text:
Repair of Infarcted Myocardium by Autologous Intracoronary Mononuclear Bone Marrow Cell Transplantation in Humans
Background— Experimental data suggest that bone marrow–derived cells may contribute to the healing of myocardial infarction (MI). For this reason, we analyzed 10 patients who were treated by intracoronary transplantation of autologous, mononuclear bone marrow cells (BMCs) in addition to standard therapy after MI.
Methods and Results— After standard therapy for acute MI, 10 patients were transplanted with autologous mononuclear BMCs via a balloon catheter placed into the infarct-related artery during balloon dilatation (percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty). Another 10 patients with acute MI were treated by standard therapy alone. After 3 months of follow-up, the infarct region (determined by left ventriculography) had decreased significantly within the cell therapy group (from 30±13 to 12±7%, P=0.005) and was also significantly smaller compared with the standard therapy group (P=0.04). Likewise, infarction wall movement velocity increased significantly only in the cell therapy group (from 2.0±1.1 to 4.0±2.6 cm/s, P=0.028). Further cardiac examinations (dobutamine stress echocardiography, radionuclide ventriculography, and catheterization of the right heart) were performed for the cell therapy group and showed significant improvement in stroke volume index, left ventricular end-systolic volume and contractility (ratio of systolic pressure and end-systolic volume), and myocardial perfusion of the infarct region.
Conclusions— These results demonstrate for the first time that selective intracoronary transplantation of autologous, mononuclear BMCs is safe and seems to be effective under clinical conditions. The marked therapeutic effect may be attributed to BMC-associated myocardial regeneration and neovascularization.
Received August 2, 2002; accepted August 2, 2002.
Remodeling of the left ventricle after myocardial infarction (MI) represents a major cause of infarct-related heart failure and death. This process depends on acute and chronic transformation of both the necrotic infarct region and the non-necrotic, peri-infarct tissue.1,2⇓ Despite application of pharmacotherapeutics and mechanical interventions, the cardiomyocytes lost during MI cannot be regenerated. The recent finding that a small population of cardiac muscle cells is able to replicate itself is encouraging but is still consistent with the concept that such regeneration is restricted to viable myocardium.3
In animal experiments, attempts to replace the necrotic zone by transplanting other cells (eg, fetal cardiomyocytes or skeletal myoblasts) have invariably succeeded in reconstituting heart muscle structures, ie, myocardium and coronary vessels. However, these cells fail to integrate structurally and do not display characteristic physiological functions.4–7⇓⇓⇓ Another approach to reverse myocardial remodeling is to repair myocardial tissue by using bone marrow–derived cells. Bone marrow contains multipotent adult stem cells that show a high capacity for differentiation.8–10⇓⇓ Experimental studies have shown that bone marrow cells (BMCs) are capable of regenerating infarcted myocardium and inducing myogenesis and angiogenesis; this leads in turn to amelioration of cardiac function in mice and pigs.11–14⇓⇓⇓ However, procedures based on this phenomenon remain largely uninvestigated in a human clinical setting.
An investigation of one patient receiving autologous skeletal myoblasts into a postinfarction scar during coronary artery bypass grafting revealed improvement of contraction and viability 5 months afterward.15 Autologous mononuclear BMCs transplanted in a similar surgical setting showed long-term improvement of myocardial perfusion in 3 of 5 patients and no change in 2 patients.16 However, such studies entail a surgical approach and are therefore associated with well-known perioperative risks. Moreover, this surgical procedure cannot be used with MI. We therefore looked for a nonsurgical, safer mode for transplanting autologous cells into postinfarction tissue. A pilot study from our group demonstrated that intracoronary transplantation of autologous mononuclear BMCs 6 days after MI was associated with a marked decrease in infarct area and an increase in left ventricular (LV) function after 3 and 6 months of follow-up.17 To confirm these results and validate this promising new therapy for MI, we established a clinical trial involving 20 patients for comparing the safety and bioefficacy of autologous BMC transplantation. All 20 patients underwent standard therapy, and 10 patients received additional intracoronary cell transplantation. All 20 patients were followed up for 3 months.
Patient Population
All 20 patients had suffered transmural infarction according to World Health Organization criteria with the involvement of the left anterior descending coronary artery (n=4), left circumflex coronary artery (n=3), or right coronary artery (n=13). Mean duration of infarct pain was 12±10 hours before invasive diagnostics and therapy. Patients had to be <70 years old and were excluded if one of the following criteria were met: screening >72 hours after infarction, cardiac shock, severe comorbidity, alcohol or drug dependency, or excessive travel distance to the study center.
After right and left heart catheterization, coronary angiography, and left ventriculography, mechanical treatment was initiated with recanalization of the infarct-related artery by balloon angioplasty (n=20) and subsequent stent implantation (n=19). All patients were monitored in our intensive care unit, and no arrhythmogenic events or hemodynamic impairments were recorded in either patient group.
All 20 patients were briefed in detail about the procedure of BMC transplantation. Informed consent was obtained from 10 patients, who formed the cell therapy group, whereas 10 patients who refused additional cell therapy served as controls. The local ethics committee of the Heinrich-Heine-University, Düsseldorf, approved the study protocol. All procedures conformed to institutional guidelines.
Before taking part in rehabilitation programs, all patients left the hospital with standard medication consisting of acetylsalicylic acid, an ACE inhibitor, a β-blocker, and a statin.
Bone Marrow Aspiration, Isolation, and Cultivation
Seven (±2) days after acute coronary angiography, bone marrow (≈40 mL) was aspirated under local anesthesia from ilium of cell therapy patients (n=10). Mononuclear BMCs were isolated by Ficoll density separation on Lymphocyte Separation Medium (BioWhittaker) before the erythrocytes were lysed with H2O. For overnight cultivation, 1×106 BMCs/mL were placed in Teflon bags (Vuelife, Cell Genix) and cultivated in X-Vivo 15 Medium (BioWhittaker) supplemented with 2% heat-inactivated autologous plasma. The next day, BMCs were harvested and washed 3 times with heparinized saline before final resuspension in heparinized saline. Viability was 93±3%. Heparinization and filtration (cell strainer, FALCON) was carried out to prevent cell clotting and microembolization during intracoronary transplantation. The mean number of mononuclear cells harvested after overnight culture was 2.8×107; this consisted of 0.65±0.4% AC133-positive cells and 2.1±0.28% CD34-positive cells. All microbiological tests of the clinically used cell preparations proved negative. As a viability and quality ex vivo control, 1×105 cells grown in H5100 medium (Stem Cell Technology) were found to be able to generate mesenchymal cells in culture.
Intracoronary Transplantation of BMCs
Five to nine days after onset of acute infarction, cells were directly transplanted into the infarcted zone (Figure 1). This was accomplished with the use of a balloon catheter, which was placed within the infarct-related artery. After exact positioning of the balloon at the site of the former infarct-vessel occlusion, percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA) was performed 6 to 7 times for 2 to 4 minutes each. During this time, intracoronary cell transplantation via the balloon catheter was performed, using 6 to 7 fractional high-pressure infusions of 2 to 3 mL cell suspension, each of which contained 1.5 to 4×106 mononuclear cells. PTCA thoroughly prevented the backflow of cells and at the same time produced a stop-flow beyond the site of the balloon inflation to facilitate high-pressure infusion of cells into the infarcted zone. Thus, prolonged contact time for cellular migration was allowed.18
Functional Assessment of Hemodynamics
After 3 months, all 20 patients were followed up by left heart catheterization, left ventriculography, and coronary angiography. Ejection fraction, infarct region, and regional wall movement of the infarcted zone during ejection were determined by left ventriculography. Ejection fraction was measured with Quantcor software (Siemens). To quantify infarction wall movement velocity, 5 axes were placed perpendicular to the long axis in the main akinetic or dyskinetic segment of the ventricular wall. Relative systolic and diastolic lengths were measured, and the mean difference was divided by the systolic duration (in seconds). To quantify the infarct region, the centerline method according to Sheehan was used.19 All hemodynamic investigations were obtained by two independent observers.
In the cell therapy group before and 3 months after cell transplantation, additional examinations for measuring hemodynamics and myocardial perfusion included dobutamine stress echocardiography, radionuclide ventriculography, catheterization of the right heart, and stress-redistribution-reinjection 201thallium scintigraphy. The contractility index Psyst/ESV was calculated by dividing LV systolic pressure (Psyst) by end-systolic volume (ESV). Perfusion defect was calculated by scintigraphic bull's-eye technique. Each examination was performed according to standard protocols.
There were no complications or side effects determined in any patient throughout the diagnostic or therapeutic procedure or within the 3-month follow-up period.
Statistical Analysis
All data are presented as mean±SD. Statistical significance was accepted when P was <0.05. Discrete variables were compared as rates, and comparisons were made by χ2 analysis. Intra-individual comparison of baseline versus follow-up continuous variables was performed with a paired t test. Comparison of nonparametric data between the two groups was performed with Wilcoxon test and Mann-Whitney test. Statistical analysis was performed with SPSS for Windows (version 10.1).
Clinical data between the two groups did not differ significantly. The range of creatinine kinase levels was slightly but not significantly higher in the standard therapy group than it was in the cell therapy group (Table 1).
Comparison of the 2 groups 3 months after cell or standard therapy showed several significant differences in LV dynamics, according to the global and regional analysis of left ventriculogram. The infarct region as a percentage of hypokinetic, akinetic, or dyskinetic segments of the circumference of the left ventricle decreased significantly in the cell therapy group (from 30±13 to 12±7%, P= 0.005). It was also significantly smaller compared with the standard therapy group after 3 months (P=0.04). Within the standard therapy group, only a statistically nonsignificant decrease from 25±8 to 20±11% could be seen. Wall movement velocity over the infarct region rose significantly in the cell therapy group (from 2.0±1.1 to 4.0±2.6 cm/s, P=0.028) but not in the standard therapy group (from 1.8±1.3 to 2.3±1.6 cm/s, P=NS). No significant difference was observed between the two groups. Ejection fraction increased in both groups, albeit nonsignificantly (from 57±8 to 62± 10% in the cell therapy group and from 60±7 to 64±7% in the standard therapy group) (Table 2).
Further significant improvement could also be seen on additional analysis of the cell therapy group alone. Perfusion defect was considerably decreased by 26% in the cell therapy group (from 174±99 to 128±71 cm2, P=0.016, assessed by 201thallium scintigraphy) (Figure 2). Parallel to the reduction in perfusion defect, improvement (Table 3) could also be seen in:
Cardiac function, as revealed by increase in stroke volume index (from 49±7 to 56±7 mL/m2, P=0.010) and ejection fraction (from 51±14 to 53±13%, P=NS).
Cardiac geometry, as shown by decreases in both end-diastolic (from 158±20 to 143±30 mL, P=NS) and end-systolic volume (from 82±26 to 67±21 mL, P=0.011). Radionuclide ventriculography was used to acquire the data.
Contractility as evaluated by an increase in the velocity of circumferential fiber shortening (from 20.5±4.2 to 24.4±7.7 mm/s, P=NS, assessed by stress echocardiography) and by a marked increase in the ratio of systolic pressure to end-systolic volume (from 1.81±1.44 to 2.27±1.72 mm Hg/mL, P=0.005).
The present report describes the first clinical trial of intracoronary, autologous, mononuclear BMC transplantation for improving heart function and myocardial perfusion in patients after acute MI. The results demonstrate that transplanted autologous BMCs may lead to repair of infarcted tissue when applied during the immediate postinfarction period. These results also show that the intracoronary approach of BMC transplantation seems to represent a novel and effective therapeutic procedure for concentrating and/or depositing infused cells within the region of interest.
Neogenesis of both cardiomyocytes and coronary capillaries with some functional improvement has been shown recently by several investigators using bone marrow–derived cells in experimental infarction.11–14,18,20–23⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓ Moreover, transendothelial migration from the coronary capillaries and incorporation of cells into heart muscle has been observed experimentally.3,12,24–26⇓⇓⇓⇓ Until now, clinical data only existed for the cell therapy of surgically treated chronic ischemic heart disease.15,16⇓ Our aim was to transform the encouraging results from animal models to a safe clinical setting. The most crucial questions we had to address while designing and realizing this trial were: (1) What cell population should we deliver? (2) Which application method is the most efficient? (3) When should the cells be transplanted?
In recent years, several laboratories have shown that environmentally dictated changes of fate (transdetermination) are not restricted to stem cells but may also involve progenitor cells at different steps of a given differentiation pathway (transdifferentiation). Moreover, mesenchymal stem cells may represent an ideal cell source for treating different diseases.27 Adult, mononuclear BMCs contain such stem and progenitor cells (≤1%), eg, mesodermal progenitor cells, hematopoietic progenitor cells, and endothelial progenitor cells. In several animal infarction models it has been shown that: (1) Bone marrow hemangioblasts contribute to the formation of new vessels; (2) bone marrow hematopoietic stem cells differentiate into cardiomyocytes, endothelium, and smooth muscle cells8–13⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓; (3) BMCs give rise to mesodermal progenitor cells that differentiate to endothelial cells28; and (4) endothelial progenitors can transdifferentiate into beating cardiomyocytes.29 Thus, several different fractions of mononuclear BMCs may contribute to the regeneration of necrotic myocardium and vessels. In order to utilize this large and perhaps heterogeneous regenerative potential, we decided to use all mononuclear cells from the bone marrow aspirate as a whole, rather than a subpopulation. No further expansion was performed because experimental data have revealed a dramatic decline in the homing capacity of in vitro amplified hematopoietic stem or progenitor cells.30
The second question was how to deliver the cells most efficiently. When given intravenously, only a very small fraction of infused cells can reach the infarct region after the following injection: assuming a normal coronary blood flow of 80 mL/min per 100 g of LV weight, a quantity of 160 mL per left ventricle (assuming a regular LV mass of ≈200 g) will flow per minute.31,32⇓ This corresponds to only about 3% of cardiac output (assuming a cardiac output of 5000 mL/min).31 Therefore, intravenous application would require many circulation passages to enable infused cells to come into contact with the infarct-related artery. Throughout this long circulation and recirculation time, homing of cells to other organs could considerably reduce the numbers of cells dedicated to cell repair in the infarcted zone. Thus, supplying the entire complement of cells by intracoronary administration obviously seems to be advantageous for the tissue repair of infarcted heart muscle and may also be superior to intraventricular injection,33 because all cells are able to flow through the infarcted and peri-infarcted tissue during the immediate first passage. Accordingly, by this intracoronary procedure the infarct tissue and the peri-infarct zone can be enriched with the maximum available amount of cells at all times.
As stem cells differentiate into more mature types of progenitor cells, it is thought that a special microenvironment in so-called niches regulates cell activity by providing specific combinations of cytokines and by establishing direct cellular contact. For successful long-term engraftment, at least some stem cells have to reach their niches, a process referred to as homing. Mouse experiments have shown that significant numbers of BMCs appear in liver, spleen, and bone marrow after intravenous injection.34 To offer the BMCs the best chance of finding their niche within the myocardium, a selective intracoronary delivery route was chosen. Presumably, therefore, fewer cells were lost by extraction toward organs of secondary interest by this first pass–like effect. To facilitate transendothelial passage and migration into the infarcted zone, cells were infused by high-pressure injection directly into the necrotic area, and the balloon was kept inflated for 2 to 3 minutes; the cells were not washed away immediately under these conditions.
The time point for delivery was chosen as 7 to 8 days after infarction onset for the following reasons:
In dogs, infarcted territory becomes rich in capillaries and contains enlarged, pericyte-poor "mother vessels" and endothelial bridges 7 days after myocardial ischemia and reperfusion. Twenty-eight days later, a significant muscular vessel wall has already formed.35 Thus, with such timing, cells may be able to reach the worst damaged parts and at the same time salvage tissue. Transendothelial cell migration may also be enhanced because an adequate muscular coat is not yet formed.
Until now, only one animal study has attempted to determine the optimum time for cardiomyocyte transplantation to maximize myocardial function after LV injury. Adult rat hearts were cryoinjured and fetal rat cardiomyocytes were transplanted immediately, 2 weeks later, and 4 weeks later. The authors discussed the inflammatory process, which is strongest in the first days after infarction, as being responsible for the negative results after immediate cell transplantation, and they assumed that the best results seen after 2 weeks may have been due to transplantation before scar expansion.36 Until now, however, no systematic experiments have been performed with BMCs to correlate the results of transplantation with the length of such a time delay.
Another important variable is the inflammatory response in MI, which seems to be a superbly orchestrated interaction of cells, cytokines, growth factors and extracellular matrix proteins mediating myocardial repair. In the first 48 hours, debridement and formation of a fibrin-based provisional matrix predominates before a healing phase ensues.37–40⇓⇓⇓ Moreover, vascular endothelial growth factor is at its peak concentration 7 days after MI, and the decline of adhesion molecules (intercellular adhesion molecules, vascular cell adhesion molecules) does not take place before days 3 to 4 after MI. We assumed that transplantation of mononuclear BMCs within the "hot" phase of post-MI inflammation might lead them to take part in the inflammation cascade rather than the formation of functional myocardium and vessels.
Taking all of this into account, we can conclude that cell transplantation within the first 5 days after acute infarction is not possible for logistical reasons and is not advisable because of the inflammatory process. On the other hand, transplantation 2 weeks after infarction scar formation seems to reduce the benefit of cell transplantation. Although the ideal time point for transplantation remains to be defined, it is most likely between days 7 and 14 after the onset of MI, as in the present study.
This trial was designed as a phase I safety and feasibility trial, meaning that no control group is necessarily required. However, to validate the results, we correlated them with those obtained from 10 patients who refused to get additional cell therapy and thus received standard therapy alone. We are aware of the fact that such a comparison does not reach the power of a randomly allocated, blinded control group. However, the significant improvement with regard to infarct region, hemodynamics (stroke volume index), cardiac geometry (LV end-systolic volume), and contractility (Psyst/ESV and infarction wall movement velocity) did confirm a positive effect of the additional cell therapy because the changes observed in the standard therapy group failed to reach significance.
Another important factor for interpreting the results is time interval between onset of symptoms and revascularization of the infarct-related artery by angioplasty; this represents a crucial determinant of LV recovery. For patients with acute MI, it has been shown that if the time interval is >4 hours, no significant changes in ejection fraction, regional wall motion, or ESV are observed after 6-month follow-up by echocardiography and angiography.41 None of our 20 patients was treated by angioplasty within 4 hours after onset of symptoms. Our average time interval was 12±10 hours. Thus, PTCA-induced improvement of LV function can be nearly excluded; indeed, the only mild and nonsignificant changes within the standard therapy group are consistent with the above-mentioned data.41 In contrast, the cell therapy group showed considerable and significant improvement in the same parameters, which may be attributed to BMC-mediated coronary angioneogenesis and cardiomyoneogenesis.
These results show that transplantation of autologous BMCs, as well as the intracoronary approach, represent a novel and effective therapeutic procedure for the repair of infarcted myocardium. For this method of therapy, no ethical problems exist, and no side effects were observed at any point of time. The therapeutic benefit for the patient's heart seems to prevail. However, further experimental studies, controlled prospective clinical trials, and variations of cell preparations are required to define the role of this new approach for the therapy of acute MI in humans.
- ↵Pfeffer MA, Braunwald E. Ventricular remodeling after myocardial infarction: experimental observations and clinical implications. Circulation. 1990; 81: 1161–1172.
- ↵Ertl G, Gaudron P, Hu K. Ventricular remodeling after myocardial infarction: experimental and clinical studies. Basic Res Cardiol. 1993; 88: 125–137.
- ↵
- ↵Leor J, Patterson M, Quinones MJ, et al. Transplantation of fetal myocardial tissue into infarcted myocardium of rat: a potential method for repair of infarcted myocardium? Circulation. 1996; 94 (suppl II): 332–336.
- ↵
- ↵
- ↵Tomita S, Li RK, Weisel RD, et al. Autologous transplantation of bone marrow cells improves damaged heart function. Circulation. 1999; 100 (suppl II): 247–256.
- ↵
- ↵
- ↵
- ↵
- ↵Orlic D, Kajstura J, Chimenti S, et al. Mobilized bone marrow cells repair the infarcted heart, improving function and survival. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2001; 98: 10344–10349.
- ↵
- ↵
- ↵
- ↵
- ↵
- ↵
- ↵Sheehan FH, Bolson EL; Dodge HT, et al. Advantages and applications of the Centerline method for characterizing regional ventricular function. Circulation. 1986; 74: 293–305.
- ↵
- ↵Toma C, Pittenger MF, Cahill KS, et al. Human mesenchymal stem cells differentiate to a cardiomyocyte phenotype in the adult murine heart. Circulation. 2002; 105: 93–98.
- ↵Kamihata H, Matsubara H, Nishiue T, et al. Implantation of bone marrow mononuclear cells into ischemic myocardium enhances collateral perfusion and regional function via side supply of angioblasts, angiogenic ligands, and cytokines. Circulation. 2001; 104: 1046–1052.
- ↵Ferrari G, Cusella-De Angelis G, Coletta M, et al. Muscle regeneration by bone marrow-derived myogenic progenitors. Science. 1998; 279: 1528–1530.
- ↵Kawamoto A, Gwon HC, Iwaguro H, et al. Therapeutic potential of ex vivo expanded endothelial progenitor cells for myocardial ischemia. Circulation. 2001; 103: 634–637.
- ↵
- ↵
- ↵Jiang Y, Jahagirdar B, Reinhardt RL, et al. Pluripotency of mesenchymal stem cells derived from adult marrow. Nature. 2002; 20: 1–12.
- ↵Reyes M, Lund T, Lenvik T, et al. Purification and ex vivo expansion of postnatal human marrow mesodermal progenitor cells. Blood. 2001; 98: 2615–2625.
- ↵Condorelli G, Borello U, De Angelis L, et al. Cardiomyocytes induce endothelial cells to trans-differentiate into cardiac muscle: implications for myocardium regeneration. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2001; 98: 10733–10738.
- ↵Szilvassy SJ, Bass MJ, Van Zant G, et al. Organ-selective homing defines engraftment kinetics of murine hematopoietic stem cells and is compromised by ex vivo expansion. Blood. 1999; 93: 1557–1566.
- ↵Gregg DE, Fisher LC. Blood supply to the heart.In: Handbook of Physiology. Vol 2. Washington, DC: American Physiological Society; 1963:chap 44, 1517–1584.
- ↵Strauer BE. Myocardial oxygen consumption in chronic heart disease: role of wall stress, hypertrophy and coronary reserve. Am J Cardiol. 1979; 4: 730–740.
- ↵Toma C, Pittenger MF, Byrne BJ, et al. Adult human mesenchymal stem cells differentiate to a striated muscle phenotype following arterial delivery to the murine heart. Circulation. 2000; 102 (suppl II): II-683.Abstract.
- ↵
- ↵Ren G, Michael LH, Entman ML, et al. Morphological characteristics of the microvasculature in healing myocardial infarcts. J Histochem Cytochem. 2002; 50: 71–79.
- ↵
- ↵Frangogiannis NG, Smith CW, Entman ML. The inflammatory response in myocardial infarction. Cardiovasc Res. 2002; 53: 31–47.
- ↵Allgöwer M. The Cellular Basis of Wound Repair. Springfield, Ill: Charles C. Thomas; 1956.
- ↵
- ↵
- ↵
This Issue
Article Tools
- Repair of Infarcted Myocardium by Autologous Intracoronary Mononuclear Bone Marrow Cell Transplantation in HumansBodo E. Strauer, Michael Brehm, Tobias Zeus, Matthias Köstering, Anna Hernandez, Rüdiger V. Sorg, Gesine Kögler and Peter WernetCirculation. 2002;106:1913-1918, originally published September 3, 2002https://doi.org/10.1161/01.CIR.0000034046.87607.1C
Citation Manager Formats
Share this Article
- Repair of Infarcted Myocardium by Autologous Intracoronary Mononuclear Bone Marrow Cell Transplantation in HumansBodo E. Strauer, Michael Brehm, Tobias Zeus, Matthias Köstering, Anna Hernandez, Rüdiger V. Sorg, Gesine Kögler and Peter WernetCirculation. 2002;106:1913-1918, originally published September 3, 2002https://doi.org/10.1161/01.CIR.0000034046.87607.1C


text:
The GIS 2 GPS team would like to thank the following companies and organizations in helping support and nurture GIS and GPS technology in schools. The following companies feel like us that these new technologies will be important to students in the future. Over the past couple of years, these technologies have rapidly developed and are now used in the real world. It is important that the present day students are exposed to these new technologies so they will be ready to use them either in their job or everyday life experiences.
The following companies and organizations in their own unique ways have assisted us in developing the program that we now have in place. These companies have not only given us technical support, but they also have donated materials, equipment and software to the development of our program. With their sanction, we have also been able to pass along this support and materials to the schools and teachers we have been working with. Another part of this collaboration is a special savings to schools and teachers for the equipment and software that is necessary to bring these new technologies to the K-12 environment.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
80 Degrees by 8:00 AM; Texas Butt Bake Hang just around the corner; near heat exhaustion yesterday
Im ready for some cool weather. Im ready for fall!
Its time to start talking about November! Yep, let's get the Annual Texas Fall Group Hang planning underway!
If you dont have the date saved yet, mark November 7-9, 2014 on your calendar for the Lone Star States Annual fall hammock infestation of the trees at Fairfield Lake State Park.
Its a great time to renew friendships, make new ones, and play with gear, so dont miss out.
As this is the sixth round of this annual event, weve somewhat become creatures of habit so lets meet the weekend of the second Saturday in November at Fairfield Lake State Park once again!
There has been a large increase in forum membership over the past year and a good number of them are Texas folks, (or friendly neighbors of The Republic), and all are welcome. What started with a handful of folks from South/Central Texas in early 2009 has grown to nearly the century mark with past participants from Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, Michigan, and places forgotten or unknown.
If you have not been to this event before, take a few moments and scroll through some of last years planning and trip reports. It will help answer questions you may have and maybe create some that can be addressed on this thread in the weeks to come. Heres the planning thread from last year and the 2013 Trip report links.
In the past, the fun has included car camping for those who like to bring everything; (the location has showers and porcelain facilities for those who wont leave home without them); day hikes for those so inclined; lake paddling; fishing; pot luck dinners; Dutch oven cooking; DIY play time; lots of show and tell along with a little gear trading; group buys; stove tests; drawings for prizes, and some wonderful campfire fellowship.
Here is the link to the planning spreadsheet on Google docs. By posting to it we can keep a running list of folks attending and other stuff past the date that this post can be edited. Please add or update yourself on it.
So, let the planning conversation begin!


text:
Want to improve your Google search skills?
Here are the three tips — basic, intermediate and advanced — from Dan Russell at Google. He studies how people use the search engine and teaches classes on how to do it better, including a free online course this month, for which registration started Tuesday. He promises these tips will make you happy, and he cares a lot about that — his official title at Google is über tech lead for search quality and user happiness.
Basic tip:
Say you know you were mentioned in an article online, so you search to read what was said about you. But when you click on the link, you get the entire article and no idea where to find your name. The solution is simple: Control- F. Typing those two keys allows you to enter a term to find it anywhere it appears on the Web page. Ninety percent of United States Internet users do not know how to find the word they are looking for on a Web page, according to Mr. Russell's studies. "Control F changes the way you read anything."
Intermediate tip:
You tried to snowboard and ended up back at your computer with a possibly broken arm. Instead of typing "What do I do with a busted arm" into Google, try to use words that you imagine someone else would have written about broken arms, Mr. Russell said. "Put yourself in the mind of the author of a perfect Web page," he said. "Emulate the language of the person you want to read the answer from." But do not take that too far, by making up words that you think are expert, but are not real words. "Don't overdo it using words you think are medical, like 'fracturated,' because you will find results, at which point you'll be in even bigger trouble," Mr. Russell said. Which leads us to his final tip.
Advanced tip:
Before you ask Google what to do with a "fracturated" arm, look up the word, or any word, by typing "define:" followed by the word. Mr. Russell advises promiscuous use of the word "define" followed by colon. "Before you search, make sure you're searching the right word. The worst thing you can do is to search for something you think means one thing but in fact means something else, but you believe the answer when you asked the wrong question."


text:
Big players pan modifications to DOL's Form 5500
No real benefits seen from proposed changes, only more of a burden
The reviews are in for the Department of Labor's proposed changes to the Form 5500 annual report — and they're not raves.
Among major players in the retirement, benefits and financial industries, the sentiments submitted to regulators often ranged from revising the proposal to rejecting the document as currently offered.
The proposals will create "unnecessary burdens on plan sponsors with little, if any, benefit," asserted a trade organization representing large employers. "Costs outweigh benefits," argued a group of record keepers. The DOL's recommendations will produce "a further disincentive for small employers to adopt plans," contended the world's largest money manager.
The object of their disaffection is Form 5500 revisions the DOL said would "improve publicly available information about employee benefit plans and reinforce for plan fiduciaries" their ERISA duties to "operate plans prudently and monitor service providers."
After the department introduced the proposals in July, it sought public comment. In October, the DOL extended the comment period until Dec. 5 because companies and organizations said they needed more time. Of 200 public comments filed with the DOL, more than half were filed in December.
Industry participants say the proposed rules offer some improvements, but they add the DOL must perform a better cost-benefit analysis, hold public hearings and reconsider some recommendations.
"It still has legs — but not in its present form," Bradford Campbell, Washington-based counsel for Drinker, Biddle & Reath LLP and the former head of the Employee Benefits Security Administration, said in an interview. "A rule will proceed in a few years, but it will probably look quite different."
The DOL's effort to generate more data "is strongly positive," said Lew Minsky, executive director of the Defined Contribution Institutional Investment Association, Washington, also in an interview. "Like every other regulatory initiative, it is "to be determined.'"
Mr. Minsky added: "I don't think it will be scrapped. I expect high-level changes in scope and philosophy, as you would in any change of administration."
The DOL proposals, which would take effect in 2019, include:
nImproving the "reliability and transparency" of information, including the reporting of alternative investments, "hard-to-value-assets" and investments through collective investment trusts.
nHarmonizing Form 5500 requirements with those of the DOL's regulation governing fee information provided by providers to sponsors. This will produce "improved evaluation of service arrangements involving investments, record keeping and other administrative services."
nAdding questions about "plan operations, service provider relationships and financial management of plans," that would "compel fiduciaries" to evaluate plans' compliance with the Employee Retirement Income Security Act and the federal tax code.
nExpanding the annual report to many group health plans subject to ERISA. "This includes eliminating for group health plans the current exemption ... for small insured and self-insured welfare benefit plans."
The proposed changes in the Form 5500 also were endorsed by the IRS and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.
"I think they overreached in several aspects," said Mr. Campbell, citing the reporting requirements for health plans. "This would be a huge burden on health plans, because most health plans have not filed a Form 5500 at all. They are completely changing that."
The DOL's proposed harmonizing of Form 5500 with the ERISA fee regulation "is not an apples-to-apples comparison," Mr. Campbell added. As written, the proposed rules "create confusion" for researchers and could encourage more litigation, he said.
The DOL's suggestions on Form 5500 and the ERISA rule — known as Section 408(b)(2) — "leads to a "numerical zinger," said Andrew Oringer, a New York-based partner at Dechert LLP.
Because the DOL proposal "wants to convert high-level information" in the ERISA regulation into numerical information for Form 5500, "people are concerned," he said. "People got comfortable with 408(b)(2) to describe what they were doing. Putting it in a numerical form is more work."
Given the changing political environment, "I don't know if this will happen," Mr. Oringer said.
Some organizations said the DOL proposals didn't go far enough. Washington-based AARP, in a Dec. 5 letter, said the DOL should require additional information "that a participant needs to know, and in the language they are most likely to understand." AARP asked for stronger enforcement of filing deadlines, better notices to employees of document filings and greater detail for fee information.
However, many large organizations and companies didn't mince words in their criticism.
"The proposed amendments should be withdrawn at this time," said a Dec. 5 letter from the ERISA Industry Committee, Washington, a trade group that represents large employers on retirement, health and compensation matters.
It noted that President-elect Donald Trump and top GOP leaders have stated that they wish to "repeal, delay, dismantle and otherwise not enforce" the Affordable Care Act. Requiring new, health plan-related rules in this environment "will likely cause a considerable waste of time and resources."
Costs outweigh benefits
Record keepers told the DOL that the proposed rules should be rewritten, subject to public hearings. "Costs outweigh the benefits," said a Dec. 5 letter from the Groom Recordkeeper Group, a collection of record keepers represented by the Washington law firm Groom Law Group.
"Record keepers currently are expending significant resources" to comply with the fiduciary rule, which takes effect in April, the letter said.
"Record keepers and others in the industry simply do not have the resources to implement so many major regulatory changes in such a short period of time."
The American Retirement Association complained the DOL "significantly underestimates the cost and burden to comply with the reporting requirements," in a letter filed Dec. 1. The Arlington, Va.-based trade group represents financial advisers, actuaries, consultants, accountants and attorneys who provide services to retirement-plan sponsors.
The ARA warned the proposed rules "will require large-scale changes to investment platforms, trust accounting systems, record-keeping systems, reporting systems and the software that supports the preparation of the form." Such costs, it added, would "likely" be passed on to participants and beneficiaries.
BlackRock (BLK) Inc. (BLK), New York, said the DOL should revise its proposals, maintaining they would create extra administrative requirements, especially on small plans, and would "significantly" raise costs to sponsors and providers.
"Imposing additional burdens on small plans will create a further disincentive for small employers to adopt plans," BlackRock wrote in its Dec. 5 comment letter. "We question whether there are sufficient benefits to justify the regulatory burden."
T. Rowe Price Inc., Baltimore, in a Dec. 5 letter, said the DOL's proposals would force it to make "substantial modifications" to the technology that operates its record-keeping platforms, boosting costs to clients and service providers.
Those costs "will ultimately be borne by plans, participants and beneficiaries," the letter said.
This article originally appeared in the January 9, 2017 print issue as, "Big players pan modifications to DOL's Form 5500".


text:
Chocolate Covered Cherry Shake
Create a Recipe Makeover
Report Inappropriate Recipe
Nutritional Info
- Servings Per Recipe: 1
- Amount Per Serving
- Calories: 151.8
- Total Fat: 4.0 g
- Cholesterol: 1.6 mg
- Sodium: 31.5 mg
- Total Carbs: 31.1 g
- Dietary Fiber: 4.0 g
- Protein: 4.3 g
View full nutritional breakdown of Chocolate Covered Cherry Shake calories by ingredient
Submitted by: SLSALKIL
IntroductionYUM! YUM!
Number of Servings: 1
1 c. Almond Breeze unsweetened chocolate milk
1 c. Dole dark sweet cherries, frozen
3 packets Splenda sweetener
1 tsp Sugar free chocolate syrup
Squirt of fat free reddi whip
Pour almond breeze into blender. Add 1 c frozen cherries, splenda and chocolate syrup. Blend until well blended. Pour in glass and top with whipped cream. Enjoy.
Number of Servings: 1
Recipe submitted by SparkPeople user SLSALKIL.
Number of Servings: 1
Recipe submitted by SparkPeople user SLSALKIL.


text:
Difference between revisions of "Talk:Main Page"
(Hello, very interesting site!)
m (Reverted edits by 188.8.131.52 (Talk); changed back to last version by Ravikiran r)
|Line 12:
|Line 12:
Spambot's like to also edit the second section of this page and replace it with spam. This is a trap to make it easy to spot if the spam bot strikes.
Spambot's like to also edit the second section of this page and replace it with spam. This is a trap to make it easy to spot if the spam bot strikes.
== Un-Englishing the main page ==
== Un-Englishing the main page ==
Revision as of 20:02, 5 February 2007
BEFORE YOU EDIT THE MAIN PAGE: Please refer to the Main Page guidelines before editing the Main Page.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Please take general discussions about Wikitravel to the travellers' pub. This talk page should be about the Main Page itself, not about Wikitravel in general. -- Evan 11:18, 3 Oct 2003 (PDT)
- 1 This is spam! Please revert it!
- 2 This is also spam
- 3 Archived discussions:
- 4 Un-Englishing the main page
- 5 Rolled back google link
- 6 Statistics
- 7 Very Important
- 8 Afrikaans
- 9 No edit section
- 10 Why haven't you upgraded?
- 11 Article templates
- 12 Including CSS on Wiki Edit Page
- 13 Hierarchical Directory
- 14 How to behave in a restaurant/bar etc
- 15 Wikitravel sold to Internet Brands?
- 16 Images in Country Articles
- 17 Make news & discover more prominent?
- 18 Reversion of User:Cdcd
- 19 Mention of IB
- 20 Main Page Update
- 21 Other languages into two tiers: under-1000 and over-1000
- 22 Fatal error
- 23 Cincinnati DotM
- 24 Discovery - "R" in Slovenian.
- 25 Bubbling under?
- 26 By Bicycle
- 27 Description
- 28 Hiding the "Main Page" in Main Page
- 29 Prices
- 30 Semi-protect this page?
- 31 United Nations
This is spam! Please revert it!
A spambot likes to edit the first section of this page and replace it with spam. This is a trap to make it easy to spot.
This is also spam
Spambot's like to also edit the second section of this page and replace it with spam. This is a trap to make it easy to spot if the spam bot strikes.
Archived discussions:
- Guide/Project split layout → Talk:Main Page/Split layout
- Travel news → Talk:Main Page/Travel news
- Cologne Blue is evil → Talk:Main Page/Cologne Blue is evil
- Activities section → Talk:Main Page/Activities
- Romanian version → Wikitravel talk:Romanian Wikitravel
- New Main Page layout → Talk:Main Page/New layout
- Main Page policy → Wikitravel:Main Page policy
- Travel calendar → Wikitravel:Travellers' pub
- New, New Main Page layout → Talk:Main Page/New new layout
- Destination of the Month/Week → Talk:Main Page/Destination of the Month
- December 2003 to November, 2004 Discussion → Talk:Main Page/Dec 2003 to Nov 2004
- December 2004 to December 2005 Discussion → Talk:Main Page/Dec 2004 to Dec 2005
Un-Englishing the main page
If my top-o'-the-napkin calculations are to be believed, around October 2006 this year the majority of Wikitravel's content will be in languages other than English. Is it time to start considering a language-neutral front page, akin to that seen for Wikipedia or Wikinews? That is, wikitravel.org/en will stay as is, but plain old wikitravel.org should present a list of languages available. Jpatokal 11:58, 15 Jan 2006 (EST)
- I'd like to do it slightly differently: that is, I'd like to use the browser's built-in language preferences to redirect users automatically from http://wikitravel.org/ to the best available language version, and have the default go to en:Main Page. Using content negotiation should make this quite easy.
- That should cover the mainline case of a French language speaker wanting to read the French language Wikitravel. Users who are using a French-language configured browser but want to read, say, the Swedish Wikitravel should be able to find the sv: link on fr:Accueil anyways. --Evan 13:15, 15 Jan 2006 (EST)
- OK, so, this is the way it works now; we're doing HTTP/1.1-compliant content negotiation (thanks, Apache!). Users who've configured their browser to prefer English will see Main Page; users who've configured their browser to prefer German will get de:Hauptseite. Users who have their browsers configured solely for a language we don't support (say, Spanish) will get the English main page. Users who have configured their browsers in complicated and interesting ways will get complicated and interesting HTTP/1.1-compliant results. I invite folks to try http://wikitravel.org/ and see for themselves. Try fiddling with your browser's language preferences and see what happens. --Evan 01:57, 17 Jan 2006 (EST)
- Neat! Just a tiny bug, though. My browser language is English (New Zealand) i.e. Lang = en-nz (in the HTML header). That version of English is ignored and instead I get the next language in my browser list. Initially I only had my own variant of English in the browser list. My browser appears to be configured that way by default - and I suspect lots of others are configured that way too, with only one highly specific language. The English page only appeared if I had Lang = en - for generic English - ahead of the other (generic) language options on the language list. If the browser language option is not set to the 2 letter generic language option then even the generic version of prefered language is not be served - I tested them - and it appears as if you do not have an English or other language setting. Only the generic language setting results in the correct language version being served. My browser (Internet Explorer) gives the following specific versions of the languages we currently use:
- de (German)
- de-at (Austria), de-ch (Switzerland), de-li (Liechtenstein), de-lu (Luxembourg)
- en (English)
- en-au (Australia), en-bz, (Belize), en-ca (Canada), en-gt (United Kingdom), en-ie (Ireland), en-jm (Jamaica), en-nz (New Zealand), en-ph (Philippines), en-tt (Trinidad), en-us (United States), en-za (South Africa), en-zw (Zimbabwe)
- fr (French)
- fr-be (Belgium), fr-ca (Canada), fr-ch (Switzerland), fr-lu (Luxembourg), fr-mc (Monarco)
- nl (Dutch)
- nl-be (Belgium)
- ro (Romanian)
- ro-md (Moldova)
- sv (Swedish)
- sv-fi (Finland)
- I do not know if this is just a Microsoft thing or if it is W3C standard language (dialect) representation, but I can see it causing problems for anyone who has had their (IE?) browser configured to one of these language variants, without being configured for the generic language as well. I think this happens by default when the language is selected and people would not be aware of the problem unless they specifically reconfigured their browser's language settings. Could cause all sorts of grief for someone in Switzerland or Luxembourg if they had French and German variants and got the English page! It would definitely upset French Canadians if they found out. -- Huttite 20:35, 17 Jan 2006 (EST)
- Grrrr. I couldn't find the twiddly bit that says, "for people who say that they want en-xx, serve them the en one. And so on for other languages." So I just copied your fine fine list above. It worked for me with en-ca and fr as my two language settings (correctly gave Main Page), so I think it's right. I'll continue scanning Apache docs, since I find this part of the Web fascinating. --Evan 23:35, 17 Jan 2006 (EST)
- Another thought: If we had a multi-language common page that appeared when none of the current languages were detected as being used by the browser, would that be better unenglish solution? -- Huttite 20:35, 17 Jan 2006 (EST)
- That sounds like a good idea. I can probably whip up an Esperanto common page. --Evan 23:35, 17 Jan 2006 (EST)
Rolled back google link
I rolled back a link to "http://google.com", since it wasn't really given any context and I don't think it's necessary to have it on our main page. --Evan 14:28, 15 Jan 2006 (EST)
This is probably something only an actuary or accountant would pick up - the main page says there are 6875 destination guides, while the link through to the site statistics says 6877. Which is correct? Yzerfontein 11:14, 27 Jan 2006 (EST)
- The site statistics page. The Main Page gets cached so it gets served real fast (it gets hit about 100 times more than the average page on Wikitravel), and the cached page only gets re-generated when the actual Main Page article is changed (or a linked article is created or deleted, or a couple of other reasons). This has the unfortunate result that the statistics don't get updated.
- I need to change our caching system so that when new pages are added (or pages are deleted... sigh) pages that have dynamic content (like the number of articles) get invalidated and re-generated. It's a lot of work for a teensy gain, and it's going to mean the Main Page gets regenerated every time a page is created. I'd prefer to just have something like "almost 7000 articles" or "more than 6800 articles" on the front page. But we've all gotten used to having a running tally on this page, so c'est la vie. --Evan 13:29, 27 Jan 2006 (EST)
Very Important
Hey my name's David, I'd like to create this web in Spanish. ow do I do?¿? Cdavid
- It is very important. You should sign up for the Wikitravel:Spanish Wikitravel Expedition, our project for getting the es: version off the ground. We're almost ready to go with it. --Evan 17:38, 28 Jan 2006 (EST)
Any chance of getting wikitravel going in the Afrikaans language? Yzerfontein 00:39, 29 Jan 2006 (EST)
- Hey, take a look at Wikitravel:How to start a new language version! Majnoona 00:48, 29 Jan 2006 (EST)
No edit section
So, I saw on de:Hauptseite that the "__NOEDITSECTION__" line was added, and it turned off all the little edit links. These never work for me (I always get the wrong section), so I figured it was good to turn them off here, too. --Evan 19:43, 30 Jan 2006 (EST)
- Thanks, Colin. No wonder that feature isn't documented. --Evan 21:56, 30 Jan 2006 (EST)
But there should really be a good way for a first time user to edit the main page in a legitimate way rather than confront him with ugly tables. Right now, the page looks like a trap. Whatever the first time user does will be a mistake. --Ravikiran 01:29, 31 Jan 2006 (EST)
Why haven't you upgraded?
Your version of mediawiki is quite old, 1.4.14 in fact, while the current version is 1.5.6. There are new features, such as "print this page" which would be very useful in wikitravel. i'd strongly suggest upgrading.
- Are you joking? It's less than a month old! 1.4.14 was released on January 19th, 2006!
- The 1.5.x branch made significant changes to the database structure, which makes upgrading time-intensive and difficult. We have about 10+ custom extensions - around 5,000 LOC -- that run on Wikitravel, and making this upgrade is going to be difficult.
- Upgrading to 1.5.x is on my list of things to do, but it's not at the top. --Evan 12:01, 12 Feb 2006 (EST)
- Just to follow up: Evan did the upgrade. Majnoona 18:21, 11 March 2006 (EST)
Article templates
The 'article templates' page is reporting an error and cannot be accessed. WindHorse 12 Feb 06
- Argh. That's really bad. Error messages aren't supposed to be cached. I'll take a look. --Evan 12:13, 12 Feb 2006 (EST)
Including CSS on Wiki Edit Page
Can someone please help me out with this: I am trying to design a wiki myself, and I've noticed that CSS is included right on the wiki pages of WikiTravel and its templates, for example:
|align="left" width="35%" style="background-color:#FFF7F7; border-top:1px solid #AA8888; border-bottom:1px solid #AA8888; border-top:1px solid #AA8888; padding-top:5px; padding-right:10px; padding-left:10px; padding-bottom:10px;" valign="top"|
How do I achieve this same effect on my wiki? It just shows up as text on the page! Many thanks!
- I had never noticed that.. Regardless it seems to me that it's almost always better to set the styles in an attached or imported stylesheet. -- Mark 03:19, 21 March 2006 (EST)
Hierarchical Directory
How is the Hierarchical directory created at the top of site listings, e.g. Asia: Middle East: Iran? It is not on the wiki edit page itself. Is there a table in the MySQL database with this hierarchical information? Who rearranges a new page into this hierarchy? Thank you.
- It's a mediawiki extension by User:Evan which gets its data from RDF embedded on the pages. There's a template called "isIn" which lets us add the RDF pretty much painlessly. -- Mark 05:44, 21 March 2006 (EST)
- And we call it Breadcrumb navigation. Ricardo (Rmx) 13:15, 11 May 2006 (EDT)
How to behave in a restaurant/bar etc
I think this is also a very important subject but missing on this project. You Probably think "why?" but have you ever considered this questions?
- -In some cultures it is insulting to tip (You tip prostitutes, not waiters) or at least not expected
- -varying cultures have different attitudes or different social status for bartenders. In some countries almost 90% of waiters are just students doing a summer job. In other countries more than 50% of the waiters have serving as a fultime job with years of experience in it and therefore expect much more respect from the custommers thowards them then e.g. in UK.
- -sometimes it is impolite to call a waiter, they come tom you every some minutes to ask you if you need something else, in other countries this is never done. The waiters wait for the custuommers until they call them.
- -How do you call the waiter?
- -When should you leave? Sometimes they say it to you, sometimes you should now it by yourself, also the same with stopping drinking alcohol.
- -What service is considered normal? Can you ask the waiter to buy a packet of cigarettes around the corner of the street?
- -How do you pay when you are with a group? Is it OK to pay all seperately?
- -...
There are far more of these subjects I think.
- These details are supposed to get covered in the Country-level article. See USA, which has a section on tipping for an example. There's a lot of incomplete Country articles at the moment. -- Colin 14:00, 28 March 2006 (EST)
Wikitravel sold to Internet Brands?
Possible to get some info about this in english?
- Have a look at Wikitravel:20_April_2006. -- Jonboy 16:43, 21 April 2006 (EDT)
Yes now they can go about making money on all this free content. Good to see users helping build another company!! -- anonymous
- And you can make money off of it too. Set up a mirror and put some Ad Sense ads on it. Print the guides out on glossy paper and sell them, or print them out on big sheets of paper and distribute them at hotels. You can sell add space to the restaurants, etc... There are some folks already doing this in Paris using our maps as a base. There are probably a thousand ways to make money off of Wikitravel. Go for it! Free content is all about you being able to use the content the way you want to, including making money. -- Mark 11:58, 22 June 2006 (EDT)
- I found them at l'Hotel du Nord et de l'Est, and remembered somebody contacting me a few months before to see if I really meant it when I released them under the CC-by-sa. Anyhow, it was the map of the 11th, and what they had done was printed it on large square sheets and sold ads to put in the margins. I'll try to dig up the map to get the name of the company. -- Mark 12:27, 22 June 2006 (EDT)
Images in Country Articles
I've been browsing through the site for a few hours, and I just want to say that it's really a great effort, with plenty of interesting information. I do notice, however, that in most "country" articles, (such as Niger, North Korea, Turkmenistan, Mongolia, etc.) there is a gigantic gap between the intial introductory sentence and the rest of the article. I have gone ahead and fixed the articles I mentioned before myself, but I want to bring this to the attentions of the moderators here. The text gap problem occurs on Wikipedia all the time (I am a user there), and can be easily fixed by simply moving the image that is causing the problem. In the country articles here, the map image in each article is located after the main introductory paragraph. This causes a small error in its relation to the article's infobox which is located above the introductory pargraph, since the infobox will always default to the right, and the image placed below the main paragraph will also, they will both fight over the space, lose, and end up causing a sometimes gigantic text gap in the article. The easy way to fix this, while still keeping the map image in the same exact location in the article is to move the image markup from below the main paragrph to below the infobox markup. This will then make sure the image comes out below the infobox automatically in the article and remove the annoying text gap. I have attempted to fix this in a few articles (you can see how I have done it in my history), but it seems to be occuring in most articles and that's too many for me to handle at once. I hope my overly detailed explanation hasn't been confusing. Hope that helps! -- 188.8.131.52 15:45, 2 May 2006 (EDT)
- Apparently this is an Internet Explorer rendering "feature"; I hadn't noticed it in Firefox or Safari, but if I try it in IE6 on my PC and scroll back in the history, there it is! Thanks for the tip. - Todd VerBeek 15:51, 2 May 2006 (EDT)
- Yeah it is an IE6 error, I can tell by the fact many people ignore the problem (not many people USE IE6), I only use it because I'm so used to it and have a ton of security on my PC. Still, does anyone know if fixing the markup affects any other browsers negatively? -- 184.108.40.206 16:19, 2 May 2006 (EDT)
Make news & discover more prominent?
I almost never look at the Main Page, and one reason is that it seems rather static and boring. However, with the addition of the "Discover" section there is now content that seems interesting, and that is fairly frequently updated. Unfortunately, you have to scroll down to see it, and that makes it easy to miss. The "World" section of the front page, while useful, is fairly static and boring, so what about moving "Discover" (and possibly also the "Travel News") to just under the "DOTM" and "OTBP" sections? Increasing the visibility of a fairly interesting bit of content might encourage people to return to the site more often, and the "World" navigation section is still there for those who need it. There is an anonymous comment on Wikitravel talk:Discover about this same issue, so I'm apparently not the only one with the idea. Thoughts? -- Ryan 23:43, 13 June 2006 (EDT)
- Evan raised the IMHO rather valid objection that the main point of the site is the travel guide, and the "World" index should at least be visible on the first pageful. It's still visible now, barely, but if we stick Discover above it, it won't be. Jpatokal 00:01, 14 June 2006 (EDT)
- Here's what the moving the only the discover section would look like- User:Sapphire/Sandbox/Main Page 2 and to contrast moving the discover and news section User:Sapphire/Sandbox/Main Page. I like the idea of moving the discover section to a more visible part of the main page, but I do believe the objection noted above does hold a rather large amount of water. - Andrew Haggard (Sapphire) 00:11, 14 June 2006 (EDT)
- The issue of this being a travel guide and needing the "World" index prominent is a valid point, and the only counter-argument I can offer is to question whether or not users actually are using the "World" index to browse. Personally I always use the search box to find a place instead of browsing, but I'm not sure if I'm unusual that way. The fact that the top-level articles such as Europe and North America rarely get edits has me thinking that I'm not unique, however. If most users of the main page aren't browsing to a destination then putting an unused block of text prominently on the page probably isn't the best use of screen space, and it would be worth considering putting something there that's more likely to invite users into the site. The webalizer stats aren't showing stats on specific pages, but perhaps looking at the usage stats for articles such as North America and Europe would shed some light on this. -- Ryan 00:25, 14 June 2006 (EDT)
- I rarely (once every month?) use the "World" index. I'd much rather see the discover section under the DoTM, because it inspires visitors to look up other interesting potential destinations. It wouldn't be too hard for visitors to scoll down and see the rest of the World section so I don't have a problem with moving the Discover section, and I'll actually promote the change. I don't support moving the news section, because I simply dislike the layout. - Andrew Haggard (Sapphire) 01:29, 14 June 2006 (EDT)
- Sorry, I just think having the browseable world listings gets across the idea of a travel guide better than trivia does. I like the discover info, but I don't think it's important enough to put above the fold on the Main Page. --Evan 17:38, 17 June 2006 (EDT)
- I think the best solution in the long run would be to drop the current layers-of-cake approach and move towards a multi-column approach like Wikipedia. Interestingly, though, they only have eight 'portals' linked in from the very top box and then the rest of the Main Page is all sorts of in-the-news, new-articles, this-day-in-history, isn't-this-pretty kinda fluffy stuff. Jpatokal 18:00, 17 June 2006 (EDT)
- It`s important to keep in mind that "we" (ie folks who get involved in discussions about the main page lay out) are not the average users of the site. The fact that we dont use the World for navigation doesnt reflect how a first or tenth time user interacts with the site. I think the usual assumption is that about 50% of users like to browse and the other half like to search, so it`s pretty important to have multiple navigational points of entry. Majnoona 20:30, 18 June 2006 (EDT)
- Are there any stats available about whether people are actually using the "world" index to browse the site? The webalizer stats don't provide info on individual pages, so my guess that people aren't browsing the site was based mostly on the fact that there are relatively few edits to the top-level articles like North America and Asia. The suggestion to move the "Discover" section up the page was motivated specifically by a desire to invite more new users to explore and re-visit the site. If those users aren't using the browse functionality (and they may be, in which case it should be left where it is) then maybe it wouldn't hurt to try pushing it down the page and putting something else into that prominent position to see if it invites more users to explore the site.
- Well I can tell you that before we had it, we ended up with lots of email from confused and frustrated users asking how the heck they were supposed to find things. This was in the first few months when we were a little too focused on contributors and hadn't yet realized the imporantance of easy navigation for readers/newcomers. I'm sure we can find a compromise here... Majnoona 00:51, 19 June 2006 (EDT)
- If the consensus is that the main page should stay as-is, that's totally fine with me - I'm not of the opinion that it must be changed. My only motivation for bringing this issue up was that the main page just seemed so static and, well, dull that there wasn't really a reason to look at it after one visit. The Discover information finally provided content that was updated regularly and worth checking out, but it was hidden at the bottom of the page, so moving it to a more prominent location seemed like a nice win. The issue of making it clear that this is a travel guide is a good point, and if users were emailing asking how to navigate then that's enough of a reason to not change things without considering trade-offs. I can live with leaving the page as-is, although if there was some way to provide obvious "browse" navigation while still making the dynamic content prominent I'd obviously be in favor. -- Ryan 01:05, 19 June 2006 (EDT)
- An alternative approach might be to implement Jpatokal's suggestion and just drop the sub-sections of the "world" index and simply display the top-level articles next to the project description at the top of the page - something like this. That would leave the site browse-able for those who want to browse, and provide the needed screen real-estate for the more dynamic content tailored to those who might want to explore. -- Ryan 23:43, 18 June 2006 (EDT)
- I like your sandbox main page. How about asking a few people who have never used Wikitravel to visit and ask what their opinions are? I'll ask my pops to stop by tomorrow and check out the different versions. - Andrew Haggard (Sapphire) 01:15, 19 June 2006 (EDT)
- I also like Ryan's version. It'd be nice to have someplace to show off new articles though -- or is Discover enough for this? Jpatokal 03:56, 19 June 2006 (EDT)
- What you said, and I don't think Discover is enough. We need a rolling showcase of good articles. And I am concerned that after every redesign, we end up looking more similar to WP rather than less. — Ravikiran 04:34, 19 June 2006 (EDT)
Reversion of User:Cdcd
Hi! I reverted the changes form User:Cdcd because in my view it was nonsense. I was somehow logged of so 184.108.40.206 was my change. I wasn't able to use the revert think but maybe I get it some other time. Jan 06:21, 13 July 2006 (EDT)
Mention of IB
Several new users have suggested mentioning that Internet Brands now owns Wikitravel by noting this in the first box of the Main Page. I think this would be a good move and help show the transparency IB states they want. -- Andrew Haggard (Sapphire) 22:10, 17 July 2006 (EDT)
- I'd jut like to point out for those not following the latest discussion Re: Transparency by IB for New Users (not to mention those who weren't active at the time of the changeover), it has been going on at Wikitravel_talk:Internet_Brands#Transparency_for_New_Users Weaponofmassinstruction 05:01, 18 July 2006 (EDT)
Main Page Update
It's very late and I'm very tired, which is the only excuse I can offer for again bringing up a subject that some people feel very passionately about. However, we never did fully resolve the discussion above ("Make news/discover more prominent"), and left it with some people expressing an opinion that the front page needs a browse option, while others felt it was too static. Having had another month to think about the matter, I really do think that the large text "browse" box conveys the wrong message. I realize the purpose of that text area is to provide a list of high-level topics AND to showcase good articles & give different cities a chance to be featured, but I think users AND Wikitravel would be better served by having a more dynamic and concise front page.
I've proposed User:Wrh2/Sandbox as a possible update that offers a high-level browse index while at the same time removing the "rotating cities" list. My reasoning is in the previous discussion, but to recap I think that having a list of ONLY the high-level topics is good enough for users who want to browse, while getting rid of the rotating cities makes the purpose of that index clearer, looks more professional, and is less confusing (over the years there have been numerous edits to "fix" the fact that a place like Sleepy Hollow is listed but New York City is not). The proposed new layout moves the dynamic information to a more prominent location and (IMHO) makes the main page more interesting and worth visiting multiple times. It isn't perfect - Ravikiran's suggestion that it should have a distinct look from Wikipedia is a good one - but I think it's an improvement and hopefully a good compromise that offers both a browse-able index and a main page with dynamic content. Thoughts, suggestions, criticisms, insults, and/or gifts of cash are welcome. -- Ryan 05:08, 12 August 2006 (EDT)
- Can I give you my credit card number? I like your design and I second using it to update the main page. -- Andrew Haggard (Sapphire) 05:25, 12 August 2006 (EDT)
- Me like, and I'll sponsor the effort with one million billion dollars from the Bank of Hell. But the one thing now missing is a way to showcase new articles, which is what the current rotating index (somewhat fitfully) tries to do — one way would be to re-engineer Discover to showcase facts from newly added/upgraded places.
- As for looking different from Wikipedia, I think finally changing the stylesheet to something other than Monobook would be the best way of doing it... Jpatokal 05:54, 12 August 2006 (EDT)
- The moustache of the guy on that bill rules. I kind of like the idea of also having a rolling list of the newest articles - it would add a bit more dynamic content, and it might also be cool to include something like the newest articles to reach guide+ status, and maybe also a link for the COTW. Let me see if I can put my (limited) design skills to use to cook something up... -- Ryan 12:41, 12 August 2006 (EDT)
- I agree that it's an excellent start, but it would be nice to have more "featured" space. I think it would help keep the page from being too static. I await your next creation with baited breath. Maj 12:51, 12 August 2006 (EDT)
- There's a second attempt on User:Wrh2/Sandbox that tries to add a "Featured Articles" section for the COTW and newest "Star" articles. Some issues:
- The "Featured Articles" box includes a "Newest Articles" section, but I don't know if that's feasible - especially as Wikitravel grows I think it's going to be impossible to keep the five newest articles on the front page unless there's an automated way to do it. We might want to consider something else - maybe have 5-9 star articles, the COTW, and do away with "New Articles"?
- The current layout creates a lot of whitespace in the travel news box. Having a shorter list of featured articles would fix that, or we could jigger the travel news (I didn't want to touch those templates since it would affect the current main page).
- In the final version I think the "Featured Articles" should be in their own template to help simplify the main page layout. It will also make it easier to update that section.
- The CSS is slightly off with IE. That can be easily fixed, but I'm too lazy to spend much time tweaking CSS for a test page ;-)
- I won't beg for money this time (although it worked surprisingly well last time, hmmm...) but comments and suggestions would be welcome. -- Ryan 13:54, 12 August 2006 (EDT)
- I removed the "New Pages" section as I don't think it can be maintained. That leaves a list of "Star" articles and the COTW - any suggestions for a third category to add would be welcome, although I don't think two looks that bad. -- Ryan 17:39, 13 August 2006 (EDT)
- So, I have to say that I like your design, and you've managed to keep some browsing, and making it even higher on the page (although much abbreviated). I wonder... what if we made a World page just for doing a browsing-style interface? The microbrowser you have on the main page would be a good starter, but we could also have a bigger, full page dedicated only to browsing. We could even make the continents "isin" the world page, so it would be accessible as the top of the geographical hierarchy. Feelings? --Evan 21:32, 13 August 2006 (EDT)
- Great idea! -- Andrew Haggard (Sapphire) 21:34, 13 August 2006 (EDT)
- Great work on version 3! I'm super impressed at how much you have going on and yet how clean and usable it is. I think we've had a problem with a lack of a good starting point for browsing since day 1, so I'm pretty into the whole idea of having a World page. I also like the idea of adding it to breadcrumbs... Maj 21:39, 13 August 2006 (EDT)
- I've fought the good fight with IE's CSS, and I think the User:Wrh2/Sandbox page should be OK now, with the exception of the double-border around some of the news items (fixing that issue requires a template change that will affect the current main page). It sounds like most of the people commenting are happy with the new design, but it might be worthwhile to wait a bit longer before replacing the current main page in case anyone else wants to comment - I'd be especially interested in any reports of broken CSS.
- The World page sounds like a potentially interesting idea. Would it be handled in the same way as the current "World" index on the main page, or do you envision something slightly different? -- Ryan 21:54, 13 August 2006 (EDT)
- Given the lack of objection to the new main page design, is there any reason not to make the change? -- Ryan 15:30, 14 August 2006 (EDT)
- I think we have overwhelming interest in seeing this go. So, please do it! --Evan 18:30, 14 August 2006 (EDT)
- Done. -- Ryan 18:51, 14 August 2006 (EDT)
Other languages into two tiers: under-1000 and over-1000
Once Japanese reaches 1000 articles (which will in all likelyhood happen before the end of the month), I'd like to split the "Other languages" box into two tiers: over 1000 articles (German, French, Japanese), in a bigger font, and other, in a smaller font. This will allow readers to pick out the big ones easily, allow squeezing in more small fry, and encourage them to contribute more. Jpatokal 05:13, 16 August 2006 (EDT)
- 1000 articles crossed today, so I'm going to plunge forward and do this. Jpatokal 02:16, 20 August 2006 (EDT)
Fatal error
Did anyone else see this message on the main page: Fatal error: Class name must be a valid object or a string in /var/www/wikitravel/mw/includes/SkinTemplate.php on line 126? -- Andrew Haggard (Sapphire) 23:52, 19 August 2006 (EDT)
Cincinnati DotM
should probably mention something about the Oktoberfest, but I don't know what. — Ravikiran 02:04, 1 September 2006 (EDT)
- How about the text that I have here? -- Andrew Haggard (Sapphire) 10:19, 1 September 2006 (EDT)
- I've added it with minor changes. — Ravikiran 14:31, 1 September 2006 (EDT)
- Looks good and thankfully Jonboy caught a stupid mistake which I overlooked while editing the original text. -- Andrew Haggard (Sapphire) 02:03, 2 September 2006 (EDT)
- I've added it with minor changes. — Ravikiran 14:31, 1 September 2006 (EDT)
Discovery - "R" in Slovenian.
Actually, the R in Slovenian is most certainly not a vowel. It is somewhat rolled, like the Scottish R, but not a vowel. What you see here is an example of the vowel not being written in the word. Until sometime in the 19th century or early 20th century the "uh" sound in words like cmrlj (pr. chm-uh-rlj - the last sound is actually the difficult part, combining a rolled r and a rolled l. Some places it's pronounced chmuh-roo. It sounds like English "churl", only with an m after the ch.) and vrt (pr. vuh-rt) was written as an E. Thus cmerlj and vert (the e pronounced as "uh").
Trust me, R is pronounced R. Only sometimes the vowel isn't spelled out. I'm Slovenian, btw.
Bubbling under?
In the languages section, I see "Bubbling under". What does this mean? Is it vandalism that's not been repaired?--justfred 12:04, 25 October 2006 (EDT)
- It's just a colorful reference to the fact that these sites are still percolating, and haven't reached 1000 articles yet. - Todd VerBeek 12:07, 25 October 2006 (EDT)
By Bicycle
Please help. Some places in this wiki have information on getting around also by bicycle as well as taxis, buses etc. but some do not. The info is very helpful for people who cycle in deciding where to go. What specifically is useful in this regard is info on
- general conditions for cycling (NOT scaremongering - many non-cyclists or casual cyclists might say things like "too dangerous, don't do it" - I once read such a description about Naples after I cycled there for a few days - the description was rubbish)
- info on hiring bicycles - for example in Beijing its easy and cheap to hire from many places, many hotels etc, in San Fancisco its quite expensive to hire and there aren't so many places to hire one from - its useful to know that
- info on how prevalent bicycle theft is - for example in Turku, Finland its very safe and there is little bicycle theft but in the Netherlands its not and you are advised not to expect a decent bike to not get stolen
- info on laws/restrictions and whether they are upheld. For example information on the web tells me that bikes in Beijing must have registration plates but the reality is very different because its not enforced. Information on spain is that cycle helmets are compulsory - I have yet to see whether it is enforced.
I've not been a contributor to this wiki before so I don't know whether there is a basic form for an entry but it looks to me like there is, except sometimes it has cycling in and sometimes not. I am suggesting the community adopt the convention (if not already) that there always be a cycling entry in whatever the basic template is even if nobody filled that part out yet. Cycling is good for the world - (green arguments, global warming etc.) and is also good fun.
If I posted this comment in the wrong place I apologise and will watch this page for responses and try to do it right next time.
- Plunge forward! Go ahead and add the information and don't worry about the details, others will fix up after you if needed. Jpatokal 08:42, 29 October 2006 (EST)
So, people at IB have asked about the description tag that we have on the main page -- they're concerned that it wasn't descriptive enough of what we're doing here. I've added their suggested text at the bottom of the page in the {{description}} marker as a starting point for future edits. Please feel free to edit to a consensus text, with the caveat that "magic words" like {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}}, piped (or any other kind) of links, and pretty much any fancy wiki text doesn't work very well and isn't really appropriate for description meta tags (which are supposed to be plain old ASCII text). --Evan 14:34, 30 October 2006 (EST)
- The fact that the Wikitravel content is licensed under an open-source license is very, very, very important, so I've re-added "free" to the description. -- Ryan 14:40, 30 October 2006 (EST)
- Indeed it is! I've done you one better and added the phrase "open source", which may or may not be kosher (the CC licenses haven't been submitted for approval by the Open Source Institute). I've also synchronized the description template used for articles that are about a place, MediaWiki:Travelguidedescription. --Evan 14:49, 30 October 2006 (EST)
- What exactly does that template do and is it visible (I may be overlooking it)? -- Sapphire
- Do you mean Template:Description or MediaWiki:Travelguidedescription? The MW string is used as follows: for every page that is marked as describing a place (if it uses the IsIn or Geo templates, for example), a "description" meta tag is added in the head section of the HTML output. This is used by some Web spidering software as a description of the page; you can also see it in Firefox by pressing Ctrl+I (Tools/Page Info). I think it's accessible in Internet Explorer, too, but I'm not sure how.
- For pages that aren't descriptions of a place (like phrasebooks, itinerary, etc.) the description tag is just the first paragraph of the article. Typically this is a good description of what the page is about.
- Template:Description is a way to override these default behaviors. {{description|some text here}} will make some text here the contents of the description meta tag.
- The reason business folks care is that if you see a Wikitravel guide in Google (like this: [1]), it's the description that shows up underneath the title page. So they want to make sure that people who are looking for a travel guide know that this particular search result is worth clicking on.
- This works in all the Wikitravel language versions, but I don't think any ones except Wikitravel have the template customized. You can read more at Wikitravel:RDF Expedition/Description. --Evan 15:09, 30 October 2006 (EST)
- Is it possible to add the <includeonly></includeonly> <noinclude></noinclude> to this template or will this confuse the software? It would be great to include you explaination directly to the template! --Flip666 04:50, 26 January 2007 (EST)
Hiding the "Main Page" in Main Page
At the risk of looking even more like Wikipedia, would it make sense to just remove the page title from the Main Page? It is taking up valuable real estate without any benefit. I looked around to find out how it is done and I found this hack [2], which I am thinking may not work here because of caching. Before I experiment, does it make sense to try? — Ravikiran 22:19, 26 November 2006 (EST)
This is my first look at Wikitravel so I have obviously looked at my home area. I notice that there are prices quote for all the hotels and B&Bs. Are these going to end up like most hotel sites on the WWW where the prices bear no relationship to reality i.e. usually a year or so out of date and things "from £xx" where this is calculated on full occupancy of the room then converted to per person? --22.214.171.124 09:45, 3 December 2006 (EST)
- Well, Wikitravel has a marked advantage over "most hotel sites on the WWW" in that anybody can go and fix up an incorrect price. But naturally it's just a snapshot of a very fluid situation, and the main point of the price is to give a comparative benchmark so you know that Chateau Ritzy will cost more than Flophouse El Cheapo. Jpatokal 09:58, 3 December 2006 (EST)
- Flophouse El Cheapo? I thought you said your Spanish was rusty? -- Andrew H. (Sapphire) 12:47, 3 December 2006 (EST)
- Agreed. It's unlikely that we'll ever have dynamic pricing charts showing the price of each room at each day of the week in each season of the year. The point is to give a rough idea of a price, hopefully with a range of high price to low price, at a level of accuracy that helps planning and doesn't give much of a surprise when you actually book the room. --Evan 00:01, 13 December 2006 (EST)
Semi-protect this page?
So, I'm no fan of protected pages, but I wonder if it's time to protect this page ("Talk:Main Page") from edits by anonymous users and new users. But this page has very little editing apart from the multiple vandalizations per day. It's tiresome and wastes admin time. Any opinions? --Evan 15:38, 13 December 2006 (EST)
- I don't think it has become such a problem to require protection and I would loudly object to any such action. We have new and anonymous users who may edit the main page and if they have a question they're likely to ask that question here. Also, new anonymous users, who are clueless about how Wikitravel works, occassionally use this page to ask questions about the project. It would be ill conceived to protect this page. There isn't any reason I can see why we need to protect this page. Using it's tiresome and wastes a user's time as reasons seems to be an attempt to excuse laziness on our part. -- Andrew H. (Sapphire) 17:18, 13 December 2006 (EST)
- I've been supported full protection (+ templatization) for a while, so this seems like a good compromise. Jpatokal 23:51, 13 December 2006 (EST)
- I also would prefer to leave the page open to edits as I believe blocking it is unlikely to deter potential vandals. Instead, they will most likely just express their pent-up 'vandalistic' tendencies and energy on other pages. Also, I would prefer to uphold the spirit of non-protectionism as much as possible. However, I have no real strong opinion about it, and will go with the flow of consensus. WindHorse 01:02, 14 December 2006 (EST)
- No not the main page. Evan wants to protect this Talk page. For reasons I can't quite comprehend, very few people vandalize the main page anymore -- maybe they're used to Wikipedia where they just can't. -- Colin 01:08, 14 December 2006 (EST)
- Yeah, I understood that it was the talk page. Maybe I should have written 'open to comments' rather than 'open to edits.' Apologies for the confusion. WindHorse 01:43, 14 December 2006 (EST)
- I don't think the talk page is worth protecting - it's inevitable that the spammers will eventually move on to other pages, so I think we need a solution other than page protection. Tweaking the spam filter rules to include patterns that better catch common spam (such as the filters based on CSS patterns) might be a better solution, and others probably have their own ideas. -- Ryan 01:55, 14 December 2006 (EST)
- I go with Ryan's solution. WindHorse 02:11, 14 December 2006 (EST)
- Yes, I did mean this very page ("Talk:Main Page"), which gets hit with automated spam 2-3 times a day. I probably should have put this discussion on "Talk:Talk:Main Page", but MediaWiki doesn't work that way. B-) "Semi-protection" would prevent anonymous users and new registered users (I think it's less than 48 hours or something) from editing. I'm pretty vigorously opposed to protecting pages, but the edits of T:M_P seem to go around any other patterns. They're from random IP addresses, so they're hard to block, and the content includes URLs only sometimes, making them hard to catch with the blacklist.
- I can definitely live with not protecting the page, but I wanted to offer this tool as a possibility. The best Wikitravellers have better things to do than roll back edits by a robot spammer -- for example, rolling back edits by human spammers. B-) --Evan 09:13, 14 December 2006 (EST)
United Nations
Should the United Nations Headquarters in the New York City area have its own article? It is considered to be "international territory", having an extraterritoriality status, in which it borders Manhatten, New York City, New York, USA. Its general public tours tends to be a popular tourist attraction. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by UniReb (talk • contribs) 28 Dec 2006
- See Wikitravel:What is an article?. Basically, you can't sleep at the UN, so it's not an article. Extraterritoriality in itself doesn't matter, otherwise we'd be listing every embassy and diplomatic residence in their own articles... Jpatokal 01:39, 28 December 2006 (EST)


text:
-Heirloom Collectables- Womens red background cotton ramie fold-down collar zipper front longsleeve Ugly Christmas Sweater with snowmen attempting to ice skate, as well as snowflakes and some beading. A snowman on the back. Shoulder pads. Minor pilling and pink fading add to the ugly factor.
Fits 40Bust (Womens Large), 28Sleeve
Good Condition
1.31 lbs


text:
close up at the pond and chat
Challenge #8 in the Photo chat series. Hosted by AndrePooh, barb_s.
Challenge has finished
***This is a complex challenge, please read the instructions and the and the comments first.*** Enter one photo showing little things, flora, fauna that are associated with ponds and ditches and also enter a -dummy- photo as shown in the example below as a second picture, see for elaboration the comment in the example. Then give constructive comment on all other photos. Eventually you can enter a second improved version of your first picture by withdrawing the dummy and use that free slot.
Show full rules
Sunday, 22nd January, 2012 (GMT)
Sunday, 29th January, 2012 – Saturday, 4th February, 2012 (GMT)
Sunday, 5th February, 2012 – Saturday, 11th February, 2012 (GMT)
Processing rules:
Capture date rules:
Additional rules:
Maximum number of entries per user:
Maximum number of entries in challenge:
phase has
29 entries
phase has
564 votes
|Sunday, 29th January, 2012 19:02 (GMT)
|Monday, 25th May, 2009
|Focal length:
|135 mm
|Shutter speed:
|1/320 sec
Entry comments
Great subject - it would be worth experimenting with the crop and the color to bring the image to life a bit more.
Nice cathc, but I find the colors of the frog a bit too bright. Try to reduce the exposure
nice capture clean crisp shot
Great frog picture, love his spots and his camouflage colours. As Patty has said very succinctly, the shot seems to be a bit overblown, with very bright spots of white sunlight. Maybe cropping will reduce some of these highlights.
Hope you didn't have to step in this muddy pond!
Great title for the frog shot. It is beautifully camouflaged. Maybe you could crop a little from behind so that the subject is a bit off center. I wish it were a bit sharper. It looks a bit soft on my monitor.
fun subject! GREAT title :) ! -You did a fabulous job with this capture! And it couldn't be more perfect for this challenge! -There are just a couple of points of critique I can offer on your shot. First is that the compositon is slightly disconcerting. Your frog is SO close to the bottom of the frame, and centered right in the middle of the image. If you can, it would be nice to see a little more room between his little toe and the bottom of the image. It would also be great if you could pull him over to the left side a bit, getting more on the left-third of your frame (which would have him "facing in" to the frame rather than out of it). The second thing I would experiement with is toning down your highlights a bit. There seems to be quite a bit of "blown-out" areas throughout (almost making me squint like I'm looking into the sun) and toning them down would restore some of the fabulous color and detail in your shot. I really like this one though.
It looks good for me, do not change it. Great picture.
|Street Food 2017 by ziggyzag
from Your City - Fast Food
|Running free by LassiM
from Water
|Treacherous Land- "Dune " by Frank Herbert by Domenick Creaco
from Sci-Fi or Fantasy Film Titles
|1969 Oldsmobile 442 Resto-Mod by J Warren
from O is for...


text:
Links from 1 to 63
Date: 02/19/2002 at 01:54:48 From: Anonymous Subject: Adding all links can have 1-63 You arrive for your Club Mud vacation and are given 1 chain of 63 links to use instead of money during your stay. Your task is to cut the chain in 3 places so that you'll be able to hand a person any number of links they ask for, from 1-63. A cut link still counts as a link. I tried as follows: Since each cut will make 1 link separate from the chain, I'll have 3 single links. But I could not decide how the other 3 numbers (part of chains that totals 60) could be found so as not to miss any number from 1-63 if added in possible combinations. I do not know whether my assuption that each cut could cause a single link isolated from the chain is right. Thanks!
Date: 02/19/2002 at 02:27:27 From: Doctor Jeremiah Subject: Re: Adding all links can have 1-63 Hi there, If you cut the second link, then the first link can be taken off the second link and the second link can be taken off the rest so you have two single links and a big string of links. And when you cut it again you will get more single links. That is important. Since you are going to end up with three single links anyway, perhaps the shortest chain should be 4 links. The reason for this is that with three single links you can give 1, 2, or 3 links. With an additional chain of 4 and three single links you can also give 4. 4+1, 4+1+! and 4+1+1+1 links. So now you can give any value from 1 to 7 links. You cannot give 8 links, so the next chain you need is 8 links so that you can also give away 8, 8+1, 8+1+1, 8+1+1+!, 8+4, 8+4+1, 8+4+1+1, and 8+4+1+1+1 links. Now you can give any number from 1 to 15 links, so the next chain you want is 16 links. So what you want to do is cut the 5th link, which gives you a single and a chain of 4, and cut the 9th link in the remaining chain to get a single and a chain of 8, and cut the 17th link in the remaining chain to get a single and a chain of 16. That leaves a chain of 32. Now look at the values: 1 + !+! + 4 + 8 + 16 + 32 = 63 If we add two of the single links together we get powers of two: 1 + 2 + 4 + 8 + 16 + 32 = 63 Powers of two can be arranged to add up to any value. - Doctor Jeremiah, The Math Forum http://mathforum.org/dr.math/
Date: 02/19/2002 at 22:14:58 From: Anonymous Subject: Adding all links can have 1-63 Dear Dr. Math, Thank you so much for your prompt reply. I guess, I did not follow up my reasoning further but you showed it to me in a very easy way.
Search the Dr. Math Library:
[Privacy Policy] [Terms of Use]
Ask Dr. MathTM
© 1994- The Math Forum at NCTM. All rights reserved.


text:
|Perl-Sensitive Sunglasses
Comment on
|( #3333=superdoc: print w/replies, xml )
|Need Help??
Yes you can mix 2 or more eventloop systems by making one loop the master controlling loop, and all others, as slaves. The slaves get pumped by a timer call in your master loop, which tells each looping system, to do one loop. You will need to call this timer often, to make all the widgets seem responsive.
I don't have Wx going, but here is an example mixing Gtk2 and Tk
The same principle should work for you with Tk and Wx. Just find the Wx command to execute 1 loop, and manually call it from Tk.... or vice/versa
But in all honesty, you should be able to find a set of widgets, all from the same toolkit, so you wouldn't need this hackery.
Why can't you use the Canvas from Wx?
I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth.
Old Perl Programmer Haiku ................... flash japh
In reply to Re: Wx with Tk
by zentara


text:
Hi there!
I'm currently learning PHP, and I decided to develop a coin toss site for some good practice. I thought it would be rather interesting and unique to add alternating site icons to go along with which coin you got, e.g. I toss a coin, I get a tails, the site icon is set to a tails. I toss again, I get heads, the site icon is set to heads.
The only problem is I have no idea how I would do this, or if it is even possible.
Here's my PHP script so far. If needed I can provide the whole page.
Since this forum seems to be full of experienced developers, thought I would register and ask here. Thank you very much.PHP Code:
$flip = rand(0,1);
if ($flip){
echo '';
echo "
You tossed Heads
";
} else {
echo '';
echo "
You tossed Tails
";