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I'm in Austin, Tx and I have the 'New Guide' format. Just recently I noticed that the channel numbers have disappeared from my on-screen guide and the channels are in alpha order. How do I change this back to numerical order?
Solved! Go to Solution.
You can do that to see just subscribed or just go to all channels. You may have
inadvertently selected Networks A-Z.
Julia R.
Spectrum-Social Media Customer Care
Lead Moderator-Community Forums
Thank you!
Thank you!


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After a not-so-successful Operation Two Half Marathons In Two Days, one recovery week, one 5k Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving, and slowly starting to work my way back into a normal running routine, I'm ending November with 57.95 miles! November has had its ups and downs running wise, but overall I'm happy with how I'm ending this month. 👍🏻😁
Alrighty! As for my other goals, well, I kinda took a little break from them! Since Operation Two Half Marathons In Two Days was my big goal for November I figured I could use a little break from everything else. Especially since I took about a week off from running and have just been slowly working my way back into a regular running routine. It didn't really make sense to me to be trying to hit 10,000 steps everyday or trying to journal about everything since I have kinda fallen out of that habit anyway.
But now that a new month is upon us and I'm pretty much back into my usual running routine (but in a much more laud back fashion 😉) I'm getting right back into it!
I've also been thinking about what my goals for the upcoming year are going to look like. I've been thinking about that a lot since all of my racing for the year is done. I'm thinking my goals for 2019 are going to involve a lot of time goals. I didn't really have any this year and I ended up not PRing my times for anything. That's not a huge deal considering I've still made quite a bit of progress this year, just in a different way. But I sure have missed getting this shiny new PRs so that's what I'm going to be focusing on! Among a few other things, of course. 😉
But that's another blog post for another day! Wishing you a very merry December!! 🎅🏻🦌🎄🎁🍷🍪❤

subset: commoncrawl


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Product Description
4 CD Series
In the 4-part lesson, The Faith Connection: The Process of Faith, Dr. Mike Moore discusses the four components of the faith process that demonstrate the practical side of faith. Faith works by Hearing with your ears, Believing with your heart, Speaking with your mouth, and putting Actions to it. Each component is explained in such a simple way that Believers of any age can understand how to apply his or her faith every single day and in every situation. Vol 5 of 5
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This Massage chair has it ALL- From its fancy leather upholstery to the wide range of health benefits that you can get from this Electric Full Body Shiatsu Massage Chair Recliner with Heat Stretched Foot Rest 06C. Personally, I love how cheap this massage chair will cost you in the market. It is not too expensive unlike the other high-class massage chairs in which you are paying more for the brand rather than the quality of the furniture product. It is also not too cheap that its superior quality will not be compromised. No wonder this massage chair belongs in our top 5 picks! It brings promising results with its sophisticated design.
Features and Functions
E06C is a comprehensive head-to-toe massage that is available for a jaw-dropping price. Its health benefits offered are: it alleviates stress; increases blood circulation, improves mobility and flexibility; loosens tight muscles; aids in rebalancing your mental, physical & emotional wellbeing; and overall decrease in cardiovascular diseases. These are the healthy advantages that you will get from this massage chair. By the way, it comes in a close second to Electric Full Body EC01 because of nearly-the-same features with a bit of price tag difference.
This massage chair has more or less the same services offered by our third pick in the list. The eight massage functions all contribute towards your good well-being and the updated features will surely give you a run for your money. Listed below are the eight massage operations performed by this massage chair:
- Flapping: It is one of those deep-tissue massages that originate from eastern practices. Its function is to strengthen tissues, reduce muscle aches and pains, stimulate nerves and blood circulation, remove toxins from the cells, and moisturize skin.
- Rolling: It uses power rollers to move in an up-and-down motion on your entire back and also uses massage heads to target certain stress points in your neck.
- Kneading: It is a rigid massage that loosens knotted muscles on the neck and shoulder and gives relief to your fibrous muscles in the spine.
- Chop Action Tapping: This unique massage duplicates the motions of the hand rapidly tapping on your back. This will relax your stiff and sore muscles, soften fat storage and remove aches from stressed tissue groups.
- Compression: This is a firm massage that targets the muscles beneath the skin and in the lower extremities as well to enhance blood flow, posture and flexibility.
- Percussion: This massage has been made possible because of the constant development of modern technology. The Percussion technique uses body scan to remove stress and fatigue muscles tissues in your body and acts as an energy booster.
- Shiatsu: This massage involves the use powerful rollers that go deep into the muscle tissues to relax stress and worn-out muscles and revitalize the mind and body. EC06 focuses on giving the best Shiatsu massage to its customers.
- Vibration: This feature actually adds to the heath benefits in doing massage therapy. It dilates the large and minute blood vessels to remove impurities and harmful substances in your blood, tissues and pathological organs.
Like I said, it has the same features as EC01 thus, it also has four pre-set programs for you to combine and customize. These are Recovery Program, Extend Program, Relax Program, and Refresh program. EC06 has over 30 airbags to provide an Air Pressure system and a total of 20 air bags are strategically placed at the lower part of the massage chair.
Get the Shiatsu BestMassage EC-06 today
The Air pressure relieves fatigue by applying upward pressure and promotes blood flow in your lower appendices such as legs, buttocks and calves. Each has specifically a massage feature ideal for that body part:
- Buttocks: Vibration and Air Pressure
- Thighs: Air Pressure
- Calves: Air Pressure
It is combined with the kneading massage function to loosen and relax the stressed muscle shins and calves.
One unique feature for the Full Body EC06 is its Build in Heat Intelligent roller system which gives you the therapeutic heat massage you need and the heat stretched foot rest will be what you need to give your feet a massage treatment after standing or walking during the whole day. The multiple roller systems are designed to easily conform to your spine shape and work on different areas of pressure points and muscle groups. Another stand-out is the rollers' extensive back range starting from the neck down to the tailbone. Most massage chairs don't have this feature to cover a full body massage.
The Air Massage System can be modified depending on your likes and its intensity can be weak or strong. The speed and pressure applied can also be adjusted so you can have a therapeutic Shiatsu massage you can take advantage of. It has an accessible control panel found at the right arm with easy-to-use buttons. A built-in LED digital display also shows the feedback and massage function or mode you have chosen. EC06 has an automatic recline function (about 165 degrees) and you can raise or recline the backrest as well as the leg rest to whatever position you are most comfortable with.
It is equipped with an Air Ottoman System in which the air bags squeezes the leg in the leg rest while it is lowered and raised in twenty degree increments to give your leg a complete and contoured massage experience.
Final Thoughts
With health benefits like relaxation, reliever and your best energizer, you are investing a lot more than the brand and the quality. With the modern features to give you the best Shiatsu massage and Heat therapy combined, I'm sure you'll stop wanting for more. Clearly, this Electric Full Body Shiatsu Massage Chair Recliner with Heat Stretched Foot Rest 06C will work wonders on both your body and health. Nothing beats a refreshing, yet gentle massage.


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Because these materials off-gas and absorb allergens, they can trigger or worsen the symptoms of allergies and asthma.
Most people choose carpet to cover most of the flooring in their homes. Bedrooms, family rooms and living rooms commonly contain wall to wall carpeting for comfort and aesthetic reasons. Traditional carpets harbor hundreds of thousands or more dust mites, and the fibers of carpet also capture allergens such as pollen tracked in from outdoors as well as pet dander and dust. The chemicals contained in carpet fibers off-gas over the lifespan of the carpet, which can also trigger allergies. Vacuuming your carpets with a HEPA filter can remove most particles that trigger your allergies, and good ventilation in your home can reduce the effects of off-gassing.
Vinyl flooring is common in areas of your home where water is used or for sanitary reasons, such as bathrooms, utility areas and the kitchen. Vinyl contains additives and chemicals such as chlorine that can trigger allergies and worsen asthma. However, vinyl floors are simple to clean with natural cleaners such as vinegar and water, avoiding the chemicals used to clean other types of flooring.
People visit our website with allergies might wonder what types of flooring will be less likely to trigger their allergy symptoms. Hardwood, steamwalletcodesgenerator linoleum and other materials might be less likely to trigger symptoms but still have some cons when it comes to allergies.
Natural Cork
Natural cork can be used as a floor covering by itself or as an insulating layer under other types of flooring, in place of padding and other more toxic materials. Sealants used on the cork may contain vinyl and moisture trapped in unsealed cork can promote the growth of mold or collection of dust and dirt from foot traffic.
Hardwood floors are long lasting and durable. Many times, you can outfit your home with reclaimed hardwood. Veneers and stains used on hardwood can emit toxins, and refinishing hardwood can result in increased dust in your home.
Linoleum is a natural product made from wood, cork, pine check here resin and linseed oil combined with clay or chalk. It resists bacterial and fungal growth, which may help reduce mold allergy symptoms. This durable material rarely requires waxing or cleaning, which benefits those sensitive to chemicals and sprays. Linoleum is most commonly used in kitchens, utility areas and bathrooms and can be cold to the touch and lacks cushion and shock absorption.


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Multi use game area surfaces can come in 3 different forms. Polymeric surface, Porous Macadam and 3G 3rd generation artificial synthetic grass and all have different playing characteristics and are suitable for different uses. All weather pitches are now commonly used by local authorities, schools and sports clubs as they can be a long term sport playing kickabout area which can provide income from the renting out of the surface / facility. Polymeric is an EPDM rubber surface with an anti slip coating applied, Porous Macadam can be used with or without anti slip paint and the 3G grass can be used as it is and they are all playable in most weather conditions.
The additional of sports floodlighting will mean that the surface can even be used at night meaning increased revenue. Multi use games areas are also specified and designed to be use with 3 – 5m sports rebound fencing, as this will provide safety for the players and it will keep the players enclosed in the sports area. The ball court can be designed to suit any area which means that sizes / dimensions can be achieved to fit most specifications. Costs and budgets for the MUGA is dependent on the type of surface, size, location and extra areas such as fencing & floodlighting.
Soft Surfaces Ltd are specialist contractors in the sports sector and will be able to provide designs, specifications, costings and maintenance information on your individual project. Please visit our website or call us on 01625 445760


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Coffee Cup Rubber Stamp
- Brand: Clearsnap
Stickers and doodles are great and all, but you can surely take your crafts to the next level with beautiful stamped designs. Coffee Cup Rubber Stamp features a coffee cup with a heart carved into pink rubber. Give it a press into your favorite ink pad, and stamp designs in cards, scrapbooks, tags, and much more!
Wood Block:
- Length: 1"
- Width: 1"
- Thickness: 3/4"
- Length: 11/16"
- Width: 1/2"
Item not available in Hobby Lobby Stores.
Check your local store for availability.
Send me an email when it's back in stock.
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SIZE matters
Portraits represent my love for seeing and recording everyday life. At large, they identify a community of artists who shaped my experience in the M.F.A program at Arizona State University. Like great masters of the past, individual size indicates the importance of the sitter within the hierarchy of my academic and social worlds. Size provides a context of my recent and current visual and psychological relationships.
Since the 19th century photography has been used as a catalyst for painting. I use photographs as a strategy to employ reflective color and optical mixtures. Both bring attention to the complexities of figure ground relationships through the technical and visual intricacies of layering, texture and mark making.
Social relationships are embedded in portraits and deal with artist/sitter exchanges. The majority of my paintings involved visiting others' studios to capture poses in front of their work. For the in-voluntary and physically in-convenient sitters, I created digital composites as a form of reference.
My portraits document the social pecking order of the tiny communal art universe at A.S.U. Through size I draw parallels to hierarchies that exist in the world around us.
Copyright Ben Willis 2013


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When Sony unveiled the first trailer for "DC Universe Online" at E3 2008, it was time to officially get excited. Many fans knew that a DC Universe MMO was being worked on, but details had been scarce up to that point. The trailer looked good, and when Jim Lee started talking about his own gaming history and the passion the creative team was bringing to the project, there was even more reason to look forward to the final product.
Since that time, fans have seen some screenshots, some videos of the creative process, and also learned that Geoff Johns will be penning the story for the game. Overall though, there's still a lot about this game that we don't know, and it's clear that Sony is being careful with this project. CBR News was lucky enough to get a chance to ask some questions of Wes Yanagi, Senior Producer for "DC Universe Online." As it's still fairly early in the development process, there were some things that Yanagi could not speak to, but he answered as many of our questions as he could.
CBR: We've heard about both Jim Lee and Geoff Johns' involvement in "DCUO." Do you expect to get additional DC Comics creators involved as the project moves forward?
Wes Yanagi: For now all we're talking about is the involvement of these two comic book superstars from DC. Did you know this is the first project they've ever collaborated on?
Will the storylines and quests in the game mirror iconic DC stories, or will they be all-new?
The DC Universe is huge. It's so huge that we can't build all of it up front. We're focusing on our story that Geoff Johns is writing. It is a terrific plot that allows players to become part of this rich and exciting universe. From there, the sky's the limit for our expansions.
How will grouping work in the game? Do you have to be part of a group to participate in an event, or can players jump in if they happen to stumble across a battle between the good guys and the bad guys?
We do plan to provide players with established mechanisms for grouping. On top of this, we will also add systems to allow players to jump into an encounter they might stumble across. After all, it makes sense for a hero swoop in out of nowhere to help save the day or for a villain to pile-on and take advantage of some chaos. On a larger scale, we will also support the concept of guilds, which we are calling Leagues for heroes and Legions for villains. You will also have a lot of interaction with groups like the Justice League or the Society. Joining them is certainly something to expect if you can earn it.
Are costumes completely customizable, or will the templates be based on existing character costumes? For example, if someone were to create a winged character like Hawkman, what is the level of customization they have to create their own look?
We can't get into too many details at this point, but when you create your hero or villain, you'll be able to choose from a variety of body sizes, silhouettes and hairstyles. We spent a lot of time iterating on these designs with Jim Lee, our executive creative director, to get a nice range of choices. The costume options will be influenced by your character's origin, such as technology or magic. Once you roll a character, you're not locked into that specific costume — it can change over time if you so choose.
Could you explain the idea of power themes as opposed to classes?
We will have a wide variety of powers to choose from. Players will gain power as they level, and leveling occurs as players complete the game content. But we wrap this and tweak them in metaphors that make sense for these characters. In the DCU, heroes and villains become more experienced by training, discovering new powers, and practicing with the ones they already know.
How are you balancing the controls and gameplay between the PC and the PS3?
With our current internal build, you can play with either a mouse and keyboard, or a PS3 controller. So, it's really just a matter of personal preference with the controls. From a gameplay standpoint, we don't see it as two platforms. We see it as two ways to play the same game, to step into the same universe.
Stay with CBR for ongoing coverage of "DC Universe Online," as we'll be checking in a little later on in the development process. For more information about the game, visit www.myspace.com/dcuo and www.dcuo.station.sony.com.


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Chipper Program Application
In order to get on the waiting list for the Chipper program please fill out and submit the form on this page:
Do you have fallen branches, overgrown brush and other vegetation that needs chipping? The Chipper Program is once again offering service to residents who are working on their wildfire safety clearance. The program provides an alternative to burning or hauling fire hazardous brush.
The Chipper program is in its fourteenth year and anticipates offering service this season until May 15th but don't wait to get your fire prevention work done!
To prepare brush and limbs for the Chipper Program:
- Stack cut brush and limbs in a row within 5 feet of the road edge with the ends facing towards the road.
- Rows should be stacked no more than 4 feet high.
- Keep mud, rocks, and roots out of the rows.
- Locate the rows so the truck and chipper can easily access them, no off-road locations allowed.
To participate in the Chipper Program please call 530-877-0984. The Program is a service of the Butte County Fire Safe Council, a non-profit organization.
Funding provided by a National Fire Plan grant from the Cooperative Fire Program of the U.S. Forest Service, Department of Agriculture, Pacific Southwest Region, through the California Fire Safe Council. This institution is an equal opportunity provider.
**NOTE** Please read the attached PDF for specific questions and information.


text: GOP Hits Friction in Bid to Repeal ObamaCare Ryan says plan is now to repeal and replace at same time By Newser Editors and Wire Services Posted Jan 10, 2017 12:37 PM CST 226 comments House speaker Paul Ryan meets with reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2017, to discuss efforts to replace the Affordable Care Act, following a closed-door meeting with the GOP... (J. Scott Applewhite) (Newser) – Republicans will work on unraveling and replacing ObamaCare at the same time, House speaker Paul Ryan said Tuesday as GOP leaders struggled to align their zeal to rapidly erase one of President Obama's proudest achievements with Congress' legislative and political pitfalls. The AP reports that Ryan spoke to reporters amid growing concern among Republican lawmakers about erasing Obama's overhaul—which expanded coverage to 20 million people—without having an alternative to show voters. Republicans have been divided for years over how to replace the statute, and the process of crafting replacement legislation they can unify behind is likely to take months or longer. "It is our goal to bring it all together concurrently," Ryan said. "We will pass as much as we can [initially]." He said Republicans would then produce a second bill to "show you the full scope of what a real replacement effort looks like." Trump has said he supports erasing Obama's law and replacing it simultaneously. Congressional leaders had said in recent weeks that they would quickly repeal the statute with a delayed effective date, and then work on replacing it. According to Rep. Dennis Ross, Ryan told Republicans Tuesday that "he had a conversation yesterday with Donald Trump, and they're on the same page." GOP leaders have made dismantling ObamaCare their premier 2017 priority. But at least six GOP senators and some House members have expressed qualms about repeal without having a substitute. (Read more ObamaCare stories.) My Take on This Story Report a story error Show results | 16% Hilarious 10% Intriguing 11% Depressing 18% Brilliant 25% Scary 20% Ridiculous


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Properties in Italy
Related questions...
I may have asked this in the past, but don't know how to search old posts. Anyway,we're spending our first family Christmas in Italy this year. Any favourite recipes gratefully received. We're having roast beef (ribs on the bone) and no doubt roast potatoes. Found a recipe which includes gravy consisting of a whole bottle of red wine!!!
Since my grown-up kids don't like brussels sprouts, no doubt it'll be a boon to them if they're unobtainable???
Daughter will insist on Yorkshires - so she can attempt to make those from scratch. May have to bring the pud over in my backpack. Only small presents allowed given Ryanair's allowance. Strange how cost of prezzies are in inverse proportion to their size!
As I'm writing this, I KNOW I've posted before on this, but I think it was more about things to do than things to eat. Apologies anyway and what else should I definitely not miss off the cooking list?
not showing up
Well, I have been able to see it. Anyway, here are 10 pages of recipes and comments from the Old Forum:
The sauce that uses a full bottle of wine will be delicious and very rich. The alcohol content of the wine evaporates after 3-5 minutes of boiling. This will be useful if children are having some of the sauce.
Another suggestion, you can serve potatoes and sweet potatoes or yams as the Americans call them (patata dolce).
If your children do not like Brussels sprouts (you should be able to get them) offer them sauteed broccoli or spinach, or cauliflower in white sauce with cheese and ham, or "radichio rosso al forno".
Do you need a recipe for any of those?
Brussel Sprouts ...............................mmmmmmh
Only one way to eat them [like most veg]
Raw with gravy - fantastic [better after a frost - it sweetens them up]
My Mum would be putting the sprouts on the stove just about now - just to make sure they were cooked for Christmas - if they weren't of a consistency that would pass through a fine sieve, they weren't done!
You've hit the BS problem on
I've now printed off most of
Anne, you can order BS from
Very easy, here we go:
600 g red radicchio, washed and cut into quarters (you can also use endives)
extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
Dry the radicchio quarters patting them with some kitchen paper to absorb any excess of humidity.
Put them in an oven tray, previously coated with some olive oil.
Add a sprinkle of salt and pepper and a drizzle of olive oil.
Bake in a moderate oven for some 5-10 minutes or until the leaves become tender.
You can also cook them in a skillet or a wok for some 3-5 minutes. They cook very quickly.
What else would you like?
This is a delicious combination, ideal for a festive occasion. Simply steam about 600g of Brussels sprouts. Heat a bit of olive oil. Add the Brussels sprouts and cooked chestnuts (you can get these already prepared:
and some cubes of bacon or ham. Add the juice and the grated zest of 1 orange together with 1/2 spoonful of sugar. Allow to reduce. Delicious.


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Warrant Officer Botha, a detective with 24 years experience, was the first officer on the scene after the Valentine's Day shooting of law graduate and model Reeva Steenkamp.
However, he was pulled off the case after it emerged he was being investigated for seven counts of attempted murder. He was also criticised for mixing up key facts about the investigation at Pistorius's bail hearing.
Mr Botha, who wilted under cross examination during Pistorius's dramatic bail hearing, was one of four police officers who opened fire on a mini-bus in 2009, allegedly while drunk.
The officer denies the charges and says he was never asked to give a blood sample.
The charges were initially dropped but were reinstated on February 4, according to the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA). Mr Botha is reportedly due in court to face the charges in May, according to Eyewitness News, which broke the story.
Mr Botha was forced to admit in court during the bail hearing that there were no inconsistencies in Mr Pistorius's account of how Miss Steenkamp, his 29-year-old girlfriend, had died.
In one embarrassing exchange, Mr Botha was forced to retract a claim that Mr Pistorius had a home in Italy that he might flee to, if granted bail. "We know that he has offshore accounts and a property in Italy," said Mr Botha. Mr Pistorius's defence lawyer asked exactly how he knew of the alleged property in Italy. "Someone told me about it," was Mr Botha's reply.
He then dropped this claim, accepting that there was no supporting evidence.


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As I said in my latest post January was a good reading month for me and I'm still one book ahead on my reading challenge *woo*! So, I'm obviously rooting for myself to read as much as possible in February too (even if that means I have to read non-stop during my week off over half term, haha!) if only for the fact that I am officially solidifying my love for reading this month by getting a book tattoo on the 10th - don't worry, I'm sure I'll be sharing photos on here/on my twitter if you're interested in seeing that, I'm so excited! So yeah, I'm setting myself quite an ambitious TBR this month, (considering reading alonside a full time job can be fairly tricky at the best of times!) but I just have so many new books that I'm excited to read, but... here they are! As always, feel free to share the books you're planning on reading this month in the comments below, I would love to know!
LYING ABOUT LAST SUMMER - SUE WALLMAN // I've already started this one actually since I needed an easy YA to read alongside the non-fiction book I'm getting through at the moment. (Packing For Mars by Mary Roach - you can read more about my thoughts on that book here, if you like!) After reading and really liking See How They Lie by the same author last year, I had great expectations for this book and I have to say I'm liking it so far.
MY LADY JANE - CYNTHIA HAND // I'm probably a bit late to the game with this book.. but I recently discovered that I had to have it after realising the second book (My Plain Jane) comes out this year! My Lady Jane is a silly, lighthearted historical comedy that retells the story of Lady Jane Grey's reign and romance it's fluffy and funny and fun and also technically educational.. right?! It promises to be full of puns, jokes and mockery and it just seems like a laugh out loud kind of a book... definitely something I'm looking to read this month!
INK - ALICE BROADWAY // Yes this is yet another book I'm late to the game with, but ahh well! Once again the story line just intrigues me with this book.. I mean a book all about how people's significant moments are tattooed on their bodies, every mistake and every action, is definitely something I've never heard of before.. something I need to read more about! Also, the cover of this book is super gorgeous, anything shiny and I'm sold!
SATELLITE - NICK LAKE // I definitely want to carry on my tradition of reading books set in space after reading The Lonliest Girl In The Universe and completely falling in love with it last year. I'm already currently reading Packing For Mars by Mary Roach, but I definitely need some more space in my life - I don't know what it fascinates me so much, but I really do love reading about it! This book in particular really intrests me, since it's about a teenage boy in space making his first ever trip to Earth, so I'm excited to see how that pans out! I've heard mixed reviews so let's see how I feel about this one.
UNDERCOVER PRINCESS - CONNIE GLYNN // Let me be 100% honest with you here, I definitely picked this book up for the gorgeous cover.. I can't even lie to you, just look at it. It's bloody gorgeous. It was only after I bought the book and left Waterstones that I realised what this book actually was, of course it's part of The Rosewood Chronicles by Connie Glynn, who is a lovely YouTuber I watch every now and again! Jokes aside though, this book does seem completely up my alley and I need some Princess - fairy tale action in my life.. it's something I definitely need more of in my reading life!


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Rubio biography: Grandfather was ordered deported
A forthcoming biography of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who is described by author Manuel Roig-Franzia as a "politician who built a political identity on his family story," reveals an immigration hell for Rubio's Cuban-born maternal grandfather, who was ordered deported from Florida because he flew in from Cuba without a visa, a decade before Rubio's birth.
Roig-Franzia, a Style section writer for The Washington Post, writes that the grandfather's treatment during his 1962 run-in with federal authorities "was not unlike the present-day experiences of many Mexicans and Central Americans who come to the United States legally but later run afoul of visa laws and find their lives irreversibly upended."
Story Continued Below
Rubio was born a U.S. citizen in Miami in 1971 to two Cuban exiles who arrived in the U.S. in the late 1950s. Roig-Franzia reports that the grandfather, Pedro Victor García, did not leave the U.S. as ordered, but remained in Miami, possibly on retroactive refugee status.
The episode could draw renewed scrutiny of the personal narrative of Rubio, a possible running mate for Republican nominee Mitt Romney. Rubio is taking the lead in his party as a more moderate voice on immigration and plans to offer his own plan in coming months as a counter to the more liberal Democratic proposal supported by President Barack Obama.
Whether Rubio is chosen by Romney or contemplates running on his own in 2016, Rubio looks to have a bright national political future as a 40-year-old, Hispanic Republican beloved by conservatives.
( Also on POLITICO: Rubio camp issues statement on book excerpts)
"The Rise of Marco Rubio," an unauthorized biography being published by Simon & Schuster, is one of two books about Rubio due out June 19. The other, written by Rubio, is called "American Son: A Memoir," published by Sentinel. The publishers are racing to the stores, with each having moved up the publication date because of the competition, and Rubio's hotness as a potential vice presidential pick.
"The Rise of Marco Rubio" has a skeptical tone but gives Rubio his due, comparing his 2010 speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference to Obama's breakout speech to the Democratic National Convention in 2004.
"Rubio had arrived on the national scene at a time when both parties were — again — forced to confront the enduring and growing power of Hispanic voters. … Good timing matters, but it isn't everything. Execution counts too. And each time Rubio's timing has been good, his execution has been even better," Roig-Franzia writes.
The author — who conducted more than 100 interviews for the book, and located a scratchy recording of the grandfather's immigration hearing — notes that as Rubio rose in national prominence this year, "his personal history continued to be questioned."


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I just finished the movie 'Religulous' by Bill Maher, and I realized the guy has a point. Religion of any kind is illogical. It is. Think about it. Take any religion and break it down to its most basic premise; I'll do the first one for you. (Yes, it's probably the one you'd jump to first, too.)
Christianity: A guy who is also his son and a third thing that's genderless got a girl pregnant without touching her and wants you to telepathically acknowledge his three-in-oneness so that you can join him in the sky when he blows everything up at the end of time. Which might be tomorrow.
Yeah, it's easy, and it's the first religion that everybody goes to. There are a lot of holes in Christianity, and most of them come from the disparity between the different books of the Bible and the sermons preached from modern day pulpits. Sin. Wrong-doing. Morality. The modern Christian church in America (and I want to specify America, as Christianity doesn't have the hold on the rest of the world that it has here) has a monopoly, seemingly, on telling people how awful they are. It's so easy to make fun of these beliefs, because thanks to recent interest by Hollywood and the publishing world, we all know about the aforementioned holes.
But, what about other religions? Let's cut to the chase and talk about Paganism. Or, is that paganism?
Paganism: A bunch of people that don't want to consider themselves part of anything that can't decide what exactly they believe, but they're pretty sure it has something to do with magic and multiple deities, unless you don't think it has anything to do with magic and deities, then it has a lot to do with sitting in a bookstore arguing about why your beliefs are right and Christianity – specifically – is bad, while simultaneously arguing how you're 100% accepting of everyone… Wait…aren't we supposed to be worshipping something?
Yep, pagans, there are tons of holes in our own 'religion.' They begin from the fact that nobody really knows, or can categorically define, paganism. Who are the Gods/Goddesses we believe in? Why can't we agree on them? What about the Goddess, is she better than the God? And the list goes on…and on…and on…
I'm an academic. I'm not a philosopher, and though I made A's in all my Philosophy courses in school, I cannot possibly consider myself a true philosopher. I'm a social scientist. I study the human condition, specifically what happens when we do harm to one another. I'm what philosophers would call a naïve realist. A naïve realist is someone who completely accepts that the world is real, that it does not require perception to be real, and that it would be real whether or not I thought it was real. To me, that is a leap of faith in and of itself. I don't question the realness of the bullet; I just know I don't want it to hit me.
I know doubt on an intimate level. I question everything: motives, definitions, reasoning, thought patterns, what I read, what I see, and most especially what I hear out of people's mouths. I'm the first to encourage pagans to call one another out on their claims of superpowers and claiming ridiculous titles like High Mugwump Magus of the 7th Seely Court – or whatever your particular World of Warcraft guild calls you. So, why, then would I ever talk about having faith? And how is the acceptance of reality a leap of faith?
Second question first: it's a leap of faith because it's much easier to continue questioning everything, but at some point you have to stop and say, "This is where I shall beginning leaning on faith." The point where you decide that to not believe is more ridiculous than believing, that's where you begin to have faith. I believe firmly in gravity, because not believing is ridiculous. That's something real and measurable. It's easy to believe in gravity, and you have to start somewhere.
But let's jump to the big questions. God(dess). Any God(dess). How in the hell do you believe in a divine force that you can't go visit in person or smell when they haven't showered in a while, who can do anything and be anybody, and who made absolutely everything but can't seem to get rid of things like disease, natural disasters, hunger, rape, gang violence, or gravity. (Hey, I'd like to fly… Leave me alone.)
For some this is answered by simply not believing. It's really easy to not believe, because there are so many holes in a belief in God(dess). For others, it might start with one little thing: a request, a wish, a need, something that came true. Sometimes it's a faith placed in deity, because it makes more sense than the randomness that mere science seems to suggest.
Atheism: A whole bunch of absolutely nothing suddenly exploded and rearranged its former nothingness into everything by beating the absurdly mountainous odds against it and transformed into self-replicating molecules that suddenly became stuff. And nobody else had anything to do with it whatsoever. Yep…totally random.
The funny thing is that everybody has a leap of faith about something. I believe that I will be safe and the other cars are going to stop when the light turns red. I believe that my locked door will deter burglars. Naïve, yes, but it's real, it's measurable, it's trustworthy.
My doubt reinforces my faith. The more questions I ask, the more I find that while dogma might be utter crap, the idea of God(dess), the notion of magical and mental power, and the sacredness of nature makes sense. It makes more sense to me to believe in these things than to not, and it's because of my doubt and constant questioning that my faith is constantly becoming even stronger.
Why are things done the way they are? Why do certain individuals not provide complete answers? How were things made? How come science leans on the statistical randomness of things? And, again, these questions go on and on and on. It's easy to pick apart a particular faith, a set of beliefs and dogmas. It's unbelievably easy to pick apart religion, because with religion comes things we must consider hard truths. If you're a Wiccan, then you absolutely believe there are only two deities. Once you make a claim like that about something you cannot prove, you're allowing the opportunity for others to pick it apart. When you legislate morality through religion – as is apparent in many of the world's major religions – you're setting yourself up for failure, because at the end of the day you cannot answer why something is wrong. Because, when a religion tells you what is right and what is wrong, the best answer you can respond to the question of 'Why?' is, "Because that's what God(dess) said." That's not an answer.
However, at some point, there's an acceptance of faith. It's because of those 'Why?' questions that we either do or do not become believers, but I firmly believe that a healthy amount of doubt is required before we can commit to believing in anything.
Love and Lyte,
Fire Lyte


text:
Monday, March 16, 2009
Today I sent off a reference for someone applying for the secular priesthood, unfortunately not for my own diocese. Say a prayer for him, I think he will make an excellent priest.
3 comments:
- Fr. Gary V. said...
Father, here in the US, we try not to use the word "secular", instead we use "diocesan". The word "secular"(of or pertaining to worldly things or to things that are not regarded as religious, spiritual, or sacred; temporal)has a negative connotation like secular world.
- 16/3/09 1:29 pm
- Jane said...
Dear Father,
Aout the prayer for your recent aspirant. Yes of course, wholeheartedly.
- 16/3/09 3:16 pm
- Simon-Peter said...
This is very good news, thanks for sharing it with us! I will certainly remember him in my prayers today.
Fr in the US: I personally prefer the word secular to diocesan. I find it a good reminder that 'diocesan priests' live in the secular world 'among' the faithful (which is encouraging on many levels), as opposed to religious in community. And I also think it's a good idea to 'take back' words which may have become misunderstood.
- 17/3/09 5:01 pm


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The randomly drawn Home Page Artist this week is
...It's My Magic
Now onto our fabulous Ginger Gems. When each challenge closes, we also pick 7 Ginger Gems (this time 10) - fabulous creations that we feel really exemplify that challenge's objective. The Ginger Gems appear in a slide show in the blog sidebar for the entire week, as well as in this wrap-up post, and their creators have the honor of displaying this Ginger Gems blog badge.
For more information about Ginger Gems and entering our challenges, please visit the FAQ page.
Ginger Gems
Artwork by k_eine
Artwork by Valerie-Jael
Artwork by Ona i Ja/Agnieszka
Artwork by Jo Willis
Artwork by Cynthia Shelzig
Artwork by Shannon - Desert Designs
Artwork by Hazel
Artwork by Chris Slater
Artwork by Cheryl (Shestamps)
Artwork by Jingle
Special Guest
Come by tomorrow for a new Random Redhead Challenge!


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Where the Flinders Ranges Meets the Outback
posted in: Featured, South Australia, walks | 2
I awaken to the distant sound of a sheep bleating, momentarily disoriented and then remember where I am. Harry and Chris are still asleep so I make myself a cup of tea and venture out onto the deck. It is a … Continued


text:
Overcast is an immensely popular podcast app for iOS with over 12,500 reviews and an aggregate rating of 4.5, plus thumbs-ups from The Verge and others. Marco Arment, who is also the cofounder of Tumblr and creator of Instapaper, documents the process in detail:
I designed Overcast 1.0 in 2014 for iOS 7, and it was a product of its time: it used ultra-thin text and lines against stark, sharp-edged, full-screen white sheets and translucent blur panes, with much of the basic functionality behind hidden gestures. That fundamental design carried through every update until today... I've been working on [the update] since last summer, informed by over two years of testing, usage, and customer feedback.
Arment shows the before and after of most of the key screens, along with his reasoning for each of the changes; and it's worth a read.]]>
The brothers work out of their barn studio located 30 miles east of Seattle. Their workspace is perhaps the best reflection of who they are and what Invisible Creature has evolved to represent.
All photos courtesy Don and Ryan Clark.]]>
What does it look like, you ask? Just this: * + *
Built on the principle of exception-driven design, you can use this selector to specify universal rules regarding flow and layout, and then write exceptions as required. This becomes tremendously useful for grid-based designs.
Even the most complex systems must depend on foundational rules, and CSS is no different. Although modularisation of a complex interface is a necessary step in its maturation, any interface that does not follow basic governing tenets is going to lack clarity.
Highly recommended, even if you consider yourself an experienced frontend developer.]]>
First TVs went almost bezeless, and with the Galaxy S8 announcement last month, Samsung is carrying forward that philosophy into mobile as well. Apple may follow suite soon.
The rationale here is that the bezel or frame which holds together the display unit does not serve any other purpose to the user, hence is "chrome". Minimising (or altogether eliminating) it enables more content to be displayed without physically increasing the size of the display. Applying this thought to interfaces would yield similar returns -- less interface chrome means more space for the content to shine through.
But this is nothing new. Interface designers have been balancing content and chrome since the early days of GUI design. We know the old adage -- reduce interface chrome and make the content the interface. Or as Edward Tufte said, "The information is the interface, not computer administrative debris."
A good example is Netflix, on past iterations of their app.
On the left, you can see chrome in the form of ratings, unnecessary buttons, filters and other panels; which were removed in the later version on the right. Luke Wroblewski has documented how Netflix applied NUI principles to simplify their interfaces.
One of the earliest examples of near-chromeless GUI design deployed on a mass scale were Windows Phone 7 apps designed with the Microsoft Design Language (formerly Metro or Modern style). Debuting way back in October 2010, Microsoft Design Language was heavily influenced by the International Typographic Style and its underlying principles -- use of grid systems, clear typography, vibrant colours and objective imagery.
Minus the blue bar at the bottom, there is almost no chrome at all. Instagram treats the content as the interface which you can directly manipulate via taps, scrolls or gestures. This is standard practice today, but was not the case back in 2013. This was chromeless design at its best, and it looked and felt ahead of its time.
Chromeless interfaces are inherently minimalist, and so are synonymous with flat design. And Microsoft became the biggest evangelist for this chromeless + flat philosophy for the better part of the last decade. This philosophy was then applied across a range of devices from phones and tablets to game consoles and desktops; and Microsoft attributed this impressive plasticity to its treatment of content as the interface.
But it wasn't without its share of problems, and the biggest criticism of chromeless interfaces and flat design was that usability suffered.
Microsoft in particular experienced severe backlash. Without traditional menus and manipulation controls visible at hand, and visual cues like shadows that signified depth on a two-dimensional medium; users struggled to find their way around.
To get a sense of what this means, consider smartwatch interfaces today. The extremely limited screen estate means controls have to be out of sight. These watches have similar functionality but wildly varying means of invoking them, which is problematic for consumers.
They demonstrate that chromeless interfaces take some getting used to because they rely heavily on muscle memory, as Luke Wroblewski observes in The Invisible Interface:
When there's no graphical user interface (icons, labels, etc.) in a product to guide us, our memory becomes the UI. That is, we need to remember the hidden voice and gesture commands that operate our devices. And these controls are likely to differ per device making the task even harder.
Microsoft was designing to bring about the future, but it didn't account for the reality of the present -- consumers were not ready for such a leap. Yet.
Microsoft's digital purity gave way to Google's pragmatism. Circa 2014, Material Design corrected all the usability problems of the chromeless + flat philosophy by establishing a unified framework for interface elements like menus, modals, tab bars, input elements and other such chrome; and marrying it with the Flat 2.0 aesthetic that was gaining popularity at the time.
The reception was unanimously positive -- designers and technologists everywhere were aflutter with praise for Material Design.
In fact, Microsoft, the pioneers of "authentically digital" design recently showcased their Fluent design system, the successor of Microsoft Design Language used across Windows 10. In terms of an interface framework and its treatment of chrome, it seems identical to Material Design.
This is where we stand at the moment. Design sensibilities have hit a plateau. We have established patterns and guidelines for design across devices and product ecosystems. Apple, AirBnb, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and other big companies influencing product design today seem to agree that absolutely chromeless interfaces are not practical -- at least for the moment. Product design has become homogenous, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.
But what does the future hold?
Kirill Grouchnikov has been documenting interfaces from sci-fi films since 2011 at his blog Pushing Pixels. From Prometheus to Oblivion to Iron Man to Tron: Legacy and others, he calls them fantasy user interfaces (FUI).
Another interesting take on interfaces of the future comes from Microsoft's Future Vision videos. As the name suggests, they offer a glimpse into the future of technology through Microsoft's rose-colored glasses.
It's easy to dismiss these as marketing gimmicks or just wishful thinking. But this future may not be very far away. And looking closely at these interfaces, two things stand out at once.
They're almost entirely chromeless.
They are visually flat, or almost flat.
Interface chrome seems to be minimal -- limited to button groups and simple menus. Most interactions are happening via natural language and memorised gestures. Considering this future becomes a reality, the logical question is: how would users figure out how to use these interfaces?
Well, it's established that each subsequent generation understands affordances through experience and expectation. Andrew Coyle explains this succinctly:
The pinch and zoom interaction on a mobile map is not inherently intuitive. Users learn it once, perhaps by accident, luck, or word of mouth, and it is forever ingrained in their minds. This type of interaction is discoverable because it is built upon the expectation that a user can zoom in on a digital map. Before mobile touch-screens, users clicked a zoom button on maps that were rendered on a web browser. The prevalence of this possibility presents the expectation in other contexts, which allows the cue to fade away.
Digital affordances, unlike their real-world counterparts, are continuously evolving. In fact, Apple is a company that is generally cautious about following trends, but even they made many bold moves in iOS 7; one of which was button styling. Apple's designers seem to agree that a button today doesn't have to look like a real-world button with drop shadows and bevels. There only has to be some visual cue that explains its interactivity.
It's almost certain that interaction patterns will evolve past the taps and gestures we use on our devices at present. For example, Siri can do a lot and the Amazon Echo has already demonstrated the potential of natural language recognition. A simple phrase like "Ok Google" allows for a lot of visual chrome to be hidden and kept accessible on-demand. So future interfaces could display purely content and reveal chrome when requested via natural language, gestures or even specific hardware peripherals.
One good example of the last category is Microsoft's Surface Dial, a controller that allows users to customise and navigate interfaces on the Surface Studio.
Interface design is far from mature, and that's precisely what makes it so intriguing and rewarding:
Digital technology will always outpace mainstream's societies understanding of it. The goal of design is to simplify technology's trajectory by developing a story around it that users can understand.
As product designers, we're all playing a part in telling that story.]]>
The first step in building something new is understanding what problem you want to solve, and for whom. This should be crystal clear before you start thinking about any solutions.]]>
What typically separates successful and unsuccessful teams is not whether they do things that fail (this is guaranteed), but how well they can consistently execute.
Define what success metrics look like for your product before you launch. Otherwise, if you try to interpret results after they start coming in, confirmation bias will lead to a non-objective reading.
One of the standout podcasts in recent times, High Resolution features Bobby Ghoshal and Jared Erondu interviewing some of the best contemporary designers each week.
In March, they interviewed Kate Aronowitz, who was Design VP at Wealthfront. Before that, she was a Design Director at Facebook where she took their team from 20 to 200 world-class designers under Mark Zuckerberg.
Some (paraphrased) highlights from the episode:
07:50 -- "All companies should maintain both career paths for their designers -- to either progress as design specialists or get into design management, with equal pay for both."]]>
15:15 -- The tripod of product, design and engineering; and the role of each.
24:10 -- "Designers are often myopic and self-absorbed... No one cares about your illustration strategy unless you can show them how it translates into results for the business."
25:25 -- The roles and responsibilities of a design VP versus design director.
31:46 -- Kate's "hockey stick" career path, and how she went from junior designer to design VP.
43:17 -- Designing the recruitment process at Facebook and scaling the design team from 20 to 200.
46:10 -- On mentoring Luke Woods and Julie Zhuo, both of whom went on to become VPs for design at Facebook.
Vintage Seth Godin.]]>
Gradual engagement is the process of moving a user through an application or service -- actually engaging with it, and seeing its benefits. With gradual engagement, new users are not just presented with a registration form and then dropped off a cliff. Instead, registration is either postponed, or handled behind the scenes and the first time experience is focused on giving people an understanding of how they can use a service and why they should care to.
The article is around four years old, but apps like Airbnb, Meetup, Medium and others are still guilty of forcing registrations upfront.]]>
The designers fixed the problem simply. They took away the Register button. In its place, they put a Continue button with a simple message: "You do not need to create an account to make purchases on our site. Simply click Continue to proceed to checkout. To make your future purchases even faster, you can create an account during checkout."
This case study was also documented in Luke Wroblewski's Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks, and has since been referred to as the 300 Million Button. It is a reminder that any designer's intuition, however strong, should never trump empirical evidence.]]>
Many designers compartmentalise building a product into two distinct parts – design and development. This distinction is one of the most dangerous traps a product team can fall into. When design is seen as a satellite that orbits engineering, it usually comes crashing back to earth.
Lots of agencies and creative boutiques still work this way.
Design specs are tossed over the back wall for an external team to build. You'll be lucky if you ever meet them face to face. Luckier still if the product ends up resembling anything close to what you designed.
He then dives right into what product designers need to understand before they begin design -- understanding constraints early, and designing with engineering in mind -- before finally sharing the actual process Intercom uses to build its product.
And remember that for a modern product team, what matters is what ships. So embrace those who can turn your ideas into reality.
Nail on the head. Nothing beats the kicks you get from iteratively refining your interfaces through collaboration with real people.]]>
Compared to the past few years, the explosion of new tools in 2016 promises to give product designers plenty of options going forward. Let's take a brief look at each of these options and examine their value propositions vis-a-vis Sketch, the current workhorse.
All the tools that came to the fore in 2016 can be categorised into one of the following:
The big news in 2016 was Figma -- nobody expected an interface design tool that was browser-based, collaborative and real-time. Dylan Field and Evan Wallace announced it in December 2015 along with $18MM in funding from Greylock, Jeff Weiner and others.
Figma's trump card is collaboration, which is perfect given that product design is inherently an iterative and collaborative exercise. If you are a designer working in a team, you'd typically have to get hold of the required assets for a new project, then create and upload previews of your designs to a platform like Invision to get internal feedback, plus maintain a history of changed files.
Figma users need not be fazed. Just like Google Docs, your .fig file is stored securely in the cloud. You need not worry about tracking changes. Comments can be placed virtually anywhere on an artboard. And since it is all browser-based, you can access your files on a Mac or PC via a simple URL.
Since version 1.0 was publicly announced along with macOS and Windows apps, Figma has received a ton of praise. But it is not perfect by any means. Questions remain unanswered about other aspects of the design process like prototyping, animation and developer handoff. Pricing is also a concern, and it seems like it will most likely go with a monthly subscription model. Users have also reported that offline usage tends to lag, and performance in general suffers on a slow network connection.
But given these are very early days, the future looks promising. For those interested, Meng To has written a handy comparison of Figma and Sketch.
Built to enable "design at the speed of thought", Adobe Experience Design (XD) comes across as a combination of a raster and vector graphics tool, with the basic prototyping and collaborative abilities of Invision.
Formerly Project Comet, the app is currently in beta and is available as a free download for both Windows and macOS. Like Figma, Adobe also believes collaboration is an important part of the modern design workflow, so XD makes it possible for multiple stakeholders to participate in real-time -- senior designers and clients provide feedback and signoff via comments, developers can also get specs right from the app itself. Plus designers can create video recordings of prototypes or share a link to an interactive prototype hosted on Creative Cloud. While Sketch relies on third-party support for prototyping, XD lets designers define flows, triggers and transitions within the app itself. Plus, XD is part of the Creative Cloud, so designers can expect it to work well with other CC apps like Illustrator and Photoshop.
There's new leadership now at Adobe, new faces (including Khoi Vinh, who is currently Principal Designer), and hopefully a new approach to building products. XD is work in progress, and Adobe has an impressive vision of how they want XD to mature.
Adobe has been indecisive in the past with many promising projects like Fireworks and the Edge suite, and given the Beta tag that XD currently sports, it is not surprising some are a little sceptical. But for the 500,000 designers reportedly using XD at the moment, Adobe is busy pushing updates on a monthly basis; with a mix of new features, enhancements to existing features and bug fixes.
Affinity Designer has quickly built a formidable reputation as an alternative professional graphic design app to the Adobe Suite. Having already secured the coveted Apple Design Award, and thousands of 5 star customer reviews on the Mac App Store; Affinity has now set its sights on UI and UX designers as well.
Compared to Sketch, which is marketed primarily as a UI design tool; Affinity Designer seems more like a Swiss army knife -- capable of delivering for both print and screen, across a variety of disciplines like branding, icon design and illustration, and most recently, UI design too. So startups with growing design teams that find the Adobe suite a little expensive now have an alternate. Designer costs just $49.99 one-time.
As such, a few advantages of its multidisciplinary nature quickly become apparent. For starters, you get the now customary Symbols feature just like Sketch does, but also a Constraints feature that allows designers to specify how the interface should respond to varying viewports or similar limitations.
Advanced typography options seen in Adobe Illustrator and missing in Sketch can also be found in Affinity Designer, and this means designers can take advantage of OpenType support -- ligatures, swash, titling and contextual alternate glyphs, lining and oldstyle figures, and more.
One feature lacking in Designer is some sort of handoff mechanism to developers once the design phase of the project is complete. Sketch leads the race here with excellent third-party support for Zeplin, Invision Inspect and Measure. So keep this mind before considering Designer for your next project.
The unique characteristic of Subform is that it identifies itself specifically for product design, rather than graphic design. Having been inspired by CAD and other 3D modelling tools, it will -- according to its founders Ryan Lucas and Kevin Lynagh -- eventually be able to fully understand the designer's intent, which every other tool currently ignores.
Subform raised $112,651 through its Kickstarter campaign in November 2016 and is available on invite-only basis, so not much information is available at this point. It is being touted as a power tool for master product designers, as opposed to the Swiss army knife philosophy of Affinity Designer.
Let's quickly revisit the earlier point about understanding designer intent, as it is quite intriguing. For example, Sketch cannot differentiate between a regular button and a Floating Action Button (from Material Design). But designers can get Subform to identify a FAB and position every such instance precisely 20px from the bottom right of each screen. This itself is a step ahead of anything out there at the moment.
There seems to be meticulous thought put into its core features. Its shared components seek to provide balance between consistency and contextual variation, it accounts for viewport constraints, it can save an unlimited number of states, pull in real data while designing, and much more.
Subform seems to embrace large-scale product design projects in an agile environment, where change is constant and any available time be spent on design and maintaining consistency, rather than fighting your tools. This is definitely one tool to keep an eye on.
Product designers who code swear by the immediate impact a functional HTML prototype has over static comps. All current UI design tools add a necessary outer layer over the actual product, letting you interact with either static images; or stringing them together and adding transitions (like Invision and other advanced tools like Framer and Atomic do). This output is still a model of the product and not the actual product.
Enter Webflow -- part design tool, part CMS, part hosting platform.
For starters, designers can specify layouts using the CSS box model, flexbox or floats, then add content and style it with media, colour and typography. Webflow also provides templates similar to Virb or Squarespace for those who don't have a lot of time. Any element on the UI can be specified as a Symbol, and can be used repeatedly via CSS-like styling hooks.
The second part of Webflow is a CMS that allows content editors to add content via custom fields, and then bind these fields to the layout that designers create. Webflow also provides webhooks -- custom actions that are triggered when something is added, updated or deleted; if developers need to do some heavy lifting like background services.
And finally when the site is ready to be launched to the intertubes, developers can use Webflow's integrated hosting platform to publish. Webflow relies on Fastly and AWS to deliver your site files to visitors anywhere in the world.
So whether you're a designer, developer, client or content manager working on said site, you have a single place to sign in and do your thing. There is nothing stopping you from doing all of this simultaneously.
As its name suggests, Webflow is only suited for Web-based, content-centric responsive design projects. Its target audience is non-technical users (especially designers) that need to have a site up without learning code. The design community has been crying out for a Web-based design tool for years, and Webflow doesn't just embrace the fluidity and constraints of the Web -- it is built on top of it. It already has over 250,000 users on the platform; including enterprise clients such as Groupon, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Mastercard, Pinterest, MTV, and Hitachi.
Let's not forget the reigning emperor of product design tools. Bohemian Coding understands its user base well, and its flagship product has matured nicely over the last couple of years. Sketch's interface has become the standard, with most of its competitors choosing not to reinvent the wheel.
Having seen all the big guns the would-be competitors are bringing to the fight, 2017 could be an important year as Sketch tries to cement its place as the tool of choice. The most likely changes would be improvements to Sketch Cloud, first-party version control, even better style management and more. Sketch 42 is just out the door, with a new Export Presets feature among the usual bug fixes and stability improvements.
More importantly however, a couple of plugins from its exemplary developer community seem to be already propelling Sketch forward with gusto. Meet Abstract and Picnic.
Abstract was the brainchild of Frank Chimero, Josh Brewer and Kevin Smith; and today has Tim Van Damme and others onboard as well.
As of the time of writing, Abstract is in private alpha; so we can only speculate about how it would work. After making a bunch of changes to your Sketch file, you hit a key combination which calls a Mac client -- similar to the kind Zeplin has -- to document your changes and push it to a repo. You could also possibly create branches or anything else Git allows.
The primary advantage of Abstract is designers' familiarity with Sketch -- and continued access to all the other extensions and integrations the ecosystem provides. And Git is a battle-proven version control system. This combination seeks to eliminate ambiguity about who made changes to the document, what was changed and where the changed files can be accessed. If if you and your design team's primary issue with Sketch has been intra-team communication and workflow, Abstract could be your balm.
Update, 03 March: In an interview with Khoi Vinh, Abstract CEO Josh Brewer has pretty much confirmed these assumptions, and has given a lots of details behind Abstract's magic.
Picnic is the Sketch ecosystem clearly pushing back at Figma's multiplayer collaboration. It promises to put Sketch's Pages panel on steroids using Dropbox or Google Drive -- allowing designers to share a file with their team and all simultaneously work on it. Like Abstract, Picnic is also currently being put through its paces in private testing.
We could easily see this tag-team -- Abstract and Picnic -- becoming the biggest assets in the Sketch arsenal.
With its simple interface focussed on UI design, a performant and constantly improving product, a huge ecosystem of third-party plugins and integrations that never fails to surprise -- there are so many things Sketch gets right. It is most likely to remain the industry favourite for at least another year. The competitors will not go down without a fight, though.
The uphill climb toward feature parity will eventually plateau out leaving behind an almost-homogenous bunch of tools -- just look at what has happened with AWS, Azure and Google in the cloud space. At such a point, choosing between them would almost certainly be a matter of personal preference.
In the end, it is us designers who stand to benefit from all this competition. The future looks very interesting.]]>
With a highly successful product and brand, new versions need to strike a balance between familiarity, the foundations of the brand, and hot newness.
Coming at a time when most of the press were criticizing Apple's "stale aesthetics", pieces like this are essential reading, regardless of whether you design brand, interfaces or physical products:
Iconic brands don't zig-zag. They move forward with seemingly inexorable momentum. Their evolutions often feel inevitable, not surprising. Weak brands move like ping-pong balls; strong brands move like bowling balls. A new Rolex needs to look like a Rolex. A Leica needs to look like a Leica.
Great products never change for change's sake. If you've figured out better solutions to existing problems, then yes, by all means. But realign, don't redesign.]]>
Use Grunt to accomplish all kinds of boring, repetitive (but essential) tasks like concatenating CSS and JS, optimising images, cache busting with version numbers, generating image sprites and lots more.
Since the article is 3 years old, the part about installing Node.js needs an update -- don't use the installer from the Node.js website, instead follow this article and use Homebrew instead.
Everything else is up to date, and brilliantly illustrated with screenshots aplenty.]]>
At a basic level, the system is built on top of Crestron smart home technology and lets him control everything from lighting to thermostats. But it goes way beyond — doors that open via facial recognition, toasters that toast on demand, even a t-shirt cannon — with Zuckerberg having written custom APIs to connect some of these to a set of interfaces that include a message bot and speech recognition. All this was done in Objective C, PHP and Zuckerberg's language of choice, Python.
After a year of coding, here's how Jarvis shaped up:
In some ways, this challenge was easier than I expected. In fact, my running challenge took more total time.
Oh Zuck, now you're just showing off!]]>
Facebook didn't build in those protections, not because they don't care, but because our approach to design is fundamentally flawed, in that we build our assumptions around idealized and average users and use cases, and neglect to ask ourselves and our teammates, "What if we're wrong? How could our product hurt someone?"
Further down:
When we label a usage an "edge case," we marginalize that user and choose not to care. Think "stress case," instead, and design for that human.
The entire article is gold. If you've ever thought what it means to design for human beings, this is it. Meyer has also fleshed out all of these principles in his book Design For Real Life, if you want to dive deeper.]]>
Here are a few shots of their London office.]]>
Julie Zhuo's meteoric rise within the ranks of Facebook is stuff of legend. Within just two years and five months of joining as a product designer, she began co-managing the product design team. But long before she was appointed VP of Product Design, she had to take the plunge into management.
Today, Julie is one of the most outspoken design managers in the world; well-known for her long-form pieces on Medium. Writing in hindsight, she offers practical insight into team management through the lessons she learnt the hard way.
One of the first things I now ask people when they tell me they are contemplating becoming a manager is this hypothetical question: Imagine you spend a full day in back-to-back 1:1s talking to people. Does that sound awful or awesome?
The first of a two-part series, it has since become one of her most read essays.
He also discusses the implications of design without intent or purpose:
The opposite of design, then, is the failure to develop and employ intent in making creative decisions. This doesn't sound hard, but, astonishingly, no other leading tech company makes intentional design choices like Apple. Instead, they all commit at least one of what I term the Three Design Evasions […] preserving, copying and delegating.
The third part about delegating is what is really interesting. On the issue of choice, Moran writes:
The banner of "choice" is always good PR, and may even be good product strategy for many companies. But it's not design. Design means curating the choice for the consumer […] As an analogy, giving someone birthday money instead of taking the time to choose a gift seems eminently logical — why limit the recipient's choices? But the gifts we remember most fondly are seldom checks.
And on the issue of A/B testing:
The final flavor of delegating is a favourite of Internet software and services companies: using A/B testing (or some variant) to see which designs elicit the best metrics from users […] This kind of user testing can be useful, but it's not design. You can safely bet that Apple has never tested 41 shades of blue on users to decide the right color for its website links.
It's an elaborate read, but definitely one that deserves a bookmark. And a re-read once in a while.]]>
Is anything today truly original?
What do we mean when we say original? Something arising or proceeding independently of anything else; something not borrowed heavily from predecessors. If such concepts or ideas do exist, they probably end up as epic failures; and never reach the horizon of public consciousness.
It was back in 2012 that Kirby Ferguson first told a packed audience at TEDGlobal to Embrace The Remix. Nothing is original, he said; everything revolutionary is just skilfully borrowed or stolen, and then transformed. Picasso, Dylan, Jobs — they were influential minds, they were great innovators, and they did precisely that.
Ferguson has also created a four-part video series: Everything Is A Remix. It's worth a watch, especially the extra about the original iPhone:
So are we to believe this as true? Is everything around us just a remix, an improvisation of something before? How do "innovative" ideas come about?
Ferguson's theory may sound like blasphemy to many, but an impartial analysis of some memorable ideas and products in design and tech from the last two decades would lead us to conclude that he is in fact correct. We could broadly categorize these under one or more of the following:
The idea for Twitter — one of the most used digital products of our time — resulted from a brainstorming session at Odeo about an SMS service for small groups: a dispatch service that connects people on their phones using SMS text codes. What started initially as a sort of instant group messaging with SMS evolved into the public status update that ended up stealing Facebook's thunder.
Within the context of interface design, one of the big leaps forward came with Microsoft's type-centric, pure-digital design language (then called Metro); which made its debut on Windows Phone 7. It was heralded as "innovative" and a "breath of fresh air", but the language itself was inspired heavily by both public transportation signage as well as Swiss graphic design principles established decades earlier.
Frank Chimero talks about artists and creators across diverse industries learning from each other in The Shape of Design:
The actor can learn from the painter about the emotive power of facial expressions. The painter from the designer, about the potential of juxtaposing images and words. And the designer from the poet, who can create warmth through the sparseness of a carefully chosen, well-placed word.
Be wary, though, of what you choose to use; because borrowing ideas or material from outside your industry might make you seem like an "innovator", but doing the same within your own industry or medium might make you look like a follower or imitator:
The first successful implementation of a radical idea is usually and correctly lauded as the innovator. The second is derided as an imitator. But by the time you get to the third and fourth, the idea becomes a category.
Sometimes amazing things happen when the time is right, and all the factors necessary for a revolution come to a boil at critical moments in history.
Henry Ford did not invent the automobile. He didn't even invent the assembly line. But more than any other single individual, he was responsible for transforming the automobile from an invention of unknown utility into an innovation that profoundly shaped the 20th century and continues to affect our lives today. He is also famous for downplaying his role in all of it:
I invented nothing new. I simply assembled the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries of work. Progress happens when all the factors that make for it are ready, and then it is inevitable.
Maybe Elon Musk is the new Henry Ford. Tesla Motors has become a rage, and they deserve it. Their decade-long perseverance with Li-ion technology has even put auto giants like General Motors and Toyota to shame. It's not that electric cars didn't exist before the Model S, but Tesla produced something way ahead of its age.
Here's another illustration that is closer to home. Mashable called 2013 the Year of Responsive Web Design. Ethan Marcotte coined the term in his article on A List Apart in May 2010. The underlying technologies and components — fluid grids, flexible images and CSS media queries — were already in use then, but no one had yet tied it all together. Browser support for media queries too was so-so. But when Marcotte expounded on the theory and practice of RWD in his book of the same name, Web design would never be the same again.
Sometimes, things are perceived as revolutionary because of significant lowering of cost or size of the technology concerned. Ben Thompson explains this vividly in Apple and the Innovator's Dilemma:
Within ten years the hard drive industry moved from the 14-inch drives that had been used in mainframes to 8-inch, then 5.25-inch, then 3.5-inch drives […] Apple too rode a similar wave with the iPod, iPod Mini and iPod Nano; disrupting itself successively using changes in the exact same sort of media (storage) that felled market leader after market leader 30 years prior.
So we've hopefully established that it is very difficult to progress within design and technology without borrowing from predecessors. That being said, one important question remains.
Where does one cross the line between remix and rip-off? How can we be fair to others and to ourselves? Are there any rules we can follow to successfully side-step the blank slate, yet avoid running over those who have paved the way before us?
Chimero delves a little into these issues in Chapter 3 of The Shape of Design, titled Improvisation and Limitations:
When we build, we take bits of others' work and fuse them to our own choices to see if alchemy occurs. Some of those choices are informed by best practices and accrued wisdom; others are guided by the decisions of the work cited as inspiration; while a large number are shaped by the disposition and instincts of the work's creator. These fresh contributions and transformations are the most crucial, because they continue the give-and-take of influence by adding new, diverse material to the pool to be used by others.
The problem is not everyone's intentions are aligned with the intentions of the pioneer. Many choose to be selfish and take what they want without contributing anything. David Smith — while confessing frustration at the lack of an acceptable definition — gives his take on The Right Way to Copy:
Good copying learns from another's innovation and then applies it in a novel way to a new context that doesn't diminish the source invention.
The keywords there are novel way to a new context. This is why any self-respecting designer would find it difficult to defend, say; Samsung in its saga against Apple, or the many clones of hit games like Flappy Bird and Threes!.
Good copying as a progressive, non-destructive metaphor can perhaps be visualized as lighting one candle with another candle. Jim Jarmusch; an indie film director, actor and producer; sums it up best:
Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination […] Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don't bother concealing your thievery. Celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: "It's not where you take things from, it's where you take them to."
So, go on then … Take stuff to the next level.]]>
The main app is Node.js with nginx. They also use Java, one might guess for heavy-computational stuff. Redis is used as well, probably for recommendation / collection feeds. Medium relies heavily on AWS services; as they use EC2, EBS, S3, Route53, EMR, DynamoDB, SQS, CloudFront and SES. All their assets are being served via CloudFront.
He also exposes how successive articles in Medium load with almost zero delay:
Turns out, when you browse Medium, you never go to a new page. Medium simply loads the "page" into a new <div> in the container, sets the old page to 'display: none' and updates the URL and title.
Both these guesses were verified by Dustin Senos — one of Medium's first product designers.
Those interested may want to read more about the Single Page Application model that Medium uses.]]>
What sets it apart from every other booking site I have used is that it doesn't follow convention. Instead, based on the single page application (SPA) model, every segment takes over the screen — be it the calendar for departure and arrival selection, or the seat layout for seat selection. There are no overlays, no lightboxes and no page refreshes.
Here it is in action:
It isn't everyday that a well-designed booking experience for a large corporation actually makes it through to production without getting watered down.]]>


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BCS Machine & Mfg. Corp. has the capability of Silk Screening control panel or parts with up to 6 colors.
Honesty, commitment and quality
Precision Sheet Metal
Petroleum fuels the world
We remember the old days of black gold like few others. We've seen and been part of every incremental advance of getting the stuff out of the ground – from the first rigs to the most sophisticated underwater solutions of today.
With a CNC 19 station precision punching Strippit SPM750 stamping machine we have capabilities of punching up to .125" aluminum, .093" steel and .062" stainless steel. Up to 30"x 40" panel and hold .005" toreances on bending dimensions.
CNC Machining
Our Miller Heli-Arc Industrial welding station can weld Aluminum, steel and stainless steel.
BCS Machine & Mfg. Corp. specializes in precision CNC 3 axis machining with tolerances of
+ .005" and a capacity of X42"-Y22"-Z22"
We don't typically engage in hyperbole, but we will say that no matter what industrial problem you have, we've already been part of the solution.
When you've been in business as long as we have and faced technology's increasingly rapid developments, you learn a few things. Or, in our case, more than a few. We not only have simple, ready-to-implement solutions for almost every problem, we have the patents for them, too. And, if you bring us something new, our engineers would love to work with you to find the solution.
Having the right hands on the job makes a difference
When we see companies say things like "a century of collective experience," we all look around and laugh. We can count pretty high, but not high enough to tally the years of experience we have managing job sites of every size.


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ONE of the most highly respected hospital consultants in North Wales has retired to concentrate on his speciality in a very different field.
And for Jeff Edwards, it will mean swapping his white coat for the more colourful garb of the Spanish horsemen of centuries ago.
For Mr Edwards, who until his retirement this year was consultant in obstetrics and gynaecology with the Conwy and Denbighshire NHS Trust, is among a small band of riding enthusiasts who seek to emulate the riding skills of the historic Spanish and Portuguese.
He belongs to the El Caballo de Espana, described as a School for the Equestrian Art, who put on shows and displays throughout the country.
As a youngster he was always interested in horses and the interest was revived in 1985 when two of his children started riding.
The following year he read about the Spanish horses and their riders and was immediately captivated.
"In Spain and Portugal horsemanship has always been a much-admired skill among gentlemen. It was as much an accomplishment as swordsmanship. It goes back as far as the Conquistadors," he said.
"I became hooked on it and happened to find an instructor who was superb."
The specially-bred horses, mainly greys, are extremely intelligent and quickly learn the intricate manoeuvres of the synchronised performances.
"They are very gentle in the stable but very fiery to ride. The stallions, in particular, have a superb temperament and are like a coiled spring when they are ready to perform," said Mr Edwards, 55, who gives solo performances as well as being a member of the team.
The intricate skills formed the basis for the now morefamiliar dressage competitions.
"The style of riding is intended to be harmonious, with no force being used. The horses love showing off and they are only doing what they would do naturally," he said.
Mr Edwards now owns three horses which he imported from Spain and all three take part in the group's displays.
The group began by performing at county shows but have established such a reputation that they are now asked to perform at corporate events and major displays. Next month they will perform at a
Members of El Caballo de Espana pay equally detailed attention to their traditionalstyle costumes, saddles and other accessories.
Mr Edwards said that although the hobby was exhilarating it was often tiring to fit
in all the commitments around his work at Glan Clwyd Hospital, but having retired he is now looking forward to devoting more time to his horses.
"I ride each one for at least an hour each day," he said.


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While toxic plants are growing in potency thanks to global warming, so are other plants that produce natural antidotes.
Menands, NY (PRWEB) April 16, 2010
Poison ivy, sumac and oak are toxic plants native to North America that adversely affect an estimated 60 Million Americans and Canadians every year. As members of the Rhus family, these poisonous plants cause nasty topical complications by producing a toxic reaction on the skin. Rhus plants contain an oily substance called Urushiol that oozes from the leaves, stems and roots of cut or crushed vegetation. Topical contact with the oil causes allergic reactions that produce inflammatory redness, painful blisters and severe itching.
While 25% of the population is generally immune to small doses of urushiol, this natural substance appears to be growing more potent with increased carbon dioxide levels that accompany global warming. This means less people are immune to the toxic plants, and more people are suffering worse reactions than they did only twenty years ago.
Recent botanical research shows rash-inducing plants are growing faster and producing more potent toxins as compared with the same plants of earlier decades. Rising carbon-dioxide levels appear to create ideal conditions for these poisonous plants, producing larger and faster growth along with more potent toxins. As more potent urushiol is produced by plants, the toxic reactions become worse and affect a larger population.
"If it's producing a more virulent form of the oil, then even a small or more casual contact will result in a rash," says Dr. Lewis Ziska, a plant physiologist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Beltsville, Md.
A 2007 study, led by Dr. Ziska, focused on poison ivy plants grown under different levels of carbon-dioxide exposure. One group of plants was exposed to 300 parts per million of CO2, the same level found in the atmosphere during the 1950s. A second group of plants was exposed to 400 ppm of CO2, the same level found in the atmosphere today. After one growing season, researchers measured leaf size, stem length, overall weight and oil content of the plants. The measurements of plants grown under current CO2 levels were 50% to 75% higher than plants grown under the 1950s conditions. Not only did higher CO2 levels double the growth rate, but they also created hardier plants that recovered more quickly from adverse environmental conditions.
An earlier study conducted at Duke University also reported that higher CO2 levels create a chemical change in poison ivy that results in a more toxic form of urushiol. The Duke study supports U.S. Agriculture findings, showing significant increases in the toxicity of plants exposed to increased levels of CO2.
"It is more abundant and allergenic," says Jacqueline E. Mohan, a research scientist who led the Duke study.
As the scourge of poisonous plants worsens, traditional over the counter medicines are becoming less effective across the population. While there are many remedies for poison ivy and its relatives, most are made with chemicals that mask symptoms until the rash has passed, but none have been able to fully relieve the symptoms. The average case of urushiol poisoning can last up to three weeks, but there are natural botanicals that can neutralize urushiol to promote faster healing -- even as the toxin becomes more potent.
Thankfully, while urushiol is increasing in potency due to growing carbon dioxide emissions, other plants that produce natural antidotes are also increasing in potency. A new natural product uses proven botanicals to relieve topical urushiol poisoning by incorporating more potent strains of anti-inflammatory plant extracts. ThermaSkin Itch Blocker is designed to counteract the irritation caused by a variety of toxic plants. According to the manufacturer, their proprietary formulation of Jewelweed, Caspaicin, Pareira and Goldenseal neutralizes autoimmune responses caused by contact with urushiol.
Contrary to popular belief, urushiol does not spread once it absorbs into the skin. After 10 minutes of exposure, urushiol cannot be washed away -- even with soap and water. Because the oil binds with proteins in skin cells, it's impossible to remove once the toxin has been absorbed. Since the average urushiol rash occurs 12 to 48 hours after exposure, most people don't realize they've been contaminated until it's too late. Even when blisters are oozing with puss, the toxin cannot be spread by scratching and it cannot be transferred to other people, but the horrific symptoms can linger for weeks.
"There's no doubt the combination of jewelweed, capsaicin, pareira and goldenseal instantly counteracts the immune response caused by urushiol, but the application method is equally important. We experimented with sprays and lotions, but we found a roll-on was far more effective. Roll-ons naturally apply pressure to deliver the formula deep into the skin while increasing blood flow and breaking up blisters. Since urushiol cannot be spread once a rash appears, there's no chance of spreading the infection with a roll on. So a roll-on was the best way to go", says Wayne Perry, developer of ThermaSkin Itch Blocker.
Jewelweed has been used by Native Americans for centuries to neutralize the effects of urushiol. In fact, jewelweed generally grows next to poison ivy throughout North America. Capsaicin is also a Native American remedy used to control topical pain and itching, and ThermaSkin Itch Blocker is the first commercial product to use the power of the pepper. In addition, Goldenseal and Pareira root are both proven to reduce topical inflammation, and ThermaSkin uses both botanicals. By combining these natural ingredients in a roll-on, the makers of ThermaSkin Itch Blocker guarantee their product will relieve allergic skin reactions caused by a variety of modern plant irritants without the adverse effects of chemically based products.
"As carbon emissions worsen, so to will allergic complications faced by people who enjoy the outdoors. Our mission is to use Mother Nature's own antidotes to neutralize the effects of toxic plants without resorting to harmful chemicals and steroids," adds Perry.
To find out more about ThermaSkin Itch Blocker, visit the official company website at Greensations.com.
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My RL kept me so busy with school and then being out of town again and again. I missed creating stuff and I've missed you guys ~ and thank you for all your messages ^^ ~ hugsss
Well before they turn real ancient in my inventory I have released a bunch ...well fine ...all ... of the items I had for the 5 Years hunt Anniversary ... look at the post below to see them all .
Also some of them are FREE ...so check the cheap and free vendor ( the one next to Midnight Mania ) and get your free doze of clothes and shoes if you haven't got the chance to do so at the hunt. Also are other freebies and cheap items inside the vendor just scroll down to get to see them all ^^
And I a new release called Gypsy ... nothing fancy as a fortune teller gypsy or a carnival one hehe ... this one is a Romanian gypsy ..just in time for Halloween
Also since Halloween is coming I shall put here Valeria too ...even tho some of you may know her already from the hunt
And another new release Samara outfits ..
And I never got to release Ade and Charlotte
That would be all for now...more things coming soon ...and a few surprises :D
Posted by Aniri
Friday, September 12, 20140 comments
at 10:25 AM
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As a trusted advisor, E2 Optics has created a solutions approach to working with our customers. We start with the discovery and analysis of their IT and business requirements. From there, our team works to design and engineer IT solution options that cover the requirements and the customer's budget.
Once the design is approved by the customer, we start the project implementation based on schedule and project management principles. Once the project is successfully completed, we are able to operate and maintain the installed system. E2 Optics provides exceptional customer service for system warranties and follow-on Moves, Adds, and Changes contracts with our customers.


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by Dean
(Fairfax, Virginia)
To start, you might want to check our Tire Size Calculator, if you haven't already done so. It will help keep things in perspective.
Based on the results which the calculator shows, I don't have any great concerns over your proposal because the difference in the two sizes isn't that much. What might pose a problem is the change in the offset, but it hardly seems enough to seem significant.
I'd really like to do a test fitting before making a final committment, but possibly you can pre-judge the consequences by seeing how much room you have on either side of your tires/wheels with your existing setup. If you have at least 15mm to work with, this change is not likely to pose any problem.
Yes, it's possible that the systems you named will be affected minimally by this change, but because the change is so small it's not likely to be beyond the normal tolerances which are engineered into them.
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