characters - How do I know who's my protagonist? EARLY in writing process (maybe complicated, maybe not)

This is my first actual question, so I apologize in advance if I include something that is not suited for the forum, or if this is a duplicate of an existing west - though I DID try to find one that suits my case, without luck.

Here's the situation:

I'm writing a sci-fi story (only very little "fi"), that takes place in our time. I have a lot of characters "sketched out" already, and for a long time I felt that a certain one of these was the protagonist. This person is "randomly" pulled into the story (with a reasonable explanation within the universe), and ends up being a vital piece in an existing puzzle in the story.. However - and I realize that this may be solved by simply writing MORE - so far he's not very active in the plot...

I have a rather detailed outline for approximately 70-80% of the story, but have only written about 5-10%

In very short, the start of the story, and the way the "main" characters are connected, is as follows.

There is a certain "society", that consists of ordinary people who have achieved knowledge about certain things.

Peter (part of the society, young) has been kidnapped (which he is unaware of at first - makes sense in the story)

Adrian doesn't know Peter (or even anyone Peter knows), but obtains information from Peter (without knowing it at first)in a way that makes him valuable to the the other people connected to Peter.

Cleo (part of the society, but very young) is a Peter's niece, and meets Adrian "randomly" because of the information that he's now in possession of.. This information then pulls Adrian into the "society", which of course changes Adrian's life for good.

So far I have always thought of Adrian as the Protagonist, since hi's story is the one that makes the most sense in the way I want to reveal this "society", however I have heard that a protagonist is not the protagonist unless he actually consciously makes decisions.

Adrian WILL make decisions, but it's gonna take a while into the story...

Cleo undergoes a very interesting development during the story, and could potentially be the protagonist of a sequel, but I don't think it makes sense (so far) that she is the protagonist of this one...

I'm counting on Adrian and Cleo getting very close, and "sharing the adventure to save Peter"(just one part of the story of course), so I'm thinking that there may be more than one protagonist, but for the sake of my current point..

EDIT: Important note: I'm writing in the third person (I'm unsure if the terms omniscient is correct here, but I know what each of these characters are thinking and feeling), starting with Peter, then introducing Adrian and lastly introducing Cleo. They each get one of the first three chapters (if all goes according to plan). SO far I've written the first (Peter's) chapter, and some of the second (Adrian's) chapter. Also; knowing what different people think and feel is crucial to the story, since this i strongly connected to what the society is about.

Actual question: How do I know who is actually my main character of the story?

Will it reveal itself to me?

Should I simply trust my gut/original idea, or should I actively work on giving more influence in the story?

Answer

To answer your question, I have to talk about the difference between a plot and a story. A plot is a sequence of events that happen. A story is an arc of rising tension leading to a resolution. (These terms are sometimes defined differently, and even exactly the opposite, but that is what I am using them to mean here.)

You could have a plot about Joe going to work. He catches bus A, then transfers to bus B. At work he talks to Dave who suggests he take bus C and transfer to bus D. The next day Joe tries it and finds it gets him to work five minutes faster.

This is a plot. It has events. It even has a problem and a solution. But it is not a story. It is not a story because we have no emotional investment in Joe getting to work five minutes early, and Joe had nothing at stake in his decision to follow Dave's advice.

A story requires that Joe wants something, that it is important to him, and that it is difficult for him to get it. We have to sympathize with his desire (not approve, necessarily, but recognize it as a human desire, and Joe as a human person, and become engaged with his struggle). The question then becomes, how far will Joe go to get the thing he desires. When something frustrates his desire, will he give up or try again? Just how much is he willing to do, willing to sacrifice, to get what he wants? How much is he willing to bleed? And in the end, either he gets his desire, or he doesn't, or he learns the futility of his desire and achieve something more worth having. An arc of rising tension followed by release.

Plot puts flesh on the bones of this story structure. But the story is the story of a person. The person whose story is the main arc of you novel is your protagonist, though there may be other characters with their own arcs.

So if you have a plot but you don't know who your protagonist is, then you don't have a story yet. And since story is the master of plot, and plot must bend itself to the demands of story to create an arch of rising tension and a satisfying resolution around the desire of a character, you need to figure out your story and your protagonist before you get too far down the road of defining you plot.

The heart of every story is X wants Y and can't have it because of Z. Find those elements and you have your story, and once you have your story, you know who your protagonist is.

"Contact us" form submission best practice

As a user, when I submit a "Contact us" form with [valid] info, should the page response show in the form (clear the form and show some "We have received your message" type of success message, either at the top or bottom of the form, or should they simply be redirected to another page showing the success message?

Answer

Directed to a new page. Clearing the form is troublesome because it lets the user refill it out, even though there's a message saying it's been received. Redirect moves them away and is a clearer state change for a user to understand.

Is it legal to convert a not-freely-distributable font to "path" and distribute it?

Suppose, I am creating a logo in a vector graphics editor (for example Inkscape) and I use there the font which cannot be freely distributed (for example Myriad Pro which can be obtained by downloading Adobe Reader).

Then I convert the text, which uses the not-freely-distributable font, to "path" (for example, Inkscape can do it), so all the information about the used font will be lost.

Is it legal to distribute such a logo (the font is no longer embedded in the logo, it was converted to path)?

Answer

The legality is governed by the license. As far as Adobe products are concerend it appears that YES, you may use a typeface within a logo as long as you do not distribute the font file.

The arbiter of this is the license and licenses vary.

An answer from an apparent Adobe employee ( http://forums.adobe.com/message/5106212 )

You certainly may use any of the fonts bundled with Adobe applications for a logo or similar static content. You may also embed the font in the resultant PDF file or EPS file that you create for the logo for placement in other content. What you cannot do is give out the font file itself to others. By having the font embedded in the PDF or EPS (PDF is the preferred format, by the way), you avoid any such problems or limitations. Note that this is true for Adobe fonts, but not necessarily fonts from other vendors.

My personal opinion is that this is not "derivative" in the normal sense because the sole function of a typeface file is to create works derived from it.

business - How can I protect my job from a client publishing it elsewhere?

I am designing a brochure of 1,872 pages for a client. This client is asking me provide him with a copy of the job. I am 100% sure if I provide a copy this job is gone. He will print it elsewhere. This client loves my graphics, but he doesn't want to pay for it. I must definitely provide a copy for him. My questions are:

1. Is there a way to protect the job from him printing it?


2. Is there software I can pass my Corel Draw file through to lock and protect the job, but such that it is still readable?



3. Is there a way I can secure my file so that even when printed it will lose quality or come out blurred?


4. Is there a way I can make it readable, but not printable?

Is there software at all for Corel file security?

ordering - what is the ideal order of fields to have in a contact form?

I'm working on a contact form and was wondering on the order of fields. if I should start with the subject first and then name, email and message field or name, email subject and message field.

Removing part of a stroke and adding a gradient to a stroke in Illustrator CS5

Here's what I have...

The top and bottom half are two separate objects each with their own gradient.

I would like to remove the curved horizontal line going across the shape, then I would like to add a gradient to the rounded rectangle stroke. I thought I had found an answer to the first part here(drag stroke below contents) which I applied here but in addition to being kind of a work around(the horizontal line still exists), I am still unable to add a gradient to the stroke. The rest of what I've googled regarding removing part of a stroke instructed use of the pen tool to add and then delete anchor points on the part of the stroke that I want removed but I am not clear on how to do this, whenever I tried, I ended up also removing the barrier between the two halves of the object which I do not want to do.

I have tried "Object > Path > Outline Stroke" multiple times in order to add a gradient to the stroke but am still left with the same two paths underneath the object's group. I expected the stroke to be turned into a new path. Any help as to how to

1. Remove the horizontal line stroke from existence while still maintaining separate gradients for the top and bottom halves of the object

and

2. Add a gradient to the stroke surrounding the rounded rectangle sans the horizontal line

would be greatly appreciated.

Answer

This essentially gives you an outer stroke around all the objects within a group. Apply this appearance to a layer and you'll have a stroke around everything on that layer.

Then use Object > Expand Appearance, then Object > Expand - check ONLY the Stroke option and hit OK. You are then left with a shape rather than a stroke. This is expected. You can then apply a gradient fill to the resulting shape.

This method works. It can be a bit cumbersome because you're essentially creating new paths you need to manage.

However, Illustrator CS5 has no option to create gradients on strokes. So you can't really have a gradient stroke. You can only have gradient fills.

Regarding the path which crosses the shape. You can't remove that if you want the overlaying gradient. Many well-constructed Illustrator objects need closed paths. Since that specific path shapes the edge of the top gradient, you can't remove it. However, this should be of no consequence. You only see the path because the object is highlighted and Illustrator is highlighting the path edge. When you de-select the object you only see the edge of the gradient, not the path.

Here's possibly a better method....

Rather than using a stroke (since you want a gradient) use an offset fill.

• Remove the stroke entirely.
  


• Add a new Fill via the Appearance Panel and move the fill below the Contents item.
  


• With the new fill highlighted in the Appearance Panel, choose Effect > path > Offset Path and enter a value (the width you want the stroke to appear to be)

You can then have a gradient around the exterior of the shape without the additional paths of expanded strokes.

I used red/orange to show the offset fill a bit better.

Note: In Illustrator CS6 you can simply apply a gradient to a stroke. However, only CS6 or newer versions support gradients on strokes.

*screenshot from Illustrator CS6 but it should be the same as CS5 panels/dialogs.

illustration - Trimetric cube drawing in illustrator

I have found many tutorials about drawing isometric cube with illustrator. But I need to do some trimetric cube. The left part of the image shows the step of drawing isometric cube, the right part marked questions is exactly I want to know. What is the scale number and each angle need to be rotated.In this case,the trimetric cube angle is 15 and 30 ,it will be great if there is a formula that can calculate any angle. Is there anyone can tell me the number in the image?

I will not draw with Cadtools,because the process of using cadtools which as a third-party plug-in can not be recorded. Thank advanced.

Answer

In trimetric projection each axis has a different scale. The first thing to do is getting the scale correct (see here). Since you have tool for this (as per a now deleted question), I'm not going into this subject. I'm just going to assume you know the shape of the unit square you want to generate. After all you could be going after military oblique with this same method.

Note: I am on purpose not answering your specific angles. I want you to do the work yourself. Teach a man/woman to fish and all that. This works with any arbitrary linear combination.

A visual method

Unfortunately, Illustrator does not let you type the matrix values. That would be easy. So we need to decompose the projection into atomic operations. These operations could be Scale, Shear and Rotate (SSR, and in that order, linear transforms aren't commutative). But any other decomposition might do as well.

1. 
   

   Start by drawing the unit cube your interested in. For demonstrative purposes lets make a totally random projection.

   
   

   

   
   

   Image 1: Our totally random non accurate projection with free scale.

   
   


2. 
   
   

   Next isolate the face you want to measure the values for, in addition you meed to know the size of your unit cube. You can repeat the same steps for any face, but I'm only going to do one. Lets draw the unit cube it in:

   
   

   

   
   

   Image 2: Top face and corresponding unit cube.

   
   


3. 
   

   To decompose we need to do the transforms in reverse, one at a time. Since we are doing a SSR decomposition, we start with rotation. We want to rotate the primary edges together, since we know the angle we know the rotation in this case should be -20°

   
   

   But we can just let the rotate tool measure this by moving the top cube to align. Tip: if you record these moves you can just read the values form history panel. Or when you redo rotate dialog it stores last used rotation in the value.

   
   

   

   
   

   Image 3: Before and after rotation stage, note your rotation value for reuse later.

   
   



4. 
   

   Ok so we can move forward for the shear in this case the value will be -135° but just use your shear tool, put its pivot on a anchor and drag till you snap to the cage. Same tip as before for reading the angle.

   
   

   

   
   

   Image 4: Next the shear

   
   


5. 
   

   And finally the scale (129.655%):

   
   

   

   
   

   Image 5: And scale.

   
   



6. 
   

   Ok all we now need to do is record the opposite moves in reverse order. In the scale dialog type 10000/129.655 in the vertical box. Then shear by 135° (that is opposite of -135°). and rotate by 20° Lets compare:

   
   

   

   
   

   Image 6: seems to match well. Lets do another test.

   
   

   Another test fitting circle to our new top projection:

   
   

   

   
   

   Image 7: Works fine now do same for the other sides.

   
   

html - What is the best web UI for choosing a range on a form?

I have a typical form with dropdown choices, freeform textboxes and textarea for large fields.

I now need to add a range for things like this.

Start / End Time Start / End Day Low Bid / High Bid

I can do this by simply having 2 different controls and have folks choose seperately but i was thinking there might be a better way given the validation functionality seems generic (i don't want anyone to be able to choose a value for the End / High number that is lower than the Low / Start number and visa versa.

What is the best UI for this?

Answer

While I have no idea how to implement it, I saw the following on kayak.com recently and it might work for your purposes. There are sliders for Min and Max. IN this case, as you are sliding it displays a graph showing the price of flights for that selection. I've seen similar on ebay motors and other places.

I prefer this UI over having separate controls for Min and Max (or Start and End, etc.) The entire schedule or range is on a single control and the user has immediate feedback on the consequences of their changes.

Option Pricing Model Calibration In Practice

I'm curious how an option pricing model like the Heston model is calibrated in practice.

Here's how I imagine it happens:

Let's say I have access to the most recent option prices on a given stock for $n$ strikes and $m$ expirations dates for each strike. Let now say it's the end of the business day, so I have a set of $n \times m$ closing prices $p$ each given by $p(K,\tau)$. The collection of all closing prices would be denoted $\{p(K_i,\tau_j)\}_{i,j=1}^{n,m}$.

I'm going to need to price options on this stock tomorrow, so let's calibrate Heston's model to this most recent closing data. For this, use some method of least squares optimization, finding the parameter values that best describes the price data. Whatever method I use, I calibrate Heston's model to the $n \times m$ data points of today.

Now, let's say I also have access to previous days' closing prices, say $d$ days, each with $n \times m$ prices. That's $d \times n \times m$ closing prices.

1. 
   

   Should I include all $d \times n \times m$ closing prices in my calibration? That is, should I try to fit Heston's model to $d \times n \times m$ data points? This seems like it would better capture the recent history of the option prices.

   
   


2. 
   

   Or, should I stick with the most recent data, perhaps relying on some efficient markets idea to argue this is all I need?

   
   


3. 
   
   

   Or, perhaps calibrate the model $d$ times, once to each day of data, build a distribution of parameters and pick the most likely parameters?

   
   


4. 
   

   Or,...

   
   

It seems there are many methods for calibration. I'd be excited to hear from those with experience on how they have seen it done!

icons - Which way should arrows point in a collapsible accordion? Left/down … down/up?

What is the best way to indicate that it's possible to open and close an element accordion-style?

Arrow pointing left/arrow pointing down
Arrow pointing down/arrow pointing up
Plus sign/minus sign
… or something else?

drop down list - When should I use a select box instead of radio buttons?

I know that a select box takes up less space and is good for lots of options. But should there be any deeper influences to my choice than space? Are there any studies that show users preferring one or the other?

There's also the issue of multi-select vs checkboxes in html, which can be discussed here as well, seeing as the answer will probably be the same.

Answer

I use select when the user doesn't need to know all of the alternative choices available. Autosuggest is useful for a long list. Generally, they know what they want and selects save space. Example: Choose a "State" like California or New York. You would never use radio buttons.

I use radio buttons when the alternatives matter. When I want to user to see what they are NOT choosing. Radio buttons allow you to expand the selection and even use longer text.

Rule of thumb: If it's a long list or the alternatives aren't that important, use a select.

user behavior - Why shouldn't we use words such as 'here' and 'this' in textlinks?

Over the years of surfing on the web I have found numerous examples of people saying that you shouldn't use the word "here" in a textlink etc. Personally I like the idea of using the word, because it is so straightforward for your visitors to know where to click.

The only reason that I can truly think of is for SEO purposes. The word here doesn't have much value as a keyword as such.

I would like to know some other opinions on why we should/shouldn't use word like "this" and "here" in a textlink.

Answer

Most of the other answers here seem to be focusing on accessibility, which is fine, but is hardly the point. Screen readers are what? Less than 5% of the market for a general website? The reason "Here" and "Click Here" are bad is because they are useless words. They provide no context. This isn't an accessibility issue; it is a usability issue.

There's an overwhelming amount of evidence that website visitors don't read, they scan. They scan for links to find the link they want to click on next. If your link says "click here" and the user has to read the text around the link to find out what it is for, you are adding to their cognitive load, meaning they are less likely to continue on.

The same thing holds true for "Click here for special offers" and "For special offers, click here" (as TomA listed in his answer). You are still adding to the users' cognitive load because now your links have additional words that are completely unnecessary.

As long as your links look like something that the user can click on (and if they aren't, you are doing something wrong), then things like "here" and "click here" are a complete waste of space.

science fiction - Third person into first person as the protagonist becomes the same entity as the narrator

I'm attempting to write a sci-fi novel in a dystopian future baring semblance to that within 1984. I'm using third person to describe what the protagonist sees, what he feels and what he thinks, however unbeknownst to him, he is being monitored by machines, recording the aforementioned information.

Eventually, he will upload his consciousness to an android, thus granting him access to all the information that was recorded by the machines, now the main character is the same entity as what was 'narrating' in third person.

Would the transition to first person work?

If not, what perspective should I use after this point?

Answer

That's a great idea and the viewpoint shift would not only work well but support the story.

But to give a more general answer: When you write, trust your gut.

I believe that stories aren't constructed but conceived. They grow in your unconscious and emerge from there. As Ursula Le Guin said: A story is a found thing. Only, you find it in yourself instead of outside. Your story has a logic that derives from the internal structure of your being and reflects who you are. Your story is true to you, and you can trust it.

So whenever you find that something does not work in your writing, for example, when your beta readers agree that some part of your narrative didn't work for them, don't delete what didn't work. Make it work.

In your case, if you find or someone told you that the viewpoint switch didn't work, don't abandon that switch but try to understand why it didn't work and amend that. Because often it is not that an element of your narrative is wrong, but that you didn't yet know how to make it work.

For example, often twists appear out of the blue to the reader because the writer forgot to foreshadow it, not because there should have been no twist. Or if characters behaves in an unbelievable way, it usually doesn't mean that they should behave differently, but that the writer hasn't developed the character for the reader properly.

But making it work isn't always the solution of course. Sometimes something you wrote just feels wrong. And it's not always where you think the problem is that feels wrong.

I a recent novel I wrote I had a character that I thought I had written well and a jarring plot hole I didn't know how to fill. After some feedback and a few weeks away from the text, I realized that what felt wrong to me was the character. I had changed her from my original conception to something I thought fit the target audience better, but I no longer had a connection to that character. So I rewrote her, thinking I would then attack the problem as a second problem, but to my surprise changing the character back to my original intuition made her behave in a slightly different way and dissolved the plot hole.

Just as you should trust your gut about what is right, if your gut tells you that something in your story is wrong, trust your gut.

Use your rational mind to make your story work, but follow your intuition or instinct or gut, when you develop your story.

copyright - Can I use an "editorial-only" 3D model for demonstrative purposes in a commercial?

I'm creating CG for a video commercial that will likely be used mostly in tradeshows or online. I'm looking to purchase two models from Turbosquid, one a Boeing 787 and one a Volvo semi truck and trailer. Because these are real-world products they are marked as "editorial use only."

The product/service being advertised is a new kind of composite tooling. The 787 is meant to provide an example of something made from composites, the production of which might be facilitated by this process. The semi truck would be used to illustrate that the process can be taken out of the factory and used for on-site production. In other words, neither model would be a primary visual element, nor are they directly related to the service being sold. I would also be perfectly willing to put a disclaimer in the commercial to the effect that we are not affiliated with nor endorsed by the companies that own the products being visualized.

Does this blur the line at all of the "editorial" use licensing? Despite the "non-commercial" admonitions I'm usually reading about editorial use, I'm also seeing things like "giving context," "enhancing the effectiveness of the story," etc., which is the primary reason for using the models, and essentially I'm using real-world examples because "generic" models are usually much poorer quality or are so glaringly trying to be generic and unreal that they become a distraction.

Answer

YES.

(My comment is hereby submitted reformed as an answer to the original question.)

Clearly, from your characterization of the models, you are not using them to represent commercial products, per se, but rather to illustrate and characterize the variety of products constructed using a particular construction method or process.

Qualifier: The Turbosquid EULA will be the final arbiter.

print design - Printing photographs when job is a 2 spot color job

my client is printing a newsletter and they are using only two spot colors and neither is black. The newsletter contains photos so what are my options? Can I make the photos gray-scale and then use one of the spot colors as a screen?

I'm using InDesign to create the template and can also use Photoshop and Illustrator.

Any thoughts? Thanks so much!

adobe illustrator - Modify a shape and have modifications apply to clones

Is there any any "Symmetry Modifier" option in illustrator?

Let's say I want to create a head that is totally symmetric. I created one half then mirrored it to get another half. Flipped the other half, aligned them and joined them together with Pathfinder→Unite option.

Now I modified some portion of the right half outline. But how can I get that same modification to be updated on the left option? I thought it would happen automatically.

pricing - Which interest rate model for which product

Given the multitude of existing interest rate models (ranging from simple to very complex) it would be interesting to know when the additional complexity actually makes sense.

The models I have in mind:

• Simple one factor (e.g. HW)


• Two factor models


• Two or one factor models with stochastic volatility


• LIBOR-Market, HJM, SABR and SABR-LMM model

Are there any rules of thumb to decide which model to use for which product? (Perhaps there is some book dealing with that topic that I am not aware of)

Edit 22.02.2014:

While trying to answer the question myself I found the follwing very interesting paper on the emperical comparison of interest rate models. Here the authors mainly compare how well the different models can fit market data and hit the relevant market pries after being calibrated.

Thus a follow up Question: (that is also related to the question on model validation)

Does it suffice to hit the market pries spot on after calibration for a model to 
qualify for being used in pricing for an instrument ? Or are there other aspects to be
considered? (computational speed, statistical fittness, robustness of the hedges) 

Let's assume my model fits the market data really well - backtesting however shows that the hedges it provides don't work that well. Also the model might not be able to statistially fit the path of the underlying. E.g. mean reversion can be observed in some markets but not in others. One could argue that risk neutrality does not necessarily entail meaningful real-world scenarios etc.

I have good theoretical grasp of the models but have mainly used them for risk management (thus generating paths and analysing what happens to a portfolio or the balance sheet of an enterprise)

documentation - Does UX apply to other documents, such as Word or Spreadsheets?

Does UX apply to documents such as a Word document, or a PowerPoint presentation?

In other words, should the writer take into consideration the readers' experience of the document?

Answer

It does, in the sense that it's important for the document to be clear, structured and readable. The principles of good technical writing are eventually aimed at providing good UX for the reader (short paragraphs, a funnel structure, coherent navigation within the document etc).

The same goes for spreadsheets - if your user/reader can't find his way around the spreadsheet and a lot of different data is stuck into the same sheet, that's bad UX.

But few people realize these things and treat them as such - and it definitely doesn't mean that any UX person is good at writing or at designing word documents and spreadsheets. They often don't realize that they should be guided by the same principles when working on that, and it's a skill like any other.

It also doesn't mean that technical writers are automatically good UX people :)

website design - What rules does Google use to make a button gray, blue, or red on their sites?

This has been an elusive topic, and I haven't yet been able to form my own conclusion about what Google's reasoning is to make a given button blue, red, or gray, given their latest design ethos. Take the Drive page, for instance:

In general, on these types of pages, they'll make the button on the left red, and the others gray, but I've seen it more sporadic on other sites of theirs.

I like the simple look-and-feel, and wanted to adopt something similar for my site, but I'm struggling to design the UI rules for developers to follow to choose what button is what color. Maybe large-scale definitive actions are red buttons, routine actions are gray, and new features are blue? I dunno, but I thought I'd see if anyone has any ideas, or maybe even a source for this information.

Thanks.

Answer

The following screenshot is taken from the speech by Jon Wiley at UXweek 2011 (Original video). He explains the design decisions made by google in the past months.

Look towards the end (after minute 27) of the video to see it by yourself:

• red is for "create something"


• green is for "share something"


• blue is for "do something" (e.g. submit a form)

Keep in mind that this may be slightly outdated. For instance in the latest version of google+ for Android, google started using colors in a different way. In any case the video is worth seeing, since a lot of examples are made and the process that took google to this design is clearly outlined.

inkscape - Cannot change aspect ratio of embedded raster image after PDF import

I imported a figure from PDF (generated from Latex) into Inkscape as SVG for final editing. After import the raster-image does not fit the axis anymore.

This would not be an issue, but for some reason I cannot adjust the size of the raster image with free aspect ratio to fit it to the axis.

The lock in the toolbar (next to size and position) is not locked so it should be possible.

Furthermore for some reason the image is completely blurred (you should be able to see large individual pixels). Probably some filter, but I tried to remove a filters, which did nothing.

This is the image after import (I removed all other elements as this is for an as of yet unpublished article):

This is when trying to resize to a much smaller square aspect ratio (for illustration). Note how the box is squared, but the image maintains its aspect ratio.

Answer

• Click on the image to select it.



• Open the XML editor.


• Set the attribute preserveAspectRatio for the image to none

How to rotate around shifter center precisely in Illustrator?

If I select Rotate tool, I can select center of rotation then and move it. After that I am able to rotate object around that center. But this rotation is imprecise. Suppose I want to rotate for 120 degrees. I can double click on Rotate tool and get Rotate dialog, where I can enter precise value in degrees. But this way I can't use shifted center of rotation because it jumps back to geometric center at the moment I call Rotate dialog.

Is it possible to rotate by precise angle with dialog and have shifted center of rotation.

file format - Retain Blending Mode after saving to .svg? (Illustrator)

I'm a little new to illustrator. I designed a little logo in illustrator that comprises of several layers. Now because I have some of this layers interact with each other different using the blend mode, the image looks alright when I'm working on it in illustrator.

However saving it is a different story, my blending modes are lost and the image is altered.

If it helps I'm using the .SVG format

Much Appreciated.

software recommendation - How to batch watermark JPG files?

I have around 15,000 JPG files that need to be watermarked. Is there any way to process these images en masse and add a watermark?

The images may be different sizes, I want the watermark placed in the center of the images.

adobe illustrator - Mismatched CMYK Values

I have a strange problem with Illustrator. The company I am working with has a stock hex colour - #0074aa (1).

According to online conversion sites, this hex code translates to the CMYK of:

C:  100
M:  31.6
Y:  0
K:  33.4

When I add these CMYK values to Illustrator as a colour swatch, these translate to a slightly darker, deeper blue (2). Alternatively if I add a swatch with the Hex value of #0074aa, the CMYK values are completely different.

Confusingly, if I put the translated CMYK values that Illustrator came up with after entering #0074aa into an online converter, the resulting hex match is completely different - a bright cyan blue (3)!

Does anyone have an idea as to why this is occurring? When I sent a business card design I made to the printer, the colour printed out was the bright cyan; hence why I am trying to figure out the reason for this problem.

I send my files to the printer by PDF. I'm working in CMYK mode in Illustrator CS5. Viewing the CMYK on iPhone also shows the bright cyan colour.

Answer

It's easier to get a best match from CMYK to HEX than the opposite, and make sure your client understand there will never be an exact match but only a close one.

The suggested CMYK equivalent is a bit "rough" and not always precise. It will suggest you an equivalent by comparing the 2 color gamut mathematically but it's never precise. It's better to find a similar match by using your own eyes, printed charts and the CMYK values. The colors will always look different on every screen you'll look at, that's also why you cannot expect to have a perfect match.

But if you need to select a color in CMYK based on a web color, the best is to use a Pantones color chart and select your color there, and use that color converted to CMYK instead.

In this case, your blue looks like a Pantone 286 on coated and 293 on uncoated. Photoshop suggests Pantone 7690.

One way to see your colors well is to use Photoshop and compare them. I used the correspondant CMYK you mentioned and your HEX, and compared them. They are truly different.

I suggest to ignore the equivalent online and use Photoshop in this way instead:

You will notice:

• 
  

  There is a little square next to the 2 swatches above; this represents the gamut the CMYK can print and the closest match. It is suggesting you a similar blue to the one you got online and it doesn't look right.

  
  


• 
  

  You can also see the option "color libraries"; that's where you'll find the Pantones equivalent to the recipe that is active. Click it.

  
  

If the color on the top swatch matches well the one on the bottom swatch, go back to the previous screen by clicking "picker."

You will notice a new HEX value and a new CMYK value. Ignore the HEX value. You will use that new CMYK value instead; it's the value of the Pantone the closest to your HEX value, converted to CMYK.

If you want to see if these 2 colors are very close to each others, enter your HEX value #0074aa in the HEX field; the color of the swatch on top and bottom should be closer. You can adjust your CMYK if you need to by modifying the CMYK values.

This is not a perfect method, it's better to simply use a Pantones color swatch and put it next to your color on your display, as archaic as it may sound! But it's still a good way to get a better result than simply using the rough conversion from HEX to CMYK.

You could also simply use the color CMYK version your Photoshop gives you for the HEX value, but the advantage of using a Pantone is you can actually see the result already printed on a coated/uncoated paper.

If you go meet your printer, you can ask him to have a look at their Process pantones chart; the CMYK values are written on them! Bring your laptop and stick the color chart on the display until you find a good match. If you plan to print in CMYK, you should use the CMYK side of the chart.

Also, you should try to NOT use decimal in your color recipe.

^{Source image Pantone Porcess Chart: printcatalogs.com}

plot - What techniques are used to create non-linear stories?

For stories that are highly non-linear, or that use multiple simultaneous sub-plots, what are some techniques for creating and managing the different items? An example that comes to mind is Steven King's Under the Dome...since I just read it.

I imagine that with simultaneous plots that it is probably best to outline the general flow for the entire piece. However, would you consider writing the entire perspective of one character at once, even if it is going to eventually be split into multiple pieces? Writing an entire perspective might lead to awkward situations when you incorporate other pieces of the story unless you really have a good idea of how to merge the subplots.

Answer

It seems to me that highly non-linear plots are rather different than simultaneous sub-plots, so I think I will address them separately.

Simultaneous Plots

When I do longer work, I usually have multiple sub-plots running. I never write one sub-plot all the way through. I always go back and forth, usually switching every chapter. This question actually inspired a bit of self-analysis, as I'd never really thought about why I do it that way.

A somewhat minor reason is simply keeping fresh. By bouncing back and forth, moving between characters and settings, I can keep my own interest. I stay fairly close to all my characters and plot-lines, and when sub-plots intersect, I don't have to go back and remind myself what each character was up to.

I think the biggest consideration, however, is that "story time" and "reader time" are very different things. A year may pass in the story, denoted only by a chapter end or page break. That year passes in a moment for the reader. By writing the various sub-plots in (roughly) the order they're going to be read in, I can get a feel for that pacing that I couldn't get by writing them separately and then fitting them together. I can make little adjustments on the fly.

If you were to write each subplot separately and then merge, the key would be to know where those plots intersect one another. The parts far from the intersections are easier to modify, because they'll only have an effect on their sub-plot. Closer to the intersections, changes to one sub-plot may affect others.

Non-linear Plots

Non-linear plots will almost always require more work than their linear counterparts. If you're someone who doesn't mind outlining, life will probably be easier. You can outline the events in order, then work on a second outline that takes those events and rearranges them. This way, you can still write the first draft in the approximate shape you want it for the final draft. Ideally, I prefer to take this route (though that doesn't always happen).

If you don't want to outline up front, it probably pays to write the story linearly first, then go back and reorder things. This is going to take more editing, but that's usually the price you pay for not outlining up front (this isn't necessarily a bad thing - some people find this is the only way they can work).

technique - What Can I Do to Familiarize Myself with my Characters?

I'm a plotter, meaning that I develop and plan my novels before I ever start writing them. In my case, this is almost something of an extreme, as I develop every part of the novel carefully and then create a very detailed outline scene by scene before writing a word.

I generally have very little trouble with characters. I develop them like everything else, creating them with all the aspects they need. As I develop them, I get a general sense of who they are, and when I sit down to write, I can visualize them acting out what I have them do. This is all I really need to 'get in my character's head.' It works fine.

With my most recent work, I have a bit of a problem. I had originally created the premise for this work several years back. A year or two after that, I partially developed it, including the character, and wrote something of a first draft. I then moved to something else, and didn't come back to it until now, several years later. During re-development, a lot of things changed, including several key aspects of the character and who he was.

The problem is that when I now sit down to write, the character is coming across as an emotionless cardboard stick figure. It is my theory that this is because I have two versions of him in my head, which are essentially complete opposites in some areas (and thus cancel each other out). I think I know the previous version better and might still see him that way as I write, while trying to write him as the new version.

I think I can fix this problem by getting to know my character better. What can I do to get to know my character better?

Important Note: Do not misunderstand this question as 'how can I discover my character?' I already know who my character is and how he acts. What I need is the ability to write him that way.

---

After-answer-notes: I've marked Lauren's reply as the answer, but if it doesn't work for future viewers, the answer from Mike C. Ford is the way to go. Especially that bit about renaming the character. That is pure genius.

Answer

Write a bunch of short pieces with no particular plot to get used to writing him. Drabbles (100 words), double-drabbles (200), flash (1,000 to 2,000).

Your stories should just be little windows into him to practice writing what he'll do. Like:

• He's out of milk. He goes to the store to get milk, and the store is closed. (What are his reactions? What does he do next?)


• There's a leak in the bathroom faucet. (That can be an entire set piece depending on his reaction.)


• He decides to get a pet. (What animal? What gender? What breed? fixed? name? Does it need a cage, a tank, a litter box, a leash?)


• He has to sell his vehicle. (What kind of vehicle? Why? is he happy about it? Sentimental? Annoyed? Desperate for money? Does he enjoy negotiating to get the best of the buyer? Does the buyer get the best of him?)

The point of these pieces is to become accustomed to figuring out what Dude 2.0 does rather than your original Dude 1.0 did, so that when you go back to your novel, the 2.0 version is already in your fingertips and you don't have to work so hard to access him.

Writing a bunch of little bits will help you to slough off 1.0's bad habits. Making them unconnected, meaningless bits which are not part of your novel will help you get past the concern of screwing up your current work. You don't have to worry about leaving your outline because these are essentially pantsed (discovery) pieces, purely for exercise.

adobe illustrator - Unable to draw logo with correct strokes and shadow

I am trying to design a logo for my company. However I have tried for 12 hours now making the design below, but I have huge problems getting what I want.

I want the road to be crossing the other one like it was a bridge. It should not look like a intersection like it does now. Can someone give me instructions to how to manage to create a shape like this?

This is what I have.

Answer

I assume you're trying to do all this with a single stroke?? Things really depend upon how you currently have objects constructed.

In order to get the appearance of an "overlap" you need an overlap. So draw a section of road to cover the overall path:

Same stroke style applied to an additional path on top of the base path. You won't be able to create the appearance of an overlap, regarding the white stroke, with a single path and the Appearance Panel.

To deal with those hairline bits that appear on the ends due to anti-aliasing, you can add an Effect the the base black stroke. This is really just a drawing anti-aliasing artifact and won't be visible on export (Art Optimized) or in print. But if it bothers you or you are uncertain it really isn't an issue, you can tweak things to remove it.

Highlight the base stroke... Choose Effect > Distort & Transform > Transform from the menu. Enter a very small scale change in the top two fields of the Transform Options dialog window:

This will cause the black base stroke to be slightly larger than the underlying white stroke, and subsequently remove that hairline you may see.

Writing dialogue, present or past tense "said"

This may seem like an off-topic question, but it's really more about writing than about the grammar.

I use a lot of dialogue in my writing, sometimes too much, but while I'm writing it, though the story itself is in the present tense, I don't know whether it would be confusing to use the past tense for dialogue tags. For example:

I swallow and look at Mac.

He looks back at me, just as frightened.

"Tell me the truth, should I be scared?" He asked me.

I answer, "I don't know."

Is this confusing to do? The way I usually look at it is by imagining the way the narrator is hearing it. Like, if the narrator is narrating after it's said, use the past, or he/she is narrating during use the present, etc.b

Is it best to just stay in one tense in dialogue regardless of when the narration is happening?

Answer

It doesn't matter how much dialogue you have. If your story (the narration) is in present tense, then all the verbs have to be in present tense. All the dialogue tags, all the narration, everything. The only exception is if you're talking about something which happened in the past relative to the present moment of the story.

[Bolding is for emphasis, not because the story needs it.]

I swallow and look at Mac.

He looks back at me, just as frightened.

"Tell me the truth, should I be scared?" he asks me.

I answer, "I don't know."

When we left town an hour ago, we were tired and hungry, but uninjured. We walked for an hour before we fell into the crevasse. Now we're tired and hungry, Mac has a broken arm, and my ankle is twisted. I don't know if we can get out of this.

readers - What are the things to consider when writing a sequel to a novel from another author?

I am talking about writing a sequel to a novel that's in the public domain. For example, Wizard of Oz. As far as I know, this is completely legal; however, the issue is how to deal with the fandom that exists. There are things fans want to see in a sequel and things that would be blasphemous to them, so how should you navigate this? Any guideline or procedure? I am thinking Dune has a huge fandom, although I am not sure if Dune is in the public domain. I don't think it's would be a good move to start your writing career with a sequel of Dune, wouldn't it? You can use any franchise as an example (even if they're not in the public domain) in your answer.

Answer

IANAL but I definitely recommend verifying you're on legally safe ground, even if it means getting authorisation from an author or their estate, as with the example I'll discuss throughout the rest of this answer, which focuses on the writing side. Excluding franchises that were designed to have multiple authors such as The Hardy Boys, by far my favourite example of an author writing a sequel to another's work is Stephen Baxter's 1995 The Time Ships, an authorised centennial-marking sequel to The Time Machine by H. G. Wells.

If you've never read the original 35,000-word novella, do; just be warned it's hardly modern in its style. But read the sequel next. Baxter finds a way to believably step into those Victorian shoes without making the writing inaccessible to a 1990s audience. He takes what worked in the original (a premise he fleshes out in a much longer, more complex story that didn't feel padded even when I read it as a child), and eschews what wouldn't again (telling almost the entire story as a quotation; Wells technically used an irrelevant other character as the first person narrator). Baxter also explores many questions Wells didn't: how would history change once multiple time machines enter the picture, how do they work, and how was the first one built? This allows him to give us alternate twentieth-century events, rather than an 802,701 that's less relatable. I also liked the supporting Morlock, Nebogipfel, plus a number of other things I'd better not mention because the plot doesn't deserve me spoiling it.

I think the lesson to take from Baxter is you have to not only love the original and know why you do; you also have to know why it's loved in general, and what would make a fitting answer to that. But every work is different, so I can't say specifically what you'd need to do. If you do read Baxter, however, try to think about why his decisions were prudent (and won multiple awards!), and more importantly how he'd come to them.

navigation - Best practice for displaying no of records on datagrid

I am designing a banking application where i have a record count of over 1000 rows. I wanted to understand the ideal design patterns for pagination and displaying rows on a data grid.

I am considering using pagination control

1) by giving #of records to display (10/25/50/75/100)

2) by having previous/next

3) by virtual scrolling

Can you tell me what is the good UX pattern for this?

Answer

As Michael Zuschlag says in his great reply to the question "Is scrolling better than clicking to reveal more content?":

Paging should be used to break content into semantic or task-related groups of content, such as by your categories in your menu bar on the left. This allows users to find content by what it is (e.g., the page title in a menu) rather than where it is (e.g., page number or relative position in a scrolling page). Generally user tasks depend on what (“I need to check sports”) not where (“I need to check channels two-thirds down the list”).

In your case, you need to find smaller logical (related) entities or filters to enable users to quicker find the information they’re needing. By Time (month/week/day), by account type, by account holder or any other logical content separation would do. But paginating a list of the same thing is a bad idea. Try to avoid it if you can.

vector - Is vectorizing an image copyright infringement if the image is not CC/Public domain?

Is it okay to vectorize this image to make a poster out of it even though the image is not Creative Commons or anything like that? I'm not using any part of the image directly and only going to use it as a guide to make my own SVG version.

This is the image:

Here is original Image.

It says that it is CC licensed but the original NatGeo one isn't, I don't think.

I don't plan to make money off it or anything, I just want a nice poster and the quality of the original isn't that good.

Answer

Yes, a vectorized image generally counts as a derivative of the original, which means that distributing it without the original copyright holder's permission would be a copyright violation.

Of course, if you just want to make a nice poster to hang on your own wall, then you're probably safe — doing so may or may not be legal, depending on your local laws, but realistically, who's going to bother to sue you?

(Please note that I'm not trying to encourage you to break any laws, just stating a fact. You should find out whether your local laws permit this kind of copying for personal use, and make your own informed decision about whether it's wise to do so.)

If you intend to sell your poster, though, or even distribute it for free, I'd strongly advise against it — if for no other reason, than because the image you linked to looks very much like something that National Geographic might want to sell as a poster themselves. That might significantly increase their motivation to sue you if they find you stealing their potential profits.

Ps. It turns out that the image is for sale as a poster at least here and here. I had no luck with any of the obvious searches, but then I thought to try the artist's name plus "poster".

mobile - Android List View - delete row button, delete selected button or delete from item click menu?

Android List view activity with item rows. User needs to be able delete some rows.

I know standard way in Android is to use item click menu. But it's 2 clicks. Is it best way?

Answer

It all comes down to how often the user will need to use delete function.

If it's very often, maybe consider adding a button to each list item.

If it's less often you should consider adding it to the items contextual menu (the long press menu). This is standard practice for most things.

I'm guessing when the user presses an item they will be taken to an activity with more information on it. You could add the delete button there or add it to the menu options on that activity (or both if really needed).

r - Portfolio Optimization with equal weight for assets selected

I have a data frame of bets, with 1 being a win and 0 being a loss. These bets are correlated so I cannot just pick the highest winning percentage. Goal is to get 2 optimizations, 1 for max sharpe ration, and 1 for minMAD for a given return. This is similar to any portfolio questions, but with the unique constraint that each bet can only be placed once and some bets are correlated with one another

> df
  X1 X2 X3 X4 X5 X6 X7 X8 X9 X10
A  0  1  0  1  0  0  0  1  1   0
B  0  1  0  0  1  1  1  1  1   1

C  1  0  0  0  0  0  0  1  1   0
D  1  0  1  1  1  0  0  1  0   1
E  0  0  1  0  1  0  1  1  1   0
F  0  1  0  1  0  1  1  0  1   1
G  1  0  0  0  0  1  1  1  1   0
H  0  0  1  1  0  0  1  1  0   1
I  1  0  0  0  0  1  1  1  1   0
J  0  1  1  0  0  1  0  1  0   0

Bets can either be included or excluded, but each bet can only be placed 1 time. I posted a questions over the weekend Optimization with Binary decision variable and simulated database thinking an equal weighted quadratic optimization could solve the problem but I could not figure out how to program binary variables. After doing so research today, I saw an example of a GLPK program that used mean absolute deviation and transformed it for a LP.

I am trying to tweak this for a binary variable, but have no experience with optimizations. What are some good resource to learn how to program the matrix. Here is the goal.

Minimize - Mean Absolute Deviation

S.T.

Number of bets = 4

Bets are a binary variable

Winning percentage >= 0.52

And

Maximize winning percentage / MAD

ST

Weights are equal (1/n) or 0.25, and sum to 1

Can someone help point me in the right direction. I am new to R and never set up a LP before. Some resource to help learn, and advice on set up will be much appreciated. I spend this weekend trying to figure it out spinning circles. Also I plan on playing around with the constraints and objective function once I get a base model going so please pass along good resources on R optimizations so I can learn. S.O. has been a great resource helping me learn R, right now I am using excel as a stop gap but the read data set is too big for the standard excel solve so I have to make several adjustments to get any usable results.

Thanks for all of your help.

So this is what I have so far, but the output is not correct.

> nAssets = nrow(df)
> nScenarios = ncol(df)
> Mean = rowMeans(df)
> data = as.matrix(df)
> sucessRate = .52
>   vec <- c(weights=rep(0, nAssets), scenarios=rep(1/nScenarios, nScenarios))
> mat <- rbind(

+       MAD.LE = cbind(data, -diag(nScenarios)),
+       MAD.GE = cbind(data, +diag(nScenarios)),
+       RETURN = t(c(Mean, rep(0, nScenarios))),
+       BUDGET = t(c(rep(1, nAssets), rep(0, nScenarios))),
+       X = cbind(matrix(rep(0, nAssets*nScenarios),ncol=nAssets), diag(nScenarios)),
+       WEIGHTS = cbind(diag(nAssets), matrix(rep(0, nScenarios*nAssets), nrow=nAssets)))
> mat <- rbind(
+       MAD.LE = cbind(data, -diag(nScenarios)),
+       MAD.GE = cbind(data, +diag(nScenarios)),
+       RETURN = t(c(Mean, rep(0, nScenarios))),

+       BUDGET = t(c(rep(1, nAssets), rep(0, nScenarios))),
+       X = cbind(matrix(rep(0, nAssets*nScenarios),ncol=nAssets), diag(nScenarios)),
+       WEIGHTS = cbind(diag(nAssets), matrix(rep(0, nScenarios*nAssets), nrow=nAssets)))
> rhs <- c(
+       MAD.LE = rep(0, nScenarios),
+       MAD.GE = rep(0, nScenarios),
+       RETURN = sucessRate,
+       BUDGET = 1,
+       X = rep(0, nScenarios),
+       WEIGHTS = rep(0, nAssets))

>  dir <- c(
+       MAD.LE = rep("<=", nScenarios),
+       MAS.GE = rep(">=", nScenarios),
+       RETURN = "==",
+       BUDGET = "==",
+       X = rep(">=", nScenarios),
+       WEIGHTS = rep(">=", nAssets))
>  Rglpk::Rglpk_solve_LP(vec, mat, dir, rhs)
$optimum
[1] 0.31


$solution
 [1] 0.000000e+00 1.000000e-01 0.000000e+00 0.000000e+00 9.000000e-01 0.000000e+00 0.000000e+00
 [8] 0.000000e+00 0.000000e+00 9.860761e-32 1.000000e-01 1.000000e+00 0.000000e+00 9.000000e-01
[15] 9.000000e-01 1.000000e-01 0.000000e+00 9.860761e-32 0.000000e+00 1.000000e-01

$status
[1] 0

What mistake did I make that is yielding more than 10 weights, and how do I get the weights equal and only 4 bets selected. Here is MatLab code for almost exactly what I am looking for, can someone help translate what is missing to R.

http://www.mathworks.com/help/optim/examples/mixed-integer-quadratic-programming-portfolio-optimization.html

forms - Required field validation

How should required field validation be handled visually?

Note: assume asterisk is red

*Name:[_______________]

or

Name:*[_______________]

or

Name: [_______________]*

or

Name: [____red bg____  ]

or

Name(<- font color red): [_______________]

or

You tell me a better way!

Answer

There's never a right or wrong answer with these type of questions and a lot of it depends on your users personas (engineers vs. power users vs. aunt alice who never used a computer) and context.

A general rule is to use

label [input   ] [validation       ] 

Using the validation area for either a red asterisk to indicate a required field or an error message after validating the form (or both).

The Simply Accessible website has a good, concise write up on required form fields here: http://simplyaccessible.com/article/required-form-fields

Why do ATMs (Cash Machines) display a thank you message for so long?

When I use an ATM, as soon as I have my card and cash I'm walking away. I don't hang around to read any "thank you" screen after the transaction is complete.

When using an ATM immediately after someone else in the queue, I'm often frustrated by having to wait for up to 10 seconds while the machine continues to display such a "thank you" screen, during which time I can't insert my card to start a new transaction and the user the sceen is intended for is already halfway down the street.

Does anyone (industry insiders?) know a good reason for this? If it's just a way of thanking the previous customer, why can't I insert my card until it has finished displaying? Is it actually just something to look at whilst the machine is busy doing something, like a splash screen?

Surely the banks/manufacturers have figured out that it will rarely be seen by the intended user, because as far as they're concerned the transaction is complete as soon as they have their cash/receipt/card etc.

I only have experience of UK cash machines, other countries may be different.

description - Is the opening of this story intriguing, "dark" and smooth?

Disclaimer: I'm not an Native English Speaker.

This is my fifth attempt of writing a short story (the previous ones are set in the same "universe" as this one).

I would like to know if the reader would feel intrigued by this opening. I also wonder if he would feel that it has a "dark" atmosphere.

This is the first time I describe so many things in a story. So I would also like to know if the descriptions are 'flowing' smoothly. If not, how to improve them?

Julian found himself walking along an empty street, only accompanied by the darkness and the fog. They were like omnipresent observers, carefully watching each of his steps. He didn't know where he was heading. In fact, he didn't even know if he wanted to reach a particular destination. After walking for a while, he spotted a light at the distance. It was a long and white, and looked as if it were suspended in the fog. As he was getting closer, the light started to form a shape. It was a big neon sign that said Little Paradise. Soon he realized that he was standing in front of a glass door. Another neon sign, one with the silhouette of a nude woman, was hanging on it. He stood there for a while, staring at the door. Then, as if he had just made up his mind on something, entered the place.

Inside was dark and empty. The only source of light were a couple of neon signs hanging on the walls. Julian glanced around the place. There was a bar in the front, a few seats in the center, and some others on the sides. Back at the bottom, there was small stage with a stripping pole in the middle of it. Everything looked old and rusty, like old antiques deteriorated by time.

Julian walked towards the bar and sat on one of the stools. He took a package of Marlboro Red from his pocket and lit a cigarette up. Without knowing what else to do, he focused his eyes on the stage, smoking his cigarette and waiting for someone to come.

After staring at it for a while, he realized that there was someone lying on it. He hesitated a little bit, but then crushed his cigarette in an ashtray, and slowly made his way to the stage. Once he reached a reasonable distance, he narrowed his eyes and he examined the person. It was a girl. She was lying still, with her back to the absent audience. She was wearing a black bikini, and the upper part of her body was being covered by a black jacket. He stood there, staring at her as if he were in a trance for a minute or two.

"Hello?" Julian called out after a moment. His voice didn't sound has his own.

A silence passed. The only thing that he could hear was the sound of his own breathing. He never imagined that a drinking spot could be that silent.

"Sorry, there are no more shows," the girl suddenly said, without moving from her lying position.

Answer

In all honesty, it doesn't work for me. To address your particular questions:

Is it dark? Not especially. I get a sense of someone not being sure where they are, but not being in a sinister place. More like having woken up after a drunken night, and trying to remember the last bar.

Does it flow? Not IMO. I am reminded of the old text-based Adventure games "You are in a room. There is an octopus lying on the floor."

Solutions? More words, more description. Taking it slower, adding more potential danger would help both of these. A quick attempt to rework the first sentence, for example:

Julian was in a deserted street. How he had got there, or where 'there' was, eluded him. As he walked, the fog enveloped him, wrapped him, held him. When he escaped from the fog, the darkness took him instead.

Note - these are just my opinions! Others may disagree, but as a rule, slower progress tends to make for more suspense. And I think, with some work, this could work out well.

mobile - Selecting age between 6 and 18

I've got a reasonably simple requirement but can't come up with any appealing ways of presenting it to the user.

To meet the requirement, the user has to be able to choose 1 or more age groups, ranging from 6 to 18. In its most simplest form, it would be a row or grid of 13 checkboxes with the values 6 to 18.

The selection can be completely random, i.e. 7, 10, and 18 so any kind of slider or other selector that would work with a maximum value won't work.

I'd love to hear some ideas on how to make this more appealing to the user.

Answer

Maybe something like this could work:

Since you have such a small number of options just make them large, press-able buttons which display a checkmark once you tap them.

This list obviously scrolls off the screen but I think you get the idea.

^{download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups}

academic papers about market making

I am looking for academic articles which model the p&L of market makers. I have read the Ho-Stoll (1984) article. Is there any recent article on this subject?

Answer

In fact you have three papers available to go further:

I prefer the last one ;{)}

black scholes - What are the main problems for calculating the implied volatility of in the money American put options?

As stated in the question I have a problem with calculating the implied volatility for in the money put options I have a data set of 2.6 million American style plain-vanilla call and put options. For these options I need to calculate the implied volatility (already wrote a Python script). For call options and out-of-the-money put options, I am able to determine almost 100% of the implied volatilities. However, it does a really bad job for calculating in the money put options (see also the graph below).

For calculating the implied volatility I use the Black-Scholes formulas for plain-vanilla put and call options. My data set only contains American options (instead of the European assumption of BSM) and is downloaded from the Euronext website and freely available (https://www.euronext.com/nl/reports-statistics/derivatives/daily-statistics).

Furthermore, I make use of discrete dividends instead of continuous dividends. Main reasons for this is, that dividends aren't continuous and I need to price barrier options, which are very sensitive for ex-dividend dates. I also discount the expected dividends (ex-dividend) between t and maturity against Eonia rate (same rate as the risk-free for the BSM).

Also this data set contains options from 1-1-2017 until now (negative Eonia rate). Below you see a print-out of the first 10 put options for which I am not able to calculate the implied volatility. The error column is the difference between the quoted price (Quoted_Put) and BSM price (P_BSM). I also added the IV and the quoted price for the call counterpart (same underlying, strike, maturity and quoted date).

My question is pretty simple does some one has an academic or practical suggestion how I can solve this problem? Or maybe someone see a pattern which needs more attention? It surprises me that I do not have a problem with calculating the implied volatility of other options, only in the money put options does give problems.

I checked the formulas twice in Excel and Python (similar results) but maybe did I make a wrong assumption? Or maybe someone encountered a similar problem and can tell me how he or she solved it? If you have any further questions, I am happy to provide extra information, graphs and spreadsheets.

A couple of non-preferable solutions which crossed my mind:

I could use only the out of the money options (in this case I could easily drop most of the errors), for which I need to assume that the implied volatility is the same for the call and the put (well known this is not true and also visible in the spreadsheet). This is not a very strong argument (main argument is that is solves my problem). This solution is also suggested by a contributor on another question (Implied Volatility Calculation for Deep In The Money Calls, Numerical Issues). But it is not really clear why this is rational/academic feasible to do (@Mark Joshi stated: the intrinsic value of the in the money tends to swamp the numerics)

I also could use only call options with the same assumptions as the before mentioned "solution". In an interest rate positive environment an American call and an European call are equal to each other. However, the Eonia is already negative since 2014.

A different risk-free rate (i.e.) Euribor 3M also improves the results but I heard en read that in practice traders use the Eonia rate. So, also not a very strong solution. Furthermore, the Euribor is also negative.

gui design - Is red an acceptable colour for a submit button on a form for a purchase or booking?

I have been drafted in to provide UX feedback on a recently completed website. One point I made was that red was not a suitable colour for a positive action, i.e. completing a form. The reply cited this article

The reason why 2.0 kept pushing the red button – besides the fact that he likes to torture anyone over 3 feet – is that it was red and the other buttons are black. Red is a very good color for checkout and form buttons. In the reptilian brain, red signifies blood. Blood is good. It means you killed something and will get to eat dinner tonight along with your cave woman.

What is everyone's thought on this? My initial reaction is that it could cause confusion. Is red really a good colour for a positive action? Will it really increase conversions?

copyright - Is it legal to display third-party logos as part of "As featured in" on sites/printed ads without their consent?

Have seen more companies include logos of media outlets on their site/printed marketing material as part of the "As featured in" section.

Is it legal to do this without the companies' consent (especially on printed material)?

toggle - Icon for ascending-descending sort

I'm trying to come up with two icons to represent ascending-descending sort order which would allow the user to sort the members ('bars') of a chart/visualization.

The control will be a toggle allowing the user to select one option or the other. I included a few variations, I'm wonder what you think is the most intuitive/clear:

One note, not sure if this relevant or not,potentially could impact the usability of the icons: often the data has more members than the chart can display - for example a bar chart can only fit 20 bars while we have 200 cities in the data. In this case what happens is the 20 biggest/smallest bars are displayed (based on the sort order) and the rest are just averaged and grouped into an 'others' bar.

Answer

I don't think the 'others' bar will have an adverse effect on the user experience, if you always put it as the last item on the bottom, and clearly label it. (You can use parenthesis or italic font on the label to make it stand out even more, then most users will not confuse it for a normal label.)

For the icon: what do the colours mean, why is one green and the other grey? If it indicates the current order, I think the selected one could be brighter and perhaps have a bit of glow (and I think this is a good way of showing the current state.)

On unsorted data, I would make it neutral (both options equal.) The current contrast between green and background is a bit too low and a bit difficult on the eye.

(To compare other applications: mail, windows explorer and others just use a single triangle to indicate the sorted column, and assume the users know clicking on headers will sort. Some webapps use an up-down arrow on hover (if applicable - not for mobile) to indicate the possibilty. Word uses an a-z with downward arrow, a visualisation tool uses almost the same icons as you do, but split into two separate buttons. In a new application, the first option is probably too undiscoverable.)

Do two stocks with the same beta have a correlation of 1?

If two stocks have the same beta over same time period, does it mean they are 100% correlated over that time period?

In a CAPM framework, a stock's beta is defined as

$$\beta_1={\rm Cov} (R_1, M) / {\rm Var} (M)$$

where

• $R_1$ is the return vector of security 1



• $M$ is the market return vector.

Equating two betas means ${\rm Corr}(M, R_1) \cdot {\rm Std} (R_1) = {\rm Corr} (M, R_2) \cdot {\rm Std} (R_2)$.

I'm not really sure where to go from here - the standard deviations of $R_1$ and $R_2$ might not be equal, and I'm not sure what the relation, if any is between the ${\rm Corr} (M, R2)$ and ${\rm Corr} (M, R1)$.

According to this paper, correlation is not transitive. If $R_1$ and $M$ are perfectly correlated, and $R_2$ and $M$ are perfectly correlated, it doesn't necessarily mean $R_1$ and $R_2$ are perfectly correlated.

Answer

The answer is NO. It's mathematically incorrect. Simply look the correlation and covariance formulas. But here is a gedankenexperiment (thought experiment) that demonstrates that it's incorrect.

Suppose, R1 = M. Then the claim Corr(M,R1) = Corr(M,R2) implies 1 = Corr(M,R2) for any R2, which is obviously wrong.

user experience - Do interfaces really need to "look good"?

I notice that sites and software with less superficial value (less style, inspiration, or simply "neat-ness") often succeed far above their fantastically, well-designed counterparts.

Is the style, creativity, & inspiration side of interface design not equally important compared to the content, efficiency, & productivity side of interface development?

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In other words, if the buttons are where they should be and I can understand everything that's going on, is it not important to focus on additional fancy style?

Examples:

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Reddit vs Digg

Reddit:

Known globally to look terrible, used monthly by 112 million unique users.

Digg:

Looks great, used monthly by 20 million unique users.

Windows 7 vs OSX

Windows 7:

Looks alright, but known more for efficiency and compatibility than beautiful, smooth design. 500 million licenses sold.

OSX:

Looks fantastic, performs and interacts smoothly, but 'natively' incompatible with most of the world's desktop software. 50 million copies sold.

Answer

Edit: Since you keep pushing :) I will answer directly:

Is the style, creativity, & inspiration side of interface design not equally important compared to the content, efficiency, & productivity side of interface development?

is it not important to focus on additional fancy style?

I have a little problem with the question, as there are some problematic premises. I would like to remove "fancy" and "additional" and rephrase:

Is it important to focus (more) on style? (ref. your examples)

Yes. It is important.

Design should not be in addition to, something of a coat on top of something (presumably) functional. It is a from-day-one part of creating. This is not understood everywhere, and hence we have infuriatingly idiotic interfaces such as ticket machines, parking meters etc that makes you scratch your head.

I disagree with the sentiment form follows function. The aim is to find where they break even. But if you are out at sea and have to prioritise one over the other, let function a step ahead. To stand on the shoulders of giants; here is Paola Antonelli:

People think that design is styling. Design is not style. It’s not about giving shape to the shell and not giving a damn about the guts. Good design is a renaissance attitude that combines technology, cognitive science, human need, and beauty to produce something that the world didn’t know it was missing.

You can say that a lot of designed stuff ("everything is designed, few things are designed well") are over-designed. Simple functionality drowns in trends, designer egos and clients believing that their site must somehow look like the neighbours.

But take Facebook. It is well designed. It is functional and solid. People get their knickers in a twist every times Facebook redesigns something, and then two months later no one remember what it used to be like.

So why does Reddit still forge ahead, despite the miserable visual language? People are used to it. Redesign your site when your accountant tells you to, not when your designer does. And do it in increments.

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I do not think you can entirely judge a piece of software solely on the number of users or programmes sold. Correlation is not always causation.

I stay well clear of Craigslist and Reddit; they sandpaper my eyes. I also understand that to others, this is incomprehensible. Mac OS for example was more of a niche product for many years: it did not really reach the public and non-designers until fairly recently. Personally, I think the iPod paved the way, then the iPhone (it was more common in the US for many years, but not so much here out on the rim.). (please do not let this start a mac-win discussion. Please!)

I do think that a lot of webdesign these days are ludicrously slick, non-descript. I little more personality and "wobblyness" would be interesting, humorous and useful. Insecurity, I think, on behalf of a lot of designers results in "dead" graphic design with the idea of minimalist = style.

Less is not more. Less is less. Design should not say "look at me", it should say "look at this (content)". The true art of designing for dissemination of information is to convey as much information as possible, without loosing manoeuvrability. This is incredibly hard. Giving a site 40 pages is easy. Making do with 5 is an art.

accounts - How do you prevent users from getting confused with multiple login options?

I came across this question in a closed LinkedIn group. I think it's a great one and since it's hidden from search engines, I decided to bring it to the outside world.

Some users don't visit your website/application as frequently as others and are bound to forget their login credentials. When accounts are created with a simple username-password combo, you offer the Forgot your login details? option.

However, what do you do when you also use 3rd-party authentication APIs (e.g. OAuth or OpenID)?

• What is the most effective way to help returning users remember the service they used to create their accounts?


• How do you prevent them from creating a duplicate account via another authentication service?

I realize the answer might be more technical than design and might have include some back-end code. If that's the case, please simply link to the documentation and don't post the code here.

Answer

Well I found this interesting article from Luke Wroblewski https://bagcheck.com/blog/02-design-solutions-for-new-log-in-problems

Essence:

Ideally, there is a nifty way that the "Forget how you signed up, Enter user name: - This is in sync with existing patterns and it looks best to start with. Next, Step 2 -is what my concern area where on typing "Luke" it provides a auto-populated results, which is against privacy, and I do recommend that to be a simple plain text box. Step 3, is cool that it brings only the related Sign-on engine and takes away unwanted buttons or platforms.

This certainly address the issues that is existing with SSO.

index - What is the better representative of a P-B ratio for a sector?

What is a better representative of a P-B ratio for a sector, for using it as a factor to predict future returns on that sector? The market weighted average of P-B for all names in that index, or market weighted average of all prices/ market weighted average of all book values, basically $\mathbb{E}[f(x)]$ vs. $f(\mathbb{E}[x])$?

Answer

This is a question of how to aggregate ratios.

I see your two options, and raise you one more.

1. Method 1: The mean (or median) value of Price-to-Book values for individual securities

$$f(E[x]) = \frac{\sum_{i}^{n} \frac{P_i}{B_i}}{n} $$

Pros: Relatively simple to calculate and gives an idea of what the typical company's Price-to-Book is.

Cons: Individual company values can tend towards extremes. Because it is a ratio, you will get asymtpotically small and large numbers in your data-set which skew the results. For example, a relatively large cap company can have an extremely high or even negative book value. Likewise, relatively small cap companies, through any number of accounting anomalies (anyone remember Chinese reverse take-overs and variable interest entities?), can have very large book values.

2. Method 2: The aggregate value

$$E[f(x)] = \frac {\sum_{i}^{n} {P_i}}{\sum_i^n B_i} $$

Pros: Also relatively simple to calculate. Resilient to outliers and small-cap anomalies.

Cons: Tends to be skewed towards larger cap companies which may not give a good idea of the typical company's price-to-book.

3. Method 3: The harmonic mean defined by: $$\frac{1}{f(E[x^{-1}])} = \frac{n}{(\frac{1}{x_1}+\frac{1}{x_2}+\frac{1}{x_3}+...\frac{1}{x_n})} $$

Pros: useful for taking the average of certain ratios. In this case, where $x_i$ represents a security's price-to-book, it is essentially taking the mean of the inverse of price-to-book (i.e., book-to-market). Taking the mean of the book-to-market will be more resilient to outliers since market caps are on the denominator and cannot be zero or less than zero. You will thereby eliminate the problem of asymptotic values.

Cons: It may be inappropriate in certain situations.

Personally, I prefer the sector aggregate method because it gives an unbiased estimate of the actual mean. In certain cases, when I am trying to get an idea of the typical company's multiple, I will take the median value. In situations where it seems to appropriate to take the harmonic average, I can't help but to think that I should've just started with the inverse as my baseline.