If you’re unsure how to pet a cat (i.e., maybe you didn’t have cats around growing up), it can be helpful to bear in mind that petting is a grooming activity. Grooming each other is how cats bond. Of course, each cat will have individual preferences, but the fact that it’s a grooming thing gives you two basic places to start:
Scratch areas that the cat has difficulty reaching, like the chin and upper throat, behind the ears, or the the very top of the head. (Watch the body language here – you’ll know if you pick the wrong spot right away.)
Work your fingers deeply into areas of thick fur where tangles are likely to form, like around the shoulderblades or the ruff of the neck. (You may come away with a handful of loose fur; this means you’re doing it right.)
Also, if you’re unsure of how to approach, try extending your hand with the palm up and the fingers relaxed for the cat to sniff. It’s the cat equivalent of a handshake – cats sniff each other to see where they’ve been, and for humans, it’s the hands that carry our scent history, since we touch everything constantly.
It’s kind of amazing watching all the folks who didn’t know that petting is a grooming behaviour come to the realisation that cats lick you because they want to pet you back.
Another thing you can do with skittish cats is offer your *closed fist*.
A cat that is shy of an open hand that can grab may approach a closed hand that they don’t perceive as trying to grab them. (Needless to say, don’t actually grab them, please.)
They bonk against your hands (and your head, if they are at head level) the same way they bonk against one another’s heads. It’s a friendly greeting that often ends in friendly cats turning and licking each others shoulders, necks, and ears a few times.
They scent mark by rubbing their faces on things. Their cheek glands produce a pleasant-smelling (to them, we can’t smell it) pheromone that projects friendship and reassurance. When they scent mark you like this, it is a friendly gesture.
So with this in mind, try letting the cat bump your fist, then gently rub the fist past the side of their face as they rub their face against your fist. Think of your fist like a cat’s head, and you are scent marking them back. You are sharing a friendly gesture.
A worried cat may warm up after a few passes of this, and you may be able to pet the neck and back of the head. The under-chin/throat area can be a little dicey. They don’t casually kiss each other there.very often and it can make them feel vulnerable.
Rolling over to show the tummy does not always mean the same thing it means for dogs. Unless you know the cat, be very careful touching the tummy. It might not be an invitation. It might be a readiness posture.
Digression: cats don’t show submission by rolling. Rolling is a defensive maneuver that prepares them for possible combat with other cats by putting their most powerful weapons – their teeth and back claws – into play simultaneously. They fight other cats by hugging with the front legs, biting anything they can reach, and kicking with the incredibly strong hind legs. It is an advantageous position for fighting/play fighting, lets them see all around them AND above, where humans usually approach them from, and it keeps them from getting pinned on their bellies, unable to retaliate. If they need to, they can flip and run away easily because cats are FAST.
So yeah, some cats love tummy stuff. Some hate it and just want you to admire from afar. A gentle hand placed on their tummy should tell you whether they want actual pets there or not. If they stretch or open up their body language, that’s good. If they tense or “sit up” to look at your hand, that’s not good. Stop petting and go back to the head.
Obviously if they grab your hand and rabbit-kick and bite, then you should not pet them there.
Some cats have a hair trigger. Sorry about that.
You can also pet them without moving your hand, just hold it out and let them rub against it. This will give you a good idea of where they like to be touched and how hard and for how long.
Very shy cats, once they realize you are willing to pet them without grabbing, may really come to enjoy approaching you.
We have a cat like this. If you let him see you respect him by not over-petting, he will rub against your hands and legs for a long time.
The moral is that cats are not inconsistent jerks, it’s just that we misinterpret their body language.
It’s also that we do not respect their boundaries when they present them, because we, as humans, want to be allowed to pet all soft things, and, somewhat spoiled by dogs, who love it nearly unconditionally, we unreasonably expect it of cats, a very very different animal.
If you want a cat to come back for more, don’t push yourself on them. They will remember you are a Cool Human and will come back for more.
(Also, speak softly. Cats usually really hate loud people.)
Two other things to consider with all of this: blinking and body position. If you offer your finger or hand, the cat will look up into your face as they sniff. Blink, slowly, and do not stare. This communicates a lack of aggressive intent. It also helps if you break your body plane backward; that is, lean back a little. If you are leaning backwards and not staring, you’re not about to pounce. I spend the first five minutes of an exam leaning against the wall and looking bored. It helps.
People who are excited to see a cat tend to lean forward, make eye contact and (as noted above) raise their voices, and then the cat thinks they’re in trouble. This is why cats are attracted to the people in the room who “don’t like cats;” they’re the ones communicating the least possibility of conflict.
the first american woman in space was a lesbian……… this sounds like such a shitpost buts its actually real i love history
I just looked this up and it is (mostly*) true! The first American woman in space was Sally Ride in 1983. Here’s a picture of her in space communicating with ground controllers during the 6-day Challenger mission. (Source)
Prior to her first space flight, Ride got a lot of shit from the media and remained remarkably calm and non-homicidal:
“No other astronaut was ever asked questions like these: Will the flight affect your reproductive organs? The answer, delivered with some asperity: “There’s no evidence of that.” Do you weep when things go wrong on the job? Retort: “How come nobody ever asks Rick those questions?” Will you become a mother? First an attempt at evasion, then a firm smile: “You notice I’m not answering.” In an hour of interrogation that is by turns intelligent, inane and almost insulting, Ride remains calm, unrattled and as laconic as the lean, tough fighter jockeys who surround her. “It may be too bad that our society isn’t further along and that this is such a big deal,” she reflects.” (Source)
After her death in 2012 it was revealed that she had been with her partner Tam O’Shaughnessy (a woman) for 27 years. Below is a picture of Ride (left), her partner O’Shaughnessy (right), and their dog Gypsy, circa 1985. (Source).
Ride and O’Shaughnessy co-founded the Sally Ride Foundation, aimed at promoting interest in science among elementary and middle school aged-kids, especially girls. The two women also co-wrote six children’s science books. Here is a picture of them speaking at an American Library Association Conference in 2008. (source)
*Ride had been previously married to a man and it is unknown exactly how she identified (lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, etc).
But yeah, Sally Ride was not only the first American woman in space, but also the first and only known LGBT astronaut at NASA. And she was also a badass. (source).
(Also: Bear Ride, Sally’s sister. Dr. Bear Ride is a Presbyterian minister who has been arrested along with her wife at a LGBT march. (source) Badassery must run in the family.)
UnitedHealth Group is offering free mental health services to anyone in the country who was emotionally affected by the shooting at Pulse in Orlando – even if you don’t have health insurance.
Optum will operate a 24/7 helpline, and users can speak to a trained mental health professional for as long as they need. Individuals can call toll-free at 866-342-6892. The company is also providing access to their benefits site, which contains mental health information like professional tips on how to manage anxiety.
“The helpline can be an easy, accessible way for people to reach out,” William Bonfield, chief medical officer of OptumHealth Behavioral Solutions, told The Huffington Post. “It can provide support, an opportunity to talk and help a person decide if mental health treatment may be helpful.”
Please please please take advantage of this if you need it! Mental healthcare is so important but can be so freaking expensive, and processing Pulse might take a lot out of you. That’s okay – help is out there. And if you’re looking for someone LGBTQ-specific to talk to, the Trevor Project and Trans Lifeline are available for you too.
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I’ve discovered that rejections are not altogether a bad thing. They teach a writer to rely on his own judgment and to say in his heart of hearts, “To hell with you.
I’ve said this to my non-techie friends countless times. It’s no secret that being able to code makes you a better job applicant, and a better entrepreneur. Hell, one techie taught a homeless man to code and now that man is making his first mobile application.
(note: yes I realize that 3/5 of those links were Google projects)
But most folks are intimidated by coding. And it does seem intimidating at first. But peel away the obscurity and the difficulty, and you start to learn that coding, at least at its basic level, is a very manageable, learnable skill.
There are a lot of resources out there to teach you. I’ve found a couple to be particularly successful. Here’s my list of resources for learning to code, sorted by difficulty:
Novice
Never written a line of code before? No worries. Just visit one of these fine resources and follow their high-level tutorials. You won’t get into the nitty-gritty, but don’t worry about it for now:
w3 Tutorials (start at HTML on the left sidebar and work your way down)
Intermediate
Now that you’ve gone through a handful of basic tutorials, it’s time to learn the fundamentals of actual, real-life coding problems. I’ve found these resources to be solid:
If you’re here, you’re capable of building things. You know the primitives. You know the logic control statements. You’re ready to start making real stuff take shape. Here are some different types of resources to turn you from someone who knows how to code, into a full-fledged programmer.
Programming problems
Sometimes, the challenges in programming aren’t how to make a language do a task, but just how to do the task in general. Like how to find an item in a very large, sorted list, without checking each element. Here are some resources for those types of problems
If you learned Python, Django is an amazing platform for creating quick-and-easy web applications. I’d highly suggest the tutorial – it’s one of the best I’ve ever used, and you have a web app up and running in less than an hour.
I’ve never used Rails, but it’s a very popular and powerful framework for creating web applications using Ruby. I’d suggest going through their guide to start getting down-and-dirty with Rails development.
If you know PHP, there’s an ocean of good stuff out there for you to learn how to make a full-fledged web application. Frameworks do a lot of work for you, and provide quick and easy guides to get up and running. I’d suggest the following:
If there’s one point I wanted to get across, it’s that it is easier than ever to learn to code. There are resources on every corner of the internet for potential programmers, and the benefits of learning even just the basics are monumental.
If you know of any additional, great resources that aren’t listed here, please feel free to tweet them to me @boomeyer.
Best of luck!
I’d also like to add some more specialized resources!
SpriteKit (2D) and SceneKit (3D) which are built into the official compiler to create iOS apps (see iOS apps for more resources)
also all of the above game engines (cross-platform)
Game console development:
Game Maker Studio (with a paid subscription)
Unity
Unreal
CryEngine
Note that games can also be created on more general platforms like iOS and Android apps, but the resources listed above are specialized for game development.
iOS apps:
In order to develop iOS apps, you’ll need to purchase an iOS developer program membership for $99 a year, which requires an Apple account. Here are some general resources:
Xcode (the official IDE for iOS apps; can be installed on OS X)
Xcode also has SpriteKit, SceneKit, and Metal built in, all of which are incredibly useful for creating apps that require elaborate graphics, particularly games.
Also, in order to publish iOS apps, you’ll have to juggle certificates, app ids, and provisioning profiles. This process can be convoluted at times so here are some resources:
Blender (can also be used to create games; Python script; free and open-source; can be installed on Windows, OS X, and Linux)
Maya (specialized script; free trial, free 3-year student subscription, and paid subscription versions; can be installed on Windows, OS X, and Linux to an extent)
3ds Max (Python script; free trial, free 3-year student subscription, and paid subscription versions; can be installed on Windows and OS X)
RenderMan (specialized script; free for non-commercial/educational use and pay-per-license for commercial use; can be installed on Windows, OS X, and Linux)
Misc. resources:
Stack Overflow is an ask-and-answer community for programmers. It’s amazing and will save your life. Sign up and don’t be afraid to ask for help.
Github offers a student pack (here) if you create an account and prove you’re a student. This gives you free access to a bunch of great programming resources for free for a certain period of time, such as Unreal Engine. Also, Github in general is a site that you can host your code on. Other users can see it, and “fork” it to make a copy of your code and modify it.
Parse is a backend service that allows you to store data in databases it hosts on its own servers. It lets you use push notifications, create users, store and retrieve data, etc. It’s compatible with iOS apps, Android apps, Windows apps, Xamarin, React, Unity, OS X, Windows, JavaScript, PHP, .net, Arduino, and Embedded C. It’s free up to a certain limit that depends on the services you use.
Cloud9, Codebox, and Squad are online IDEs that allow for real-time collaboration and support a variety of languages, so they’re useful for team projects.
And some general advice:
Your program will not work right away, 99% of the time. That’s okay. Do your best to figure out where the error is. Here is some advice on debugging (written for PHP but the methods can be generalized).
If you’re stuck, Google. Google like there’s no tomorrow.
Ask questions on a community like Stack Overflow.
For that matter, browse relevant Stack Overflow questions. You can probably find some solutions there.
Don’t be afraid to copy and paste.
Take breaks sometimes if you’re getting burned out. But don’t stay away from your projects for too long or you’ll lose track of its status.
Backup your code. On the cloud, on a USB drive, wherever. If your IDE has a backing up feature like snapshots, use it whenever you hit a milestone.
If your project is big, split it up into milestones and set goals. Don’t tackle everything at once.
Like the OP said, coding isn’t just for professionals and “geeks” anymore. Anyone can learn it if you really try, and with the rapidly expanding tech industry, learning coding can really broaden your opportunities.
If any of the links are broken, or you have a question or some information/resources to add, you can contact me through the askbox or the OP through his Twitter (as mentioned in his post).
If you’re interested, try some of these out and best of luck!
Great work expanding on my humble list to include a much fuller collection of resources for learning how to code! Cheers!
@veronicasantangelos You might want this at some stage when you finally start Uni!
Just to add to this;
1, Set yourself up an account on jsfiddle.net and you get yourself an awesome, easy to use sandpit for trying out JS/JQuery/JS framework stuff. YOU DON’T NEED TO INSTALL ANYTHING (woo!). It’s free.
Just remember if starting a fiddle from scratch, you’re usually gonna be coding with JQuery, so you gotta set JQuery as your framework:
2, Got a light/medium understanding of JS? Next step: learn AngularJS. Seriously, it’ll blow your mind. Just remember to select it as a framework in JSFiddle:
for the record, codeacademy is good with basic syntax but doesnt teach you much of the why/how of what’s going on. But if you want to learn python for instance, there are several free classes (all you have to do is get an account, but it doesnt cost anything) at udacity.com. also, automatetheboringstuff.com gives you access to a how-to ebook on programming in python, aimed at people who have never coded before. those two resources have helped me out a lot more than codeacademy and whatnot
for modeling and animation: there is also Maya LT, which is $30 USD a month compared to standard $185+ Maya and 3DS Max subscriptions since it is geared toward indie game development
Few things worth pointing out/adding this post:
Xcode no longer requires an iOS developer’s license to push your app to a mobile device. However, it’s still needed for submission.
If you do develop for mobile and plan on submitting your app I would recommend looking at Apple’s human interface guidelines, or at the very least the do’s and don’ts of UI design. Your app doesn’t have to look and work flawlessly but if it’s clearly a mess Apple will reject it.
TalentBuddy was bought by Udemy and I don’t believe the actual coding problems are available anymore? HackerRank effectively does the same thing.
Speaking of Udemy, they just changed their terms of service and courses aren’t astronomically expensive anymore. It’s paid, but if you learn better through videos here’s my favorite iOS course.
DON’T ignore GitHub. There are a LOT of open source projects available that are specifically created to make the production of your app easier. Few examples:
Chart.js makes adding graphs to web pages much easier [x]
Spring makes it easier to implement UI animations into your app [x]
New XKit’s source is on here [x] (not really something you’d “add” to anything but I thought I’d point it out)
Realm is super easy to use and is great for databases on mobile devices.
Udacity was mentioned but I want to stress how great it is at explaining concepts without taking up too much time. It’s faster paced but it puts a lot of emphasis on creating projects on your own without telling you explicitly how to do it, which imo is the best way of learning because it makes you have to actively think about the material you’re looking at instead of just copying everything the video does.
