Year of the Rat

Dibs! Topic "coffee" taken! Here it comes, my next The 50 Images-Project topic for 2020! =D This is also my plan A, before I considered the plan B, which would have been " trash ". But after thinking long and hard, I decided a topic close to my heart, or more likely close to my nose is much better. What I am actually going to do is shoot 366 photos for a leap year, one photo per each day. But those daily pictures I will "dump" to Instagram (maybe also to Twitter), and publish here only 50 selected photos during the year 2020. Moreover, here I will write a photo blog (photolog, plog) articles on various topics on coffee, covering all kinds of issues like how to make it, why one should drink it, or not to drink, what it causes to individuals and to planet, and is it fair or not. I am surely not an expert on what comes to coffee, but I will write about it from my personal point of view, and how coffee has affected to my life. So, keep tuned to this project of mine, if you are interested to see and read more, and especially find out if I succeed. During this year 2020 I am also going to try marketing (advertise, promote) the ipernity web site whenever and where ever I can. As soon as I manage to get this project started, I am planning to make noise about ipernity on other social media accounts of mine (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and maybe also somewhere else). The reason for the division of daily pictures at Instagram and weekly stories here at ipernity is to prove that this can be a practical way to use social media. Instagram, Twitter (and other similar platforms) are good for "quick and dirty" mobile phone photo blogging. Whereas ipernity is better for long articles like this. So, in the long run other platforms may help me, my "followers", and hopefully even totally new contacts to find ipernity, and how wonderful it can be. Well, this is pretty ambitious goal, and very likely may flop. Mainly because I am after all Mr Nobody on the world wide web. But if we all try to do the same, we may become somebody. =D ➽ Me at Instagram ➽ Me at Twitter ➽ Me at Facebook P.S. Post processing done with Mirror Lab and Snapseed Android apps.

Contribution for The Sunday Challenge #416: Words

" Damn good coffee! " Or at least good enough to get the day started. Around here it is popular to drink "brewed coffee" made with electric drip coffeemaker. There are then few things to consider in order to get good coffee: Use separate clean jar to fill the reservoir. Never use the coffeemaker's own carafe to fill the reservoir, unless you clean the carafe after every use. What you do not wish to have is the remains of earlier made coffee to circulate through the pipes of the coffeemaker. There is for example surprisingly lot of coffee grease stains left after each time you brew the coffee. Use fresh and cold water. Especially if you use tap water, make sure it is cool and fresh enough. Water standing long time inside the copper or plastic water pipes starts to take taste from them. If you wish to save water, then consider filling glass bottles and store them in the fridge. Use proper grind for your coffeemaker. Coffee packages are usually marked with symbols and texts to indicate how the grind is supposed to be cooked. Find out what is the best roast and brand for your taste. I used to favor light roast coffee, but I discovered it is then usually also more acid than dark roast, and therefore causes heartburn (gastroesophageal reflux). Moreover, the brand I used to favor was sometimes shoddy and bitter. Therefore I changed to less acid dark roast and more homogeneous brand. Filter paper may matter. Purists recommends to use oxygen bleached coffee filter paper. I am not a purist ;-) Brew several pots of hot water through the coffeemaker, if it has been unused for long time. If you are not using the coffeemaker on daily bases, and especially if it has been unused for over a week, it is better to clean the pipes before you make coffee with it. Clean the coffee maker regularly. Wash the funnel and carafe once a week, or at least once a month. Moreover, use cleaning agents or vinegar every now and then to clean the pipes as well. What comes to my 366 coffee project at Instagram and Twitter, it has been started well. ➽ How to Clean a Coffee Maker with Vinegar at wikiHow ➽ Me at Instagram ➽ Me at Twitter ➽ Me at Facebook UPDATE January 9, 2020: Storage your coffee in cool and dry place. I prefer to use ready ground coffee because I drink coffee on daily bases, and like to get the grinds homogeneous. If one makes coffee less often, then it is probably better to buy coffee beans and grind them at home with a coffee grinder. But then you also need to pay attention on the grinding process and keep your grinder clean. Some say it is better to keep the coffee grind package even in the fridge, to avoid the coffee oil become rancid. But when drinking coffee somewhat every day, I think ground coffee is way more easy. Although, grinding the coffee from beans of course can be a very enjoyable part of the process. ➽ Whole Beans Vs Ground Coffee: What’s the difference? at Craft Beverage Jobs

Coffee consumption ... ... per capita is the highest in Finland! And that has been the way for decades. The nobility in Finland started to drink coffee in 18th century (1700 ->, when Finland was under Swedish rule). Lower class people started the coffee consumption in 19th century (1800 ->, under Russian rule). Finnish coffee consumption is almost ridiculous and the subject of jokes. There are many strange cultural phenomenon affiliated with coffee. Some collective labor agreements may regulate that the worker must have right for 15 minute coffee break(s) besides the normal lunch break. It means that the work places even have to offer the specific coffee rooms for that. If something can get Finns on barricades, it is the right to have coffee, coffee breaks and space for it. Coffee is also the must have beverage in somewhat all festive occasions from cradle to grave. When a child get the name, a teen get graduated, a couple get married, or when someone achieves somewhat anything remarkable like wins a medal is sports, there is then coffee served for the guests. According to some statistics the Finnish coffee consumption is even 12 kg per capita per year! But in any case it is somewhere around 10kg. Coffee can be bought almost in every corner. I recon there are even more coffee selling shops, cafes, restaurants and coffee machines than there are pubs. Especially because one can by coffee also in pubs. Personally 2-4 dl filter coffee per day is enough for me. But I must have at least one cup of it per day! I got a tonsillectomy done at rather old age, and at that time I tried to get rid of the coffee. I discovered that I am coffee addict and had terrible withdrawal symptoms for weeks! And after getting over that, I realized that my overall state of vitality was much lower than it was when I used coffee. So, after few months I again end up drinking coffee on daily bases. ➽ Finnish coffee culture is one-of-a-kind , by Jori Korhonen

Contribution for The Sunday Challenge #417: Epitaphs Philippians 1:21 - For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.

This work is a derivative of Long Island City New York May 2015 panorama 3 by King of Hearts used under CC BY-SA , remixed on Mirror Lab Android app and respectively licenced under CC BY-SA by Sami Serola --- Respect ipernity guide of good conduct I decided to delete my earlier Creative Commons how-tos, and provide a revised one. That is because I realized that earlier I was breaching ipernity Guide of good conduct , where the following is said: " Make sure you are the author of any content that you publish. " So, to become an author of the content, one has to remix the original somehow, in order to create a new derivative work . It means that just republishing the original authored by someone else, here at ipernity, one would breach the ipernity Guide of good conduct. It doesn't even matter under what license that original is published at first. Here at ipernity one should publish one's own contents only. Best practices for attribution When you do base your derivative work onto some original shared under Creative Commons license, then you should try to follow the best practices for attribution . The bottom line is that one should try to make it easy for the audience to find: ● Where the original work can be found ● Who is the author of the original work ● Under what Creative Commons licence the original has been shared Moreover, it is recommended to help the audience to respect the Creative Commons attribution of your derivative work. Which is why it is good to explain: ● What remix is done (not necessary in case of derivative work where the modification is and should be rather extreme) ● Where one should refer to in order to find you as an author of the new derivative work ● What Creative Commons attribution (license) one should respect when citing to your work Finally you need to properly licence your work here at ipernity. For example on this case I needed to license this image respectively under CC BY SA (see the authorizations and license on the right margin). So, the original that I used is shared at Wikimedia Commons by King of Hearts under Creative Commons Attribution + Share Alike . There the "share alike" means that one can make derivative works, but then those derivative works has to be again shared under the same attribution. Meaning that anyone can again make some remixes based on my work, and again has to respect the same attribution. I am not sure how one should license and cite the new derivative work based on this derivative work of mine. But I guess it would be enough if one treats my work as an original of that new creation. Audience can then follow the citation and links to find my work here. And then the audience can again find out that this image here is also based on some previous image shared under CC BY SA. By the way, the BY part on the Creative Commons license means "attribution", which means that one need to give credit to the author(s). So, it is important part of CC license. For example the license I have defined here on right margin has word "Attribution", which is the same as BY, and asks one to credit me if and when ever using or sharing this image of mine. Just as I credited King of Hearts under my image. Conclusion Tricky? Yes, it is. But the paramount thing here is to use ipernity only for works that are original enough to become authored by you. Moreover, if you ever like to use someone else's images to create something new, you should respect the licences of the work(s) where your derivative creation is based on. In my opinion that should be the case also if and when one uses so called free images (e.g. public domain) or copyright protected images. One need to remix the used material enough to claim the creation is something new. What comes to copyright, please consider reading my Copyright is tough, but it tries to be fair... blog article. Exception There is a tiny exception on what comes to ipernity guide of good conduct. Any "content" that one can embed and inline link anywhere here at ipernity is allowed. For example, one can embed Deezer audios, Youtube videos on blog articles, and even inline link external images. However, one should still think what is appropriate and ethical. So, for example it is nice to tell to the audience what the embedded content is about and where it is embedded from. Especially so, if there is no indication on the embedded content letting one know where the content is embedded or inline linked from. For example this Deezer audio embed code does make it clear enough that it is embedded into this image caption: Thank you for reading =) --- P.S. And if you ever see Creative Commons license saying "Attribution + no derivative", then you shouldn't do even this, not here at ipernity! That license states that one should not alter the original in any way without explicit permission given by the author of the original work. So, you can't then make a derivative work to share it at ipernity.

Happy Fence Friday, and have a nice weekend! =)

Contribution for The Sunday Challenge #418: Accidental Letters EDIT Jan 27, 2020: ♫ TSC by TSC (Regy Vanhaecke) at Soundcloud

Unfortunately PicMonkey does not seem to work at the moment. API link seems to open the service though. So, the problem is on PicMonkey's side. In any case we need to reconsider what to do with the option to offer an access to some online photo editor . This is because the required Adobe Flash is soon no longer supported. And if you seriously need to get your image on Explore, then try this: 1) Make contacts. 2) Give attention to other people's uploads. View them, like them (give stars), and comment them. 3) Shoot as popular subjects as you can (sunsets, fences, impressive landscapes). 4) Upload no more than one or two image per week. If you upload many pictures in short intervals, your own photos become your worst competitors. 5) Join to some popular groups and post your images there as a contribution. 6) Reply to comments and appreciate your audience. 7) Be patient and wait that your latest image becomes viewed, liked and commented enough to get it on Explore. Read more about how Explore seems to work on my Exploring ipernity Explore blog article. ♫ Always Look on the Bright Side of Life by Overboard on SoundCloud

When I saw Kenny's latest TSC contribution , I remembered this fellow =) And these images:

♫ Waves album by Melorman on SoundCloud

Maybe there is a social demand for such a group. A place where people could dislike each other's posts, and disdain each other's comments.