Mr Branding

Wednesday, April 27, 2016

7 Meditation Apps and Devices for Mindful Entrepreneurs

Stressed entrepreneur

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Stress is a part of everyday life, especially if you have to deal with difficult clients, stare at a computer screen for several hours of the day, or constantly reply to emails — not to mention the often horrific commute to and from work during rush hour, and various other things you have very little control over.

Luckily, meditation can help reduce (or even stop) stress.

Meditation is a practice in which you learn to rest your mind and reach a state of consciousness that results in total clarity and calmness, usually achieved by sitting comfortably, closing your eyes, listening to ambient sounds and breathing deeply. You can meditate for as little as 10 minutes a day. Ironically, the main cause of the average entrepreneur’s stress (technology of course) can also help us find our zen. Let’s take a look at seven apps and gadgets that can help you meditate, a modern alternative to a practise that’s been used for thousands of years.

1. Calm

Calm

Calm is a meditation app that helps with sleep, relaxation, and mindfulness. It’s free to download via Google Play or the Apple App Store, and once you login via Facebook or e-mail you can start a beginners session called ‘7 Days of Calm’. Each session is only 10 minutes long. Perfect for busy entrepreneurs to use during lunch breaks or when stuck in traffic! If it works for you, you can subscribe for $9.99 a month or $39.99 a year.

2. Muse

Muse

Muse is a headband that measures brain signals while you meditate. Its seven calibrated sensors (two on the forehead, two behind the ears, three reference sensors) detect and measure the brain’s activity.

It connects to an app on your mobile device via Bluetooth and once connected, you’ll be taken through a tutorial on how to adjust it to fit so that it reads and monitors your brain signals effectively. Before every use, because your brain is different on a daily basis, you will complete a 60-second brainstorming task.

After de-stressing you with relaxing music, Muse offers feedback on your meditation session by converting your brain signals into wind sounds. Calm winds indicate that your mind was settled; winds become stronger when the brain is more active. After use, your progress is recorded and you’ll unlock new app features.

Are there any downsides? Maybe. It looks quite obvious that you’re wearing it, and it costs $249 (on Amazon) — if this doesn't bother you, the reviews are averaging at four stars!

3. Spire

04-spire

Spire ($149) is a small stone-shaped activity and mindfulness tracker that fits easily on your waistband, making it ideal for those who are constantly on the move or need something they can take to work. It records your breathing and activity and conveys it on its corresponding app.

Spire displays your breath in real-time on your device screen, as if you were breathing on a mirror, and lets you know if you’re feeling stressed or lacking focus. Once it notifies you of your current state of mind, the app provides you with activities in order to achieve the best level of mindfulness.

Sadly it isn’t available for Android, but it’s coming soon!

Continue reading %7 Meditation Apps and Devices for Mindful Entrepreneurs%

by Rebeka Bergin via SitePoint

Avoiding a JavaScript Monoculture

JavaScript, as a language, has some fundamental shortcomings -- I think the majority of us agree on that much. But everyone has a different opinion on what precisely the shortcomings are.

Christoffer Petterson recently wrote that "JavaScript just needs to become a better language" -- about the shortcomings of the JavaScript standard run-time, and how this creates a culture of micro-packages and polyfills.

In this related opinion piece, I'd like to challenge that point of view:

Shortcomings of the JavaScript language and run-times are not the fundamental reason we have micro-packages or polyfills.

While various shortcomings of the standard run-time library are the obvious, immediate reason for the creation of micro-packages, I'm going to argue that this point of view is actually obscuring a deeper, underlying problem.

As to opinions about the shortcomings of the language itself, or the standard run-times, it's important to realize that every developer has a different background, different experience, different needs, temperament, values, and a slew of other cultural motivations and concerns -- individual opinions will always be largely personal and, to some degree, non-technical in nature.

For me, the best answer to shortcomings of the language itself has been Typescript, but I understand that's not everyone's cup of tea. For one guy, it's CoffeeScript, for another gal, it's Dart, Scala, Go, Rust, and so on.

My point is this: the fundamental problem is neither shortcomings of the standard run-time library, nor is it any specific technical shortcoming of the language itself.

The real problem is our lacking willingness to embrace cultural diversity.

One Size Does Not Fit All

It seems there's a thriving mass delusion that we can somehow make JavaScript the ideal language for everyone and every thing.

Initiatives such as ES6, while seemingly improving things, are actually a step in the wrong direction.

For instance, those who prefer classical inheritance may enjoy the addition of the class keyword, while others may reject it as conflicting with the idea of a prototypical inheritance model.

Again, this is all opinion-based, and due to the sheer number of developers who rely on this technology as their bread and butter, sub-communities and religiousness forms around patterns, anti-patterns, practices, de-facto standards, micro-packages, polyfills, frameworks, build-tools, etc.

Continue reading %Avoiding a JavaScript Monoculture%

by Rasmus Schultz via SitePoint

10 Examples of 3D Printing Transforming Our Reality

3D printing has evolved over the last decade from a technology only accessible to big manufacturers to one that is achievable in the home office. It is becoming increasingly more affordable and offers a fast means of product creation. However, the ethics, legalities and moralities of 3D printing are becoming increasingly relevant as the speed of innovation surpasses regulation. Here are 10 forms of 3D printing that demonstrate that 3D printing will become as regular as other forms of manufacturing in the years to come.

1. Bioprinting in Health Science

[caption id="attachment_129248" align="aligncenter" width="660"] 3D printed ear Credit: Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine[/caption]

Researchers at North Carolina's Wake Forest University have created a 3D bioprinter that can produce organs, tissues and bones that could theoretically be implanted into living humans. Researchers from Wake Forest University have created muscle, bone, and ear structures using plastic-like materials and living cells from humans, rabbits, rats, and mice. Amazingly, the living cells survived the 3D printing process. The researchers also successfully implanted their 3D-printed structures into rodents. If the technology works as well for humans as it does on rodents, doctors may be able to use a patient’s own cells to print them a new bone, muscle, or piece of cartilage one day.

This was proceeded by a printer that was able to print artificial skin. Various cell types were placed in the wells of an actual ink cartridge and a printer was programmed to arrange the cells in a pre-determined order. Currently, researchers are using an adapted version of ink-jet printing technology to enable on-site "printing" of skin for soldiers with life-threatening burns. In this technology, "skin cells would be placed directly into a print cartridge, along with essential materials to support them, and would be printed directly on the soldier's wound at the site of the wound."

The notion of a skull implant seems like something out of science fiction but last year doctors in China were able to save the life of a baby with hydrocephalus by 3D printing and implanting a titanium skull in three pieces. 3D printed titanium is strong, lightweight, and can be designed to perfectly fit the patient.

2. Drug Printing

[caption id="attachment_129249" align="aligncenter" width="600"] The 3D printed drug, Spritam Credit: Aprecia Pharmaceuticals[/caption]

Recently US-based Aprecia Pharmaceuticals released the world’s first 3D printed drug, Spritam, a drug to treat seizures in epileptic patients. The printing comes from MIT produced technology using the company’s trademark ZipDose technology. Produced using technology by sandwiching a powdered form of the drug between liquid materials and bonding them at a microscopic level, the printed pills dissolve rapidly on contact with liquids.

3D drug printing is a huge step towards personalised medicine. Alteration of a pill's surface area through printing means that the size, dose, appearance and rate of delivery of a drug can be designed to suit an individual. In the future this could mean on-demand drug-printing facilities at clinics, hospitals and pharmacies, or even in patients’ homes.

Continue reading %10 Examples of 3D Printing Transforming Our Reality%

by Cate Lawrence via SitePoint

Dependency Management with the Swift Package Manager

Swift's journey into a fully fledged cross-platform language continues as it's contributors focus on the version 3 release.

Any language that wants a long-term existence needs a way of adding functionality that doesn't require the core developers to add every request. This is typically in the form of package or dependency management, and the Swift Package Manager (SPM) will be one of the many features added to Swift 3.

But something not being officially released has never stopped inquisitive developers experimenting in the past. So in this article I will introduce the SPM, show you how to install it and existing packages, and how to create your own.

Continue reading %Dependency Management with the Swift Package Manager%

by Chris Ward via SitePoint