Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev.

Our polling station. Congressional representatives’ representatives are campaigning right from the flower beds

This is for the early voting process. You can register and vote before the big day. By mail, email, fax, or the old-fashioned way by coming here and dropping it in the box

Interestingly, this dog’s “let’s play” state is almost exclusively triggered after eating. At other times, he blissfully sleeps or reluctantly accompanies the owners on a walk (mainly because of the leash). So, if you don’t play enough ball with him after he eats, he goes to the backyard, finds a weed, and occupies himself. A convenient dog indeed.

Two paintings by Yuri Pimenov. 1937 and 1944. New Moscow. The Frontline Road.

A new update on my Hybrismart.com: Implementing Back-in-Stock and Price Drop Alerts

In this article, I explore the potential pitfalls and mechanisms that can be developed to tackle and possibly eliminate obstacles when implementing Back-in-Stock and Price Drop Alerts. This content is aimed at product owners, solution architects, and developers. It is independent of SAP Commerce, making it relevant for any custom solution (though there is a brief chapter about the OOTB module).

By using back-in-stock notifications, customers are alerted when a product they recently showed interest in becomes available again. Similarly, a customer might want to subscribe to updates on a product’s price and receive notifications when its price decreases.

As a result, customers are more likely to return and make a purchase. These two functionalities are often deemed essential for nearly any marketplace solution.

The implementation and design of these features are also perceived to be straightforward and quick. However, this is not always the case — several points might be overlooked during the design phase. In this article, I focus on the potential pitfalls and best practices in implementing “Back-in-stock notifications” and “Price drop alerts”.

Overview

Users

Registered/Authenticated

Anonymous

Double opt-in?

Subscriptions

Notify Me Buttons

Don’t Notify Me About This Product

Registry of Subscriptions

How Often and When to Stop

Handling Languages and Currencies

Handling Discontinued Products

Handling Multi-site Products

Handling Variant and Configurable Products

Duplicate Subscriptions

Canceling Subscriptions

Notifications

Handling Product URLs and Categories

Handling Availability and Price Groups

Handling Multiple Subscriptions

Minimum Inventory and Price Drop Rules

Notification Intervals

Service Suspend/Restore

Integrating with Web Analytics

Reporting

Solution (diagrams)

Back in Stock Alerts

Price Drop Alerts

How interestingly the brain works. Take some musical notes, practice for about half an hour. Some things work right away, but of course, at first, it’s far from smooth, and after a while, you feel — that’s it, no progress. Then you take a break, switch to work, after a while — say an hour or two — you return to the piano, and it goes significantly better than before the break. You make progress again, hit a dead end again, go to sleep, for example, come back — and it’s a completely different story. The delta between the first time after rest and the last time before rest feels very significant. It’s as if the brain was training instead of resting. Or not eating. Or not coding.

Apparently, during the learning process, the brain gets loaded with all sorts of junk in a form that’s inconvenient for it, which then requires time to sort things out neatly when it’s not busy consuming information. Then it takes the necessary things directly from the right shelves, not from the heap hastily thrown together.

For some reason, this doesn’t work with drawing.

Another interesting thing is how muscle memory and consciousness work. You play something, and you are aware of playing — exactly at what moment which chords and which keys to press and which not to. At some point, after about the tenth time, you catch yourself thinking that you no longer understand what you are playing, but it plays smoothly. And that’s the moment when you need to significantly reduce the tempo (or even break it), to create a balance between muscle memory and conscious playing. Muscle memory is fine, but only until the first mistake. It is quite difficult to recover from it, as the conscious part of the brain has relaxed and handed over control to the mechanical part, and then bam, a mistake, and the conscious part is like oh where am I what are we even playing here and all that.

“An old rabbi was very proud of his faith in God. He often repeated: ‘I believe in the Lord’.

Once, during a year of heavy rains, there was a flood. The water kept rising, and people began to evacuate. People came to the rabbi’s house:

– We are leaving this place. Come with us, – they offered.

– No, I’ll stay, – the rabbi answered. – I believe in the Lord and I know he will help me.

The water continued to rise. A boat floated up to the house, and the people sitting in it said:

– There’s still room here. Come with us, the water is still rising.

– No, I believe in the Lord and I know he will not forsake me in my troubles, – the rabbi replied to them.

The boat left. And the water kept rising and rising. When it flooded the entire house, the old rabbi had no choice but to climb onto the roof and pray to God for salvation. Soon a helicopter arrived, and from there they shouted:

– Old man, we will pick you up, climb up the ladder! There’s no other help coming.

– No. I pray to the Lord and I know that he will save me, – the old man replied.

The water continued to rise, and the old rabbi drowned.

Meeting God in heaven, the rabbi asked him:

– I so believed in You, Lord, how could You let me drown?

To which God replied:

– I tried three times to save you: I sent people to you, directed a boat to your house, and then I even sent a helicopter…”

Instead of generating images on DALL-E/Midjourney/Stable Diffusion, you can search for existing ones. Look at this beauty: https://lexica.art/

Today we discussed James Whistler — an American impressionist artist of the late 19th century. In his youth, he studied at the Russian Imperial Academy of Arts. At that time, Nicholas II invited his father, an engineer, to build the St. Petersburg-Moscow railway, and the whole family lived in Russia for several years.

Much later, he had a lawsuit against the art critic Ruskin, who called Whistler “a jester who asks two hundred guineas for splashing a bucket of paint in the public’s face”.

Judge Holker then asked Whistler why he charges two hundred guineas for a painting that took only two days to create (a engineer earned a third of a guinea a month, and shoes cost half a guinea). To which Whistler replied that he charges not for two days, but for the knowledge he had acquired throughout a lifetime to paint in two days.

Sir John Holker: The labour of two days, then, is that for which you ask two hundred guineas?

Whistler: No, I ask it for the knowledge I have gained in the work of a lifetime.

This story interestingly echoes what is attributed to Picasso (though Whistler’s is at least not fabricated). According to legend, a woman approached Picasso and asked him to draw something on a crumpled napkin, adding that she was willing to pay whatever the artist demanded. Picasso handed back the napkin saying “10,000 dollars, madame”. “But you did it in just 30 seconds!”, the woman exclaimed. “No,” Picasso replied, “It took me forty years.” (As with any legend, the sum, seconds, and years change with each retelling)

Whistler won the lawsuit, but the legal process completely bankrupted the artist, and all of his possessions were sold off to pay the debts incurred in paying for the trial.

https://artsandculture.google.com/entity/james-abbott-mcneill-whistler/m0jt1_

Yesterday, I visited one of the four district libraries in our village, Brambleton Library. Besides books, all libraries are equipped with a lot of technology, and each has a Maker Space—a department where you can engineer something.

All four libraries have:

* various 3D printers (Formlabs Form2, LulzBot TAZ, Fusion3, Makerbot Replicator)

* sewing equipment,

* embroidery machines,

* wide-format printers,

* 3D wood milling (Carbide 3D Nomad 3)

* laser engraver (Glowforge),

* fabric printing press,

* plotters (like Roland CAMM-1 GS-24 Vinil Cutter), including for fabric,

* video work (including VHS transfer),

* robotics kits (Lego, Makey Makey, Little Bits, etc.).

Specifically, Brambleton Library also includes a recording studio. Everything is free, except for consumables, which are priced slightly higher than retail (for example, PLA costs $10 per 100 grams, Resin – $20 per 100ml, which is about six times more than on Amazon). But, the use of equipment is free. And for the recording studio and video work, no consumables are required (except for patience).

With 3D, you can even upload files over the internet and then come pick up the finished form. There are people who will review the design and only proceed if it’s printable.

The library also offers subscriptions to digital content—from books and magazines to music and audiobooks, plus a plethora of educational content. However, not all of it can be taken home—access is library-only. But music, PDFs, and audio can be borrowed for free on your phone, and streaming is entirely free as well.

https://library.loudoun.gov/online

Language courses, and a whole bunch of various classes (with physical attendance) are free. A library card works across a multitude of libraries (not just in our county) and is, of course, free.

And here are how our crocodiles cross the road