Kate Scott's Blog, page 8

Choose the Best Hardness Tester from Innovatest

Innovatest provides various hardness tester for a wide range of applications. It also has various indenters and portable equipment for field assignments. For fixed workstations, the manufacturer has several floor and bench testers. Its portable testers use a software program installed on your computer and tabulate their data in standard spreadsheets, Word and CSV files. They are powered via USB, which enables them to perform hardness-test tasks outdoors. In addition, the floor and bench testers come in various configurations for multiple applications. Each comes a knob for the fine adjustment of the Z-axis, a touchscreen system, and an electronic eyepiece. They are connected to a controller, which comes with Innovatest proprietary software for functionality and to add third-party add-ons.

Innovatest Uses Various Hardness Test Methods

Innovatest uses multiple test methods across its range of hardness testers. It gives users a choice of Rockwell, Vickers, Knoop, and Brinell methods for various applications. The Rockwell test works with hard plastics and most metals. It is faster than other methods and requires minimal calculation after the test is completed. On the other hand, a Brinell test is commonly used on hard materials such as steel and aluminium and delivers loads up to 3,000 kgf. The Vickers test uses different calculations don’t consider the size of the indenter, making it ideal for all materials. Finally, the Knoop test works with very thin materials and makes very small indentations. As for the indenters, Rockwell uses a cone-like weight while Vickers has a pyramid-like indenter. Knoop uses micro indenters while the Brinell test method uses a tungsten ball.

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How to make your business website more effective

If you want your business website to be effective, it’s important to customize it for your target audience. Too often, businesses simply create a website and expect it to be successful without putting in the necessary work. The truth is, your website needs to be tailored to your specific niche in order to reach its full potential. There are different companies which can help you with this, for example Triggre. In this blog post, we will discuss how to customize your website for maximum effectiveness.

Audience

When it comes to customizing your website, the first thing you need to do is consider your target audience. Once you have a good understanding of who your target audience is, you can begin to tailor your website accordingly.

Design

One of the most important things you can do is create a user-friendly design. Your website should be easy to navigate, and all of the important information should be easy to find. If your visitors have to search for what they’re looking for, they will likely leave your website without taking any action.

Content

In addition to a user-friendly design, it’s also important to have quality content on your website. Your content should be well-written and relevant to your target audience. It should also be updated regularly, so that your visitors always have something new to read.

These are just a few of the things you need to consider when customizing your business website, for more information you can look on triggre.com.

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A business in used buses

You might have heard of some pretty weird businesses to run. But selling used buses is on a whole different level. This business is so specific that you might think that there aren’t many customers for them. But then you’d be wrong! The fact that Womy can sell buses all over the world proves how much demand there is for used buses. There’s also the fact that the company has existed for over 25 years now. And if there wasn’t any demand for it they wouldn’t have lasted this long. Besides, their results speak for themselves. They have had some pretty good and large projects in the past.

An example

In the past Womy sold over 500 buses in the Ivory Coast to a local company which is the first actual urban transport company in West Africa. They could only have achieved this with enormous achievement with the help of the people working at Womy! They didn’t only deliver buses to them but also trained the personnel of SOTRA to repair and maintain the buses. Because of the gigantic order they had to deliver a lot of spare parts as well. The amazing successes of both companies are easily shown in this example. 

Make your own success story

If you are interested in achieving your own goals, you can always inform Womy of your plans. And who knows are you their next big project. Even if you only need a handful of buses, or even just a single one. Working with Womy surely increases your chances of success. They have proven as much. So there is no need to be in doubt any longer. Go grab your chances and opportunities with both hands and check out what they have to offer!

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Sunshading

It is agreeable that the world we live in right now has taken a drastic change over the years. Most of this has been our own making. Inasmuch as you can take responsibility and change things for the better, you can also improve your home environment by choosing the best of sunshading to protect yourself from the dangerous rays of the sun 

How to protect improve your home with ray protection products 

Now that reducing global temperature is something that will take a while, you can take swift action to protect yourself from the danger of sunrays. Here, you will see some ways people are reinventing their home structures into magnificent resting places. 

1. Glass sliding doors 

These doors come in handy, especially with the new modern house structures. Most houses are no longer built with concrete. Furthermore, glass doors are more appropriate in areas that receive high temperatures from the sun. Not only does it make your place look more attractive, but also save you from getting health issues like cancer. 

2. Verandas 

Sunshading verandas can be the best and profitable way as a business. You can maintain your customer base since most people like eating while enjoying the breeze and view. Furthermore, you can also take the same idea to your home place when you have guests who want to visit and hang around. 

3. Carports 

Having to construct garages can be tiresome and expensive. However, by sunshading with glass covers and metal posts, it can make a beautiful space for your car to park. 

Conclusion 

Life has been a lot cheaper and bearable due to the use of sunshading products. Avoid the phobia of getting out due to the heat and enjoy a simple day’s breeze under the shade.

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Hallo wereld!

Welkom bij WordPress. Dit is je eerste bericht. Bewerk of verwijder het, start dan met schrijven!

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Diving In

As I mentioned last week, I recently adopted two wonderful children. Parenting them takes all of my available time and energy, leaving me little or no mental powers left for fiction writing. So I have decided to start writing memoir instead.

The hardest part of this new memoir writing attempt is figuring out what aspects of my children's lives I want to share publicly. Blogging about my kids causes the same problems, but also seems like the easiest place to start.

So here is what I've decided. I am not going to post my children's names on this blog. For now I'll just call them my son and my daughter, but I might come up with fun new nicknames for them in the future. I am also going to avoid posting clear pictures of their faces, but I may occasionally post profile and back pictures.

Instead of posting all the complicated back story, that will eventually make it's way into my memoir , I'm going to simply post about the little every day things that make this new life worth living.

So lets dive in. Here is a picture of my daughter doing just that. I took it yesterday during her swimming lesson.

I am so proud of this little lady for so many reasons. Her new found swimming ability is only one of them. When she moved in with us 15 months ago, she had never been in a swimming pool. Now she's not only jumping off diving boards, she can also swim both the crawl stroke and the back stroke with perfect form.

A member of my kids bio family drowned when they were little. His death is actually what first brought them into foster care six and a half years ago. That will never happen to either of my kids. These feisty kids can swim. They can survive.

Back to the Blogging Game

It's been ten months since I've updated this blog, so I doubt anyone is still checking it. But I've decided to come back to the land of blogging.

My reason for leaving and my reason for returning are actually the same thing, or two things to be more precise.

For the past fourteen months, I've been fostering two wonderful children with the intent of adoption. Parenting these children has been both the most challenging and most rewarding thing I have ever done. It has also required more energy, and patience that I ever thought I had.

Trying to find time to write while also being a mom has been a struggle. In 2014, I published my first two novels. I've been working on the first draft of my third novel for a year now, and I'm still only about a quarter of the way through the rough draft.

My problem isn't that I don't have time to write. It's that I don't have the emotional reserves to write fiction. My real life is overflowing with joys, frustrations, fears, and delights. I don't have any mental powers left to pour into my fictional characters. So I have decided to take a break from fiction writing and give memoir a try instead.

The adoption of my two little bundles of hyperactivity and love was finalized on September 24th. I am now in the process of writing an adoption memoir. As I sort through all the events and emotions that have lead my family to this point, I'm going to try sharing at least some of it with you.

So I'm back to blogging. Tune in next week, and I'll share something about my crazy family with you, I'm just not entirely sure what yet.

Happy New Year

2014 was a big year for me, and I'm hoping you can help make 2015 even better.2014 included several enormous changes in my life. My first novel, Counting to D, was released in February and my second novel, The Evolution of Emily, came out in November.

To keep things hopping, I also adopted two children in August. Then I quit my day job, which means if I want to feed these children, I need to sell books.

This is where I need your help. Hopefully, you have already read and enjoyed at least one of my books. If you haven't read my second book yet, think about adding it to your to-read list.

The thing that would help me out the most is if you reviewed my books that you have already read and enjoyed. Currently, Counting to D has 27 reviews on Amazon and 111 reviews on Goodreads. The Evolution of Emily on the other hand, only has 6 reviews on Amazon and 14 reviews on Goodreads.

Reviews accomplish two things, they act as a form of endorsement for potential buyers trying to decide what to read next, and they also affect recommendation algorithms. Amazon has a very complicated algorithm to recommend titles to potential buyers.

The number of reviews a book has is one key component to this algorithm. These reviews don't have to be super long or eloquent. Simply posting a couple sentences saying that you have read and enjoyed a book will help ensure that the book will be recommended to other readers in the future.

2014 was a great year. I hope 2015 will be even better. In order for that to happen, I need more people to review both of my books, but especially The Evolution of Emily. So if you have already read it and loved it, please consider posting a review on Amazon or Goodreads.

What's Up Wednesday

What's Up Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Jaime Morrow and Erin Funk.  Head over to Jaime's page for links to find out what's up with everyone else. Here's what's up with me.
What I'm Reading

The vast majority of my reading lately has been aloud to my kids. Recently, they've decided they love Shel Silverstein. We finished A Light in the Attic last week and are now reading Falling Up. I do like all of Silverstein's poems, but definitely feel the strongest attachment to Where the Sidewalk Ends mainly because it's the Shel Silverstene book I read as a kid. It's also the one we don't actually own yet. So Santa, if you're reading this, do you maybe want to get my daughter Where the Sidewalk Ends for Christmas?

What I'm Writing

I'm trying to work on Fragments of Life. I like the concept a lot and think it has the potential to be my best book yet. But it's a very hard story to write. My POV character spends the entire book lying in a hospital bed. So yeah. It's a challenge.

I've got about four decent chapters right now and parts of others that I like. I think I need to do some more research first though. Like maybe go to med school or something.

I did officially quit my day job this week. For the last four months I've been on family leave ('cause I just adopted two kids) but I told my old boss I wasn't coming back this week. Now that writing (and being a mom) is my only job, I really do need to find time to write.

What Works for Me

I now have an office, sort of. I had an office before I became a mom. But that room is now my son's bedroom. We moved our desktop, and the desk it sits on into a little alcove off the side of our living room. I have always preferred writing on my laptop though. For the last few months I've been doing most of my writing while sitting on my bed, which may be one of the reasons why I've gotten so little done in the last few months.

I recently got a new chair that fits nicely into the corner of my bedroom, so I can still go to my room and close the door to get away from my kids when I want to write. But I can sit somewhere a bit more comfortable than a bed when writing.

What Else I've Been Up To

Both of my kids have birthdays this coming week, and Christmas is right around the corner. Last Sunday we had a joint birthday party for both kiddos and Jesus. Because I'm a fairly social person, and quite possibly insane, I invited a ton of people. We had 20 kids and 30 adults at our house on Sunday.

Now that that's over, I'm busy planning smaller family only (meaning grandparents, cousins, etc) birthday dinners for both kids on their actual birthdays. My life is way beyond hectic, but the kids are loving it.

My son (who is about to turn six) keeps talking about how fun his party was. Today he said, "Do you remember my party? It was so much fun, it feels like a dream. That was exactly the party I've always wanted to have."

So I may not be getting tons of writing done, but I am doing a great job of trashing my house in the name of six year old joy.

So what's up with you?

What's Up Wednesday

What's Up Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Jaime Morrow and Erin Funk.  Head over to Jaime's page for links to find out what's up with everyone else. Here's what's up with me.
What I'm Reading

I actually read this book last summer, but I've never recommended it on WUW, so I'm going to mention it today. Dormant's author, Leeann McLennan is both a friend of mine, and a fabulous writer. Dormant is about a superhuman girl (aka superhero) who chooses to ignore her powers and try to live as a normal after her mom dies while helping to save the world. When Olivia is taken hostage during a bank robbery, her supernormal instincts kick in and she is thrust back into the superhero world.

This is a very fun YA/SciFi story that I would recommend to anyone who loves a good superhero adventure.



What I'm Writing

Now that my second novel has been out in the world for almost a month, I'm trying to focus on writing book three. Trying being the key word. December is so not the time to start a new project. Real life is way to distracting. I started penciling out some of my ideas for book three last spring when I was waiting to hear back from beta readers on book two. I've now read through all of those notes and have about 10k words of a crappy first draft.

I want this book, Fragments of Life, to come out sometime in 2015. In order to make a November release for EoE, I had to get a good draft to beta readers in April. Um, yeah, I have a lot of work to do on this next story.

The story does start on New Years Eve. So maybe I'll aim to make 12-31-15 the release date. That way it will be out for the ebook upswing in January after people get ereaders for Xmas. Yeah, I still have a lot of work to do.

What Works for Me

KDP Select. For people self-publishing, or thinking about self-publishing, you should definitely know about KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) Select. Any indie author who wants their ebook on Amazon has to use KDP, but you also have the option of signing up for KDP Select.

In order to use KDP Select, you have to give Amazon exclusive ebook rights for 90 days. Every 90 days, you can either re-enroll or start selling your book in other platforms. There are two main benefits to KDP Select. The first is that you get 5 free days, or 5 discount days, per 90 day period. Today, is actually one of my free days. So if you haven't bought The Evolution of Emily yet, and you want to read it, but don't want to pay for it. I recommend getting it for free right now.

The other benefit may actually be more significant. KDP Select books are included in the free Amazon Prime lending library for the entire 90 days they are in KDP Select. A percentage of the Amazon Prime membership fees is given to authors whose books are borrowed, so my royalty rates for borrowed books are actually about the same as my royalty rates for sold copies.

In the three weeks EoE has been out, I've actually had more borrows than sales. In addition to getting paid for borrows, they also count towards Amazon sales rank. I only had my first book, Counting to D, enrolled in KDP Select for 90 days before opening it to other platforms. I'm now thinking I'm going to leave The Evolution of Emily on KDP Select until my third book comes out, whenever that happens.

What Else I've Been Up To

It's December and my life is therefor insane. If you've read my blog at all in the past four months, you probably know that I just adopted two kids. Both kids have December birthdays. My son is about to turn 6, and my daughter is turning 8. We've got two birthdays and Christmas all in the same week, every year for the rest of our lives. Yeah, December is now crazy.

We're having a joint birthday party for the kids next weekend. So far there are 35 people coming, but we're still waiting on several people to RSVP.

I said my life was crazy right now right? Yeah, book 3 is so not getting done anytime soon.

So what's up with you?