Good Feels #6: Volunteer Snow Shoveling Crew

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He asked for 10, apparently 65 people showed up to help. We can make a difference with a little effort!

 

Spokt Recommends: In Their Nature

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Brandt Woods is an artist who loved reading the Sunday comics when he was growing up. In Their Nature is a wholesome and funny comic he has created to share that joy with a new generation. He has developed some charming animal characters that explore themes in relationships, technology, animals, and psychology.

He has just launched a kickstarter to raise money for his latest 96 page book.

Back this project now and share the joy with your children and grandchildren.

If you like what you see you might also want to follow In Their Nature on Facebook and Instagram.

 

Good Feels #5: Stitching Up a Bus Seat

A resident of Dagestan repaired a seat on her way to wherever she was going. Just a simple act of kindess.
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[From pikabu]

 

Good Feels #4: Incorrect License Plate

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[From Imgur]

 

Good Feels #3: Texting Heaven


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Good Feels #2: What Brothers are For

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[From Reddit]

 

Good Feels #1: Athlete Skips Championship to Donate Bone Marrow

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Donating bone marrow is a painful sacrifice. 21-year-old Shot put athlete, Camereon Lyle, had signed up to be a bone marrow donor on a whim, but when the call came for him to donate he took it seriously.

“They said I was a possible match. And I admit it was kind of frightening for a few minutes,” Lyle says. “But I had made up my mind when I did the mouth swab and joined the registry that if it happened I would donate. Otherwise, why bother registering?”

Donating marrow is very different from donating blood. Instead of a single day of recovery, it will be weeks before this big strong college athlete will be able to even lift more than 20 pounds. Lyle’s decision to go through with the donation meant he’d need to quit the track team and give up his chance at a championship. He was worried that his coach, Jim Boulanger, would be upset.

“I remember he came into my office, closed the door, and said ‘Coach, we need to talk.’ And then he told me, ‘I’m a bone marrow match,’ ” Boulanger says. “And you know what I told him? Let’s see, 12 throws in Binghamton [host of the conference track and field championship] or save a life? Do it. Donate. Sport is not bigger than life. Sport is a part of life.”

Full Story at the Boston Globe

 

Scheduled Downtime: Jan 19 and Jan 31

Update 9:45 CT: We’re back online. If reloading/refreshing Spokt still shows you the maintenance screen, please try this to bypass your browser cache.

Update 9:19 CT: There has been an unexpected delay. We are working as fast as we can to get you back online as soon as possible. We are so sorry our maintenance window exceeded the scheduled time.

Spokt will be unavailable a couple times over the next week. The first window is scheduled for this Friday (1/19) morning from 5am–8am Central Time. The next will be Wednesday (1/31) 4am-9am Central Time. We need to perform some important maintenance tasks on Spokt servers. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause.

 

Spokt Recommends: Sky Tripping

Relax with Sky Tripping

We have found a new way to relieve stress in our lives. It’s an app for iOS and Apple TV called Sky Tripping. It features a large library of gorgeous aerial films. The scenes captured are universally appealing–The human brain seems to be hard wired to appreciate the beauty of nature. Coastal views of California, stark deserts, winter wonderlands and red rock formation.

Nature exposure is a powerful weapon against overwhelm. People living near green space report less mental distress than those in urban areas. Hospital patients with window views where grass and trees are visible experience faster recoveries. Students attending schools with green space perform better than those without. Short doses of nature—even images of it—can calm people down and sharpen their performance. In studies from Norway to South Korea, findings are the same: nature is the natural stress-buster.

Get the app and enjoy the beauty. If you are interested in reading more about the science behind how nature relieves stress read Sky Tripping’s blog post: Relieving Stress the Natural Way

 

End of 2017

The computer chip maker Intel popularized a pattern of building technology with two alternating phases, the tick and the tock. Technically they deal with clock speeds and die size. In software we sometimes borrow the tick and tock names for new features and stability improvements. 2017 has definitely been a “tock” year – in other words we have focused on improving stability and reliability for you our customers.

We have made general improvements to overall performance and stability, we have achieved improved success rates in Daily Hub Summary Email deliveries, Harbor speed improvements and bug-fixes as well as fixes related to the Firefox and Internet Explorer web browsers.

We have planed some new features for Spokt. We want to use 2018 to build these new features onto the reliable foundation we currently have. We hope you have a wonderful 2018 and we hope that we can be a small part of making it great for you!