Author: Erich Stauffer

  • I Can Build You an Online Store Website for Your Home Safety Products Business

    If you’re looking for help to make a website as an online store for your home safety products business, Market Jack, an ecommerce consultant company, can help you with that.

    Let’s say you sell home safety products (Fire extinguishers, sensors etc), CCTV, insurance, and digital courses. I’d make the e-commerce website have 2 main sections:

    1. For people who know exactly what they want to buy, its a simple online store where the can browse by category, select items to add to basket and proceed to payment.
    2. For people who want the website to help them choose what is needed to protect their home, will be asked questions like this:
    • Do you live in a house of an apartment?
    • How many rooms?
    • Do you have a kitchen?
    • How many doors from outside?
    • Do you have a garden?

    And based on the answers, I can have the website suggest a proposal like:

    You need the following:

    • 3 CCTV Cameras.
    • 2 Fire extingushers.
    • 5 Smoke detectors.
    • Home insurance (plan A)
    • a Training Course (Type A)

    The solutions will be based on the data supplied by the customers, and the website would allow you to modify the questions, and the results based on them.

    The website would not use any external subscription or depend on an external website. Integration with our Payment gateway is also within scope, we will link you with the provider to integrate.

  • A Day in Gatlinburg, Tennessee and the Smoky Mountains

    There is so much to do when visiting Gatlinburg, Tennessee! I ate lunch at No Way Jose’s, visited the Ripley’s Aquarium, visited the Appalachian trail at Newfound Gap, and went to Ripley’s Believe it or Not. Will I ride the SkyLift to the top of the mountain?

    I Visited Gatlinburg, Tennessee! Will I Ride the SkyLift?

    Amazon affiliate links:

  • We Found an Abandoned Pipe Organ in an Old Church! Does it Work?

    My ex-wife was remodeling an old church into apartments and found an old pipe organ, but does it work?

    See what happens when we climbed inside:

  • How to Use an External Microphone with an iPhone or iPad

    In order for an analog, external microphone to work with an iPhone or iPad, it must have 3 conductors (sometimes called a “3 conductor” or “3 pole plug”) or it must use an adapter to convert a 2-conductor plug to a 3-conductor plug.

    Affiliate links are below to buy adapters and mics from the video. 1/8 inch Adapters that Convert 2-Poles to 3-Poles:

    Native, External Microphones that Work with iPhone or iPad:

    The above links to Amazon are affiliate links. I earn a commission from Amazon if you use the links, but it doesn’t cost you anything extra.

  • Deliberate Practice

    Psychologist K. Anders Ericsson, a professor of Psychology at Florida State University, has been a pioneer in researching deliberate practice and what it means. According to Ericsson:

    People believe that because expert performance is qualitatively different from normal performance the expert performer must be endowed with characteristics qualitatively different from those of normal adults. […] We agree that expert performance is qualitatively different from normal performance and even that expert performers have characteristics and abilities that are qualitatively different from or at least outside the range of those of normal adults. However, we deny that these differences are immutable, that is, due to innate talent. Only a few exceptions, most notably height, are genetically prescribed. Instead, we argue that the differences between expert performers and normal adults reflect a life-long period of deliberate effort to improve performance in a specific domain.[3]

    One of Ericsson’s core findings is that how expert one becomes at a skill has more to do with how one practices than with merely performing a skill a large number of times. An expert breaks down the skills that are required to be expert and focuses on improving those skill chunks during practice or day-to-day activities, often paired with immediate coaching feedback. Another important feature of deliberate practice lies in continually practising a skill at more challenging levels with the intention of mastering it.[4] Deliberate practice is also discussed in the books Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin[5] and The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle,[6] among others.

    Two recent articles in Current Directions in Psychological Science criticize deliberate practice and argue that, while it is necessary for reaching high levels of performance, it is not sufficient, with other factors such as talent being important as well.[7][8]
    Behavioral versus cognitive theories of deliberate practice

    Behavioral theory would argue that deliberate practice is facilitated by feedback from an expert that allows for successful approximation of the target performance. Feedback from an expert allows the learner to minimize errors and frustration that results from trial-and-error attempts. Behavioral theory does not require delivery of rewards for accurate performance; the expert feedback in combination with the accurate performance serve as the consequences that establish and maintain the new performance.

    In cognitive theory, excellent performance results from practising complex tasks that produce errors. Such errors provide the learner with rich feedback that results in scaffolding for future performance. Cognitive theory explains how a learner can become an expert (or someone who has mastered a domain).[4]
    Deliberate practice in medical education

    Duvivier et al. reconstructed the concept of deliberate practice into practical principles to describe the process as it relates to clinical skill acquisition. They defined deliberate practice as:

    repetitive performance of intended cognitive or psychomotor skills.
    rigorous skills assessment
    specific information feedback
    better skills performance[9]

    They further described the personal skills learners need to exhibit at various stages of skill development in order to be successful in developing their clinical skills. This includes:

    planning (organize work in a structured way).
    concentration/dedication (higher attention span)
    repetition/revision (strong tendency to practice)
    study style/self reflection (tendency to self-regulate learning)[9]

    While the study only included medical students, the authors found that repetitious practice may only help the novice learner (year 1) because as expertise is developed, the learner must focus and plan their learning around specific deficiencies. Curriculum must be designed to develop students’ ability to plan their learning as they progress in their careers.

    Finally, the findings in the study also have implications for developing self-regulated behaviors in students. Initially, a medical student may need focused feedback from instructors; however, as they progress, they must develop the ability to self-assess.
    Practice as maintenance

    Skills fade with non-use.[citation needed] The phenomenon is often referred to as being “out of practice”. Practice is therefore performed (on a regular basis) to keep skills and abilities honed.

  • Breakfast Club Me

    How my goals for the year and what I had been practicing helped me make videos for BCM.
    How society was changing and nudging me along: How McDonalds came all day breakfast
    Tshirt business post I wrote in march and how BCM had a t-shirt as it’s first product
    Lays biscuit and gravy chips was a Noblesville Indiana winner
    How I’m known as a Sandwich and breakfast guy around my friends and how it’s part of my personal brand
    How I wrote that Everything I know about breakfast post
    How I made Seektivity specifically to find biscuits and gravy
    How I rank for the post, Does Hardee’s serve breakfast at night
    How Skinny sells honey and coffee and how that business model is similar to Hatchery.co
    How I Bought mixedmade honey to try before starting BCM
    How my Friend wanted to start a coffee subscription business but didn’t
    How I started a raw materials company but didn’t do anything with it
    Talk about why I bought a Biscuit logo to start and then made a yellow plate logo on Canva – why the change
    30 days to first product launch – a ‘biscuits’ t-shirt
    Creating gift boxes for Christmas – how it doubled as product development
    Building out social media, email, and videos – how I was Instagram-first
    How I started using the logo as a layover to images using an app called Pronto

  • Downtown: The Musical

    This jukebox musical is a playlist on Spotify. I’ve weaved a story out of the following pop songs. It’s something I do for fun. This particular musical is a response to Uptown: The Musical. At the bottom of this post are links to other rock musicals I’ve done in the same way.

    [Act I]

    1. Downtown by Macklemore –
    2. Trouble by Iggy Azalea –
    3. Want to Want Me by Jason DeRulo –

    [Act II]

     

    If you like this, you might also like:

  • Uptown Funk: The Musical

    Uptown Funk by Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars (definitely the first song): Father is a pimp at the top of his game, walking through uptown to great fanfare

    Love You by The Free Design: A baby is sang to by family over time, 10 years pass over the course of the song

    One Man Can Change The World by Big Sean, Kanye West, and John Legend: Father sings to his son.

    FourFiveSeconds by Rihanna, Kanye West, and Paul McCartney: Father is in a low part of his life and the neighborhood has gone downhilll around them.

    See You Again (feat. Charlie Puth) by Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth: Father sings to his son and then leaves him. 10 years go by.

    Where Are U Now by Jack U, Skrillex, Diplo, and Justin Bieber: Son sings to his father, who never came back.

    I Bet My Life by Imagine Dragons

    Lose It (In the End) by Mark Ronson and The Business Intl (definitely the last song)

     

  • The Adjacent Possible

    In Cal Newport’s book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love, of which Haden’s article is about, Cal talks about the “adjacent possible”, which is:

    A term taken from the science writer Steven Johnson, who took it from Stuart Kauffman, that helps explain the origins of innovation. Johnson notes that the next big ides in any field are typically found right beyond the current cutting edge, in the adjacent space that contains the possible new combinations of existing ideas. The key observation is that you have to get to the cutting edge of a field before its adjacent possible – and the innovations it contains – becomes visible.

    I felt this book was a good example of that for me because I was just about to write something similar. It seems this is possible because Cal and I both have similar reading habits and a desire to find out how to do what we love. This book builds on principals from Seth Godin, Malcolm Gladwell, Derek Sivers, Daniel Pink, and Reid Hoffman. I will admit that I was a believer in the “passion mindset” and although I thought I was a hard worker, I tended to avoid the mental strain Cal talks about that’s so important to deliberately practice in order to build career capital (these are two terms Cal introduces). This book really does a good job of turning the passion mindset on it’s head while giving you solid, practical advice about how to get the things you want in a job: control/autonomy. The bad news is that it takes a long time, will hurt, and requires a lot of work.

    Talk about CIV and UFO Defense

    CIV Tech Tree

    XCOM UFO Defense Research

    I’m on the cusp of formulating a new way to think about intelligence

    I’m thinking about this in terms of a presentation, rather than a blog post, but the general idea is that one way to measure intelligence is a person or system’s ability to cross-reference ideas.

    Logic Puzzles

    When you were a child, you may have been asked to fill out simple logic puzzles in math class. They were simple rows and columns and a couple of sentences, which you had to fill in using logic.

    Imagine if all ideas in the world occupied both all of the columns and all of the rows in a giant logic puzzle and the more ideas are learned, the more columns and rows are added to this puzzle. It is from this idea that I present the following stories.

    The Rosetta Stone

    Despite being discovered in 1799 by Napoleon’s troops in Egypt, it wasn’t until 1822 that a man named Champollion was able to decode the Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the middle portion Demotic script.

    He was only able to do this by cross-referencing not just the Ancient Greek, but also Ancient Coptic and other hieroglyphs found at that time. It was this cross-language connections that ultimately helped decrypt the language.

    The First Web App

    In 1995 Paul Graham, founder of Y-Combinator, wanted to write an e-commerce application, but didn’t want to write it for Windows. After seeing an advertisement for Netscape, he had an idea to try running his Unix application in a browser.

    In order for Graham to create Viaweb as the first web app, Netscape, the World Wide Web, the Internet, and Unix all had to be in place first. It was from these technologies that allowed The Adjacent Possible to occur.

    The Adjacent Possible

    Innovation in any field are typically found right beyond the current cutting edge, in the adjacent space that contains the possible new combinations of existing ideas. The cutting edge has to exist in a field before its adjacent possible – and the innovations it contains – becomes visible.

    This explains why things like the discovery of oxygen or DNA occur at the same time around the world because the tools available to do so become available. However, the existence of technology is not enough, the person has to have the intelligence to connect the pieces together.

    The Wright Brothers

    By the time The Wright Brothers started working on powered flight, “flight” by gliders was already a thing. The problem was not ‘lift’ – the mechanics of that were known. The problem was in maintaining flight and controlling the aircraft.

    Because The Wright Brothers were avid tinkers and ran a bicycle shop, they were able to apply ideas from how a bicycle maneuvers through space and recent developments from lightweight aluminum engines to overcome powered flight.

    What is Intelligence?

    The ability to cross-reference ideas requires both the knowledge of the ideas and the ability to recall and compare those ideas to each other. The ability to do this as a human generally requires expert domain knowledge or the cross-pollination of ideas across domains in a more holistic view, but some level of depth is required in at least one domain.

    Compare this to a computer program that could be programmed to compare ideas at a massive scale. Every time a new paper is published or a new gadget is created, the ‘rows’ and ‘columns’ get bigger and every previous idea can now be compared. The results from a computer program doing this task in a holistic way may result in ideas and outcomes that a human would never come to on their own.

    Uploaded on Apr 14, 2008
    Lawrence Barsalou PhD Emory University. The human conceptual system contains categorical knowledge that supports online processing (perception, categorization, inference, action) and offline processing (memory, language, thought). Semantic memory, the dominant theory of the conceptual system, typically portrays it as modular, amodal, abstractive, and static. Alternatively, the conceptual system can be viewed as non-modular, modal, situated, and dynamic. According to this latter perspective, the conceptual system is non-modular and modal because it shares representational mechanisms with modality-specific systems in the brain, such as vision, action, and emotion. On a given occasion, modality-specific information about a category’s members is reenacted in relevant modality-specific systems to represent it conceptually. Furthermore, these simulations are situated, preparing the conceptualizer for situated action with the category. Not only do these situated simulations represent the target category, they also represent background settings, actions, and mental states, thereby placing the conceptualizer in the simulation, prepared for goal pursuit. Because the optimal conceptualization of a category varies across different courses of situated action, category representations vary dynamically and are not static. Furthermore, different situations engage different neural systems dynamically when representing a category. Under some circumstances, the linguistic system plays a more central role than simulation, whereas under other circumstances, simulation is more central. Thus, the concept for a category appears to be a widely distributed circuit in the brain that includes modality-specific and linguistic representations, integrated by association areas. Across situations, these circuits become realized dynamically in diverse forms to provide the knowledge needed for cognitive processing. Behavioral and neural evidence is presented to support this view.

    If you like this, you might like How to Work a Life of Purpose.