KWBaker

The post Shipwreck washes up in Ponte Vedra Beach appeared first on Southern Boating .

Forty years ago, opening a KFC franchise in Tehran was a sign of progress. Today, it’s against the law.

Before the 1979 revolution—before religious clerics took control of the country—Iran’s capital, Tehran, was a cosmopolitan city that glittered with Western influence: secularism, mini-skirts, and fast food chains such as McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken. But the new ruler, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, pushed a return to Islamic values and removing American influence. And so, women were forced to cover, Western texts were removed from schools, and American franchises were suddenly contraband.

In cutting its Western alliance, Iran became an isolated nation focused on traditionalism and hounded by morality police. Beneath the surface, though, most Iranians maintained an appreciation for Western culture, whether that meant banned literature or McDonald’s-style burgers. If there was one thing the government couldn’t suppress, it was taste. That’s why Iran is now home to dozens of knockoff franchises, from Mash Donald’s to Sheak Shack, that have taken advantage of hostility toward American fast food to serve dangerously delicious burgers, fries, and burritos. You can find the golden arches in Iran; they just have no official connection to McDonald's.

---

In the 1970s, Tehran was urbane and opulent. But it was also corrupt. The Iranian government had essentially been under Western control since 1953, when democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh was ousted in a coup organized by the United States and Britain. Like many Middle Eastern affairs, oil fueled the conflict—Mosaddegh tried to audit and then nationalize the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, so they retaliated.

The Shah Reza Pahlavi I assumed increasing power after the coup, and the family’s totalitarian reign tightened under his son, Reza II.* Dissenters mysteriously disappeared, and anyone who resisted got a visit from the Shah’s secret police. Many fled, were imprisoned, or worse. Under the leadership of high priest Khomeini, a swarm of people decided they’d had enough and revolted. Bloody demonstrations followed, and in 1979, the Shah left in search of exile and cancer treatment. Khomeini became Supreme Leader of Iran.

The Revolution and the change that followed created both more tension with the United States and a sizable Iranian diaspora in the West. Many secular Iranians left the new theocracy for Europe, Canada, and the United States. Others fled what followed: The arrests, inflation, and violence, including a certain hostage crisis at the American Embassy; tightened borders and U.S.-led sanctions; and a bloody, eight-year war with Iraq (who the United States backed) in which young boys were drafted and bombs rattled major, historic cities. Years later, the exodus would help expose those left behind to the rest of the world.

Iran’s government became less rigid in the 1990s, after Khomeini’s death, and citizens grew gutsier about flouting some strictures on Western ways. Women wore bright lipstick accented by veils, with sandals peeking out below mandated overcoats. And Iranian entrepreneurs, inspired by fast food’s success abroad, opened imitations in Tehran. (They later expanded to medium-sized cities.)

Despite the government’s efforts, Iranians maintained contact with the West through satellite television and visits from the diaspora and their American-born children. Fast food, then, became another way Iranians could experience the outside world.

“Iranians got tired of limited food options and were looking for a quick bite to eat,” says Holly Dagres, Iranian-American journalist and analyst and curator of “The Iranist” newsletter. “Fast food seemed the way to go, especially since many Iranians travel to Dubai and try American fast food franchises there.”

At the start of the fast-food wave, these restaurants were seen as places of status. Dagres recalls that Super Star, a Carl’s Jr. knockoff, was the place to be seen in the ‘90s. “Not every Iranian could afford a burger that cost almost as much as a kabob dish,” she says.

Over the next few decades, the copycat trend snowballed into outright saturation: Mash Donalds, Boof Burger, Subways, Sheak Shack, Pizza Hat. Menu item names, such as Dahbel Dahn (KFC Double Down) and Wooper, were adjusted to fit the Persian vernacular’s rich vowels. In other cases, traditional ingredients met Western formats to create one-of-a-kind dishes, such as lavash-wrapped burritos stuffed with jujeh (chicken) kebab, grilled vegetables, saffron rice, and yellow raisins.

کی اف سی فقط اصیلش 👌🙂 کِی اِف سی در ایران بهترین سوخاری ها فقط در " kfc" شعبه 1 , مشهد بلوار وکیل آباد 📞📞 ۳۱۴۰۰ شعبه 2 , نیشابور هتل بزرگ امیران 📞📞 ۴۱۳۴۳ شعبه 3 , مشهد اطلس مال 📞📞 ۳۱۴۰۰ شعبه 4 , تهران بلوار فردوس غرب 📞📞 ۰۲۱-۴۴۱۱۲۱۲۱ شعبه 5 , اصفهان به زودی @KFCiranian جهت اخذ نمایندگی و اطلاعات بیشتر WWW.KFChalal.ir 📞 021-40440370

A post shared by KFC Iranian on Instagram.

“Fast-food in Iran is very much from other countries and cultures,” says Mahan Kazemi, a fast-food enthusiast based in Tehran. Despite the people’s appreciation for Western culture, sanctions, tariffs, and government hostility deprive Iranians of famous brands and international food: They can’t open a bona fide KFC franchise or access the Colonel’s fabled blend of herbs and spices. (Although Coca-Cola and Pepsi are widely available again, via subsidiaries and local production, after a Bill Clinton-era ban.) Imitation through fast food, then, is their answer.

In most countries, these restaurateurs would have to worry about lawsuits from Chipotle, Shake Shack, and KFC. But Iran’s murky relationship with the United States gives these entrepreneurs some leverage.

The legal institutions do exist for McDonald’s lawyers to shut down Mash Donalds. Iran may not belong to the World Trade Organization, but Iran’s Patent and Trademark Office is part of the World Intellectual Property Organization and the Madrid Protocol, and Iran has special courts that handle these cases.

“Nothing in the existing sanctions prevents a U.S. company from registering a trademark in the Islamic Republic,” says David Jacoby, an intellectual property partner at New York’s Culhane Meadows law firm. “In fact, the U.S. Government’s Office of Foreign Assets Control has a general license under which American companies can take steps to protect their intellectual property rights in Iran.” In 2010, for example, Baskin-Robbins managed to shut down five bootleg franchises.

اولین روز ماه و هفته را با #رئیس لاته بگذرانید. #raeescoffee Photo Courtesy of @soroosholiaei

A post shared by Raees Coffee, Iran's Starbucks, on Instagram.

But such cases are rare, as the dysfunctional Iranian-American relationship makes enforcing intellectual property in Iran unfulfilling for fast food chains. Culhane Meadows partner Felicia Traub describes Iran as unfamiliar trademark territory. “For starters, Iran might not even allow the registration of every mark that might have qualified for registration elsewhere.” Traub cites the example of the Islamic Republic refusing trademarks that include portraits of women. That means no trademark for the Columbia Pictures logo and no trademark for Aunt Jemima pancakes.

Jacoby explains that given the unfamiliar legal terrain and lack of diplomatic ties to help navigate legal missteps, companies are inclined to devote their limited time and money to enforcing trademarks in bigger markets. As Dagres sums it up: “Why go through the trouble of pushing for a trademark infringement when your company doesn't have a presence in the country to begin with?”

Instead, the larger concern for the Iranians behind Sheak Shack and Subways is the Iranian government. Iran’s imitation fast food chains, Dagres says, are “the symbol of American cultural imperialism, which was one of the driving forces of the 1979 revolution.” Authorities can shut them down for promoting gharbzadeghi, a Persian term for “westoxification.” In 1994, for example, the Basij, a parliamentary, volunteer-based militia established after the Revolution, famously threatened a McDonald’s imitator with arson. The restaurant shut down within two days. More recently, in 2015, when a Turkey-based imitator of KFC opened in Tehran, it was shut down due to the “grave danger” it posed.

In the end, the restaurant owners play a balancing act: imitating Western chains enough to draw Iranians who want to try those brands, but not so closely that the government accuses them of corrupting and Westernizing the country.

---

On weeknights, the food courts at Tehran’s Palladium Mall buzz with customers. Located on the famous shopping center’s first and third floors, the courts are dotted with modern yellow and lime green chairs and towering fake palm trees.

On trays and counters, American staples and pizza cohabitate with tostadas, chicken katsu, and Irish breakfasts. People wait up to 10 minutes in line, soaking up the hype. Several of these chains aren’t even knockoffs—they’re original concepts.

“There's always a fast food restaurant popping up somewhere,” Dagres says. Many Iranians see fast food as a novelty that enlivens nights out, or they prefer “catering” their parties with take-out burgers and burritos to spending hours in the kitchen.

“Iranian franchises like Boof and Apache compete with each other, but their bigger concern is if tomorrow an original Western franchise opens up,” Dagres says. “If McDonald's opened up, Iranians would likely never go back to an Iranian franchise. Not necessarily because McDonald's tastes better, but because it's trendy and a Western franchise.”

Iran has a long way to go before it can repair its relationship with the West, and that depends on political will on both sides. In the meantime, ordinary Iranians just want to get a bucket of fries and enjoy the foods they crave most.

*Correction: This post has been changed to clarify the balance of power after the 1953 coup.

On a narrow street in the town of Wexford, in the southeast of Ireland, is B. Corcoran, a men’s clothing store. It’s been in operation since 1956, a fact which is evident from its storefront: above a painted olive green exterior, a wedge-shaped sign spells out "B. Corcoran Ltd." in burgundy scripted lettering.

Storefronts such as this one are a visual treasure for the graphic designer Trevor Finnegan. For the past eight years, in his spare time, he's been exploring and photographing traditional Irish stores all over the country. The ongoing project is a way to document an important part of Ireland’s visual traditions and crafts, says Finnegan. “Their unique design style and the typographic styles really appeal to me,” he explains. “They are the face of local business and the give a real sense of friendliness that you find in these types of places here in Ireland.”

There’s another reason that Finnegan wants to document the storefronts: they’re in decline. Smaller, family-run stores suffered during the recession, he says. “With many young people now living and working in the bigger cities such as Dublin, Cork, and Galway, many of these shops just simply closed down.” There is also the seemingly inexorable shift toward larger or more homogenous stores. “People’s shopping habits have changed and bigger chain stores have moved into towns across Ireland,” he says, “which has really affected local smaller businesses like these.”

Finnegan's project is not just about aesthetics. Wherever possible, he’ll speak to the people inside to learn about the store’s history. When it comes to framing his images, he takes a similarly direct approach: a straight-on view, showing the entire facade, and an uninterrupted view of the colors and typography.

Over the years, Finnegan has noticed certain visual patterns. In West Cork, Kerry, and Limerick, he noticed a greater use of ceramic lettering, "while shopfronts in more northern counties such as Donegal and Cavan tend to use the Gaelic spelling of their names on the frontage." He also notes that designs would have been dependent on the local craftsmen. “So for instance some towns might have very beautiful hand-painted signage done by the local sign-painter, while others might be more focused on the skills of a local carpenter.”

Atlas Obscura has a selection of images from Finnegan’s project, which you can follow through the Instagram account our.type.

When it comes to taking breathtaking landscape photos like the one above, there are many different factors involved.

The lighting is key, the perspective from which you shoot is important, and the camera settings you use can greatly impact the final result.

The landscape photography gear you use also has much influence over the quality of your photos.

There's a lot of gear you can use for landscapes - different cameras and lenses, tripods, and remotes.

But perhaps the most important camera accessory you can use for landscapes is a good set of filters.

Landscape Photography Gear: Essential Filters

Not only are there many different types of filters that you can use in your landscape photography setup, but these filters provide many different benefits.

Some, like a polarizing filter, help cut down on glare from non-metallic surfaces, like water. Polarizers also cut down on atmospheric haze, giving you a cleaner, crisper view of distant landscape features.

Polarizers also enhance the contrast of the sky, making the blue areas more saturated and the white of the clouds more robust.

Another must-have landscape photography accessory is a graduated neutral density (ND) filter.

Graduated ND filters are dark on the top and light on the bottom. Why?

Well, think about it - the sky is always brighter than the landscape. And as a result, when you photograph a landscape, you're forced to expose for the sky, leaving the landscape too dark, or expose for the landscape, leaving the sky to bright.

Of course, you can get around this by shooting in HDR or stacking exposures in Photoshop or Lightroom.

But an easier task is to simply shoot with a graduated ND filter.

By placing a graduated ND in front of your lens, it darkens the sky and evens out the exposure.

That means a better-exposed image right there in-camera, and less time you have to spend trying to correct the exposure in post-processing.

Learn More:

• How to Use a Graduated ND Filter
• Camera Settings for Landscape Photography

Landscape Photography Essentials for Advanced Imaging

There's another filter that can do your landscape photography a lot of good - a solid neutral density filter.

These filters have varying degrees of light-stopping power, measured in stops.

A 4-stop ND filter, for example, blocks out far less light than a 10-stop ND filter and generates delicate, blurry movement, as shown above.

A 10-stop filter, on the other hand, creates otherworldly results, as shown in the clouds in the photo above.

But what these filters have in common is a consistent level of filter power throughout the filter.

That means that you can block out light during the daytime and use a long shutter speed, and get gorgeous, ethereal effects like what you see in the image above.

Whether you blur the movement of clouds or water or something in between, an ND filter opens up many opportunities for showing landscapes in a totally different light.

The Ultimate in Landscape Photography Filters

What's important to understand about lens filters is that you get what you pay for.

Snag a cheap filter from Amazon and you'll find that the filter likely produces aberrations, ghosting, flare, and has poor color fidelity or contrast.

But if you invest in high-quality filters, like the ones in the Firecrest Ultra Elia Locardi Signature Edition Travel Kit by Formatt-Hitech, then you'll be well on your way to creating jaw-dropping landscape photos.

 

Firecrest Ultra filters are professional-grade filters that are bonded to protect the filter coating.

That means that these things offer incredible durability, which you need when you're out shooting in the elements.

What's more, these filters are created using a lap and polish process, which results in hyper-neutral filters that have enhanced clarity and sharpness.

Better still, in the Elia Locardi Kit, you get all the filters you need:

• Firecrest Ultra 4-Stop ND
• Firecrest Ultra 10-Stop ND
• Firecrest Ultra Soft Edge Graduated ND
• Firecrest Ultraslim Polarizer

The kit also comes with a 100mm filter holder, adaptor rings and step rings to fit the filters to your lens, a soft-touch outer case, filter pouches, and a booklet from Elia Locardi.

In other words, when it comes to landscape photography equipment, you simply cannot go wrong with Formatt-Hitech's Elia Locardi Kit.

This thing is loaded for bear and will help you improve the quality of your landscape photography, hands-down!

Learn More:

• Get the Specs and Pricing on the Formatt-Hitech Elia Locardi Filter Kit
• Top Tips to Help You Take Better Landscape Photos

---

Lead by spunky frontgirl Ashley Miles, Vinyl Rhino is my favorite cover band in Frederick, Maryland. For years, they’ve rocked our bars with high energy hits from the 80’s to what’s current. Saturday night they stopped by Champions and blew the roof off the place. I was there to capture it on the newly re-released Kodak TMAX P3200.

Concerts are a perfect subject for the new Kodak TMAX P3200. The film allows you to stop down in dim light and get the most performance from your lens, which is important when your grain is as big and chunky as is par for the course with 3200 ISO films.

I left my shutter at 125 most of the show and racked between about f2.8 and 5.6 as the stage lights blinked and flashed.

I rated the new P3200 at box speed, 3200 ISO. And as is customary with print film, I overexposed by half a stop to get more detail in the shadows which can fall away quickly in hard stage lighting.

As usual, Vinyl Rhino put on an amazing show. The band looked and sounded like they were truly having a blast too, which always makes the music that much sweeter.

Singer Ashley and bassist Nick were very animated, making them very challenging to photograph with an all manual film camera. When shooting concerts on film you just have to be confident that you got the last shot and concentrate on getting everything right on the next one, else you’ll be moving too slowly to catch the right moments. Sometimes you know you got a stray arm covering a face or an “in between expression,” but you just have to throw it away in your mind and wind that advance lever.

I think my favorite piece from their set was their signature fusion of Whitney Houston’s I Wanna Dance With Somebody and Cyndi Lauper’s Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. The Wanna Dance side got the crowd jumping while lyrics were mainly handled by Nick as he hopped around with his Fender bass. Then Ashley started in with a rockier version of the Lauper classic. Her vocals felt like a rebel yell which the ladies in the audience immediately keyed into with strained singalongs and glimmering ringed hands in the air.

I started out with my Leitz 50mm f/1.5 Summarit but never took it to full aperture where it softens considerably. Despite being designed in the 1940’s, it has a stunning clarity when stopped down. When shooting with grainy film, using a very sharp lens can help offset that muddiness that can occur when soft glass and the big T-Grain clusters collide. The out of focus areas become something of an emotional affair!

Then I got tight with my Leitz 90mm f/2 Pre-Asph Summicron. This Canadian-built predecessor to the current 90 Cron was the first compact Leica 90 Summicron and the optics are just incredible, 5 elements in 4 groups. But what’s neat about this otherwise very modern lens is that the front element is only single coated. So while it can be clinically sharp, even with the built-in hood extended, you can still get some flare character. Particularly with harsh stage light. A little bit of flaring, I think, looks nice on a grainy emulsion. It sort of highlights the depth and physicality of the film.

When it came time to process, I used my go-to developer Kodak HC110, Dilution B. Kodak kindly furnished me with a new datasheet but it appears to be identical to the old P3200. 10 minutes at 68 degrees Fahrenheit for 3200 or 12 minutes for 6400. Though I shot at box speed, I decided to process for 6400 as I recall processing a stop faster than the film was rated gave images a richer contrast. TMAX P3200 is very tonal by nature, hence its very wide dynamic range. Tonality is great but I like some contrast in most of my work.

Between the excellent lighting, half stop over-exposure and push processing, I think that contrast was nearly spot-on what I was looking for. I adjusted levels slightly in Photoshop, usually only pulling the blacks in and dodging and burning where appropriate.

P3200’s T-Grain is not as fine as Ilford’s Delta 3200 grain but that’s one of the things I love about this film. It makes no apologies for itself. It’s immediately recognizable, even to a non-photographer, as film. The clumps of silver are unmistakable. The depth, the soul. They’re present in liberal amounts.

I usually call it quits at 6400 but what’s crazy is that P3200 can be rated from something like 800 to 25,000 EI. Experimental shooters have even gotten wider ranges. What that means is that, if you like, P3200 could be the ONLY film in your bag, capable of shooting in sunlight into near pitch black darkness! P3200 is certainly a powerful weapon to keep in your arsenal! It’s unique, practical and versatile.

Happily, the New Kodak TMAX P3200 appears to be exactly the same old TMAX P3200 that we already knew and loved. No formula updates, no corner cutting, no bulls**t.

P3200 is back and it’s ready to rock!

---

About the author: Johnny Martyr is a premier East Coast film photographer. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. After an adventurous 15 year photographic journey, he now shoots exclusively on B&W 35mm film that he painstakingly hand-processes and digitizes. Choosing to work with only a select few clients per annum, Martyr’s uncommonly personalized process ensures unsurpassed quality as well as stylish, natural & timeless imagery that will endure for decades. You can find more of his work on his website and Flickr. This article was also published here.

Excel is powerful. If you use it a lot, you probably already know a lot of tricks using formulas or autoformatting, but making use of Cells and Range functions in VBA, you can boost your Excel analytics to a whole new level.

The problem with using the Cells and Range functions in VBA is that at the advanced levels, most people have a hard time understanding how these functions actually work. Using them can get very confusing. Here’s how you can make use of them in ways you probably never imagined.

The Cells Function

The Cells and Range functions let you tell your VBA script exactly where on your worksheet you want to obtain, or place data. The main difference between the two cells is what they reference.

Cells usually reference a single cell at a time, while Range references a group of cells at once. The format for this function is Cells(row, column).

This references every single cell in the entire sheet. It’s the one example where the Cells function doesn’t reference a single cell:

Worksheets("Sheet1").Cells

This references the third cell from the left, of the top row. Cell C1:

Worksheets("Sheet1").Cells(3)

The following code references cell D15:

Worksheets("Sheet1").Cells(15,4)

If you wanted to, you could also reference cell D15 with “Cells(15,”D”)”—you’re allowed to use the column letter.

There is a lot of flexibility in being able to reference a cell using a number for column and cell, especially with scripts that can loop through a large number of cells (and perform calculations on them) very quickly. We’ll get to that in more detail below.

The Range Function

In many ways, the Range function is far more powerful than using Cells, because it lets you reference either a single cell, or a specific range of cells, all at once. You aren’t going to want to loop through a Range function, because the references for cells aren’t numbers (unless you embed the Cells function inside of it).

The format for this function is Range(Cell #1,Cell #2). Each cell can be designated by a letter-number.

Let’s look at a few examples.

Here, the range function is referencing cell A5:

Worksheets("Sheet1").Range("A5")

Here, the range function is referencing all cells between A1 through E20:

Worksheets("Sheet1").Range("A1:E20")

As mentioned above, you don’t have to use number-letter cell assignments. You could actually use two Cells functions inside of a Range function to identify a range on the sheet, like this:

With Worksheets("Sheet1")
 .Range(.Cells(1, 1), _ 
 .Cells(20, 5))
End With

The code above references the same range as the Range(“A1:E20”) function does. The value in using it, is that it would allow you to write code that dynamically works with ranges using loops.

Now that you understand how to format the Cells and Range functions, let’s dive into how you can make creative use of these functions in your VBA code.

Processing Data With Cells Function

The Cells function is most useful when you have a complex formula that you want to perform across multiple ranges of cells. These ranges can also exist across multiple sheets.

Let’s take a simple example. Let’s say you manage a sales team of 11 people, and every month you want to look at their performance.

You might have Sheet1 that tracks their sales count, and their sales volume.

On Sheet2 is where you track their feedback rating for the last 30 days from your company’s clients.

If you want to calculate the bonus on the first sheet using values from the two sheets, there are multiple ways to do this. You could write a formula in the first cell that performs the calculation using data across the two sheets and drag it down. That’ll work.

An alternative to this is creating VBA script that you either trigger to run whenever you open the sheet, or triggered by a command button on the sheet so you can control when it calculates. You might use a VBA script to pull in all of the sales data from an external file anyway.

So why not just trigger the calculations for the bonus column in the same script at that time?

The Cells Function in Action

If you’ve never written VBA in Excel before, you’ll need to enable the Developer menu item. To do this, go to File > Options. Click on Customize Ribbon. Finally, choose Developer from the left pane, Add it to the right pane, and make sure the checkbox is selected.

Now, when you click OK and go back to the main sheet, you’ll see the Developer menu option.

You can use the Insert menu to insert a command button, or just click View Code to start coding.

In this example we’ll make the script run every time the workbook is opened. To do this, just click View Code from the developer menu, and paste the following new function into the code window.

Private Sub Workbook_Open() 

End Sub

Your code window will look something like this.

Now you’re ready to write the code to handle the calculation. Using a single loop, you can step through all 11 employees, and with the Cells function pull in the three variables needed for the calculation.

Remember the Cells function has row and column as parameters to identify each individual cell. We’ll make “x” the row, use a number to request each column’s data. The number of rows are the number of employees, so this will be from 1 to 11. The column identifier will be 2 for Sales Count, 3 for Sales Volume, and 2 from Sheet 2 for Feedback Score.

The final calculation use the following percentages to add up to 100 percent of the total bonus score. It’s based on an ideal sales count being 50, sales volume as $50,000, and a feedback score of 10.

• (Sales Count/50) x 0.4
• (Sales Volume/50,000) x 0.5
• (Feedback Score/10) x 0.1

This simple approach gives sales employees a weighted bonus. For a count of 50, volume of $50,000, and a score of 10—they get the entire maximum bonus for the month. However anything under perfect on any factor reduces the bonus. Anything better than ideal boosts the bonus.

Now let’s look how all of that logic can be pulled off in a very simple, short VBA script:

Private Sub Workbook_Open()
For x = 2 To 12
Worksheets("Sheet1").Cells(x, 4) = (Worksheets("Sheet1").Cells(x, 2).Value / 50) * 0.4 _
 + (Worksheets("Sheet1").Cells(x, 3).Value / 50000) * 0.5 _
 + (Worksheets("Sheet2").Cells(x, 2).Value / 10) * 0.1 _
Next x
End Sub

This is what the output of this script will look like.

If you wanted to have the Bonus column show the actual dollar bonus rather than the percentage, you could multiply it by the maximum bonus amount. Better yet, place that amount in a cell on another sheet, and reference it in your code. This would make it easier to change the value later without having to edit your code.

The beauty of the Cells function is that you can build some pretty creative logic to pull in data from many cells across many differen sheets, and perform some pretty complex calculations with them.

You can perform all sorts of actions on cells using the Cells function—things like clearing the cells, changing font formatting, and much more.

To explore everything you can do further, check out the Microsoft MSDN page for the Cells object.

Formatting Cells With Range Function

For looping through many cells one at a time, the Cells function is perfect. But if you want to apply something to an entire range of cells all at once, the Range function is far more efficient.

One use case for this might be to format a range of cells using script, if certain conditions are met.

For example, let’s say if the tally of all sales volume across all sales employees surpasses $400,000 in total, you want to highlight all cells in the bonus column in green to signify that the team has earned an extra team bonus.

Let’s take a look at how you can do that with an IF statement.

Private Sub Workbook_Open()
If Worksheets("Sheet1").Cells(13, 3).Value > 400000 Then
 ActiveSheet.Range("D2:D12").Interior.ColorIndex = 4
End If
End Sub

When this runs, if the cell is over the team goal, all cells in the range will be filled in green.

This is just one simple example of the many actions you can perform on groups of cells using the Range function. Other things you can do include:

• Apply an outline around the group
• Check the spelling of text inside a range of cells
• Clear, copy, or cut cells
• Search through a range with the “Find” method
• Much more

Make sure to read the Microsoft MSDN page for the Range object to see all of the possibilities.

Take Excel to the Next Level

Now that you understand the differences between the Cells and the Range functions, it’s time to take your VBA scripting to the next level. Dann’s article on using Counting and Adding functions in Excel will allow you to build even more advanced scripts that can accumulate values across all of your data sets very quickly.

And if you’re just getting started with VBA in Excel, don’t forget we’ve got a fantastic introductory guide to Excel VBA for you as well.

(YouTube link)

In this week's episode of Scatterbrained from Mental Floss, John Green and the gang tell us about shopping malls: their history, purpose, features, and a lot of little things you never realized before. It's a fact-filled primer on shopping malls! There are also tidbits on the most famous department stores that anchored those malls, plus the small shops that exist nowhere else, and the restaurants that were designed just for malls. Shopping malls will never again be what they were in the 1980s and '90s, but they still exist, and their heyday spawned other forms of community shopping. 

Ideal for chopping, slicing, and whittling, the Scandi-grind, fully-tanged Spyderco Bushcraft knife has a 4-inch O-1 steel blade, comfortable G-10 handle, and was created in collaboration with expert bushcrafters. The...

Visit Uncrate for the full post.

Nestled on seven wooded acres at the gateway to the Glacier National Park, the Montana Treehouse Retreat reimagines our childhood hideout. A spiral staircase leads to the two-story cabin. Perched...

Visit Uncrate for the full post.

The costuming was essential to the period setting of Mad Men. So were the furnishings. This Mad Men Prop Auction lets you add some of these mid-century pieces to your...

Visit Uncrate for the full post.

Built using a grandfathered license that dates back to the post-WWII era, the Roxor Off-Road Vehicle is as close to a brand new Willys Jeep as you can come. Its...

Visit Uncrate for the full post.

Isle Of Dogs /Original Soundtrack EP ($TBD) Moonrise Kingdom /Original Score ($99) Rushmore / Original Motion Picture Soundtrack ($24) The Darjeeling Limited/ Original Soundtrack ($23) Seu Jorge / The Life...

Visit Uncrate for the full post.

Many people rely on the iPhone for shooting video clips and photos in homes, offices, and on the street. The simplicity of using a single device to shoot, edit, and upload your video is something even the latest cameras can’t match.

But shooting video doesn’t always go to plan, and sometimes you’ll need to edit, trim, flip, or otherwise manipulate your video before you can upload it. Today we’ll look at how you can do that using a combination of Apple’s own editing tools and some smart third-party apps.

Note that several of these tips require iMovie for iPhone, so you should install that before proceeding.

Download: iMovie (Free)

How to Edit Videos on iPhone

To access your iPhone’s basic editing tools, launch the Photos app and find the video you would like to edit in your Videos album or Camera Roll. In the top-right corner of the screen, tap Edit to see the editing options available to you.

You’ll see two buttons at the bottom of the screen, just below the film roll. If you tap the ellipsis icon (…) you’ll be able to make adjustments within the Photos app using any external editing tools you have (like iMovie).

Once you’ve made an edit, tap Done and choose whether to create a new clip or overwrite your original.

How to Trim a Video on iPhone

You can trim a video (reduce its length) using your iPhone’s in-built tools:

1. Find the video you would like to trim in the Photos app.
2. Select it and tap Edit in the top-right corner.
3. On the film roll at the bottom of the screen, grab the start point and drag it to where you would like the video to begin.
4. Grab the end point and position it where you would like the video to end.
5. Preview your changes using the Play button, then hit Done and choose to overwrite or save your video as a new clip.

How to Crop a Video on iPhone

The iPhone doesn’t have a built-in editing tool that allows you to crop your videos, so we’ll need to turn to the App Store for this task. Many social media apps like Instagram allow you to crop your video when you post it, and this should always be your first port of call.

There’s a dearth of quality apps that can perform this function, so we opted for an ad-supported freebie called Video Crop. Unfortunately, the ads are a little intrusive and there’s no in-app purchase to disable them. However, the app itself is solid, with plenty of presets and a free crop mode too.

Here’s how it works:

1. Launch Video Crop and tap on the crop icon, then grant the app access to your Photo library.
2. Select the video you would like to crop from the list, then hit the tick icon in the top-right corner.
3. Choose the crop you would like to apply at the bottom of the screen, then move the frame to where you want it.
4. Hit Play to make sure the crop is suitable for your entire clip.
5. Tap the Save icon in the top-right corner and wait for the operation to complete.
6. Hit Save to save your video to Camera Roll or More to export it to another app.

How to Flip a Video on iPhone

Your iPhone can’t flip videos with its basic editing tools, so you’ll need a third-party app to achieve this. We opted for a freebie called Rotate and Flip which is basic but does the job just fine:

1. Launch Rotate and Flip then tap on the video icon and choose Video (you can also edit Live Photos with this app).
2. Grant the app permission to view your Photo library, then select the video you would like to edit.
3. Make your edits using the 90 button to rotate the frame, or the mirror buttons to mirror the image.
4. Hit Save and wait for the video to render. You can then find the video in your Photo library

This app allows you to rotate by 90 degree increments and mirror the video on the vertical and horizontal axes.

How to Add Music to a Video on iPhone

The easiest way to add music to your video is using Apple’s free iMovie. The hardest part of this process is having music saved to your device that you can use, since Apple Music and DRM-protected tracks won’t work.

1. Launch the Photos app and find the video you would like to add music to.
2. Tap the Edit button in the top-right corner, then hit the ellipsis button (…) at the bottom of the screen.
3. Choose iMovie and wait for the editor to load (if you can’t see iMovie, tap More then make sure the toggle next to iMovie is on).
4. Tap the musical note icon and find a song you’d like to use (you can always use the Theme Music tracks for free).
5. Drag the waveform to choose the start point for your chosen music.
6. Hit Done to save your video.

This will replace your original movie with a new version that includes a soundtrack. To get the old version back, find the movie in your Photos app, tap Edit, then choose Revert.

How to Add Title Text to a Video on iPhone

This task is also best handled with iMovie. You can use it to add animated title text to your video, and the results look great.

1. Launch the Photos app and find the video you would like to add text to.
2. Tap the Edit button in the top-right corner, then hit the ellipsis button (…) at the bottom of the screen.
3. Choose iMovie and wait for the editor to load (if you can’t see iMovie, tap More then make sure the toggle next to iMovie is on).
4. Tap the text icon which looks like a big T and choose an effect from the list at the bottom of the screen.
5. Tap on the text to edit it and type whatever you like. Hit Done to save your video.

This will replace your original movie with a new version that includes title text. There’s no way to change when the text appears. To get the original video back, find the movie in your Photos app, tap Edit, then choose Revert.

How to Combine Videos on iPhone

iMovie is also the best way to combine more than one video into a finished production. You can use other video editors to accomplish the task, but iMovie is easy to use and maintained by Apple so it’s a great place to start.

1. Launch iMovie then head to Projects and tap the New Project + button.
2. Choose Movie when prompted then navigate to your Videos using the media browser.
3. Select a movie and tap Play to preview it or the Plus + button to add it to your project.
4. When you’ve selected all your clips, tap Create Movie.
5. Drag left and right to preview your timeline, trim your clips, and make any other edits.
6. Hit Done to save your project, then export your new video using the Share button at the bottom of the screen.

You Should Download iMovie!

There really is no excuse not to download iMovie for iOS (and the free Mac version too), particularly considering it was once a premium app. It comes with its own set of great-looking filters and a fun movie trailer creator, and you can even use it to edit 4K content on the newer iPhone and iPad models.

Taking a screenshot on your iPhone is one of the important shortcuts that most people know: press the Home and Power buttons together, and you can capture anything that’s on your screen.

But what happens if you have an issue with one of your iPhone’s buttons? If your Power button gets stuck or your Home button is unreliable, you might not be able to take screenshots. Thankfully, an accessibility feature known as AssistiveTouch can help.

How to Take an iPhone Screenshot Without Buttons

1. Navigate to Settings > General > Accessibility.
2. Find the AssistiveTouch entry and enable its slider. Doing so will add an overlay button to your screen consisting of a white dot.
3. Whenever you tap the AssistiveTouch icon, you’ll see a menu that provides quick access to various functions. To easily add screenshot functionality to this menu, select Customize Top Level Menu.
4. Here, tap an icon you’d like to replace and choose Screenshot. If you’d rather, you can add an icon by tapping the Plus button and creating a new shortcut to Screenshot.
5. Alternatively, select the Double-Tap, Long Press, or 3D Touch options and set them to Screenshot for even more convenience.
6. Now, whenever you select Screenshot from the quick menu or perform your assigned shortcut, your iPhone will take a screenshot as normal.

Note that when you take a screenshot with this method, the AssistiveTouch button won’t appear in the shot. You can drag the button to any corner of the screen you like. This feature is designed for users who have difficulty touching the screen, but it works just as well for anyone who has issues with their phone’s buttons.

If you’re feeling up to it, check out how to fix your own broken iPhone. Then you won’t have to deal with that problematic button.

Image Credit: jovannig/Depositphotos

You might have heard of Canva and may even use it already to create logos, social media posts, photo collages, or blog banners. But this easy-to-use graphic design tool can do so much more than you might know.

For both business and personal use, take a look at these awesome things you can create with Canva in an instant.

1. Book Covers

If you’re an author, then creating a cover for your book is simple with Canva. To get started, select a Canva layout from the many free options available. From cookbooks to romance novels, you are sure to find one that fits your needs.

Click the layout you want and then select the text elements to add your own details. If you like the layout but prefer a different image, you can simply add your own.

2. Event Invitations

For weddings, birthday parties, charity events, and more, Canva offers terrific invitation options. Just like with the book covers, select a layout and then click the elements to adjust the text.

You can change the font style, size, color, and formatting for anything that you design. You can even adjust the letter spacing, line height, alignment, and transparency.

Another nice feature of Canva that comes in handy with invitations is the sharing options. You can post it right on Twitter and Facebook or grab a link to it to share on your own social networks of choice.

3. YouTube Channel Art

Do you have your own YouTube channel? Then you can make it stand out with awesome art. Check out layouts for music, beauty, nature, food, gaming, and many others.

Every element on the design can be changed, rearranged, or removed. This gives you complete flexibility to create the artwork you want.

When you finish, just download the design as a JPG, PNG, or PDF file. It’s that easy!

4. Etsy Shop Covers and Icons

If you sell your goods on Etsy, draw some attention to your shop with a cool cover or icon. Canva offers both of these for selling products like gifts, accessories, clothing, and fragrances.

What’s great about using Canva for these designs is that they are already sized for you. The Etsy shop cover is 1200 x 300 pixels and the Etsy shop icon is 500 x 500 pixels. So, just change the wording and images as needed and you’re set.

5. Business Cards

Many applications can handle business card creations, including Microsoft Word and Adobe Photoshop. However, Canva can also help you create a new business card.

From casual to elegant, you can pick from a large variety of business card layouts. If you send your cards via email or post them on social media, the link feature is ideal. Just select the design element, click the Link button from the top navigation, type or paste your URL into the box, and hit Apply.

6. Infographic Resumes

If you are in an industry where an infographic resume would benefit you, take a look at Canva’s offerings. The layouts are clean, professional, and help highlight your skills, experience, and accomplishments in numerous ways.

For example, you can choose a resume layout that shows off your skills using a one to five scale. Or, you can pick one that has a set spot for awards you have received. And remember, if you like a layout but not the placement of the elements, just click to rearrange them.

You can select entire blocks of elements to move or use the Ungroup button from the top to separate what’s inside. If you ever make a change that you don’t like, just hit that Undo button on the top-left navigation.

7. Gift Certificates

Maybe your business sells gift certificates. You can design them for holidays, seasons, or all year round. For dining, drinks, or other types of gifts, there is a large collection of layouts.

You don’t have to just use the gift certificate layouts for that, you can also create coupons to hand out to your customers. If you are offering a discount on your services, Canva gives you a great way to advertise it.

Another feature that’s convenient for gift certificates is that you can order prints directly from Canva. Just pick your print format, choose your print options, and begin your order. You will see the pricing right up front, which is awesome.

8. Yearbook Covers

If you are in charge of your school’s yearbook cover, then you’re in luck. Canva has layouts that your yearbook committee will love.

You can simply choose a layout and update the cover for your school or go all out and pay for a complete theme. This is a nice option that includes a table of contents, photo spots, and an autograph page at the end.

Note that some yearbook cover layouts may not be free. But this is easy to see when you hover your mouse over the pages of the theme because a dollar sign will appear on those you’ll have to pay for.

9. CD Covers

For musicians, the perfect album cover is essential and Canva has layouts for all music types. Pick from genres like symphonies, metal, lullabies, or country.

The sharing options could come in handy for getting your fellow band members opinions on it. Click the Share button from the top, add the email addresses, and then select either Can edit or Can view. This is a wonderful way to collaborate with others on the design.

10. Restaurant Menus

Do you need a little help designing a menu for your shop, cafe, or restaurant? Then look no further because Canva has great menu choices.

From decadent desserts to tasty ales, designing your menu is easy. Since you can edit or delete each element, group or ungroup them, and rotate or resize the boxes, you have full flexibility. And note that if you have a longer menu, you can click the Add a new page button to keep on creating.

Get Creative With Canva

As you can see, Canva offers much more than designs for logos, social media posts, collages, and banners. And the best part is that you don’t need any kind of design experience. The tool is so simple to use that you can create professional looking designs in a instant.

Some would rather live behind bars

The news that an Uber self-driving vehicle has killed a pedestrian in the US has made headlines around the world.

It’s a reminder that the era of self-driving cars is fast approaching. Decades of research into advanced sensors, mapping, navigation, and control methods have now come to fruition and autonomous cars are starting to hit the roads in pilot trials.

But partial or full autonomy raises the question of who is to blame in the case of an accident involving a self-driving car?

 

There is no greater polluter than government. There is no greater destroyer of peace than government. There is no greater destroyer of human life than government. Below is an example of the type of thing that happens when the state takes over all facets of life.

The insanity and the fundamental impossibility of a “planned economy/society” was a lesson most of the West had learned. But unfortunately there are now people who again flirt with “socialism.” It is a shame, but understandable. People want to believe in heaven on earth. Some people have to believe. Thing is, humans can’t bring heaven on earth. But they certainly CAN bring hell.

Statism comes in many forms, regular socialism, National Socialism (Nazis),  theocracy, crony capitalism, and many others. But in all of these philosophies there is the exaltation of the state over the individual. There is a crony class (of one sort or another) and there are the everyday people who are exploited and who suffer.

Would you believe that this trip to Memphis wasn’t originally going to include a visit to a new-to-us barbecue place? Well, that just wouldn’t do. This trip to Memphis was going to be a relatively short one. Marie’s sister was getting married, and the schedule was pretty packed with family time. So we rolled into … Continue reading Charlie Vergos’ Rendezvous, Memphis TN

Gregorio, one of the inhabitants of The Far West collective.

Beatrix’s wooden cabin. She is the only American woman living in the ZAD.

“It’s not easy living at a protest site, with almost no electricity and drinkable water,” the Belgian photographer Kevin Faingnaert tells me. “But somehow it was magic for me.” This past summer, he spent a month in the ZAD (“zone à défendre” or “zone to defend”), a camp in Notre-Dame-des-Landes in France that operates outside of the law.

Environmental activists and local farmers first occupied these 4,000 acres of countryside in 2009 to resist plans to build an airport. Since then, it’s evolved into an organized community of some 300 people, who grow their own produce and raise their own animals. Residents have access to a pirate radio station as well as a weekly newspaper, and entertainment venues include theaters and a local brewery. There are regular council meetings. According to Faingnaert, people settle in the ZAD for personal as well as political reasons. The farmers stay because this land is precious to them and always has been. Others have joined because they want to lead a sustainable life outside of mainstream, capitalist society. Some are escaping difficult pasts.

But residents pay a hefty price for their freedom. “In October 2012, the government launched Operation Cesar, where thousands of armed police spent several weeks attempting to evict the Zadists,” Faingnaert reports. Operation Cesar failed following a public display of support for the ZAD, but the clashes with authorities have taken a toll. “The French republic considers them terrorists to the state,” the photographer explains.

The ZAD might be built on utopian ideals, but it’s also had to survive hostile circumstances, and it shows. Outsiders, especially people in the media, are not generally welcome. After an initial visit with a friend, Faingnaert was hesitant to jump into the project feet-first. “Honestly, I always was to afraid to return for a longer period of time,” he admits. “There’s something intimidating when entering the ZAD: the barricades, the make-shift towers, the people who are always suspicious, the anti-journalist signs, and the continuous threat of a hard police eviction.”

In the beginning, Faingnaert put his camera aside. “The first few weeks I didn’t take any pictures at all,” he stresses. “I spent my first weeks just hanging around the zone and helping out where I could. I spent a lot of days working on the field. Planting leaks and potatoes, cleaning the library, cooking and doing dishes, repairing a cabin. I even went out dumpster-diving with a couple of guys.” After hard days of work, he was invited into people’s homes for a drink or a meal. He slept in a squatted farm or in a tent in the field. He built bonds, and he established trust.

In early 2018, Emmanuel Macron announced the end of the plans to build the airport, and while this is a victory for the Zadists and their cause, their futures aren’t guaranteed. “For most of the Zadists, fighting against the construction of the airport is just part one of their mission,” the photographer says. “Part two [is] to be recognized as a lawless state in the republic of France. They plan to stay there.” The threat of eviction or arrest hasn’t gone. “I was never at all tempted to join their struggle and their lifestyle,” Faingnaert confesses when I ask him directly.

Still, that’s not to say he didn’t feel enchanted by the place and its lawlessness. In some ways, his camera was a pretext for something larger. Diane Arbus famously said, “Photography was a license to go whenever I wanted and to do what I wanted to do.” I see traces of that same sentiment when Faingnaert tells me, “A camera, or a photography project, gives me certain kind of excuse to get close to people, to hear them talk. It gives me a reason to be there.” He remembers his time at the ZAD as eerie and magical. “At times, I couldn’t believe I was in France,” he tells me.

Faingnaert created The ZAD as part of the 2017 Joop Swart Masterclass by World Press Photo.

A wrecked car in the forest

A decorated trunk near the entrance of the Far West collective in the forest. It is built to scare off police and journalists.

The ZAD reception at La Rolandière, where first time visitors can receive more information about the ZAD. On the wall is a map which shows the occupied zone and the different collectives along the territory.

The interior of the communal kitchen of the Maquis collective

Schopy, who is the oldest inhabitant of the ZAD.

Le Tour, a tower which Alex has built from only found wood. He and his dog live in the tower until his mud house is finished.

Marcel Thebault, one of the farmers who refuse to leave the ground. He and his wife still work on the farm every day. “They can do to me whatever they want, as long as I can milk my cows and a truck can collect the milk.”

Louis and Manza presenting weekly news concerning the ZAD at Radio Klaxon, the pirate radio of the zone.

Cédric’s cabin at the 100 Noms collective

Alex’s cave, who has single-handedly dug a 6m deep hole in the ground to get fresh water out of the earth.

Iris, who lives near Notre-Dame-des-Landes and comes to help at the protest site of the ZAD as much as possible

The 12 meters high make-shift lookout tower of the Bellish collective.

All images © Kevin Faingnaert

The post Welcome to The ZAD, a Community of the Fringes of French Society appeared first on Feature Shoot.

Filed under: Aftermarket,Design/Style,Jeep,Crossover,SUV,Classics,Concept Cars,Off-Road

It's Easter time, and that means it's time for the 52nd Annual Moab Easter Jeep Safari, held March 24 through April 1, where thousands of off-roaders crawl, scrape and scramble over the rugged trails of Moab, Utah. And that brings us to this year's colorful collection of Jeep concepts, custom-built by FCA for the occasion.

Continue reading Jeep delivers basketful of concepts for the Moab Easter Jeep Safari

Jeep delivers basketful of concepts for the Moab Easter Jeep Safari originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 20 Mar 2018 11:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink |  Email this |  Comments

People commonly send up cameras on weather balloons these days to shoot photos and videos from extreme altitudes, but one Russian man recently did something different: he flew a camera drone to 33,000 feet (~10km).

The pilot, Денис Корякин, was flying a hobbyist drone that weighs 2.34 pounds (1.06kg) and has a flight time of 25 minutes.

Helicomicro reports that unlike many countries around the world, Russia’s drone regulations don’t specify a maximum height an operator can fly to. There’s no GPS data visible in the footage, but it was reportedly shot near the central town of Strezhevoy, Russia.

But just because the flight may have been legal in Russia doesn’t mean it was safe. The altitude of 33,000 feet is smack dab in the middle of the cruising altitude range of modern airliners (~30,000 to 40,000 feet). And although it’s highly unlikely that a drone would collide with an airplane in the vastness of airspace, any collision could be tragic.

“One can easily imagine that a collision at this speed and height, as unlikely as it may be, would have catastrophic effects,” writes Helicomicro. “At Helicomicro, we are very clear about this: we condemn this type of flight, without reservation. Aviation security prevails.”

In 2016, a drone pilot in the Netherlands was criticized and labeled an “idiot” online for flying a DJI camera drone to 11,000 feet. The altitude limit (without special permissions) in that country is 394 feet.

(via Helicomicro via Fstoppers)

These industrial ruins offer an up-close encounter with a cement plant that spurred the use of a new type of building material out west. Though the plant was short-lived, its legacy has endured thanks to both buildings it left behind and the ones its product help build.

In 1880, the Portland Cement Plant opened in San Antonio, becoming the first plant of its kind west of the Mississippi River. It was built to dig and process blue argillaceous limestone, which was believed to be a natural cement rock. The business grew throughout the 1880s until it became the Alamo Cement Company.

The cement processed on this spot helped build the Texas State Capitol building in Austin, as well as many other prominent structures around the state. But by 1908, the resources at the site had already been depleted. The company changed places, abandoning the plant as it moved on to more lucrative grounds.

The giant smoke stack, which was built in 1889, still remains, even though its days of sending smoke and steam billowing into the air are long gone. Several of the smaller buildings are boarded up and have plants growing out of their roofs, proof that nature is trying to reclaim the site. Wandering around the ruins reveals graffiti like names and love notes carved into the bricks. A peek through the windows of the buildings offers a glimpse of some original cement processing equipment.

The cement plant left more in its wake than just these ruins. The company also abandoned its enormous quarry, which was later transformed into the Japanese Tea Garden.

The largest lighting producer in the world just announced it's getting into the internet-making light game.

Here’s an unusual way to decorate a wall with photos: the Lithuanian design studio Gyva Grafika printed photos of apartment windows onto tiles. Once installed, they make any wall look like a Soviet-era concrete apartment block.

Here’s a closer look at the tiles, which each show a different window (and sometimes residents):

The Calvert Journal reports that the tiles were installed in the bathroom at the Galeria Urbana bar in Kaunas, Lithuania.

It’s “an idea to bring outside inside,” Gyva Grafika says.

---

Image credits: Photographs by Gyva Grafika

Had enough of Google and want to switch away from it for good? These are the best alternatives for all the major Google programs and services.

Since its debut in 1997, Google has consistently launched new apps and services that change how we use technology. Most of them are really good too, and so you end up using Google apps by default for several needs.

But all of these free services do cost something: privacy. Google is notorious for collecting and storing data on you. So if you’re concerned about privacy, it’s a good idea to switch from Google services to their best alternatives.

1. Ditch Google Search, Use DuckDuckGo

Duck Duck Go is all about privacy while giving you as good of a search experience as Google does. You actually won’t miss Google Search if you switch, and in fact, you’ll find exclusive DuckDuckGo features that Google doesn’t have. The keyboard shortcuts alone are reason enough to use it.

2. Ditch Gmail, Use Outlook.com

Gmail has long been the best email service you can use, but there has been one good contender since Microsoft revamped Outlook.com.

The new Outlook.com is packed with features and accomplishes almost everything Gmail offers. In fact, some of its unique built-in features are better than what Gmail gives you, like the ability to make alias emails and how it helps you achieve inbox zero.

3. Ditch Google Maps, Use Here WeGo

This is one service where Google is still far ahead of any competitors. Waze, Maps.me, Apple Maps, and other map services do the basics well but aren’t as feature-filled as Google Maps. For now, the best alternative is Here WeGo. The maps are as accurate as Google’s own, and live traffic information is updated as regularly too.

4. Ditch Google Docs, Use Office Online

Google’s Docs, Sheets, and Slides make an excellent productivity suite, but why use those when you can get the original office suite, Microsoft Office, for free? Docs and Word are both as good, but when it comes to Excel Online, Microsoft’s offering is miles ahead of Google. And there are plenty of other reasons to use Office Online, including the fact that it works with Dropbox too.

5. Ditch Google Drive, Use Dropbox

Google Drive gives you more free space than Dropbox, but don’t forget, Dropbox has been doing this for a lot longer than Google has. Plus, it’s a company with only one job: cloud storage. That’s a little more reassuring than someone like Google or Microsoft, who have diverse interests.

6. Ditch Google Alerts, Use Talkwalker Alerts or Mention

Google Alerts is excellent to track any word popping up on a new page on the internet, especially in news. There are two excellent alternatives for this. Talkwalker Alerts is a free service that mimics Google Alerts, and even offers an RSS feed. But if you don’t mind paying, Mention is better at monitoring news as well as social media. In fact, it’s better than Google Alerts.

7. Ditch Google News, Use Yahoo News

Google News doesn’t make news of its own, but aggregates articles from various publications. Ideally, you should switch to a proper news organization to read news that is censorship-free. But if you want a similar experience as Google News, then Yahoo News is the oldest and best alternative news aggregator, while also adding its original articles into the mix.

8. Ditch Google Calendar, Use Fruux

If Microsoft hadn’t bought and shut down Sunrise, that would be the best calendar around today. But now that it’s gone, Fruux is the perfect Google Calendar alternative. It’s cross-platform, works mostly like GCal does, and integrates with other sites and apps too. This actually lets you use a single calendar for events from Outlook, Gmail, Facebook, and other services. Not bad, eh?

9. Ditch Google Translate, Use Microsoft Translator

I never thought I’d see a day where some app is better than Google Translate, but you need to check out Microsoft Translator to believe how good it is. This is one app which you should switch to right now, whether you hate Google or not. And hey, it works really well as an add-on for Microsoft Edge too.

10. Ditch Google Chrome, Use Opera

If you’re still using Google Chrome, you need a reality check. Forget about alternatives like Edge and Firefox, every Chrome user should make the switch to Opera. It’s pretty much like using Chrome, but better, since it comes with several useful built-in features like VPN and battery-saving mode. Plus you can install Chrome extensions on Opera, so you won’t miss out on your favorite add-ons. I switched and I’m never going back.

11. Ditch Google Domains, Use Flame Domain

Google Domains lets you buy and register domains, manage them, add email, and even turn them into short URLs. But you don’t necessarily need Google Domains to do all that. There are plenty of sites which let you do all this, but try out Flame Domain for an interface and experience similar to Google’s. Plus, it works really well with Google Apps.

12. Ditch Google Sites, Use Weebly

You don’t need to be a web developer to make your own page with Google Sites. But there are other (and better) website creators for non-coders, like Weebly. Just check out some of these awesome Weebly web pages to see the possibilities with this free website creator.

13. Ditch FeedBurner, Use FeedBlitz

Since Google bought FeedBurner, the RSS creator for sites, webmasters have been looking for good alternatives. FeedBlitz should be your first stop. It gives you everything FeedBurner does, including automated newsletters and statistics. It’s not free, but you will pay only as much as you use. The pricing is sensible in that it increases only as your subscriber base increases. And importantly, you aren’t charged extra for features like mailings, funnels, and lists. If you absolutely don’t want to pay, then check out these free FeedBurner alternatives.

14. Ditch Google Groups, Use Facebook Groups or Mobilize

Google Groups let you create private discussion groups. It’s the same concept as Facebook Groups or Mobilize, but both these alternatives give you many more features. You will get instant messaging, analytics, event management, and other such abilities that are essential to managing a large group. Unfortunately, to use Google Groups, Facebook Groups, or Mobilize, you need to register for an account on their respective sites. Sigh…

15. Ditch Google Photos, Use Amazon Prime Photos

The new Google Photos is the best photo management app around. Nothing else matches up, but the only one to come close for a regular user is Amazon Prime Photos, which offers similar unlimited photo storage and sharing. All you need is an Amazon Prime account, so it’s not technically free. But hey, why would you not have a Prime account anyway?

Are You Scared of Google?

It’s convenient to use Google for all your needs, but don’t forget, this is a corporation. How much do you really trust it with your data and private information? It’s advisable to diversify your needs across several apps than under one brand.

Are you scared of what Google would do with your data, or do you trust Google to do the right thing?

John Surtees is a racing legend, having won multiple motorcycle World Championships and claiming the F1 driver's title for Ferrari in 1964. Fresh off winning the 500cc title with MV...

Visit Uncrate for the full post.

Tom Harrison knew the gun itself wasn’t worth a ton of money. A Stevens 20-gauge side-by-side with double triggers, manufactured during the 1940s in Utica, New York, it was of a kind typically bought from a hardware store or a catalogue in those days. But for Harrison, an accountant in the quail capital of Thomasville, Georgia, and an adjunct professor at Florida State University in Tallahassee, the gun had a different kind of value.

The Stevens originally belonged to his late grandfather Andrew Thomas Harrison, who passed it down to Harrison’s father, Tommy, who passed it down to him. “The gun takes me back to my childhood,” says Tom, who is now forty-five. “When I’m quail hunting, I feel like I’m channeling my grandfather through it. It’s really magical.”

Andrew Thomas Harrison grew up on the old Turkey Run quail plantation in Tallahassee, which was managed by his father, Thomas, who went by Toy. Tom remembers his grandfather taking him there as a boy, parking himself and the Stevens under a tree, one barrel loaded with buckshot for deer, the other with bird shot for squirrel.

It became Tom’s gun when he turned twelve, and while he’s owned many other bird guns since, there’s still nothing that quite compares to shooting the Stevens. Though for health reasons his father no longer hunts, he’ll often text to ask how Tom did with it.

The answer usually is pretty darn well, even if until recently the gun resembled an Industrial Age relic. Rust spotted the 28-inch barrels and the stark receiver. The tight choke constrictions could get you a squirrel at forty paces, but for flushing coveys, the narrow pattern delivered little margin for error. Worse, the stock, extruded from a pseudo-wood plastic called Tenite, had vibrated loose—for the wobbly effect of shooting from a canoe. But Harrison could still down quail faster with that antique farm implement than some shooters sporting $30,000 bird guns.

“I get lazy shooting my Beretta,” he admits. “My Stevens? I don’t want to have a bad day with it.”

But though the gun had served Harrison well for more than thirty years, he knew the old Stevens would need some work. He brought it to Lance Farlow, who owns Dark Horse Armory, housed in a 1915 bank building in nearby Metcalfe, Georgia. While the gun needed to be safe, he asked Farlow to keep it as close as possible to his boyhood memories.

Farlow replaced the shaky Tenite with American walnut, finished with traditional boiled linseed oil. Staying faithful to the original, he didn’t add checkering to the stock or the fore-end. He cleaned and oiled the steel components but left them as they were per Harrison’s instructions. As a final touch, Farlow added a brass grip cap initialed ATH—Andrew Thomas Harrison.

Tom took the restored gun on its inaugural hunt this past quail season at Southern Woods Plantation in Sylvester, Georgia. Joining him was his eldest son, Thomas Harrison III, a senior in high school. It was the perfect time to deliver the news he’d had in mind all along.

“When we were out hunting on that trip, I promised him three things in life,” Tom says. “A good name, a college education, and the Stevens.” 

The post Granddad’s Gun appeared first on Garden & Gun.

“We’re church people,” Aaron Leach says when I ask how his family came to run a soul café on the edge of the North Memphis neighborhood known as Smokey City, once thick with factories and working-class families. “When I got called to the church, my mother started cooking.” One of six children born to Jimmie and Baxter Leach, who moved from Schlater, Mississippi, to Memphis in the late 1950s, Aaron smiles wide as he calculates the fare for my plate of braised oxtails, brothy pinto beans, stumpy okra pods, and crunchy-rimmed cornbread muffins.

The matter is settled, says that enveloping grin. But the story of Ms. Girlee’s, a celadon-walled café with a mint-and-white checkerboard floor, set on a pilgrimage-worthy superblock of three soul food standouts and a hot-tamale truck, isn’t that simple. To understand how a storefront restaurant in a strip dominated by a barber college and two beauty salons became a Memphis institution requires fluency in labor history and knowledge of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s late-career push for economic justice.

Drawn to Memphis by the February 1968 deaths of sanitation workers Echol Cole and Robert Walker, crushed in the malfunctioning bin of a garbage truck to which they had retreated for shelter during a rainstorm, King visited the city three times in March and April of that year to support a strike called by their colleagues. And then, on April 4, as King stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, James Earl Ray fired a single deadly rifle shot that shook the movement and challenged the promise of nonviolent social change.

Sanitation workers’ wages at the time were stiflingly low. Hefting tin garbage pails that trickled with muck and swarmed with maggots, black men in Memphis worked with little to no chance of promotion and scant medical and bereavement benefits. Many earned such a low wage that, even after working sixty-hour-plus weeks, they still qualified for welfare.

The deaths of Cole and Walker, and the realization that the city would not financially support their families, exposed a frayed nerve in black Memphis. “[They] would give you handouts,” said sanitation worker Clinton Burrows. “We had just got tired of those handouts. You almost could tell a worker when you saw him in the streets. He either had a hat on too large or his shoes were too big or his coat was too long…”

Baxter Leach was one of the workers who walked off his job to march in the streets of Memphis, holding high a sign printed with a simple and profound declaration: i am a man. “I got Maced,” he recalled recently. “I got teargassed. I got run like a rabbit, police behind me.” He was in the audience when King spoke on March 18, declaring, “If America does not use her vast resources of wealth to end poverty and make it possible for all of God’s children to have the basic necessities of life, she too will go to hell.”

This was not the mild, reconciling King often celebrated today. “Never forget that freedom is not something that is voluntarily given by the oppressor,” he said that March night, his voice spiraling upward to meet the shouts of
the sanitation workers. “Freedom is not some lavish dish that the power structure and the white forces in policy-making positions will voluntarily hand out on a silver platter while the Negro merely furnishes the appetite.”

Jimmie Leach, Baxter’s wife, often arrives first at Ms. Girlee’s. On Thursday and Friday mornings, when she leads the crew, Jimmie ties on her apron before five. Early in her career, to help their son Aaron build a brick church, she baked and sold pound cakes and caramel cakes. She opened a neighborhood restaurant in 1983. And she soon began to fry chicken and smother greens like her grandmother had cooked back home in Schlater, where the family had sharecropped.

On Tuesdays, diners queue for fried chicken, nutmeg sweet potatoes, and hashed turnip greens. On Thursdays, gooey pigs’ feet and crusty macaroni and cheese and peach cobbler draw pilgrims. Each Friday, Ms. Girlee’s fries buffalo fish and catfish and cooks spaghetti and meatballs. That combination of fish and spaghetti is a soul-café hallmark in Arkansas, Mississippi, and western Tennessee. So are butter rolls, a sort of countrified bread-pudding dessert, baked here only on Wednesdays.

Eight Leach family members work here daily. Enkia Anita Leach Hilliard, who calls customers niece and nephew, animates the café. She’s the compassionate businesswoman who stays late to dish discounted five-dollar plates of fried chicken and two vegetables, the devoted neighbor who freezes the leftovers and delivers bereavement platters to mourning community members.

Enkia is a daughter of Jimmie and Baxter Leach. That makes her a sister of Aaron, who works the register here and who has served the True Gospel Church of Deliverance since 1980. Seated before a platter of pork neck bones and saucers of fried corn and sweet lima beans, I watch as twenty-odd men from the Memphis Baptist Ministerial Association amble in. Dressed in deep-brown suits, accessorized with purple ties, shod in two-tone spectators that flash beneath overhead fluorescents, they convene here once a week to sop potlikker and fork slabs of meat loaf and spend their money with fellow church people.

Thirty-plus years after Jimmie Leach opened her first café, church ties still bind Ms. Girlee’s to its customers. Five days a week, locals like Carl Greer, who once drove a city bus and ministers at a nearby church, file to the steam table, alongside reprints of the placards Baxter Leach carried and contemporary signs for baby shea-cocoa butter and rice bran cooking oil, refined in Arkansas. (The Leaches fry exclusively in rice bran oil; Enkia says it cuts indigestion.)

During the civil rights movement, cafés like this one were clubhouses where preachers and activists plotted liberation strategies. The issues—including gentrification, job training and access, and predatory policing—are different today. But the Leach family still sets a welcome table here in Smokey City.

The 1968 strike, the assassination of King, and the riots that followed changed the path of our nation. More specifically, those events changed the path of Memphis. For the first time, a coalition of labor and civil rights activists worked in lockstep. Sixty-five days after protests began, the Memphis City Council accepted many of the sanitation workers’ demands, including the right to fund a union and access to promotions.

Ahead of the strike’s fiftieth anniversary this year, the National Civil Rights Museum, set in the repurposed Lorraine Motel, updated its exhibits to project footage of protesters on the side of a vintage garbage truck. More recently, current and retired sanitation workers turned the dirt at a groundbreaking for I Am A Man Plaza, set next to the historic Clayborn Temple, the organizing point for many sanitation worker strike initiatives.

Despite those developments, the best place in Memphis to commune with those workers and connect with King’s drive for economic justice may be Ms. Girlee’s Soul Food, where neck bones hang heavy with tender threads of pork, and fat pintos bob with pulled turkey meat, where dignity is forever on the menu and schoolteachers and preachers and working-class folk gather daily beneath signs that read, I AM A MAN. 

The post A Soul Food Beacon in Memphis appeared first on Garden & Gun.