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24
Jan 15

My shins protest

Cold today. Caught up on a bit of television, watched the Senior Bowl. Had a few delightful phone calls. Talked myself out of running. Then talked myself into it. And then out of it again. This might have had something to do with the patterns in the sky. There was the sun and then it would appear dreary. Then the sun came back and then more clouds. But, eventually, the sun would return.

Finally, we went to run. But it was colder and dreary again by then.

“I’m just going to run a mile,” I said, “as fast as I can and then see how I feel.”

So I ran, and then sprinted and then ran and then jogged and ran again. I did a mile in 7:09, which is probably the fastest mile I’ve done since high school — my fastest was 6:23, but that was decades and a few pounds ago.

How I felt at the end of it, today, was done. I spent 10 minutes on the floor trying to catch my breath after that little episode, though, and that should probably count against my time somehow.

Now, if I could just do that several times in succession.

Things to read … because you shouldn’t read just one thing, but quiet a few things.

I ran across a mention of Col. Maggie in a Longmire book while on vacation. I’d never heard of Martha Raye’s time in Vietnam, but that was my loss:

The story relates how Colonel Maggie, who was also a trained RN before going into the entertainment field, went to entertain and visit a very small Special Forces camp. (It could have been at Soc Trang, around the early part of 1967.) I was told that she and some clarinet player, had gone to the camp to entertain, but while they were there the NVA attacked the camp. Mortar rounds and small arms fire were incoming. It appeared that there was a full-scale assault on the base camp. It was uncertain if the camp would be able to hold off the assault.. The camp medic was hit, and so with her being a nurse, she took over and began to assist with the treatment of the wounded who kept pouring into the aid station.

The camp was in great danger for several hours of being over run. The higher-ups in the military were trying to dispatch helicopters to the camp, but a combination of very bad weather and heavy fighting made that task a very dangerous mission for any crews that would be trying to come in to get the wounded, or to pull her out to a safer place. All this time, she was subjecting herself to the dangers of flying shrapnel and incoming automatic rifle rounds. She tended to the task that she was trained for – treating the wounded. She was said to have remained calm and fully active in doing her work – even with all the action taking place just outside the aid station. She kept focused on treating the wounded and did not seek shelter or safety for herself.

She kept refusing any and all rescue missions. She spent hours putting her skills as a nurse, to use treating patients and even assisting with surgery. She was in the operating room for 13 hours; she then went through the aid station talking with the wounded and making sure that they were okay. It was said that she worked without sleep or rest, until all the wounded were either treated, or evacuated out on a Huey (helicopter). She did not leave that camp until she was satisfied that all wounded were taken care of.

If even parts of that are accurate … that’s an impressive tale.

Dumb: Twitter study shows Alabamians read at elementary school level. You could discuss the actual numbers involved, but let’s just stick with the basics. You could look at age, but they did not. You could look at the issue of self-reporting locales, but that isn’t addressed. And they gloss over the notion that people are often limited in their word selection by 140 characters.

Stop Doing Social Media Wrong, also, see above.

Aggregation is deep in journalism’s DNA:

First, the aggregators of today will be the original reporters of tomorrow. Those of us who care about good journalism shouldn’t dismiss the Buzzfeeds of the world because they aren’t creating high-quality reporting. Their search for new audiences will push them into original content production. Buzzfeed may be focused on cat videos and aggregation now, but disruption theory argues that content companies like it will move into the realm of the Huffington Post — which in turn, has already indicated its desire to compete more directly with The New York Times.

Second, and perhaps more important, is that despite the obituaries for quality journalism, we can take comfort in remembering that we’ve been here before. We need look no further than that same 1923 volume of Time magazine.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

The magazine previously known as “Illustrated” … Sports Illustrated lays off all staff photographers. This is being announced on economic grounds. They had six photographers left. So even if you cut salaries, travel budgets and benefits, that’s the margin the magazine is on:

He said that while the six are no longer staff photographers, that does not preclude them for continuing to shoot for the magazine if they so desire.

So I guess the next move will be utilizing freelancers and team photographers. Maybe they’ll seek out fan contributions.

Good stuff here: Nine podcasts for journalists

Vice Uses Virtual Reality to Immerse Viewers in News:

Long the purview of the gaming world, virtual reality represents a new frontier for journalism. News reports for years have borne witness to the events shaping the world. Now, directors and reporters are experimenting with virtual-reality technologies to essentially transport people into those events.

What can virtual reality headsets like Oculus Rift do for media?:

Nor does the technology for producing VR have to be particularly taxing for publishers and broadcasters. Use of the stereoscopic camera technology employed by Jaunt and others means that publishers can create immersive video for much cheaper than creating digital environments. It’s not VR in the sense of having an interactive world, instead being a 3D video, but it requires an HMD to deliver it all the same.

Journalists can also create more immersive experience with that tech. Simply by wearing stereoscopic recording equipment in interesting environments or while reporting on events as diverse as a gig or firefight, they can put their audience at the heart of the story they’re trying to tell. Consumer magazine Elle is already planning to broadcast live footage of a fashion show in VR.

Art pieces, too, like the Seeing i project in which artist Mark Farid will wear a VR headset and experience one person’s life for a solid month, hint at the new forms of content offered by VR headsets.

Here is Microsoft’s effort:

[slideshare id=43801402&doc=b215c2a2-1c5b-4707-9a92-fffca6fb82fe-150122231506-conversion-gate01-video]

That feels like a nice progressive step, no? Not the end goal tech, but an obvious step toward restructuring storytelling and consumption.

And, finally, a bit of good news from abroad: Officials Say Ebola Cases Are Falling In West Africa:

The number of people falling victim to the Ebola virus in West Africa has dropped to the lowest level in months, the World Health Organization said on Friday, but dwindling funds and a looming rainy season threaten to hamper efforts to control the disease.

More than 8,668 people have died in the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, which first surfaced in Guinea more than a year ago. But the three worst-affected countries — Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone — have now recorded falling numbers of new cases for four successive weeks, Dr. Bruce Aylward, the health organization’s assistant director general, told reporters in Geneva.

Given the dire projections WHO and others had been offering, these positive steps are welcome alternatives. The problem is a cyclical one in the poor areas where the epidemic routinely crops up. When the numbers dwindle, so does the support and money and medical assistance. Eventually it returns.


22
Jan 15

Things to read

I had a nice four-mile run today. First mile was great. I paid for it over the next three miles. In the third mile, though:

Crows

I thought they were hawks when they were flying. But it makes more sense to have a murder of crows rather than a flock of hawks. They were massive and there were at least 34 of them.

Things to read … since we haven’t seen this feature since the holidays:

First some, jobs/money news:

Alabama and Peru to sign trade memorandum

Polaris to add 1,700 jobs at massive Huntsville plant

Alabama DHR program to receive $41 million child care grant

Hoffman Media expands digital media division

Glad to see the multimedia growth for our friends at Hoffman. They were very successful in the magazine-only model for longer than most. Now, this diversification is a good move for them.

Here are a few news stories. Bureaucratic apologia, in three, two … Can America afford Obama’s two-year tuition proposal? Putting $60 billion in perspective. And by perspective, we mean in isolation. That makes everything look like a possible rounding error, and who can’t sympathize with that?

Glad we could finally see this through. Desmonte Leonard sentenced to life without parole for 2012 University Heights murders

I said last March, and again in September, Venezuela is key. The Impending Collapse Of Venezuela:

The falling oil price is causing a widening foreign exchange gap. Venezuela needs an oil price of $100 per barrel to balance its external accounts, but oil is falling rapidly towards $40 per barrel and so far, Venezuela has failed to persuade other oil producers to reduce production in order to support the price. Venezuela’s foreign exchange outflows now substantially exceed its inflows, not least because it is supporting a complex and unhelpful exchange rate system: its US$ reserves are down to $22bn and falling fast. Venezuela will probably attempt to staunch the bleeding with tighter price and exchange controls, but all this will do is accelerate demonetization of the economy as more and more trading shifts to the black market.

But the real issue is Venezuela’s domestic economic problems. Venezuela has been in deep recession for most of the last year. Its budget deficit in October 2014 – before the most recent catastrophic oil price falls – was 17%. Inflation is officially at 65%, unofficially probably far more. Import controls, inflation and the overvalued bolivar are causing shortages of essential goods.

[…]

Fearful of public unrest escalating into something more serious, the government has now deployed troops to control queues of disgruntled shoppers at the country’s half-empty stores. And it has introduced a system of rationing, limiting shoppers to two days per week at government-controlled stores. As Bloomberg cynically put it, “Venezuela reduces lines by trimming shoppers, not shortages”.

President Maduro returned empty-handed from his recent whirlwind global tour: China didn’t want to lend him any money, and oil producers didn’t want to cut production.

Being a resource-dependent economy doesn’t seem like the best idea, but that’s Venezuela at this point.

And, now, two Journalism reads. First, here’s a journalism dean who wants to curb journalism. Wickham: ‘Charlie Hebdo’ crosses the line

Jeff Jarvis, indirectly, puts the lie to all of that. Free speech is not a privilege. It is a journalistic responsibility.

Standing for free speech is not American. It is logical. If one allows a government to control—to censor—offensive speech, then no speech will be allowed, except that which government approves, for any speech can offend anyone and then all speech is controlled.

The idea that speech should be controlled to limit offense is itself offensive to the principles of a free, open, and modern society. That is what the Charlie Hebdo murders teach us.

Some quick marketing links:

An Old Fogey’s Analysis of a Teenager’s View on Social Media

What Budweiser is teaching us about marketing to millenials

The 4 types of audio that people share

4 Ways Marketers Can Learn From a Journalist’s Approach to Content Planning

Smartphones and live sporting events

I love the data in that last link. It just screams at the need for athletic departments — professional clubs, colleges high schools, what have you — to be proactive with their audiences.
Let’s make this simple. You are in the business of providing a source of entertainment. Your audience has determined that their new toys and tools and platforms suit them. Join them there. Be loud.

And that has to mean more than “Write #GoTeam on your tweets and we’ll select the best ones to put on the big screen!”

Here’s a read to help remind you that exercise should be fun: Recovering Athlete Finds Hope in an Indoor Tri:

As she prepared to start the Indoor Tri presented by IRONMAN and Lifetime Fitness, Gluck was filled with doubts of whether her body (specifically her leg) could hold up for the 10-minute swim, 30-minute bike and 20-minute run. Setting a new PR, placing top ten in the age category—all those goals she’d had as a top age-group athlete were replaced with a simpler goal: finishing.

It’s been a long road since the September day in 2012 that Gluck was hit. She doesn’t remember anything about the accident. She was in a coma for over two weeks and suffered a traumatic brain injury. A section of her skull was removed to help with the swelling. Much of her body has been put back together over multiple surgeries, with titanium rods, screws and plates in her knee, clavicle, femur and hip.

[…]

Still struggling with balance issues, so there is no real time frame for when she might be able to ride her bike outside again. For now she grins and bears it, riding her bike on the trainer set up in her room. “They don’t give me time frames,” Gluck says, clearly frustrated. For now, she wants to continue to strengthen her leg, and work on what she considers her biggest limiter by entering more 5k’s.

The things which we would take for granted are the ones we should cherish the most.

That was worth reading, no?


17
Dec 14

There’s money big and small in this post

The view from my run this afternoon:

sun

Today’s pace was 41 seconds faster than Monday’s run. I cut 4:07 of Sunday’s three-miler. Tomorrow I’m going to run at a different place, flatter, but with more boring views. I’m going to run farther, and probably slower.

We went back to Ulta today, the store I just learned about yesterday, because there was something there of a cosmetic nature we did not pick up yesterday.

Technology is great, not only does my phone time and map my runs and give me various breakdowns of the poor splits therein, it also gives me an excuse to stand near the front of the story and just scroll through things. I can give off the disinterested vibe without making anyone feel uncomfortable about their choices.

“Oh, no, not that blush, dear,” he never said to any stranger, “it will never work with your complexion.”

Things to read … because this stuff matches your tones.

The one everyone is talking about, Sony Pictures Cancels Holiday Release of ‘The Interview’ After Threats:

The film’s collapse stirred considerable animosity among Hollywood companies and players. Theater owners were angry that they had been boxed into leading the pullback. Executives at competing studios privately complained that Sony should have acted sooner or avoided making the film altogether. To depict the killing of a sitting world leader, comically or otherwise, is virtually without precedent in major studio movies, film historians say.

And some Sony employees and producers, many of whom have had personal information published for the world to see, bitterly complained that they had been jeopardized to protect the creative prerogatives of Mr. Rogen and Mr. Goldberg.

[…]

The multiplex operators made their decision in the face of pressure from malls, which worried that a terror threat could affect the end of the holiday shopping season.

That movie cost $44 million to make, but the losses directly stemming from Sony’s entire cyber nightmare are piling up much higher. Sony’s Very, Very Expensive Hack:

(T)he corporate hack seems likely to be among the most expensive of all time – up there with the 2014 Target breach (price tag: about $110 million), TJX’s 2007 hack (about $250 million), and Sony’s 2011 Playstation hack (about $170 million).

It’s still too early to know just how badly the hack might hurt Sony’s bottom line, especially given that the hackers keep on putting out new leaks and new threats. But some early estimates of the corporate damage have started to trickle out. And $150 or $300 million does not seem like a bad guess at the moment, meaning the hack might wipe out half of the Sony pictures unit’s 2013 profits.

Big federal money coming into UAB … UAB’s annual NIH funding up 20 percent:

The University of Alabama at Birmingham received $225 million in federal research funding from the National Institutes of Health during the 2014 fiscal year, which places the school 10th in NIH funding among public universities.

That total is up 20 percent from last year when UAB secured $188 million in NIH funding.

And smaller amounts, too … Meet the 5-year-old Ohio boy who sent his $1 allowance to try to save UAB football.

Rouble turmoil leads to Apple halting online sales in Russia:

The company stopped sales of its iPhones, iPads and other products in the country after a day in which the currency went into free-fall.

The rouble has lost more than 20% this week, despite a dramatic decision to raise interest rates from 10.5% to 17%.

By afternoon trade the rouble was flat with one dollar buying 68 roubles.

Its all time low, set on Wednesday, saw one dollar buying as many as 79 roubles.

Apple last month increased its prices in Russia by 20% after the weakening rouble left products in the country cheaper than in the rest of Europe.

That’s some serious volatility.

The amounts at play here are interesting. NowThis Media Raises Another $6M To Deliver Video News Stories In Less Than A Minute:

(T)he startup has become focused on “being a distributed media company and finding audiences where they live.” In other words, it’s less focused on drawing audiences to the NowThis mobile app and website, and more on finding viewers on social media.

Apparently the strategy is paying off — Mills said the company was seeing 1 million monthly video views as recently as early summer of this year, but it was up to 40 million monthly views in November. NowThis has also launched NowThis Studio, a division focused on branded content, and it acquired another startup, Cliptamatic.

That acquisition provided the foundation for a new platform called Switchboard, which is scheduled to launch early in 2015.

NowThis seems to work better in the app than in the browser, a good first step for social reach. I just watched four videos on it. Things move fast there. You get context, but not a complete story. There’s a fine idea there, and I’m looking forward to seeing how it matures.


16
Dec 14

Where I amend my reindeer antler policy

Enjoy the Glomerata post I put up earlier today? Have you been checking out the Battle of the Bulge map posts? I’ve got about two more weeks of those, tracing my great-grandfather’s time in Europe.

I woke up this morning and did one of my favorite things, which is sit with breakfast, or tea or both, and read. I got a lot of reading in this morning and then we did some paperwork errands this afternoon.

I drove The Yankee to Target and she picked up two shirts. We walked down the street to a store called Ulta, which is not missing an R from the sign. I’m not sure I knew this store existed until this afternoon, but then I’m so rarely on the cosmetics market these days.

We picked up grain and sourdough bread at the grocery store. I remembered we needed some eggs, so I hustled to the back corner and got the six-pack container. The first one I opened had a busted egg, which reminded me of my best poultry story. I told it to my lovely wife and the cashier at the front of the store. One of them found it funnier than the other, but they both smiled politely.

We saw this car. Now, ordinarily, I’m not a fan of the reindeer antlers, but I’m willing to change this stance. The rule now is this: if you put those things in your windows, you must commit to the giant red nose on the hood of your car.

Red Nosed Mercedes

We had a dinner guest tonight, one of our sweet friends who brought a soup and stayed for brownies and a movie and uses the word “assuaged” correctly. It was a lovely evening.

Things to read

I remember waking up on this December morning in a full sweat. It was unseasonably warm. That afternoon we watched the F-4 tornado ravage Tuscaloosa, just 35 miles away, on television. That night, up the road in Birmingham, I drove home under the largest snowflakes I’ve ever seen in the South. It was a tragic and weird day. Celebration Of A Life Saved

Many of your remember this remarkable photo by Michael E. Palmer that was in the Tuscaloosa News, the day after the December 16, 2000 EF-4 tornado that killed 11 people. Michael Harris carries an unconscious Whitney Crowder, 6, through debris in Bear Creek Trailer Park after the tornado passed through. Whitney’s father and 15-month-old brother were killed in the tornado.

That post is two years old, when young Whitney was graduating from high school. It was a nice bookend to that tale.

So these two guys are political activists. They represent different parties and they are brothers. They were on C-SPAN to promote this documentary about the weird dynamic all of that creates. They got into a political name-calling debate and then the show started taking phone calls. Then … well, just watch and see:

This is worth a read. Former AP Reporter: I Didn’t Leave Journalism, It Left Me

A journalist for more than 40 years, Mark Lavie was based in Jerusalem for most of them and then in Cairo for two – during the “Egyptian Revolution.”

Lavie is no longer a journalist.

But he didn’t leave the profession, “it left me,” Lavie says.

Now Lavie is speaking out in as many fora as possible. He seeks to alert the public about the dramatic difference between what journalism used to be – and still pretends to be – and what it actually is.

Meanwhile, in Sweden, Advertisers Will Pay Up To 40% More For TV Sponsorship Deals Linked To Social Media, Says TV4

“It means that we need to work with story-telling on digital platforms, and that we need to engage and potentially also reward our users,” she said. “This is obviously very interesting for us, both from our perspective, and also from a commercial perspective, in terms of what we can offer our advertisers on these platforms.”

Lundell said that TV4’s experiments with extending linear TV formats into the social media sphere had shown that “you need to pay more than for ordinary sponsorship – and advertisers are prepared to do that. So, yes, we’re making money.”

The first thing I thought when she said “work with story-telling on digital platforms” was wondering why plots of scripted shows aren’t continued on other platforms. You already see supplemental webisodes of some of your more engaged shows, why not story arcs on Instagram?

First there was ESPN, the movie channels, last month it was CBS and now … Up To Speed: NBC to jump into live-streaming

This is solid. 5 tips for streaming live video from a smartphone

Livestreaming video from a mobile phone is a way for journalists to get footage which may not be possible to film with more traditional broadcast equipment.

“There are sometimes these stories where you don’t want a big camera crew, you want to try and keep a relatively low profile, in riots, in public disorder, or in places where you need to be sensitive,” Sky News correspondent Nick Martin told Journalism.co.uk.

“You can use that technology which is smaller and more compact to still get what you want to, but not [have] all the big crew considerations that we have.”

Media organisations such as ABC News have also started looking at mobile livestreaming as a developing part of their video programming.

For journalists who want to incorporate video streaming into their work …

As I told a colleague this evening, within the next year or two we’ll likely say if you’re not doing video with almost everything, you’re going to find yourself behind.

That’s why I spent the better part of my Saturday night building up video templates for future projects.


15
Dec 14

Look up, it is easier to breathe in the sunset

Lovely warm day. I should have started my run a bit earlier. We are in a weather system that means the temperature drops 15 degrees as soon as three tree limbs conspire to block the sun. Before that, though, it was bright and surprising. Short-sleeve weather if you’ve ever needed it in December — and who doesn’t?

But I did my little neighborhood run late in the afternoon and into the early evening. It turned to a chill just as I wrapped up, but I had views like this:

sunset

And there is nothing wrong with views like that.

So another three miles down, after three miles yesterday and before a bunch more this week. I’m trying to make my run fast.

“Fast.”

There’s a word that mean a lot without any context. Let’s give it some: I look like a shuffler, I want to look like a runner. That, to me, would be fast at this point. In truth, I haven’t been fast in decades, and even then I was only faster than a person running slowly. I grew up around plenty of fast people.

I wonder if any of them had the chance to go for a run today, or got to see a sunset like that, wherever they are.

Things to read … because this stuff is good no matter where you are.

A nice example of dogged persistence, Meet the reporter who broke Philadelphia’s civil forfeiture story—two years ago:

Two years ago, an investigative reporter named Isaiah Thompson exposed the massive and troubling scale of “civil asset forfeiture” in Philadelphia—that is, how law enforcement exploited its authority to seize cash and personal property suspected to be connected to a crime. The idea is to take ill-gotten gains from drug dealers or other criminals, but Thompson showed that Philly authorities routinely claimed property in cases where the owners were not convicted—and in some instances, not even charged.

[…]

“It shows there’s no substitute for true reporting,” said Scott Bullock, a senior attorney with IJ. “He’s not just reading the law and talking to a couple people. He went to the courtroom over and over and over, and really explored what happened.”

There’s an accidental insight here, I think: A Journalist-Agitator Facing Prison Over a Link:

Barrett Brown makes for a pretty complicated victim. A Dallas-based journalist obsessed with the government’s ties to private security firms, Mr. Brown has been in jail for a year, facing charges that carry a combined penalty of more than 100 years in prison.

Professionally, his career embodies many of the conflicts and contradictions of journalism in the digital era. He has written for The Guardian, Vanity Fair and The Huffington Post, but as with so many of his peers, the line between his journalism and his activism is nonexistent.

That’s not the problem it used to be, unfortunately, even for the Times. I think I liked it better when that would have been the cause for some consternation.

We’re starting to see this sentiment in more and more think pieces, Defining quality in news has to value the user experience:

You could frame the big challenge for the next few years of digital news this way: How can we create a news user experience that’s as easy and friction-free as Facebook — but as good as the best a dedicated news power user could assemble?

[…]

“Quality” isn’t just about how many foreign bureaus you have or how long your big features can run. It’s about every step of the process that moves from a reporter’s idea to a reader’s eyes. Too many news outlets make too many of those steps frustrating — and frustrated readers are all too happy to go back to playing Candy Crush.

That conversation is a good and needed one. It signals a maturation of the medium. And what the author, Joshua Benton, is saying ultimately leads to an effort to create a variety of interfaces for a spectrum of users. Not every story must be print, or video, no. And not every example in this enterprise need to be the TV attempt at multimedia: the broadcast package over the text of the story. There comes a time where we ask consumers to choose what they want, and we shunt them into not only the stories they want and the format they want (and the advertising they’re looking for) but also give them control of those capsules. We build it, they select how they want these stories and where. We get it there. They move back and forth through the media.

They’re doing that already, just not under one shingle.

And here’s another way the audience is doing it, How Wearable Technology Will Impact Web Design:

A lot of naysayers are quick to write off wearable technology as a fad, but a recent report from Pew Research Center Internet Project indicates that 83% of industry experts believe that wearable technology will see huge growth within the next 10 years. By 2025, we’ll be fully immersed in the Internet of Things (IoT). This means that users will be accessing websites from various platforms, not just desktops and mobile devices.

As technology expands and more users embrace wearables, more of your clients will want to their sites to be accessible. If you’re unprepared for such requests, clients will search elsewhere to fit their needs.

Although wearable technology is in its infancy now, it’s rapidly growing. Expect it to develop like a kid in puberty– overnight.

Slowly, and then all at once.

My friend Ike Pigott wrote this fine piece, The Mammals of Journalism:

A weekly newspaper, serving three cities with a combined population of less than 40,000 people… has a TV studio.

The ubiquity of ways in which live pictures can become zeros and ones and become unscattered again on a device of your choosing
The great disruption has happened. It didn’t smack the Earth with a blinding blast; rather, it carried its impact more slowly over decades. The internet, and mobile technology, and codecs, and smaller gear that people can afford, and the ubiquity of ways in which live pictures can become zeros and ones and become unscattered again on a device of your choosing… blame them all.

A weekly newspaper has a website, and now it has a TV studio.

The Tribune’s publisher, Scott Buttram, likes to say that the very technologies that have disrupted network television and movie studios and large daily newspapers have also empowered his end of the food chain. The small can feast on the big, because the rules of our media world favor the nimble and the swift.

Flexibility, low inertia, is a terrific attribute these days.

A great show, A&E’s highest rated show, was canceled. But along came Netflix: ‘Longmire’ Season 4 News: Why Cancellation Might Have Actually Helped The Series. These are truly strange times in the entertainment business.

Tomorrow, we run errands! And probably some more fun stuff, too.