enough, and whether they follow directions well enough. A tip from my grandpa; who had owned apartments a while back, told me that it’s not always you need to do everything with the material, it’s that you need to know how to do it so you can correct your staff when you need to. Knowing that my life later on will be a very hard work day, I’m hoping it will turn out successful.
My Goal for Programming
Ever wonder what strikes people to thrive for their goals in life? My goal is programming an App for the App Store. The programming program I specifically use is called “Construct 2” and it is a programming program for beginners, yet it still can be pretty difficult to understand. I started having an interest in programming a couple of years ago when I thought of the idea to create an app on the app store. I searched around but couldn’t find anything. I got this message on Facebook from my second cousin, someone whom I barely talk to asking if I was interested in this class called “Gaming Bootcamp”. He explained that this class was designed to teach younger people how to get the basics of programming done. I agreed and signed up for it. A day later I got an email from the instructor named Will, he told me that the majority of the people signed up were years younger than me, but I could be a mentor in his class and help out the kids who need help. I agreed and there I was in a programming class. I had a strong passion for this programming and picked it up pretty fast. I continued to program even after the class and Will (being a really nice person) offered to help me out by meeting up with me a couple of Fridays to get me past my problems. So far he has really helped me out. Will hosted another Gaming Bootcamp during December of 2015, he asked for my assistance. He told me since I have had so much experience with Construct 2, that I would be the one of the most advanced mentors there, infact I had more knowledge of Construct 2 and how to run it more than the teachers did. I agreed and helped him out for three days, I helped the kids out so much they knew me by name and didn’t know any of the other mentors. Every once and awhile, when Will wasn’t in the room the teachers would have to ask for my assistance. Many times when the kids would have a break they would ask me to stay behind and fix up the game. While busy with school as well as helping Will out I have been recently working on two apps. One app being a platform app (ex: Mario type of game) and one being a flying upward app. I am almost finished with both of them, yet it will still take me a while. The developing process is very long knowing that you have to make sure everything is working perfect, connecting your app to iTunes connect, as well as iAd. Eventually it will be ready for submission for the App Store, and I am really hoping my goal will be completed this year.
Social Media iFunny:)
What is it?
iFunny:) is a social media app. It is a small social media start up launched around 2009. It contains hilarious material that will make you laugh out loud
What does it do?
iFunny:) has profiles for everyone, to whom you can follow, like pictures, and even comment. iFunny:) keeps a section called “featured” where the iFunny:) team picks out 60 of the funniest pictures and posts them every 4-5 hours each day. Except in the middle of the night.
Why is it valuable for a social media plan? Who would be more likely to use it?
It is valuable for a social media plan because it keeps users laughing and smiling all day long, with endless pictures of laugher. The app has an age restriction of 17+ but you can tell by looking at the comments sections that there are a lot of 12 year olds trying to act “cool”.
How would I use it?
All you would have to do is go into the App Store or Google Play (depending on your phone) and type in iFunny:) and it will be the very top. Once downloaded you open it and it will start you off into the featured section. There is a button in the top right corner that looks like a shuffle button. This button will bring you to all of the featured pictures of the past. When looking at a picture you can double tap the picture and you will automatically “like” the picture which then will be saved in your likes, but only if you have an account. While looking at a picture you can swipe your finger in the upward position and it will bring you to the comments section. And lastly while looking at a picture you can tap and hold the picture and it will then bring up the option of saving the image, sending the image, or even sharing the image to other social media websites.
What’s a good example of a business/nonprofit using the tool
The app is a free download so they don’t charge you any money, yet you are making them revenue by using their app. They have a 24/7 ad banner at the bottom of the screen. So with millions of users on the app that brings up their income tremendously.
Can you find a review of the tool? What do reviews say?
The reviews mostly say make sure you are 17+ while using the app for there can be some inappropriate stuff in there for little kids
Include links to the tool and to at least one good example.
The link to the iFunny:) website: https://ifunny.co/
But the app is a lot easier to use. On the app store search iFunny:) and it should be the first result
Best Ways To Promote User Engagement!
Wondering what the best ways to Promote User Engagement? My source is from a website called “intercom.io” URL: https://blog.intercom.io/ways-to-increase-user-engagement/
From what I saw on this sight I discovered many ideas as well as simple ideas on how to Promote User Engagement. First of all, what is user engagement? User Engagement is an individuals response to some type of offering, such as a product, service, or website. So knowing what User Engagement is you would like a good review right? Some of the better ways to Promote this is to make a strong first impression, and how to do this are by three easy steps such as; explain and demonstrate how your application works, next you would need to motivate your customers to start using your product, and finally letting your users know how to get help. In my opinion this would really help out because if you let them know how to get help it makes them feel more comfortable with using your product knowing you have their back if a problem occurs.
Next activity to do to Promote the User Engagement is to always show a “Welcome Message”. In my opinion a Welcome Message would be a fantastic idea, it intrigues the user to get interested in your product, plus welcome messages aren’t hard to program.
A great idea is to have a sign up, or subscription button. When I’m interested in a website, and they ask if I would like to subscribe for deals, and emails talking about their sales, I always do it. There are very simple programs out there that will automatically email users on a list, so if you program a empty text box with transparent words inside saying “youremail@blank.com” meaning entering their email will put them on the list. Once they enter that their email will automatically get sent to the list which then waits on you to write the email and manually or auto send them.
Something that makes me feel good is when the big corporations speak with me directly. Sometimes on social media I will see people comment on a companies post, yet the company will actually reply to the user asking for a DM (direct message). Direct Messaging the company will get you coupons to save you money and new deals etc. Not all companies try to sell you products from direct messaging you, but some companies will give you exclusive details about their product or even help you with your product.
The Top Facebook Brands
Have you ever wondered about the top brands on Facebook? The ones with over millions and millions of likes? As well as millions of people “talking” about it? Some of the top brands include Facebook, YouTube, MacDonald’s, and even Red Bull! Red Bull has a whopping number of 44.9 million likes! That’s almost 45 million! Red Bull seems to post all the time, scrolling through their page it said they posted just about every hour. From 6 hours ago, to 7, 8, and so on. You may be thinking if they post so much, what do they have to say? What do they post? A majority of their posts include motivational stunts made by few people. These stunts go from Surfing, to skydiving, but it’s not just stunts that they post about but they also post about other activities such as hiking in the desert as well as hiking in very low temperatures. As often as they post they in fact use sentences and nothing else. Unfortunately they don’t use hashtags or any other types of words. There is a very interesting coincidence on Red Bulls Facebook page. With nearly 45 million likes you would suspect them to get thousands and thousands of likes on their posts. But they actually are very opposite. Some posts consist of a thousand, and some consist of forty three, or even in the hundreds. It seems that the really cool stunts have more likes which could be obvious. With all of the posts that they post not very many are motivational for a customer to go buy a Red Bull. Instead they are just showing how cool people can be when they try hard to do cool stunts. But they do have a couple cool advertisements. Some of them consist of someone or a group of people drinking Red Bull, getting pumped up and flying off to go do a really cool activity which gets more likes than usual.
Enough of Red Bull, curious on another Facebook brand? Another popular brand on Facebook is Oreo, with 41.7 million likes. Oreo is one of my favorite cookies, they post not nearly as much as Red Bull. Instead they post every couple days, for example: February 3, to February 5. Their posts consist of small videos of people dunking Oreos in coffee, which is a little different since their main phrase is “Milks favorite cookie”. Their captions don’t have any hashtags just complete sentences about how much people love Oreos. They get a huge amount of likes, they get up to 10 thousand likes, which is a huge difference from Red Bull! The most best part of their posts are the people enjoying the Oreos, it engages me and makes me start to crave Oreos.
Brown Stone Apartments
Downtown has a tremendous amount of companies/sole proprietorship. My choice of business is called Brown Stone Apartments. This business was founded surprisingly back in 1872, but constructed the building in the years of 1908 – 1909. The orignial owner was Thomas Henderson Brown, his assistant architect’s name is Joseph Schwartz. Throughout the building process some of the main materials used included: Brown pressed brick, and quartzite foundation!
Thomas Brown operated an investment company out of apartment #3. He lead efforts to secure the small city’s first rail connection as well as directed the site selection committee for the state penitentiary.
Also one of the earlier downtown apartments, the Brown catered primarily to upscale residents. Can you believe that these rooms had their own servants room? They still include the servants room except they do not use them as servant rooms anymore, instead the most I’ve seen are now kitchen areas or even a dinning room area. Anyways the four units on each floor were built with the servant rooms, porches and even individual fireplaces! The apartments buildings first replaced one of the city’s earliest wood frame home, build on site for Mr. Brown in 1872.
These apartments are now owned by my dad. I have been all around these apartments and they are very exciting to look into seeing the history that they use to have. Everything is very cool in the apartments…. Other than the basements… We’ve had homeless people sleeping down there before…. Kind of creepy if you ask me.
jasonbyre 