text:
March 15-19, 2014, information here
Related to the last post — JSE is one of this year's AWS speakers
25 Sunday Aug 2013
Posted Uncategorizedin
25 Sunday Aug 2013
19 Monday Aug 2013
21 Sunday Apr 2013
16 Tuesday Apr 2013
From this post of Ravi Vakil's blog:
I've gradually come around to the idea that when learning about some category for the first time, the notion of isomorphism is pedagogically prior to the notion of morphism. I won't argue about whether it is logically prior; that's not my point. When learning groups, students first propose the notion of isomorphism (as they figure out what they mean by the intuition of two groups being the same) before the notion of how you map from one group to another. With schemes too isomorphisms come first.
In mathematics notation, we have a symbol for "is isomorphic to" (\cong). But this is the wrong notion in general: we need a symbol for "a map that is an isomorphism". We already have a reasonable answer: a right arrow with a \sim on top. But might it be nicer to make it look slightly different, and have a symbol that looks like a \cong, where the bottom is a rightarrow? I like this idea because although it is (slightly) new notation, it is patently clear what it means, and also useful.
03 Wednesday Apr 2013
This post is
Most important is the following: go to the mathapedia.com sandbox here, click on "load random sketch" until you get the following
Then play.
Misc awesomeness:
More thoughts:
List of "latex on the internet" links
I compiled this list while thinking about mathapedia and a conversation with Cyrus Radfar, founder of Kapuno. (I met Cyrus at ScienceOnline, kept in touch through twitter, and when he remembered that I was a mathematician he told me about mathapedia.)
17 Sunday Mar 2013
My wife and I have a new tradition in Atlanta — every March, there is a marathon on our street. We wake up early (for us) and, rather than compete, we make mimosas, a sugary breakfast, watch the marathon from our southern porch, and do our taxes.
This year though I have pink eye. So no Mimosas. My left eye basically constantly feels like I've had the same contact in for several days. This is the 3rd time I've had pink eye. The other two times were more epic:
I've always liked how Anton geeked out when he had a blood clot and made a detailed web page about it. So I'm going to do the same. (Also, at this rate I'll probably get pink eye another 6 times in my life, I may as well learn everything about it.)
Pink eye (conjunctivitis):
Actually, there's not that much to say about pink eye:
One good tip for 3 — wipe from your nose to the outside of your face. And in general, there's something very satisfying about a midday, 3-hour, feverish nap.
The downside is that I'm often not quite lucid enough to do math. (And for instance, this blog post was written in a non-lucid state and edited later. Its like Hemingway said "Write drunk, edit sober.") When I'm sick I usually pick up some free or cheap flash or iPhone game and play it. (Usually from one of toucharcade's best of lists.)
Coincidentally, this weekend, Nimblebit was demoing their game NimbleQuest,
This was fun, but to really rock it you need to spend a lot of time leveling up. Which I don't really have. There is *some* time lucid enough to do math, but I didn't want that time to go to waste game-wise.
So I cheated — I wrote an apple script that would repeatedly walk my characters in a circle, collecting gems and whatnot, using applescript.
What is applescript
Basically its a high level language for Macs that lets you automate things. Usually I use Bash for this, but if I need to do something like click a particular spot on my screen, or resize windows, I use applescript.
Here's a good description of applescript from Profhacker. Also, Profhacker is pretty cool, check that out too.
The following script just makes my game character walk in a rectangle (he attacks on his own), and at the end of every walk hits "return" three times, so that, if the character dies he can restart.
activate application "Google Chrome"
delay 0.1
tell application "System Events"
repeat 3 times
keystroke return
delay 0.1
end repeat
end tell
delay 0.575
tell application "System Events"
keystroke "w"
end tell
delay 3
tell application "System Events"
keystroke "d"
end tell
delay 1
tell application "System Events"
keystroke "s"
end tell
delay 3
tell application "System Events"
keystroke "a"
end tell
end repeat
To tell the truth this is almost as much fun as actually playing the game… So far the game seems to make about 250 diamonds an hour.
11 Monday Mar 2013
I'm a day late with my weekly blog post because I'm at the 2013 Arizona winter school! I go every year (only missed one since 2005) since I'm from Tucson, and it's as awesome as ever, with a record 232 participants (and only 234 seats in their auditorium).
So, short post today though — inspired by the twitter-addicted-throng of science-y types at ScienceOnline, I've started tweeting again. (I used to just tweet awesome extreme metal videos, but that got old.) I haven't quite found my twitter groove, but have had quite a bit of fun livetweeting the #AWS (see also #AWS2013).
I haven't been able to get too many others to tweet with this hashtag (I wasn't quite ballsy enough to write the hashtag on their whiteboard) but its already been quite rewarding. The biggest payoff is that my tweets revealed to my postdoc mentor JSE that the fun he was missing and he impulsively (on the first day of the conference!) bout a ticket to Tucson.
Also, I thought it would be a bit awkward tweeting a math conference, but it turns out that it feels like an extension (or maybe subset) of my usual notetaking. I tend to not write down everything the speaker writes, but rather write down new insights, new project ideas, or funny quotes, a style which ports well to twitter.
Other fun —
I'm so used to this picture being a "multi-holed donut" that I never made the connection to breakfasty awesomeness.
Overall opinion of tweeting a conference: 5/5, will tweet again.
03 Sunday Mar 2013
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(This post is incomplete and will later be proofread, filled in, etc.)
Today, new sunday routine, I search my "notes.org" file for lines containing the word "blog" and found this:
"brain dumps, of things I've learned recently and lots of fun facts (e.g., Pryms)"
So who is this blog's target audience? Probably my own grad students (and, well, me at a later date). But non math people read this, and some senior math people too. What to do? Today for instance I'm going to write about Prym varieties. What can a non-math audience get out of a post like this? I'll at least say that this encourages me to try to find pictures, facts, ect that I would not usually bother with.
Cool degenerations of curves
Another line says "blog post, cool degenerations of curves and more", with a bunch of examples. Here's a degenerate prym. (The top right curve is two copies of the left curve, but with "P of the first curve glued to Q of the second".)
Two neat things about this picture
1) it is an etale double cover
2) The associated Prym variety is the Jacobian of the base curve
This second fact is key; it says that the Jacobian locus is in the closure of the Prym locus.
So what is a Prym variety?
The short answer is — it is (more or less) the only way that I know of to write down abelian varieties which are not Jacobians. I asked about this on Mathoverflow ages ago (examples of rational families of abelian varieties) and Prym varieties were (for me) the most managable example.
So how does one write down an abelian variety A that isn't a Jacobian J? Well,
– A is dominated by a Jacobian (in particular, the Jacobian of some curve lying on A) so it makes sense to look for A's in J's.
– A map of curve C –> C' induces a map of Jacobians J_C' –> J_C, and the quotient A is an abelian variety that is often not a Jacobian
– This construction might not give you a principally polarized abelian variety.
– Geometric class field theory tells that two torsion points on J_C give etale double covers of C. This is (almost) the only case where one gets a PPVA.
Numerology of Prym's
OK, the real reason I wanted to write this post is to collect all of the cool stuff I've learned about Pryms.
– Hyperelliptic begets hyperelliptic. In fact, this is an easy, explicit exercise (say, blay, in blay's book):
– Trigonal begets tetragonal. Lies deeper. Dogani's trigonal construction.
– Dimension counting. Call R_g the space of prym's of dimension g. Then there is a map M_{g+1} –> R_g. It is a classical fact that this map is generically finite, with non-finite fibers coming from Dogani's construction.
– Tetragonal usually begets a non-Jacobian.
– Tetragonal construction (characterize the tetragonal which do give Jacobians).
– Nodal degeneration trick. Keyword — Beauville admissible cover?
* Questions:
– Is there a good notion of Prym's for graphs, or in tropical geometry? My first thought is no, but after Farbod S's talk last week (reminding me of the emphasis on discrete graphs as models for metric graphs) maybe?
25 Monday Feb 2013
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This is really a post about how awesome emacs is. To start, though, something sexier than emacs:
Beer! I like to brew. My wife and I brewed 250 bottles (an amber and a Belgian witbier) for our wedding. Now that I have a house, I can do things like buy bulk grains and hops. But which hops to buy? What grain do I want 50lbs of?
So, I went to this awesome database of brewing recipes. I want to learn to make a solid Belgian Dubbel, and would like to see what the most common recipes are. I want to read all of the recipes labeled eg (extract-grain) and see what they do. I also don't want to spend 10 minutes finding and opening the 48 eg links on this page (out of hundreds of links).
Now, I know this sounds trivial, but listen — this can either be a tedious exercise, full of right clicking, eyeballing, and RSI escalation. Or it can be a fun logic puzzle.
Macros. In my emacs setup, if I hit F3, it records my keystrokes. Hitting F4 stops the recording, and hitting F4 again repeats the recorded sequence of keystrokes.
Applications abound.
1) Line breaks. One of my pet peeves is the fact that gmail (and also most of my collaborator's text editors) take normal text (one continuous line, formatted for your particular page)
and deform it into something like this (artificial line breaks; looks terrible if you scale)
I'm nerotic about these things, but don't expect my collaborators to be. (But this blog's audience? Compatible neuroses?)
Also — not something that a find-and-replace can fix. (Though query-replace with emacs, noting that C-q C-j inserts a linebreak, works well).
Basically what I did was the following sequence of keystrokes (on a mac):
– go to end of line (Cmd-right)
– go to next line (right)
– hit backspace (or delete)
– hit space.
One nice feature of this is that having it as a hotkey lets you decide when to use it. I basically want to use it for each paragraph, but not for, e.g., code or displayed math.
2) Beer! Back to beer, and a second screencast.
— view source (right click-select view source)
— copy to emacs
— start macro (f3)
– search for eg (C-s return; eg)
– move to front of line (Cmd-left)
– go up two lines
– highlight everything above this () or ()
– delete
– search for eg again
– go to end of line (Cmd-right)
– highlight (Cmd-Shift-left)
– cut (Cmd-x)
– paste at end of file (Cmd-down, paste)
– move to top of file (Cmd-up)
— end macro (f4)
Now I just hold F4 for ten seconds and I'm done.
Once I get a list of urls, I put "open" in front of each line (via macros or query-replace w/ C-q C-j), copy, and paste into a terminal and they all open as separate tabs in a browser. I can quickly browse them now.
(If I want to automate more, instead of opening, I can curl the url, write to a file, and do the same kind of macro as before to get the piece of the table with grain, hops, etc and get a big list of data to study.)
Epilogue. I'm not a trained programmer. MAGMA taught me most of what I `know'. I like coding bash scripts to do things and generally finding better ways to automate repetitive tasks in my life. Programmers might cringe at my use of macros ("Seriously? Just use regular expressions…") But for a non-programmer, recording a series of keystrokes is a fun logic problem, while regular expressions requires reading a manual.
As a mathematician, in my idle time, I almost always want to do the first, and almost never want to do the second.
17 Sunday Feb 2013
John Voight visited Emory last week and introduced me to the crazy LMBDB (L-functions, modular forms, and related objects database). (He also introduced me to the awesomeness of Fucsian groups.)
Contrast with this quote by Borcherds:
If you ever find yourself drawing one of those meaningless diagrams with arrows connecting different areas of mathematics, it's a good sign that you're going senile.
(From this great post by Scott Carnahan about Lafforgue's work.)
Technically, these aren't arrows between areas of math, but between mathematical objects, so its legit. Fun features:
1) If you hover over an arrow it tells you what the connection is.
2) The biggest selling point for me (and this came up in conversation with John, he wasn't just gloating about his involvement in this awesome project) is the computations over number fields other than Q.
3) If you go to the page of a particular elliptic curve, it returns the isogeny graph. (Featuring conductors up to 299998!)
4) On a page for an L-function, it will even verify the Riemann Hypothesis. (Scoll to bottom.) It computes this in real time too. You can see a little, almost invisible progress bar in the top right corner.
5) I generally really like super hyperlinked mathematical things. (E.g. I LOVE the stacks project and its recent interface update.)


text:
There have always been women at E3, but now there are more and more players.
While the crowd there is still overwhelmingly male, women are gaining on men who play at home.
"42% of women now are gaming, and they're gaming at an older age range. So, 18 to 35, which means we have a little more time, and definitely more money to spend on gaming," according to Trina Schwimmer, of gamingangels.com.
Local news from across Southern California
Trina Schwimmer's gamingangels.com is for women only. She says while there are games just for women, any game that involves a story line is usually a hit.
And remember, the ladies tend to be better at multitasking.
"Any kind of game that's strategic, and is a multi-player like Shooter, that's actually really good for women," according to Schwimmer. "They can actually control their squad, and they do multi-player, so we have skills that actually make us better than guy gamers.
Some are gaming for the challenge, and some want to play with their gaming boyfriends.
"Him and all his friends play and I really don't know what to do, so if you can't beat 'em, join 'em," says Emily Lansdone.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Computers & Printing
Computers for Use by the Public
Four computers are available for public use at no charge, where you can search the Internet, type and print documents, etc.
Use of the "self-serve" public computers is on a first come, first served basis, with a time limit of one hour per day, per patron. Passwords are located on each desk.
Access to the internet is subject to the Library's Internet Usage Policy [PDF]. Parents and children are encouraged to read My Rules for Online Safety [PDF].
Cost is 25¢ per page (black & white). Pick up your printing at the circulation desk.
Wireless Internet
Have your own laptop or wireless device? Free WiFi access is available at the library. Network access: Library WiFi Guest. No password required.
The Library has a self-serve photocopier available at the rate of 25¢ per copy. Pay at the circulation desk.


text:
Although a seasonal decline is expected, January was the sixth month in a row of higher year-on-year lending.
In the latest CML market commentary, chief economist Bob Pannell said: "Housing and mortgage market sentiment has improved a little over recent weeks.
"The increase in lending compared to January last year helps support our view that housing and mortgage market activity may be boosted by first-time buyers seeking to complete deals before the stamp duty concession ends in March.
"Should inflationary pressures continue to fall back, the squeeze on household finances should ease progressively and help support stronger economic recovery going into the second half of the year. This can only be good news for the housing market further down the track."
Nicholas Leeming, business development director at Zoopla.co.uk, said:
"The property sector relies on a healthy lending market and while lenders are still nursing the hangover of the crisis this is another step in the right direction. The Bank of England has hinted that rates will stay low for the foreseeable future so borrowing will remain cheap as a result. However, the end of the first-time buyer stamp duty holiday looms large and this will have a significant impact on the market. Lending figures will remain strong in the lead up to the deadline as first-time buyers rush to beat the deadline but it's likely we'll see a lull in the middle of the year as a result of activity exhaustion from this section of the market. It's important then that lenders keep introducing attractive and affordable mortgage deals to boost activity. If they don't, we're in danger of taking one step forward and two steps back."
Have your say on this story using the comment section below


text:
Welcome to
About MineyCrafty
Our server began over 4 years ago, and has remained
a close and friendly community-minded server since then.
The MineyCrafty Server has recently updated to 1.13.2 ,
with a total rebuild of the Spawn areas,
plus new maps and revised plugins.
Additional games and activities will be added in the coming months.


text:
Nichols Power Systems provides services large and small, from full building fire alarm replacements and generator installations to time and material electrical work and fire alarm programming.
We excel at providing turn-key services at competitive prices due to our strong long term relationships with engineers, vendors, and general contractors.
Please contact us for our fire alarm tech rates and for information on the state of the art product line.
Nichols Power Systems, Inc. highly skilled electricians can assist you with all of your commercial, institutional, governmental and industrial electrical projects meeting current National Electrical Codes. Whether it is powering a new building from the ground up, running feeders for heavy industrial equipment, or installing electrical receptacles in your Class A office, we have a turn-key solution to meet your needs.
Nichols Power Systems installs emergency power solutions for clients in a wide range of business categories, including apartments, health care, retail and office. Every business has unique power demands, and we specialize in providing solutions to meet our clients' needs. Our team will involve you every step of the way, from concept to completion.
Fire Alarm
Nichols Power Systems has assembled a project team consisting of experienced fire alarm project managers and field technicians with NICET certification. We excel at providing everything from retrofit fire alarm system replacements to testing and programming.
As a well-known industry leader, we consider our specialty in elevators to be our core area of business and continue to focus on providing the best possible service to our clients. From new elevator installations, modernizations, and replacements, to escalators, moving walks, and conveyers, we are committed to meeting the needs of the vertical transportation industry.
Our Location
Nichols Companies
Nichols Contracting Inc
Nichols Management


text:
KU Radar Reveals 3D Image of Earth Through Miles of Ice
In the cover article of the latest issue of the
Journal of Glaciology,
engineers at the University of Kansas detail a special radar array they developed that is capable of depicting a 3D view of bedrock hidden beneath ice sheets 3 kilometers thick.
Working at the
National Science Foundation
Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets
at KU, the researchers, led by then doctoral student John Paden, designed a Synthetic Aperture Radar system that provides a fine-resolution image of the bed over a wide geographic region, as well as the thickness of the ice. Topographic characteristics of earth below the glaciers and ice sheets have long been sought after. It is considered essential information to develop computer models that can better predict the role of ice sheets in global climate change and sea level rise.
The radar system is a game-changing development for researchers in global climate change. Previously, glaciologists could only know the thickness of the ice and bed conditions along a single line from a sole pass of a radar or at a single point where ice core samples had been drilled.
To get these innovative 3D landscapes, KU engineers constructed a special sled with several radar transmitters and receivers. The sled was then hauled over Summit Camp in Greenland, following a precise grid of parallel lines 500 meters apart connected by perpendicular lines. The radar used both left-looking and right-looking beams in the frequency needed to broadcast television signals. Researchers used advanced signal processing techniques that determined the directions of the echoing wavelengths. The team of researchers was able to collect data that essentially peer through ice as much as three kilometers thick and reveal the ground from multiple points.
Since the same spot on the ice bed is imaged by radars from several tracks, the elevation is independently measured multiple times, Paden wrote in his paper. Paden received his doctorate in electrical engineering from KU in 2007. He's now employed as a software development engineer with Microsoft's Vexcel Corporation.
"While the 2D representations provide a consistent medium for comparison of point differences, a 3D representation provides better visualization and interpretation of surface features," Paden wrote. To confirm accuracy, researchers compared their result with the length of the 3,027 meter long GRIP ice borehole, and found their data to be within 10 meters at that site. The radar system is considered very accurate with an error of 0.3 percent in the index of refraction, well within acceptable limits for ice-penetrating radars.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimated that sea level would increase from 18 to 59 centimeters over the next century. The success of this radar system will help researchers obtain needed data in the effort to create more accurate ice-sheet models that predict sea level rise, Paden wrote. The new radar system can be carried by airborne vehicles and also will help glaciologist identify locations ideal for future ice core sampling.
Paden worked with KU engineering professors Chris Allen and Prasad Gogineni, director of CReSIS; CReSIS engineer Torry Akins; and then graduate student David Dunson. All are KU engineering alumni.
Learn More:
International Glaciological Society
Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets
National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs


text:
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
6 Comments:
- At 6:31 AM, Redford said...
I've never been to a Taste of China before but I think I'll definitely have to make an
online table reservation sometime soon. This menue looks amazing.
- At 2:09 AM, Turkish Cuisine said...
I also bookmarked and tweeted this. Thank you so much for showing great concern for other people. Much Respect.Turkish sweets
- At 10:13 AM, Christine Liew said...
Go to Taste of China because of the outstanding food and the price is completely reasonable. Secondly,the restaurant is clean and sterilized. Most of the people who go there rank this restaurant one of the best they have been to. The service of the restaurant is friendly. On the menus you have many choices ranging from traditional Chinese food to food from India. In my opinion I would rank this my favourite restaurant yet. I would truly recommend this to people I know. Also its even better than the food in China town.
- At 9:46 AM, Pan Buk said...
restaurant website in generic blogspot template? I thought what I saw on this vegeterian cafe website was ridiculous :D
- At 2:33 AM, Riya Singh said...
Thanks for sharing this wonderful post, It is awesome.
Chinese Food
- At 3:34 AM, Bella said...
Thank you dear for posting the menu. I love Chinese food and I am addicted to the Cirque le Soir Table drinks. Have Fun :)


text:
Yamamoto WUD60G Dry Cleaning Harmony Professional Cleaning System
60Lb Capacity
Complete System
Each element of the Harmony Cleaning System has been carefully designed to work together to form a seamless process for professional wet cleaning.
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Efficient Process
Automated wash programs and dry-to-dry cycles save time, labor, and space.
Superior Results
Harmony Cleaning System removes soil and odors better than traditional dry cleaning. Clothes look, feel, and smell cleaner!


text:
Beauty Marks by Candace has been gearing up for the holiday season, and we're delighted that so many of you have chosen to give the gift of permanent makeup to your friends and family.
Giving makeup as a gift is very common. When you find the perfect shade for your BFF, why not pick it up and put a pretty bow on it?! But wouldn't it be even greater if your friend could have the perfect look every single day without having to apply makeup? I bet your friend thinks so!
Take a look at some of our Orange County permanent makeup BEFORE and AFTER photos to see what a difference we can make. And be sure to hear from our always satisfied clients about their fabulous eyelash extensions, airbrush tanning, and permanent makeup experiences with Beauty Marks by Candace!
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Sunday, November 20, 2011
Orange County Permanent Makeup - Great Holiday Gift!
Posted by Beauty Marks By Candace at 2:51 PM
Labels: Orange County Permanent Makeup
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text:
Like many people I am a chocoholic. Give me hot chocolate fudge cake, dairy milk, chocolate biscuits, anything really and I am one very happy lady! But saying all of this the chocolate things I avoid seem to be chocolate bars (like mars bars, twix) and things like creme eggs. The reason I think I'm like this is because I kid myself a little, a chocolate cake is surely better than a whole mars bar right?! So when it came to Easter and I was given a 6 pack of Cadbury Creme Eggs, I ended up thinking I would have them until Christmas. Instead of leaving them though I decided to bake them into gorgeous yummy cupcakes for my whole family. These were delicious and I swear baked Creme Eggs taste so good!
This Cadbury Creme Egg Cupcake recipe is made a little different to how I usually make basic cake mixtures. I wanted a moist cake that isn't too complicated to make so I mixed the cocoa powder with water and I think it did the trick. How do you make a cake super moist without having a huge list of ingredients? Please let me know by leaving a comment, I love new ideas :).
The recipe I used for the butter cream is from The Great British Showstoppers Book which is a book I defiantly recommend. Also if you are interested I used a large piping nozzle which I got from Lakeland Plastic :). Happy Baking!
Makes 12 Prep Time 8mins Cook Time 10-15mins Difficulty: Easy
- 1oz Cocoa Powder
- 3-4 Tablespoons Water
- 4oz Butter
- 4oz Caster Sugar
- 4oz Self Raising Flour
- 2 Eggs
- 6 Cadbury Creme Eggs
For the Butter cream
- 125g Butter
- 400g Icing Sugar
- 3 – 4 Tablespoons Milk
- 1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
- Pre-heat the oven to 180c and put your cupcake cases in to your cupcake tin.
- Mix the cocoa powder with the water until it makes a nice smooth paste.
- Add the butter and mix again until it makes a thick paste.
- Add the sugar and mix well.
- Add one egg at a time with a little flour each time and mix in. Once both eggs are mixed add the rest of the flour and mix.
- Spoon your mixture into your cake cases (around a third too a half of the case should be full). Bake your cakes for around 6 minutes (around half baked) and then take them out. Cut your creme eggs in to half and place a half in to each cake pushing down slightly and continue to bake for a further 6 – 8 minutes.
- Once your cakes are cooked leave them to cool down.
- To make the butter cream beat the butter until smooth. Slowly add the icing sugar by sifting it in and mixing in in little stages (this bit is messy!). Add the milk and vanilla and mix until smooth and thick. If your cakes are cooled then you are ready to pipe on top of your cakes. Decorate how ever you like just make sure you hide the Creme Eggs leaving your friends and family pleasantly surprised!
To Your Inbox


text:
Family reunions always left Joe Kennedy with questions.
The Shadyside resident took his boyhood curiosities a step further by starting a nonprofit that seeks to fill gaps in family trees, particularly those in the black community.
Riverbends Inc., a genealogical research firm, received its incorporation license in October.
Popular for-profit websites — such as Ancestry.com and Genealogy.com — have capitalized on people's fascination with retracing heritage and unearthing long-lost relatives. Sometimes they fall short for black customers because of the scarcity of records for slave ancestors and slavery-era blacks who were born free or emancipated.
Most genealogical services charge up to a few hundred dollars per year. Riverbends' basic resources are free, but customers have to do the work themselves by scanning and posting documentation that can be shared and researched against other databases.
Read more at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review


text:
Great Horned Owl Update
We haven't seen the Great Horned Owl Family very often this past month, but I now have a permanent set of Owlet triplets to remind me of how special it was to watch the Owls.
I crocheted my own owls from a pattern at Jacquie's Website. Jacquie says "If you are proficient at crochet you will be able to make one of these sweet little owls in no time at all." Proficient is the operative word. My crochet skills were rusty, and apparently my counting skills were too. 'No time at all' took several weeks. There are many fiddly bits to the project.
The hardest part, however, was getting a decent photo of them. Their light weight little bodies didn't want to sit on the branches of the trees. I finally had to wedge them between branches or skewer them a bit with the poky thorns.
As for real owls, two of the owlets were hunting here on July 19. There were several other owls too, but they didn't land. The original un-retouched photos are at my Chirps and Buzzes blog post Great Horned Owlets are Growing Up with a comparison photo of them as babies. So cute.
Here are photos of the two Owlets, altered with a Super Sharp filter in Topaz Studio.
Happy August! How is your summer or winter so far? Decent weather? Travel? Visitors? Done anything crafty lately?
12 thoughts on "Great Horned Owl Update"
Great job!!!! We have had a different summer. Had 3 storms in 18 hours. One storm had 120 kph winds. Thought we were going to get blown off the rock our cabin sits on. Many trees came down in the area. Several on our lot but no damage to our buildings. We had lots of cleanup! Summer is quickly coming to an end for us. The kids arrive this weekend for a brief week, then we close up and head home so we can go down east for hockey! Looking forward to the trip but absolutely hate having to leave here.


text:
I want to access the video stream URL of telediario from spanish television (RTVE) which you can find here in a flash player: http://www.rtve.es/alacarta/videos/telediario/
I want to do this with linux scripting, without a webbrowser.
With the Firefox webbrowser and the Firebug addon using the network analysis tab I searched for
mp4 (because it is an MP4 video stream) during the video was played. I found a URL like
which is the video stream of Telediario - 8 horas - 29/08/13.
I have read the question How to find the stream behind a Flash player, but there are only browser solutions (using wireshark to find the stream needs the browser to play the video).
Also the question How are flash file URLs are protected/hidden on video steaming sites? seems to be similar, but has no definite answer.
So what I want is: How or where can I find this mp4-URL in the website's source?
Update 1: The AK-session-ID isn't needed. That means, that the video URL was yesterday
and today
At the same time, the only similar name/number is the URL for the preview snapshot of the video (yesterday)
and today
Update 2: I have now extracted the media box which plays the flash video. It looks like
<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="100%" width="100%" data="http://www.rtve.es//swf/4.2.8/RTVEPlayerVideo.swf">
<param name="movie" value="/swf/4.2.8/RTVEPlayerVideo.swf"/>
<param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always">
<param name="allowFullScreen" value="true">
<param name="flashvars" value="assetID=2007594_es_videos&location=alacarta_videos">
<!-- solo video-->
<param name="wmode" value="opaque">
<param name="quality" value="high">
The only difference every day seems to be the
When I load this simple webpage, a file
gets loaded, with the number being the
assetID. I still cannot find a connection between the video stream URL and the
assetID or the json file.
Update 3: Oh my god! The strange number for the URL is the seconds since seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC. Because the GNU command
date +%s
results in 1377856336, which is quite similar to the URL numbers. But the last three digits are missing.
Update 4: I have decompiled the source code of the player (flash file)
http://www.rtve.es//swf/4.2.8/RTVEPlayerVideo.swf. There is no occurence of the video stream domain
http://mvod.lvlt.rtve.es, that means the player has to get this info from another source. Maybe the json file mentioned in update 2.


text:
We are runners who know that your times aren't the whole story in the race.
We know that it's not your gear that gets you out training every day.
It's what's in your heart.
This is the place for the rest of what we know about running. The things that make us who we are, the things that push us to be more than we thought possible.
These are the stories of our hearts, mind and bodies.
Our lives.
This is why we run.
Mother and lover of political incorrectness, Clinical Nurse Specialist in Anaesthetics. Enthusiastic amateur wine connoisseur, who - despite a few miles on the clock - still doesn't consider herself a runner. She was a fat kid.
Lisa studies outer space for a living and runs for fun. Fuelled by spinach curries, her ambition is to be the first Essex girl on the moon.
Martin is a scientist, ultramarathon runner, husband, father, and avid cook aspiring to balance mind, body and spirit in his daily life.
Martin Pluss
It's all about running and life. Martin or @plu is a social runner, teaches Geography, helps students and teachers use technology to enhance learning and loves learning through social media.
Involved daily in teaching and practising family law to help those in need. And de-stressing with running as often and as long possible.
Maker of factual stuff for the web and broadcast. I'm an academic, a writer, a runner, a mother and laundress. I curse like a sailor.
Writer, poet, daydreamer, movie star, computer gamer, dad to Adam. I try to work as little as possible, to allow time to either hang out with my son or nap in the afternoon sun. I have sometimes been known to run a really long way.
My passion is learning; mostly through running, the outdoors, reading, spending time with people and writing - but they're good ends in themselves too!


text:
God Intervenes!!
So today at work dispatch puts out a call for a child (about 10) walking on the freeway. I responded to the location and find Courtesy Patrol speaking with the child who was now on the service drive. I go up to talk with them and find out this child who was diagnosed as "special needs" was told to walk home by his teacher after his taxicab didn't arrive. I spoke with the child (actually 8 years old) and found him to be leery of the police (especially police cars). He refused to allow me to drive him home. He would however allow me to walk him home. So what do I do? I climbed the fence that separated us and proceeded to walk this little one home. We passed the drunks, the derelicts, the would be criminals and I told him these were the reasons why he should not walk alone. After walking for quite a while and finding him to be uncertain about his whereabouts and his not knowing his address or phone number, I asked him for his mother's name. He was able to provide that and I contacted dispatch who did a search of the name in hopes of a possible address. I also called for a patrol car to take us to his home. When we arrived, I found his grandmother in the driver's seat of her car talking to two DPS officers. Seems the parents, worried about their child had gone to the school. The DPS officers had their team out looking for this child and the grandmother, presumably, was going to look for him. When we reunited the child with his grandmother, it was clear she had been extremely worried. She hugged him and cried. I prayed for her and him. Later, the child's father called me to express his extreme gratitude. Can I tell you that through all the crap I go through at work, this, this right here, makes it all worth it!!!! I thank God I responded!! I thank God this child grew in confidence in me!!! I thank God for the dispatcher who did all she could do to find this child's mother!! I thank God that nothing happened to the child before we got to him!!! And I thank God for his family that truly loves him!!! God is sooooooo good ya'll!!!
Leave a Reply.
Faith Larkins
September 2019


text:
Queen Celebration
Adult Birthday Invitations
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Note: Sparkles are simulated and will not light up.
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Queen Celebration Envelope Seals
Queen Celebration Return Address Labels
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Place Card
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|$0.55 stamp - if other items are not added into the Envelope. Click here for additional postage information.
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|Inner Lined Envelopes available for an Additional $.40 each. Choose from 20 different colors.


text:
We are just a few days away from Valentine's Day..
If you want to have something planed and ready, now is the moment to start!
I love sweets and I already know I want to make a dessert for valentine's day, but I'm not sure what dessert just yet.
With 3 kids it needs to be something simple, if it is too complicated I might not be able to finish it, or what if I forget about it in the oven and it burns? When you have to leave behind what you're doing to change diapers, comfort a crying baby and so on, is so easy to forget what you where doing, so I am looking for some easy recipes.
Since I am already on the hunt of some valentine's day dessert recipes, I though of creating a list and share them will all of you, and to be honest also to share with myself, since this list will be easily available to me and have all my options in one place makes it easy to decide on one recipe.
All the recipes look delicious, and I wish I would be able to make all of them, but will have to choose one. Maybe two if I feel adventurous..
I hope this is list of Valentine's Day Dessert Recipes is also useful for you 😀
Just click on the image or on the name of the recipe to go to the recipe.
No-Bake Cheesecake Truffles
Valentines Jello Hearts
Red Velvet Crepes with Raspberry & Sweet Cream Cheese Filling
Fudgy Brownie Raspberry Buttercream
If you wish to support my work and help me keep the free content coming, considering leaving a tip on Ko-Fi : http://ko-fi.com/mary_craftytuts/commissions


text:
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text:
Lync is a powerful little tool, with the ability to do everything from basic text chat, to voice, to video, and even includes the ability to share your screen and/or display a whiteboard for the meeting. Also, it integrates with Outlook and SharePoint for a truly unified corporate communications tool.
However, there is a lot of that functionality that isn't being used, just because users aren't aware it's there! Below are some of the more useful and interesting things I've found.
1. Clear, easy to understand help files with screenshots and videos
One of the things that I've always thought that Microsoft struggled with was making their help documents for applications easy for the end user to understand. This seems to have been corrected in Lync 2013; the help documents are clear even for the novice user to understand, with common tasks listed on the first screen. Most are complete with screenshots, step-by-step instructions, and in a lot of cases, video – and all from the Lync program.
Simply click on the Options icon (the little gear), then Help, and Lync Help.
2. Create custom Contact List Groups
One of the things I always like to do is organize my contact so that it is easy to find the person I need, right when I need to contact them. Lync 2013 gives you the ability to create Contact Groups, and then file contacts in them.
Creating a new group is easy – just right-click on one of the existing, default groups, then choose Create New Group. After the group is created, just drag and drop contacts into it!
3. Schedule and join a Lync Meeting, right from Outlook
Lync 2013 integrates right with Outlook 2010 and 2013. As a result, you can actually schedule and create a Lync meeting right from within your Outlook calendar.
Open your Outlook calendar and click the New Lync Meeting button. Fill out the meeting information as normal, choose your recipients, and then send! They will get a meeting notice with a hyperlink to your Lync meeting. This is incredibly helpful if you are planning a video or presentation meeting.
4. Share your desktop or a particular program in a Lync meeting
Suppose you want to share a PowerPoint presentation with someone, perhaps a team member in a different office. In the old days, you would have to email it back and forth with comments, or post it to SharePoint or a network drive. Now, you can share it via Lync's Presentation feature.
In an open message or meeting window, click the icon that looks like a little monitor, and you are greeted with plenty of options. Included are the ability to share all your monitors (if you have multiple connected to your computer), a choice of which monitor, or Program. When you click on the Program option, it gives you a list of currently running applications on your computer – and when you chose one, it shows just that application window, and not other details (for instance, you desktop or your email program).
5. Create a Whiteboard for brainstorming during a meeting
This is probably one of the most useful features. It allows an interactive whiteboard where you can draw, type, insert pictures, and present during your meeting. It's reachable via the same method as 4. above, click on the Present icon, then Whiteboard, and get creative!


text:
It ought to be fun to get a new automobile. Sitting down driving the wheel is 1 of the ideal feelings you can have, and it stands to reason that the acquiring process need to also be pleasant. Most individuals feel vehicle buying is demanding, but you never need to make it so. Use the tips that stick to to make receiving a motor vehicle a entertaining time.
Make confident that you have all the needed materials when auto purchasing. Have you taken a very good appear at your price range? How many seats do you require? Is MPG important? Are you a admirer of four doorways or a two door coupe? Make a listing of every thing you want, and take it with you so nothing at all is overlooked.
Do not enable the vehicle dealer speak you into purchasing a automobile that is not inside of your funds. Several individuals get hoodwinked into buying a athletics automobile since salespeople say the particular person looks excellent in it. Salesmen generate cash on commission, and some salesmen place their very own economic acquire before your greatest interests.
Search for your automobile on the World wide web prior to browsing a dealership. You ought to only go to a dealership when you are confident about the make and model of the automobile that you want. Some on the internet analysis can be fantastic for narrowing your checklist of feasible makes and designs and for studying issues that the salespeople could not notify you.
You ought to be all set with funding before likely to search for a automobile. This can be done at your credit history union or lender. You will get a significantly far better curiosity price by carrying out this.
For many folks, vehicle buying is cringe worthy, but it does not need to be demanding! A couple of simple measures can make the method go far more easily. Just use what you've got learned right here to make car searching a optimistic knowledge.


text:
Published at Thursday, August 23rd, 2018 - 07:10:13 AM. Living Room. By Elyse Vogt.
The American Traditional style of furniture was influenced by English and French styles. With time it evolved into a unique American style. The traditional living room furniture includes styles such as the clean and simple lines of Shaker furniture, the simplicity of the Mission style and similar styles from artisans in the Southwest and all corners of the country. American traditional style is thus a blend of several styles and it takes the best that every different style has to offer.
If you have a small living room, chances are you also have small furniture and fixtures to match. But this doesn't have to be your final resort if you do have a small living room. Designing a small living room may be a challenge, but it is quite fulfilling when you see the finished product of a small living room design that fits your small space and lifestyle.
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text:
Hide Forgot
Spec URL: http://tux.u-strasbg.fr/~chit/RPMS/irsim.spec
SRPM URL: http://tux.u-strasbg.fr/~chit/RPMS/irsim-9.7.41-1.src.rpm
IRSIM is a tool for simulating digital circuits. It is a "switch-level"
simulator; that is, it treats transistors as ideal switches. Extracted
capacitance and lumped resistance values are used to make the switch a little
bit more realistic than the ideal, using the RC time constants to predict the
relative timing of events.
Created attachment 147073 [details]
Mock build log of irsim-9.7.41-1.fc7
Only tried to rebuild this: not checked for
packaging issue.
Mock build log of irsim-9.7.41-1 on FC-devel i386.
Fedora specific compilation flags are not passed.
Please check how CFLAGS etc are dealt.
Spec URL: http://tux.u-strasbg.fr/~chit/RPMS/irsim.spec
SRPM URL: http://tux.u-strasbg.fr/~chit/RPMS/irsim-9.7.41-1.src.rpm
Then, magic too suffers from that missing CFLAGS. I'll work on it.
SRPM URL: http://tux.u-strasbg.fr/~chit/RPMS/irsim-9.7.41-2.src.rpm
Well, I want to check -2 today (in Japan, EST+14h),
however rawhide upgraded tk related packages and
please wait until upgrading ends successfully.
Umm.. rawhide report says that currently several
packages have broken dependency against tk as
tk is upgraded to 8.5, so first I have to rebuild
all broken packages locally against new tk first...
Created attachment 147103 [details]
irsim -2.1 spec file I created
* Source tarball includes unneeded symlink. Your
original spec file does not remove this symlink
on %clean stage.
* Passing cflags can be done in more easy way.
And the manual modification against files
automatically created by configure should be avoided
when possible.
* Timestamps are not kept
My spec file should hopefully fix them. Please check
I will check if another issues are left to be fixed.
Well, for -2.1:
* License:
I doubt that this is licensed under GPL.
All texts which include explicit license terms
refer to the same sentences, however, I just
don't know how this license is called...
Please check:
./analyzer/anXhelper.c for example.
(Note: license for files created by autotools
should be ignored).
* Some documentation
I wonder if the 3 documentation
are really needed because:
* they are the same as man pages installed.
* it seems that they are not used at runtime.
? Would you give me some examples so that
I can check if this program works well?
? I just wonder if the following compilation flag is
Should this be your mail address?
? By the way, what are the files under other/
(In reply to comment #7)
> Well, for -2.1:
> * License:
> I doubt that this is licensed under GPL.
> All texts which include explicit license terms
> refer to the same sentences, however, I just
> don't know how this license is called...
> Please check:
> ./analyzer/anXhelper.c for example.
> (Note: license for files created by autotools
> should be ignored).
under scripts/irsim.spec.in you will see GPL. However, I've asked upstream for
more clarity on this. Here is what he answered:
The only copyright notices that appear are in the C code itself.
For a typical example (they're all the same as far as I saw):
/base/rsim.c has the following copyright notice:
* Copyright (C) 1988, 1990 Stanford University. *
* Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this *
* software and its documentation for any purpose and without *
* fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright *
* notice appear in all copies. Stanford University *
* makes no representations about the suitability of this *
* software for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without *
* express or implied warranty. Export of this software outside *
* of the United States of America may require an export license. *
From my meager understanding of software copyright law, the fact that
the Stanford copyright is less restrictive than GPL means that the GPL
license may be applied to the package without any problem. I can add
the standard GPL copyright notice to the distribution, if you would
So eventually, I asked him to add the GPL notice to the package.
> * Some documentation
> I wonder if the 3 documentation
> -----------------------------------------
> /usr/lib/irsim/doc/irsim-analyzer.doc
> /usr/lib/irsim/doc/irsim.doc
> /usr/lib/irsim/doc/netchange.doc
> -----------------------------------------
> are really needed because:
> * they are the same as man pages installed.
> * it seems that they are not used at runtime.
You are right about it, I'll remove them.
> ? Would you give me some examples so that
> I can check if this program works well?
> ? I just wonder if the following compilation flag is
> proper:
> ---------------------------------
> DPACKAGE_BUGREPORT=\"email@example.com\"
> ---------------------------------
> Should this be your mail address?
I'll point it to http://bugzilla.redhat.com
> ? By the way, what are the files under other/
> directory?
Generally in this type of packages, they are contributed codes that
- we don't know their license
- they are not currently maintained
- we don't know about their accuracy/precision on their methods
I struck a bug, which I'm working with upstream reveal its identify.
I think you should be aware of what it is (perhaps you might find something that
we can't see ):
irsim tut_irsim_scmos2um.prm tut_irsim_gate.sim -example.cmd
I can't see any changes on analyser however when I print the output to a
file, I can see evolution with respect to time.
see file c.ps
see screenshot
Created attachment 147317 [details]
Created attachment 147318 [details]
Created attachment 147319 [details]
Created attachment 147320 [details]
Created attachment 147321 [details]
Spec URL: http://tux.u-strasbg.fr/~chit/RPMS/irsim.spec
SRPM URL: http://tux.u-strasbg.fr/~chit/RPMS/irsim-9.7.41-3.src.rpm
We know what the problem is : which in fact quite silly. :)
The display was being redrawn after all. The problem is that the background is
being drawn white, and the traces are drawn white, so the result is
white-on-white, and invisible!
The Tcl/Tk version was hacked on top of the X11 version, and some things aren't
properly configured for Tcl/Tk. In Magic and XCircuit, the X defaults has been
moved to Tcl, where they are read from a Tcl script. In IRSIM, the properties
are still controlled by X11 and the X11 resource manager.
The white-on-white probably comes from a default .Xdefaults or possibly
.Xresources setting "*background: white" which makes all backgrounds white by
You can avoid this by adding to your home .Xdefaults file:
irsim.background: black
and then reloading with "xrdb -load .Xdefaults".
Created attachment 147327 [details]
corrected screenshot
Created attachment 147364 [details]
irsim -3.1 spec file I created
A bit modified irsim.spec
I added some fixes for mainly two issues.
%{__cp} -p doc/faultsim/fsim.ps %{buildroot}%{_docdir}/%{name}-%{version}
This is of no sense because %doc macro firstly clean
%{_docdir}/%{name}-%{version} directory.
%{__rm} -rf %{buildroot}%{_libdir}/%{name}/doc/
%{__rm} -f
The latter does nothing.
I have not yet checked your example, however,
> You can avoid this by adding to your home .Xdefaults file:
> irsim.background: black
> and then reloading with "xrdb -load .Xdefaults".
... Can this be done automatically by adding some files in irsim
rpm? If it cannot, adding some documentation may be kinder.
Spec URL: http://tux.u-strasbg.fr/~chit/RPMS/irsim.spec
SRPM URL: http://tux.u-strasbg.fr/~chit/RPMS/irsim-9.7.41-4.src.rpm
This package (irsim) is APPROVED by me.
Package pre-import admin stuff done. Feel free to import.
Package Change Request
Package Name: irsim
Short Description: Switch-level simulator
Owners: chitlesh
Branches: EL-5
cvs done.


text:
2019 - 2020
Jan. 8th, 2020Allan Eaton
Special Investigations Unit
For meeting details click here.
For further information on upcoming speakers
click here
The Garrison Comunity Council - Building closer connections between
Canadians and members of our Military Community.
A Garrison Community Council is a grass roots, citizen based initiative bringing together
members of the community from business, government, education, service clubs, associations and other interested individuals to build a greater understanding of the Canadian Forces through engagement and participation with the local military community.
Welcome to the Garrison Community Council of London and Region
The Council promotes communication and interface between the Garrison and
the Community in Elgin, Middlesex, Perth and Lambton Counties. The role of the
Garrison within the community, the assistance that the Garrison can offer theCommunity and methods of strengthening the Garrison-Community interaction fallwithin the ambit of the Garrison Community Council.
Find out more about us by clicking the links below.


text: 18.06.15 FSR outlines InfoComm showcase AUTHOR: Inavate INFOCOMM 2015 FSR has returned to the InfoComm 2015 show with two seamless scaling switchers, three HDMI switchers, two HDBaseT products, the FLEX IO-16 I/O Interface Unit, and updates to its Digital Ribbon Cable. This year, the company introduced its DV-MFMV-74 and DV-MFSS-71 scaling switchers; DV-HSW4K-41, DV-HSW-21A and DV-MFSW-21A HDMI switchers; the HD-HPC-SP-Tx and HD-HPCWP-Tx additions to thecompany's HDBaseT product family; the relaunch of its FLEX IO-16 I/O Interface Unit and a preview of upgrades and designchanges to its Digital RibbonCable series. INFOCOMM 2015


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text:
After the unceremonious firing of series creator Hideo Kojima, many Metal Gear Solid fans were understandably skeptical when Konami announced Metal Gear Survive. Abandoning the typical espionage-fueled stealth action of the core series for crafting and survival gameplay, the game's initial announcement was met with severe backlash from fans. Unfortunately, we can now confirm those initial criticisms were justified.
Metal Gear Survive has a wide range of issues, but first and foremost, one of its biggest problems is that it's not really a Metal Gear Solid game. Beyond its art style and the use of recognizable sound effects, there's very little about the game that will appeal to fans of the franchise. It doesn't have an engaging narrative, it almost completely throws stealth out the window, and it features a boring, generic, player-created avatar in place of the iconic Snake.
For these reasons, Metal Gear Survive is not a game that will appeal to Metal Gear Solid fans. It seems to be aimed at gamers who enjoy survival games, but even then, it fails to deliver a compelling survival experience. In fact, its survival game mechanics actually weigh Metal Gear Survive down a great deal, and are arguably the worst parts about it.
Oftentimes, and especially early on, the hunger system can cause players to fall into a death loop. There may not be any animals to hunt or vegetables to harvest, so players will be forced to complete the next mission as fast possible, return to base to save their progress, and then lay down and die. They will then respawn with about a quarter of their hunger meter filled, which should be just enough time to complete another mission and keep repeating the process.
Later in the game, when players manage to amass a larger supply of animal meat and start a vegetable farm, starvation isn't as pressing of an issue. However, it's easy to see how many people who try to play Metal Gear Survive may give up in the game's early hours as they become fed up with having to constantly babysit their avatar's hunger and thirst. These "features" simply aren't fun and serve little purpose other than to frustrate and make the game inaccessible for many gamers.
Even if players manage to stick with the game long enough to get past the starvation death loops, then they will have to deal with its other tedious gameplay loop. Metal Gear Survive mostly consists of players running through large, empty stretches of desert to an objective, which usually revolves around activating a new teleporter or defending something against waves of zombies (or "Wanderers," as they're called in the game). They loot the area, complete the objective, return to base camp, and repeat the process endlessly.
With very little variation in objectives, Metal Gear Survive quickly becomes boring, and it's hard to stick with the game. The gameplay loop of running forever, likely getting lost in the "Dust," collecting resources, fighting zombies, and returning home gets old quick, and it doesn't help that the combat isn't very compelling either.
The key to success in Metal Gear Survive is to bring a bunch of chainlink fences on missions to distract Wanderers. Oftentimes the enemies will not even try to walk around fences to reach whatever the player happens to be protecting or to attack the player head-on. Usually they will walk straight to whatever barricade is close to them, almost like the fences in the game have a gravitational pull or something. This can be exploited to make most encounters in the game far too easy, and it only becomes truly challenging when there's an overwhelming number of enemies to deal with – which doesn't happen very often.
The dumb enemy AI can easily be exploited, but just like the starvation and thirst systems in Metal Gear Survive, the situation improves the more time players invest in the game. New enemy types introduced in the later chapters will actually force players to go out of their way to craft stronger weapons and go into situations fully prepared, but unfortunately, these enemies don't show up until the game is over halfway done.
Almost everything in Metal Gear Survive becomes more tolerable and enjoyable the longer the game goes on, actually. The first five hours or so are an absolute nightmare that will likely turn most people off from the game, but those that stick with it may actually find the later levels somewhat rewarding, particularly when it comes to the crafting system and strengthening the base camp. As more buildings are built and survivors are recruited, the base camp becomes more efficient, which can be rewarding considering how dire of a situation players find themselves in at the beginning.
Something else players may enjoy about Metal Gear Survive is its use of the Fox Engine. The Fox Engine allows Metal Gear Survive to display numerous enemies on-screen at once without any kind of slowdown or other issues that many similar games seem to struggle with. In general, the game runs very smoothly, and we encountered very few, if any, hiccups during our time with it. Despite launching at only $40, Metal Gear Survive actually runs better than many full-priced games.
Even with its budget price in mind, though, we can't recommend Metal Gear Survive to anyone, perhaps especially those that consider themselves dedicated fans of the franchise. The game flatout fails to capture the Metal Gear spirit, and while it has some positive qualities, they aren't enough to redeem it. Those that manage to stick with the game for the long haul may end up enjoying it a bit more than others, but most Metal Gear Survive players may find it difficult to force themselves through its tortuous beginning hours.
Metal Gear Survive is available now on PC, PS4, and Xbox One. Game Rant reviewed the game on Xbox One.


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Product Details:
Payment & Shipping Terms:
|Continuous & Automatic
|Dry Pet Food
|1 Year
|After-sales Service Provided:
|Engineers Available To Service Machinery Overseas
|AutoCAD Format According To Client Workshop
|English Version
Product Specification
Dry Pet Food Making Machine Process Line focuses on the production of feeds for animals with a high emotional value but low economic usefulness, apart from the aspect of breeding.
CE CERTIFICATE, ISO 9001 CERTIFICATE provided. UL Cerficate under applying.
Pet Food Exturder/Pet Food Making Machine has balancing the components and gentle processing are at the center of the related quality considerations.
Pet Food Exturder/Pet Food Making Machine is therefore increasingly proving to be the right tool for modern Pet food. A complete feed, fed as a diet over a prolonged period of time, must ensure the vitality of the animal and prevent deficiencies.
Pet Food Exturder/Pet Food Making Machine is quite a challenge to the feed manufacturer in terms of the selection and composition of the raw materials, their optimal processing, and effective quality assurance.
Pet Food Exturder/Pet Food Making Machine constitute the biggest market segment.
Pet Food Exturder/Pet Food Making Machine has high-grade complete feeds capable of maintaining the health even of exotic species in aquariums over prolonged periods of time, sinking or floating feed.
Video Links in youtube:
Technical Parameters
|18 x 5 x 3m
|20 x 5 x 3m
|35 x 5 x 3m
|40 x 5 x 3m
Commissioning & After-sales Service
1. We make accurate factory layout design according to customer's factory size; if the customer needed, we could make workshop design with electricity power, water supply, gas power, material storage, final storages, worker's restroom, etc.
2. After delivering machines to client's factory, we start to apply for the Visa to client's country immediately; normally the vessel needs 20-60 days to the required port, so we have enough time to get the Visa. While the machines arrives your factory, our engineers are ready to start for the commissioning service.
3. 1-2 of our engineers will go to your factory to install and adjust the processing line to realize normal production at shortest time.
4. Our engineers have responsibility to train and teach the workers how to operate, clean, maintain and repair all the machines, until the workers could well operate the processing line.
5. It normally costs 10 days for the commissioning service, and we supply 1 year guarantee from the date of completion of commissioning service.
6. The engineer's round-trip flight tickets, accommodation and daily salary USD 100 are on client's account.
Raw materials: Dry Pet Food Processing Equipment adopts corn flour, wheat flour, animal meat, rice four, etc as raw materials.
Products: dry dog food, cat food, fish feed and so on.
Capacity: 100-1000kg/h
Flow chart: Mixing system---Extrusion system—cutting system--Drying system--- Packing system
Voltage in China: Three phases: 380V/50Hz, Single phase: 220V/50Hz, we can make it according to customers' Local voltage according to different countries.
Machines materials: All the machines are made by stainless steel, dry dog food machine is with reasonable design and with high automation; the screws are made by alloy steel, with building block system structure and self-cleaning function.
Why Choose Us?
1. Germany WEG motor, three years worldwide guarantee
2. Siemens PLC and touch screen to control the whole line, all faults will display on the touch screen
3. ABB or Schneider electric parts
4. NSK bearings
5. All parts touch with raw materials or final products are made of stainless steel 304
6. 24V operation voltage, assure the safety of operators
7. Three kinds of protectors to keep machine and operator safe: over-heating, over-current, over voltage.
Machinery Show
Sample Show
Contact Us
Add: East 2-2 , Xinxu Industrial Park, Jinan 250032, P.R.China.
Web: www.darin.cn


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A few weeks ago, a stranger walked into our office.
No big deal, it happens frequently. Sometimes it's a courier dropping off something from a client or a vendor. Frequently it's a lost soul trying to find the office of one of our neighbors. More often than not, it's a salesperson.
Despite our prominent location, and the over 100,000 cars that drive by our office and see our logo every day, I don't believe we had ever had someone show up in our lobby to talk about doing business with us.
sidebar2.jpgBut this time it was just that: it was someone who wanted to talk to us about being a customer!
Over the years, he had mostly done his own Web stuff, but lately had been relying on "some guys" to do it instead. But he had come to a point where he was being let down with bad service and second-rate deliverables. So he had decided to get serious and needed to enlist the help of an expert. And he came to us.
I asked him how he found out about us, and he told me that he's been on our newsletter list since 1997 and has read every issue. I was honored. And I wasn't really surprised, as over the years I've had countless people come up to me tell me how much they enjoy our newsletters and informative they find these articles. What IS surprising is how many people read these, tell me how helpful the information is, but don't actually use it.
Admittedly, we have covered a lot of ground since we started these newsletters back in 1997. In nearly 60 issues, we've shared our expertise in just about every single area of Web strategy. From pre-project discovery and research through development and implementation to post launch support and promotion. We've kept you up to date on all the current best practices for email marketing, search engine optimization, pay per click strategies, content management, and more... lots more. Our newsletters have been reprinted in print and on the Web. Some of our articles have caught the attention of the media and gotten us interviewed on the radio, TV and Webcasts.
But none of this information is worth the digital impulses that carry it to your browser or your brain unless you decide to use it. As many of our customers (and all our honest competitors) will attest, it's all right on. Admittedly, it would be difficult and expensive to do everything we recommend. But is that a valid excuse not to?
That boils down to how serious you are about being successful on the Web.
Back in 1997, one customer of ours who had just started a business decided to put himself into our hands. He said "tell me what I need to do and I'll do it." So we worked with him to develop his strategy... e-commerce with the features that re-enforced his brand and his business model; multiple Web sites for different markets; weekly bulk emails to his customers with success tracking and improvement metrics; search engine optimization and pay per click programs; aggressive promotion of the Web sites in print and broadcast; constant content and feature upgrades and enhancements.
It wasn't easy for him to invest this much trust and effort. He had previously attempted several business ventures, but none of them panned out. But with this one, he saw the power of the Web, and wanted to make sure he didn't screw it up. Doing everything we told him he needed to do was at times a real stretch for him, and in the early days, a financial challenge. But he trusted us because he was confident that we knew what we were talking about, and that we would take our responsibility very seriously.
And most importantly, we both knew that on the Web, as in life, success doesn't just find you, you need to relentlessly pursue it until you catch it.
And 9 years later, because of his relentless pursuit, he now owns the top positions in all the major search engines for all of his keywords. He has an email list of over a quarter million addresses. But perhaps the most important, and relevant statistic: in 2005, he caught success in the form of $70 million in sales.
Are his results typical? No. But his willingness to trust our advice enough to act on it all is not typical either. Is there a correlation?
We can't state for sure, but of the hundreds of clients who have come to us over our ten years in business, there are three categories. At one end, we have our Hall of Fame... the small number of successful businesses and organizations who look to us to provide expertise and guidance. They rely on us to create and execute quality Web initiatives. They chase success and in many cases catch it. On the other end, are the ones who were underperforming monuments to stubborn reluctance, who feared the cost, tried to cut corners, and assumed that success would somehow still manage to find them, and are now just memories.
Chances are, you are one of the people in the middle. You're someone who reads our newsletters every month. You nod your head in silent agreement at much of what we tell you is necessary for your success, but you still don't do it, believing that somehow success will catch you anyway. And you're constantly disappointed with your results.
Someone once said unless you change direction, you'll end up where you're headed. And while you may be moving, the terms of success are constant. So the question is whether you are moving toward success or away from it.
Next month we'll give you a checklist for Web success. For most of our readers it will be an eye opener as they realize how much they're NOT doing. Your response to this article and next month's checklist will be the answer. You may start chasing success by taking this seriously, re-reading previous newsletters and resolving to plan a winning strategy. Better late than never.
Or you may unsubscribe. And while we'll be disappointed, we won't try to get you you to reconsider. Because it's not our style to chase people.
Kinda like success.
-Tom Snyder
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When my husband and I visited Tampa last month, across the street from The Epicurean Hotel where we stayed was Bern's Steakhouse. We were told that we simply must eat there, that it was the best restaurant we will ever eat at.
As we live in NYC, where some of the best restaurants in the world are located, we thought, oh how cute, these people here think their steakhouse can compete. We smiled politely and said we'd try it.
Well the only reservation we could get was for 5:30 on a Saturday night, so we took it. When we arrived, the restaurant was packed- at 5:30pm. We've never seen that. Walking in, the interior is very dark, lots of wood and many small dining rooms with a dozen or so tables in each room.
Our server Lisa was amazing. She welcomed us, explained how Bern's worked and told us that we would be well taken care of; and we were. We started with a Macadamia White Chocolate Martini that was one of the most delicious drinks I have ever had- and I don't like chocolate drinks.
|Macadamia Martini
Lisa brought us homemade crackers with cheese baked on top to eat with our drinks, and then we moved onto the extensive menu. It is the War and Peace of menus, 16 pages long, and containing 20 types of caviar, among many other interesting items.
Each meal comes with a house salad (I had a bright citrus vinaigrette dressing), French onion soup, baked potato, crispy thin onion rings and side vegetable.
The French onion soup came in a little crock and was simply perfect- the perfect size to start the meal, perfectly flavored and not overwhelmed by too many onions or too much cheese. They used fontina and asiago cheese on top, which was delicious and different.
|A little crock of French onion soup
We had the surf and turf, and my husband said it was the best filet he has ever had, and he has had steaks in the best steakhouses. It was so tender and well seasoned. The lobster was out of its shell and topped with a light sweet coconut sauce.
|Surf and turf
After dinner, you are taken on a tour of the kitchen, which as former restaurant owners, we appreciated on a another level. The kitchen has a level of organization that must be seen to be believed.
We also toured the wine cellar, called the largest privately owned wine cellar in the country, and they serve each bottle of wine by the glass as well, so you have glass of any bottle of wine they serve. That is unheard of, usually you get a choice of a few white, a few red, but at Bern's, you can have it all.
At the end of the tour, you are whisked upstairs to the Harry Waugh Dessert Room. They halve huge wine barrels vertically and place a small table and booth seats inside. We got to sit next to the piano player who takes requests.
Again, there are several small dessert areas, and each of these tables had a phone where you could call in a request to the piano player. We laughed when we heard the phone ring and a young boy requested a song, it was too cute.
|The request phone at the dessert table
I had the Macadamia Nut Sundae, which had delicious macadamia nut ice cream served in an orange scented waffle dish with hot fudge, whipped cream and macadamia nuts. It may be the best dessert I ever had and I ate almost all of it, not letting my husband have much more than a spoonful.
|Hands off my Macadamia Nut Sundae!
Eating at Bern's Steakhouse is not to be missed. Even us jaded, snobby New Yorkers were impressed and had to eat our words (although there wasn't much room, we had so much fantastic food!). It might be the best culinary experience we have ever had, and we didn't want to leave three hours later. (Yes, you need to plan on three hours for this dinner.)
If you find yourself planning a trip to Tampa, the first thing you have to do is make a reservation for Bern's Steakhouse. If you can't get a reservation, change your travel plans until you can. Their website is here.


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A choir is forming to sing and perform as part of the CBC carol service on the evening of Sunday 18th December. Would you like to be part of this. Enthusiasm rather than loads of choral experience is the key.
Rehearsals times will be:
- Sunday 27th Nov. 11.30am
- Sunday 4th Dec. 11.30am
- Sunday 11th Dec. 11.30am
- Sunday 18th Dec. 4.30pm
For more info or to join, please contact Penny Mitchell via the church office.


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The Worlds First RFID Friendly Wallet
Sick of carrying around unnecessary junk? Pokitt is a revolutionary NEW concept in wallet design for Credit Card/Smart Card storage, Pokitt is designed to carry just what you need, the bare essentials.
Pokitt is an Ultra Slimline Wallet moulded from a soft & flexible Polymer material. Pokitt is only 12.5mm (less than ½" thick) X 90mm X 60mm. Pokitt contains room for only the bare essentials you need & when you do not want to carry a bulging purse or wallet.
Pokitt is perfectly suited to a wide range of scenarios where space is at a premium but you need to carry & protect Credit Cards, Smart Cards & Transport Cards.
Credit/Smart Cards have replaced all other media as the preferred method of payment & identification & Pokitt is designed specifically for these cards. Smart Cards are utilised in a mind boggling number of areas such as Credit Cards, Transport Cards, Drivers Licences, Loyalty Cards, Access Cards, Rewards Cards and a multitude of other scenarios. Until now there has been nothing designed specifically to fit Credit Cards & Smart Cards?
Most major world cities use a Smart Card system to manage public transport payments. Pokitt is ideally suited for use with these systems & can be used without removing your travel card from Pokitt. All transport systems tested scanned through Pokitt faultlessly.
Pokitt is designed to hold:
Tired of the same old boring promotional items? Take your company promotion to another level & finally give them something useful! Pokitt's flexible Polymer construction can be moulded in your exact company colours & Pokitt can be branded with your company logo. Pokitt can be easily customised & is perfect for use as a truly unique promotional item.
Give your clients something they will use every day & show to their friends/colleagues.
Some examples of Pokitt's unique potential as a promotional item.
Pat Caroll Running Group
Brisbane's premier running group run by legendary Australian Marathon Runner Pat Caroll
website: http://www.patcarroll.com.au/
Interested in stocking Pokitt? Our new Point of Sale display would look great on your counter & Pokitt certainly gets people's attention. Be the first store in your area to stock this exciting new product!
We would love to have you on board. Retail packs are available containing a complete range of Pokitt colour combinations and our POS Display. Contact us for more information and for pricing.
SF-Fennica Oy / Pulju.net
Hämeentie 157
00560 Helsinki
tel. +358 10 525 1825
fax. +358 10 525 1829 firstname.lastname@example.com www.pulju.net
United Kingdom www.firebox.com
One of Pokitt's key design innovations takes its cue from the proliferation of scannable RFID card technology. With banks and major public transportation systems already widely taking advantage of scannable cards throughout much of the US, Europe and Asia. Pokitt is designed specifically with these cards in mind.
The ultra-slim Pokitt holds two such "smart cards," one on each side, enabling the user to properly scan either card without opening the wallet.
In particular, Public Transport Smart Card technology is now used throughout the world, and it's with the widespread use of this technology that makes us think about the ways we now use our wallets.


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Aid & Comfort Committee: Coordinates responses from CIAO to members in times of family need or crisis.
Awards & Grants Committee: Responsible for reviewing requests for awards and grants and other charitable contributions and also making recommendations to the Board for final approval.
Communication/ Website Committee: Responsible for the preparation of the CIAO newsletter, Il Banditore, as well as updates and maintenance of the CIAO website and any other social media outlets.
Finance/Budget/Audit Committee: Performs audits of the Organization's financial records and ensures compliance with both CIAO's governing documents and all applicable laws and regulations. The Committee may, if needed and with the approval of the Board, arrange for an outside audit of CIAO by qualified accounting persons or firms.
Italian Festival Committee: Responsible for coordinating all activities related to the annual Italian Festival that is usually held in October.
Italian Film Festival Committee: Responsible for coordinating all activities related to the Italian Film Festival usually held in the Winter.
Meeting Set-Up Committee: Responsible, as needed, for the set-up and take-down of equipment at member meetings and social events.
Membership/Welcoming Committee: Responsible for coordinating and providing welcome packets to new members, and following up to ensure that new members are made aware of upcoming events and activities.
Nominating Committee: Responsible for soliciting candidates for Board and Committee vacancies, and making recommendations to the Board on members who are willing and qualified to fill those vacancies.
Publicity Committee: Responsible for publicizing events that are open to the public, such as the Italian Festival, and the Film Festival. In addition, as appropriate from time to time, this Committee shall arrange for photos and articles of CIAO activities (e.g. scholarship awards or other charitable donations) to be submitted to local media, such as the Virginia Gazette.
Scholarship Committee: Responsible for soliciting scholarship applicants, reviewing applications and awarding scholarships to local high school students, culminating in an awards dinner usually held in May.
Social Committee: Responsible for all non-meeting social events, including, but not limited to, the annual picnic, holiday parties, attendance at arts and cultural events, and other outings.


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Here's a timelapse of me laying out the circuit board for my IoDriver project.
AuthorBrant Martin
The other day I picked up AnnMarie Thomas's latest book Making Makers. This turned out to be one of those books I get so excited about I inadvertently read the whole thing in one sitting and suddenly it's 3AM and I've done nothing useful all evening. Anyway, this book is about encouraging in kids curiosity, play, resourcefulness, and all the other things that make makers what we are. This is stuff that I've been thinking a lot about lately, as I'm trying to transfer into the children's department at the library. AnnMarie has done a fantastic job with this book, and it's got me really, really excited to start working with kids again.
Part of what got me so excited about this book is that I've been thinking a lot about the same things lately. Since I started teaching electronics at the library, I realize that I really like teaching, although I'm not particularly good at it. I've been thinking about new ways to get kids interested in electronics, mostly because that's what I do, but I realized that I need to get them interested in making, which– because of the funding we have at the library– I'm in a particularly good position to do. Learning has always been very important to me, so I've spent a good deal of time thinking about how to make it fun for kids.
It was very interesting to read these maker's stories and seeing how they became interested, and what's kept them interested for so long. I was very curious as a child, and was always taking things apart, though I never really got much encouragement from the adults in my life. Fortunately, I was stubborn enough to not listen to them, and kept taking apart, repairing (sometimes destroying), and just learning how things worked. I didn't get serious about electronics until just a few years ago, but it's all led to me pursuing an electronics engineering degree right now.
I got excited about this book because I like teaching kids about making. I like teaching because even though there will be some kids who just aren't interested, there's always one or two whose eyes light up when they really get it. It's an incredible feeling to be that adult in a kid's life who introduces them to making, and encourages exploring and curiosity. Maybe they'll grow up to be a lifelong maker. I hope so.
Making makers is an excellent book, and I very highly recommend it, especially if you have kids, and especially if they're curious about the world and how it works. If that involves taking apart their toys, or even animals (as one maker in this book had), we should encourage them. My coworker has a son who already wants to be an engineer, and I'm going to tell her to read this book, she won't regret it.
AnnMarie has a pretty cool blog, and you should check it out.
What got me involved with the Squishy Circuits program I posted about earlier was an electronics class I started for kids. I convinced my boss to let me do it as a library program (with library funding 😉 ), and got my first experience in trying to teach to children. This was perhaps not the best idea I've ever had, but it's been a lot of fun anyway.
Since the library is almost attached to the elementary school next door, we used a group of their kids to see how this program would go. The overall result: excellent. I started with a few experiments from the very excellent book Make: Electronics, but by the third group, I'd replaced some of the less interesting ones with my own experiments.
I started out by having the kids put the leads of a AA battery pack on their tongues, more because they found that exciting than for any real demonstrative reason. Then they shorted out their battery pack, and the wires heating up were a good example of resistive heating (though I didn't go into much detail about that). An unintentionally exciting demo we did with the first group was putting a potentiometer in series with an LED. When they turned the pot down to 0, the LEDs were supposed to just burn out, but the cheap ones I got from China actually exploded, launching encapsulant pieces across the room (obviously I got less explosive LEDs for subsequent programs).
We also did a few short demonstrations of transistors, including one where the held a wire connected to the base, and one to the collector, and I explained that the tiny amount of current going through their body was enough to turn it on, just like pressing the button on the tact switch we used earlier. I also had them build the classic multivibrator blinky LED circuit, which they found pretty interesting. I showed them another version that had pots instead of fixed resistors, and used that to explain the function of the capacitors in the circuit.
Then I had them hook up a 555 buzzer circuit to a simple NPN amplifier circuit, and explained that the 555 was switching the transistor 400 times a second, which they thought was pretty impressive (I guessed 400Hz, as the pitch was somewhere close to A4, but who cares what the actual frequency was?). Just for fun, I also had them stick a pot into the 555 circuit to vary the pitch, which was fun for them, but annoying for me. For first group, I wired up the 555 circuit on their breadboards the day before, but for the last one, I actually put the circuit on a bit of veroboard that plugs into a mini breadboard quite nicely.
Since the kids I was working with were 11-12, I figured I could appeal to their interest in destruction. I brought out a small SLA battery, and shorted out the terminals with a bit of wire. After the smoke and flame, I compared it to the wires on the battery pack heating up from the first experiment, which they seemed to understand fairly well. Just for fun, I did something I experimented with as a kid. I attached some paper clips to the terminals and put a piece of mechanical pencil lead across them. With tens of amps going through a piece of graphite, it burned hot enough to light up the entire room. I took the opportunity to warn them that electricity can be dangerous, and the burning pencil lead could easily be them. I didn't do the wire demonstration with all of the groups, because of the smoke, so with some others I had them tape some steel wool to a balloon and stick the leads from their battery pack into it. Of course, that caused the steel wool to melt, popping the balloon, which resulted in some screaming and plenty of laughter. The first time we did that, it drew a bunch of kids in from outside the room, which is just fine by me 😉
We like to give kids something at the end of our programs to keep them interested and wanting to come to the next one. The first group got the blinky LED circuit and 555 buzzer on little bits of veroboard. Let me tell you, it was an enormous pain in the ass to hand-wire ten of those stupid buzzers. So much in fact, that for the last group I actually had some PCBs fabbed for the buzzer circuit. Unfortunately, that ate enough of the budget that we couldn't give them the blinky LED board, but they didn't seem to mind. Though, I didn't check my PCB design very well, and the holes for all the caps and resistors were far too small for the leads. I ended up sort of surface-mounting them onto the pads. I'm still not happy with it, but it worked well enough.
Once word got out about this program, all of the local elementary schools wanted us to come, and I went to two schools out of town. My boss wants to do this program again in the fall, but this time we'll open it to the public. I like that idea, because with the school visits, they're a captive audience. Not all of the kids were interested in electronics, although there were a few who really got into it. Hopefully, if we open it to the public, only people who are interested will sign up for it.
I really like sharing my hobby and my passion with these kids. Plenty of them weren't at all interested, and that's alright, people have different interests. There was about one or two kids in each group who really got into it, asked tons of questions, and started experimenting on their own while I was helping the other kids. It's an amazing feeling to see that, and I sincerely hope I've inspired a future hobbyist or engineer. At some point during this, I realized that I've been tinkering with electronics since I was their age.
This has been an incredible experience for me. We've not done any programs this summer, because the Summer Reading program takes literally all of the library's attention and manpower (over 2000 kids signed up this year!!!). I'm looking forward to doing more school visits and programs this fall, and I'm toying with the idea of an Arduino class for teens, we'll have to see how that pans out.
I work at the public library, and I've recently become very involved with the children's department. One of the things I've done is whip up a neat project for a summer reading program. The theme for summer reading this year was science, and a coworker and I came up with the idea to do the squishy circuits activity that Dr. AnnMarie Thomas came up with at St. Thomas University. Basically squishy circuits is play-dough that's been formulated to conduct electricity reasonably well (in the range of kOhms per square inch). You give the kids a battery and an LED, and it's a great way to demonstrate how electricity flows through a circuit. Since it's basically play-dough, the kids can get really creative, and make sculptures with the dough, then create a circuit out of it. One of the kids at a school visit made some roses, and one group made an alligator with light-up eyes (which didn't work very well, unfortunately).
In some of the St. Thomas documents, they used an arduino to change the color on an RGB LED and another to change the pitch of a little speaker. Basically, the ADC reads the resistance across a lump dough, and sends a value to tone() or analogWrite() based on that. On the first school visit we did, I used two Leonardo clones I had lying about, and those were a big hit. However, for the summer reading program, there'd be upwards of 40 kids, so two boards wasn't enough, and we couldn't afford to buy full-blown Arduinos (nor was that actually really necessary).
My solution was to make a tiny board based on the Attiny45. All that's on the board is the Attiny, some resistors, a bypass cap, and a 78L05. I got the board size small enough that they cost something like 50 cents each at OSHPark, which fits nicely into a library budget. Total they were two or three dollars each, which I'm pretty pleased with. I even managed to squeeze the library's logo onto the back of the board, which amused my coworkers to no end.
(You'll have to forgive the ugly soldering, I thought it'd be a good idea to do 0603's by hand with lead-free)
It was interesting to get these things working. There's no ISP connector, so I had to come up with a jig to program the boards. I used another board with some pogo pins soldered onto the appropriate pads, and kind of sandwiched the boards together while I programmed them. This didn't work quite right; I had to apply some lateral pressure to get the contacts to ..contact correctly. It's not too bad for a one-off product. I don't have any pictures of the programming adapter, unfortunately. It got dismantled and turned into one of the buzzers.
However, I ran into some trouble getting the LED program to fit on the Attiny. It's only got 1K of flash, and I was over by just a few bytes, which was entirely maddening. It took me about an hour to figure out that the code was using floating point numbers, and the compiler seemed to be inserting a software implementation of floating point math. The hack to get it working was to remove the floating point numbers by multiplying them all by 100, then dividing by 100 at the end of the calculations. It's not particularly elegant, but it works well enough for a bunch of 8 year olds.
The summer reading was a wild success, by the way, and all the kids from the school visits keep begging us to come back. It's a hell of a lot of fun getting kids into electronics, it's almost enough to make me want to transfer to the children's department. Almost, but not quite 😉
Update: I decided to (or rather, finally got around to) make this an open-source project. Everything can be found on my GitHub page.
© 2019 Brant Martin
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