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text: 47 and his handler, Diana Burnwood, are a team responsible for some of the most ruthless, efficient and untraceable assassinations across the globe. But before they were operatives of the shadowy International Contracts Association, 47 and Burnwood were on their own separate paths in life - streets lined with blood, bullets and revenge. As 14-year-old Diana begins a mission to track down the people who killed her parents, 47 is struggling to free himself and his friend, 6, from the mysterious Institute which has bred them as killers since they were kids. With a story that stretches from the heartland of America to the Berlin Wall, Lone Wolves will trace the birth of the legendary Hitman and the secret past of the woman behind him who pulls the string and knows just how hard taking a life truly is.

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- From: Robert Tolksdorf <email@example.com>
- Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2005 10:15:00 +0200
- To: firstname.lastname@example.com, firstname.lastname@example.com, email@example.com, email@example.com, firstname.lastname@example.com, email@example.com, firstname.lastname@example.com, email@example.com, email@example.com, firstname.lastname@example.com
10 days left for submissions: Call for Papers ====================================================================== ISWC Workshop Semantic Web Case Studies and Best Practices for eBusiness SWCASE05 ====================================================================== Objectives The Semantic Web reaches stability in its lower layers with the existence of standards and the upcoming availability of basic technologies and trialed applications. Still, the success of the Semantic Web depends on its capability to deploy in a commercial setting. While a variety of events exists on the foundations and engineering of Semantic Web technologies, this workshop complements these with a forum to learn and discuss about the actual realization of the Semantic Web with applications. The workshop will focus on question of deploying Semantic Web technologies in real business applications. It will call for work on use cases for Semantic Web and Semantic Web Services, on experience reports on commercial deployment and on best practices in doing so. The goals are to provide a forum to exchange knowledge on Semantic Web deployment, the best paths to do so, and the real world obstacles to be considered and on overall cost/benefit expectations and experiences. The workshop can be considered an outreach activity of the academic Semantic Web community to industry to encourage the take-up of research results. At the same time, it is an inreach event as a forum for practitioners to enter industry requirements on further research into the academic research agenda. Topics of Interest Of interest to the workshop are experiences in building Semantic Web applications in real-world contexts. These case studies should condense experiences made as best practices. The following industry sectors and business areas are of particular interest: * Healthcare and life sciences * Human Resources management * Tourism * Service Industry * Media & comms * Gov't & Public Sector * Pharmacy * Energy, Food industry * Transport & logistics * Automobile The list is not exclusive, other industry areas are also welcome. Paper submission Please submit papers electronically as PDF only by email to firstname.lastname@example.com. There is a limit of 8 pages for the submission, these have to be prepared following the LNCS formatting guidelines by Springer (see http://www.springeronline.com/sgw/cda/frontpage/0,11855,5-164-2-72376-0,00.html). Information on how to format the final CRC will be provided with acceptance notifications. Important dates Deadline for paper submission: 15 July 2005 Notification of acceptance/rejection: 20 August 2005 Submission of CRC: 15 September 2005 The workshop will be held Monday, November 7th as part of the ISWC2005 conference in Galway. Please refer to the conference site for all organisational issue. Workshop attendees must register for the main conference. Please register both for the conference and the workshop before the early registration deadline to allow for timely local planning of room allocation. Publication of accepted papers The organizers currently arrange for publication of workshop proceedings. Organizing committee * Robert Tolksdorf, Freie Universität Berlin * Alain Leger, France Telecom, mailto:firstname.lastname@example.com,http://www.francetelecom.com/en/ * Guus Schreiber. W3C, mailto:firstname.lastname@example.com Program committee TBA Support The event is supported by KnowledgeWeb, the EU funded Network of Excellence on Realizing the Semantic Web, by REWERSE, the EU funded Network of Excellence on Reasoning on the Web, by the BMBF funded project Wissensnetze and others to be announced. See http://nbi.inf.fu-berlin.de/conf/SWCASE05 for the workshops homepage -- Prof. Dr.-Ing. Robert Tolksdorf | Freie Universitaet Berlin Netzbasierte Informationssysteme | Institut fuer Informatik mailto:firstname.lastname@example.com | Takustr.9 http://www.robert-tolksdorf.de | D-14195 Berlin ------------------------------------------------------------------- Berliner XML Tage 2005 http://www.berliner-xmltage.de ------------------------------------------------------------------- Workshop Semantic Web Case Studies and Best Practices for eBusiness SWCASE05 http://nbi.inf.fu-berlin.de/conf/SWCASE05 -------------------------------------------------------------------
Received on Tuesday, 5 July 2005 08:15:22 UTC


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The international controversy over who "owns" antiquities has pitted museums against archaeologists and source countries where ancient artifacts are found. In his book Who Owns Antiquity?, James Cuno argued that antiquities are the cultural property of humankind, not of the countries that lay exclusive claim to them. Now in Whose Culture?, Cuno assembles preeminent museum directors, curators, and scholars to explain for themselves what's at stake in this struggle--and why the museums' critics couldn't be more wrong. Source countries and archaeologists favor tough cultural property laws restricting the export of antiquities, have fought for the return of artifacts from museums worldwide, and claim the acquisition of undocumented antiquities encourages looting of archaeological sites. In Whose Culture?, leading figures from universities and museums in the United States and Britain argue that modern nation-states have at best a dubious connection with the ancient cultures they claim to represent, and that archaeology has been misused by nationalistic identity politics. They explain why exhibition is essential to responsible acquisitions, why our shared art heritage trumps nationalist agendas, why restrictive cultural property laws put antiquities at risk from unstable governments--and more. Defending the principles of art as the legacy of all humankind and museums as instruments of inquiry and tolerance, Whose Culture? brings reasoned argument to an issue that for too long has been distorted by politics and emotionalism. In addition to the editor, the contributors are Kwame Anthony Appiah, Sir John Boardman, Michael F. Brown, Derek Gillman, Neil MacGregor, John Henry Merryman, Philippe de Montebello, David I. Owen, and James C. Y. Watt.
Buy Whose Culture? by James Cuno from Australia's Online Independent Bookstore, BooksDirect.


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Google Chrome OS: A Preview
- Getting Started with Google Chrome OS
- Navigating the Chrome OS Interface
- The Bottom Line
Look out MicrosoftGoogle is entering the operating system market!
Google's entrée into operating systems is Chrome OS, also known as Chromium. Chrome OS is based on Google's Chrome web browser; in fact, the OS interface is almost identical to the browser interface. It's an interesting little operating system, designed to work with the latest generation of netbook computersand as different as can be from Microsoft Windows.
Let's start with the basics. Chrome OS is a small and fast operating system designed for use solely with netbooks. It is not designed for traditional PCsnotebook or desktopand will not be available for standalone installation. The only way you'll be able to get Chrome OS is to buy a netbook with the operating system preinstalled. So upgrading your current system to run Chrome OS is out of the question.
As to those Chrome OS netbooks, they're going to look a little different from the notebooks currently available for sale. Google is dictating certain features that hardware manufacturers must include if they want to use the Chrome OS; the most notable of these dictates is that the netbook include solid-state flash memory only, no hard disk storage.
This makes sense when you get into how Chrome OS worksand understand that it doesn't store any applications or data locally.
That's right; Chrome OS is a true web-based operating system. It stores all apps and files in the cloud, on Google's servers, not on your own computer.
That means, of course, that you need to be connected to the Internet to use your computer; if you have an Internet outage or are out of range of a WiFi hotspot, you can't even boot up, let alone access your files. That's a real paradigm change in the way we do things.
This also means that Chrome OS isn't for everybody. If you don't have constant access to an Internet connection, forget it; likewise, if you depend on resource-intensive traditional applications, whether that be Adobe Photoshop or a customized business app, Chrome OS won't cut it.
But if you use your computer primarily online, or if you perform traditional word processing and spreadsheet work that can be done as easily with Google Docs (or similar web-based apps) as it can with the software-based Microsoft Office, then Chrome OS will perform admirably.
Speaking of performance, one of Chrome OS' claims to fame is its speed. Even in its current alpha-release version, Chrome loads at least twice as fast as does Windows 7 on a comparable machine, and Google says it will be even faster when running on a flash-based netbook7 seconds to load versus Windows' 50 seconds plus.
This speed is due in part to the new operating system being based on Linux, and the fact that because everything is web-based, it doesn't have to deal with loading a lot of background processes. In fact, think of Chrome OS as Linux using the Chrome web browser as a front end; that's as good a description as any.
That's right; the Chrome OS looks and feels pretty much like Google's Chrome web browser. If you were to use the Chrome browser strictly for web-based applications, such as Gmail and Google Docs, you'd get a good idea of what it's like to run the Chrome OS.
Because the browser is the operating system, everything you do has to take place within the browser. That means the only apps you can run are those that are web-based, whether developed by Google or by other companies. It also means that all your data is stored on the web, not on your computer; as with all cloud computing, that's both a plus and a minus.
One other unique aspect of Chrome OS is that it automatically goes online to check the integrity of its base code, as well as check for updates and fixes. This will reduce the effect of viruses and other malware; if your system has been compromised, you can essentially fix it just by rebooting.
So when will this latest and greatest operating system be available? The OS is currently in an early testing phase, but Google is saying that netbooks running Chrome OS should be available for Christmas 2010. Naturally, a lot can change between now and then, but what follows is a look at how Chrome OS works todayand is likely to work on final release.
Getting Started with Google Chrome OS
When you first launch the Chrome OS, you're presented with the login screen shown in Figure 1. This isn't a login to your computer, per se, but rather a login to your Google account. So if you have an existing Google or Gmail account, that's the information you enter.
Figure 1 The Chrome OS login screen
This is important because it means that the operating system, complete with your personal preferences, is now portable. Log on to your account on a different machine running Chrome OS, and it loads with all your preferences, applications, and data. If someone else logs into Chrome OS on your machine, they see their own preferences, apps, and data. Because it's based in the cloud, Chrome OS follows you from machine to machine.
By the way, this also makes your computer next to worthless to any thieves. Because they can't log on to your account, they can't log in to your computer. And because there are no apps or data stored on the computer, all thieves get is a piece of hardware and no valuable data.
Login completed; the Chrome OS now starts up. In the current test version, running in a virtual machine window, it took about 20 seconds or so to load. This load time is sure to decrease come the official release of the operating system.


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Last week, I offered an analysis of what Republicans need to do at their national convention this week. This week, let's take a look at what Democrats already plan to do at their national convention, which is to push their "war on women" strategy. The Huffington Post reported last week on a number of women given speaking slots at the event in Charlotte, with prominent emphasis on birth control and abortion issues. These include Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown Law student that testified in Congress for the need to mandate free birth control and sterilization services from employers and universities; Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America; and Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, the abortion chain's PAC.
The message? As Sam Stein reported, Barack Obama and Democrats want to focus on what they see as a key strength – social issues. The lineup "represents a clear effort by the Obama campaign to drive home the point that one party is tolerant of women's issues while the other is blind to them." Certainly, the Republican Party followed a similar strategy in 2004 by attempting to drive base turnout with multiple ballot initiatives supporting traditional marriage. The GOP's 2004 strategy seemed to have worked, as George W. Bush won a narrow victory over John Kerry in a close-fought presidential election.
This, however, isn't 2004. In every poll taken in this cycle, the economy is the overriding concern for voters, followed by the federal budget deficit and national debt. In their last survey on issues of importance for the electorate, abortion and contraception didn't even make Gallup's list, nor did gay marriage or other social issues. While it's too flip to say that no one cares about these issues at all, they have retreated to low priorities in both parties because of the ongoing economic stagnation during the Obama "recovery."
For instance, a new study from two former Census Bureau analysts using official Census Bureau data shows that the decline in economic standing has actually accelerated since the start of the "recovery." The Washington Post reports that median income has dropped 7.2 percent since the start of the recession in December 2007, which should surprise no one. However, despite the economy recovering back to growth levels of June 2009, median income has continued to fall. Prior to the recovery, median incomes slid by 2.6 percent, but in the three years since, they have dropped by 4.8 percent. At the same time, the civilian population participation rate fell from 65.7 percent to 63.7 percent over the last three years.
In this environment, no one outside the progressive echo chamber wants to hear about abortion and contraception. They want to hear how candidates plan to improve the economy, create jobs, and reverse four years of trillion-dollar-plus budget deficits.
Democrats run perhaps an even larger risk with this strategy than merely seeming out of touch, though. The entire "war on women" strategy has had a large streak of paternalism from the beginning, when the Obama administration first required employers and schools to provide free birth control and sterilization services to employees and students. This solved no great crisis in access to birth control, as a 20-year CDC study showed that 99 percent of all women of childbearing age who wanted to avoid pregnancy had access to birth control without putting employers in their bedroom.
As one might deduce from that statistic, the individual cost of birth control isn't a high hurdle, either. Generic oral contraceptives can be bought without insurance from bothTarget and Wal-Mart for $9 a month. That's $108 a year. Only sterilization costs significantly more – and amortized over the number of effective years, is still cheap. For those truly unable to afford their own birth control, a federal subsidy already exists in Title X and administered through Medicaid, an option which no one has proposed eliminating or reducing.
The message from the Obama campaign and Democrats in general seems to be that women are somehow incapable of finding birth control on their own unless some paternal entity dispenses it to them, despite all evidence to the contrary. They're so incapable of this task that employers and schools have to hand it for them, no matter how much income they derive nor how much tuition they manage to pay otherwise. This has already backfired during Team Obama's "Life of Julia" campaign, which offered a creepy, solitary vision of a woman's life approaching that of the song "Eleanor Rigby." Former CNN news anchor Campbell Brown wrote in The New York Times that "Julia" was "a silly and embarrassing caricature based on the assumption that women look to government at every meaningful phase of their lives for help."
But it's even worse than that. The strategy segregates women from other issues as if they only have deep concern in this election over the status of their genitalia. This theme came to ludicrous fruition in demonstrations by Code Pink at the Republican convention in Tampa, when activists showed up dressed as gigantic labia. The scene provided an unintentionally revealing portrait of just how progressives see women in modern American society.
That is the true risk for Democrats who pursue this strategy. After three nights of watching successful and accomplished women in the Republican Party discuss economic policy, job creation, and reform of the federal government for deficit and debt reduction, viewers will tune in the following week to see women considered as interested in little more than sexual reproduction. Voters might well conclude that there is a "war on women," but that it's not the Republicans who are waging it.


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You will visit the following 8 places:
Stavanger is a city and municipality in Norway. The urban area of Stavanger stretches across many neighboring municipalities, making it the third largest city in Norway by total urban population with 197 852 inhabitants as of January 1, 2011. Stavanger's core is to a large degree 18th- and 19th-century wooden houses that are protected and considered part of the city's cultural heritage. This has caused the town centre and inner city to retain a small-town character with an unusually high ratio of detached houses, and has contributed significantly to spreading the city's population growth to outlying parts of Greater Stavanger. The city's rapid population growth in the late 20th century was primarily a result of Norway's booming offshore oil industry. Today the oil industry is a key industry in the Stavanger region and the city is widely referred to as the Oil Capital of Norway. Multiple educational institutions for higher education are located in Stavanger. The largest of these is the University of Stavanger.
Southampton is the largest city in the county of Hampshire on the south coast of England, and is situated 120 kilometres (75 mi) south-west of London and 30 kilometres (19 mi) north-west of Portsmouth. Southampton is a major port and the closest city to the New Forest. It lies at the northernmost point of Southampton Water at the confluence of the River Test and River Itchen, with the River Hamble joining to the south of the urban area. The local authority is Southampton City Council, which is a unitary authority. Just over a quarter of the jobs available in the city are in the health and education sector. A further 19 per cent are property and other business and the third largest sector is wholesale and retail, which accounts for 16.2 percent. Between 1995 and 2004, the number of jobs in Southampton has increased by 18.5 per cent. Southampton has always been a port, and the docks have long been a major employer in the city. In particular, it is a port for cruise ships; its heyday was the first half of the 20th century, and in particular the inter-war years, when it handled almost half the passenger traffic of the UK. Today it remains home to luxury cruise ships, as well as being the largest freight port on the Channel coast and fourth largest UK port by tonnage, with several container terminals. Unlike some other ports, such as Liverpool, London, and Bristol, where industry and docks have largely moved out of the city centres leaving room for redevelopment, Southampton retains much of its inner-city industry.
Oslo is a county and municipality, as well as the capital and largest city in Norway. Oslo was established as a municipality on 1 January 1838. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III "Hardraade" of Norway, the city was largely destroyed by fire in 1624. The Danish–Norwegian king Christian IV moved the city, rebuilding it closer to Akershus fortress, as Christiania (briefly also spelt Kristiania). In 1925, the city reclaimed its original Norwegian name, Oslo. The diocese of Oslo is one of the five original dioceses in Norway, which originated around the year 1070.
Haugesund is a town and municipality in Rogaland county, Norway. The majority of the population of Haugesund lives in the main urban area surrounding the city centre, with the northwestern part of the municipality being fairly rural. The town also offers a much wider range of goods and services than might be expected from a city of its size (approx. 32,000 inhabitants; 42,000 including all suburbs), due to its position as the definite center of its relatively populous region.


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Frank Turner: essential tips for acoustic singer-songwriters
ACOUSTIC EXPO 2014: When faith, talent and determination align, success isn't usually far behind. Frank Turner has been on an incredible ascent with his impassioned brand of acoustic folk for a decade. Now he explains how he made it on his own terms…
Believe in yourself
When he was 10 years old, Frank's piano teacher delivered some crushing news.
"I scraped through my grade two on piano," says Frank. "She told me I wasn't cut out for music, because I was so crap as a piano player."
Just how wrong can one person be? Given Frank's punk rock beginning, five solo albums, five EPs and countless tours, including sold-out arena shows, the answer is very.
P.M.A., all the way
Even though he says there was "no eureka moment", something tells us the early rebuke at the hands of his piano teacher set Frank's inner fire blazing.
"There was nothing else I wanted to do except play music," he says with conviction. "I don't see the point in doing anything half-arsed. Give it your full attention!"
A positive mental attitude and "always looking for the next step" thus form the cornerstones of his success.
Keep an open mind
After digesting the works of Maiden and Priest, there was only one way Frank's guitar playing could begin. Yet - as the man himself illustrates - no matter where your roots lie, keeping an open mind is crucial to your development as a player and songwriter.
"I played metal initially, then punk rock and hardcore," says Frank. "As a kid, my main focus was learning thrash. It was all about super fast down picking. Later on, I discovered the joys of Bob Dylan and Neil Young. Just learning the rudiments of playing guitar like Neil Young was a challenge.
"I knew how to play C, G and D, but now I'm learning tricks like passing notes and how to pick out a melody in a major scale while moving from one chord to the other."
Frank pauses for a few seconds, considering his words: "If you're from a metal background you can often be disdainful about acoustic. Actually, the intricacies of playing within simpler confines are harder than you think."
Draw on your experience
Despite his reputation as an acoustic-wielding troubadour, Frank first made his name fronting hardcore-types Million Dead and rarely touched an instrument onstage. Nonetheless, the experience was valuable.
"Our first gig, I spent most of it singing at my feet, drums, lights… Anything but the audience," he recalls. "Learning how to perform and engage with an audience is something I learned in Million Dead."
Keep going
Turner has now played well over 1,000 shows under his own name, including a watershed Wembley Arena gig back in 2012.
Post-Million Dead, his early gigs were physically and emotionally exhausting, financially unrewarding and not without their naysayers, but he persisted.
"Leaving a hardcore band and going solo is a beaten path now,but in 2005, it wasn't, explains Frank. "I remember telling people and them asking me, 'What the f*** are you talking about?'"
"£50 plus train fare was my shout for a gig. I played everywhere: houses, uni halls, squats… I kept going and it worked."
Learn the tricks of the trade…
As a musician you need to think about how your songwriting, technique and arrangement can best complement your performance - and it's a practice that's particularly important for solo performers.
"Those early shows, it was just me and my guitar," says Frank. "[But] there are a lot of tricks, such as building a dynamic and using feel to make one voice, one guitar, go a long way. Worse Things Happen At Sea [from 2007's Sleep Is For The Week] is a good example of that."
…But don't be a slave to technique
As important as it is to have regular practice time and develop your playing, Frank reckons you need to make sure that you're actually applying new techniques to get the most out of them.
"Learning techniques in a dry way is too direct for me," says the songwriter. "If I learn how to play something, it's because I want to put it in a song now. At the moment, I'm working on banjo style fingerpicks. It's not going particularly well right now, but give me a couple of years and we'll see!"
Enjoy it
You might not be where you want to be with your music, but if you stop taking pleasure in performing, writing and playing then you're missing the point!
"I want to spread out my music, play in more countries, and I'm ambitious within the UK too: bigger venues, longer tours," Frank tells us.
"[But] all that is said with the proviso that I'm grateful for the things I have, and if it doesn't get any bigger than right now, that's OK. To be able to make a living out of playing music you love is such a rare thing. I know how lucky I am."


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Thoughts On Visibility Determination - In Dynamic, Semi-Static, and Static Scenes by (16 June 1999) |
Return to The Archives |
A few months ago, I released a document about visibility
determination for arbitrary scenes, using an octree for
spatial subdivision and a c-buffer for occlusion culling.
The idea was to find unprocessed octree nodes using the
gaps in the c-buffer, by casting rays through these open
spaces. Clipping against octree node boundaries wasn't
neccessary, so I thought. I got feedback, from Paul Nettle, Edward Kmett, Conor Stokes and Jaap Suter. The algorithm doesn't work. Since then, I discussed many techniques with many people, read many docs, and generally got wiser. :) And now the time has come to correct the previous document. In this new document I describe a technique for visibility determination that should work. I emphasize that none of the described techniques are new, possibly even the combination of techniques I present here is not new. Neither can I guarantee that it will work, although I'm pretty sure it's right this time. Finally, I do not guarantee that this is the perfect solution (I present two solutions, by the way, each with it's own weaknesses), so, in short, this document is a discussion of a potentially interesting algorithm, and it's purpose is to give the discussion about visibility algorithms an impulse. |
Spatial Subdivision
The two algorithms that I present here
both use the octree (or kd-tree) for spatial subdivision.
A short description
of both subdivision algorithms: Octree First, the bounding box of the entire scene is determined. This box is enlarged so that it becomes a perfect cube (some octree implementations do not do this). This box becomes the root node. If a node (including the root node) contains more than a specified number of polygons (e.g., 30-50) the node is split in 8 equally sized child nodes. Now the node doesn't contain polygons anymore, but only 8 child nodes. The polygon set is distributed over the child nodes, and the child nodes are subdivided again if they still contain more than the specified amount of polygons. Besides using a fixed number of polygons as a termination criterium for node subdivision, other criterea can be used as well: For example a minimum node size, or a maximum recursion depth. Kd-Tree The kd-tree looks very much like the octree data structure. This time however, the root node (which doesn't have to be a perfect cube anymore) is not split in 8 childnodes, but it is split in half, using alternating x/y/z-axis aligned splitting planes. The splitting planes do not neccessarily split a node in half, but rather in two halves containing about the same amount of polygons. >From here on, I shall consider the octree and kd-tree as two almost identical structures, although I consider the kd-tree to be a better spatial subdivision. The two techniques have so much in common, that choosing one is really not important for the two algorithms. |
Rendering The Tree
A kd-tree (or an octree, kd-tree assumed from here on) can
be traversed front-to-back relatively easily. Traversing
is performed using a recursive function that determines at
which side of a splitting plane the camera is located;
these splitting planes are generated when the octree or
kd-tree is compiled - a kd-tree contains a single splitting
plane per node, the octree contains three splitting planes. For octree traversal, check each of the three planes in turn to find the correct order to process the child nodes. The 'camera side' of each plane is processed first, then the opposite side. This way, we quickly find the kd-tree node that contains the camera. This is obviously the closest node, so we process this node first. This node also has no child nodes, so the recursive function returns, and the opposite side of the last encountered splitting plane is processed. This way we find the next closest node. Repeating this process, we visit every node, in the correct order. Note that to traverse the trees in back-to-front order, we simply pick the side of the plane that the camera is NOT in: Now the node with the camera will be the last node that is visited. This might be usefull in some cases (but not in the two algorithms that I discuss below). Also note that neither the kd-tree nor the octree provide us with any kind of visibility information; they only provide us with the nodes sorted by depth. This even doesn't mean that the polygons are sorted: The polygons in the nodes still need some processing if we want them perfectly sorted. |
Algorithm I
Using the octree or kd-tree as the basis of the algorithm, we
can now start performing visibility tests to terminate the
traversing of the tree when a processed node would not
contribute to the image on screen (i.e., it's completely
obscured by previously drawn polygons in previously processed
nodes). By discarding nodes we can skip large portions of
the scene - a discarded node may have many child nodes.
This algorithm assumes no clipping of polygons to node
boundaries. Since we can now not guarantee correct sorting of
the polygons, we need to fix this somehow. In hardware, we
could simply use the z-buffer. For software, Paul Nettle's
s-buffer is a better choice. The s-buffer allows random-
order insertion of polygons. Inserted polygon spans are
clipped against existing spans, so that the s-buffer
always contains only visible portions of the inserted spans.
In case you are not familiar with the s-buffer, I suggest
you read Paul's document. The good thing of the s-buffer is that we can also use it to test whether a polygon would change the s-buffer if we inserted it. This means that we now have a basic visibility test for the polygons: A polygon that changes the s-buffer is visible, all other polygons are invisible. Instead of testing polygons against the s-buffer, we can also test node boundaries against the s-buffer: Simply insert the imaginary octree node faces as if they where polygons, and see if the s-buffer would change. Now we do have a good termination criterium for octree traversal: An invisible node can't have visible child nodes or polygons. Note that we cannot use the hardware z-buffer for this: There is no (fast) way to test whether a polygon would change the z-buffer. So, for hardware rendering, simply maintain a software s-buffer too. This sounds expensive, but for hardware rendering, we do not have to perform span rasterization, so the time needed to insert polygons in the s-buffer is not the same as performing software rendering. |
Notes On Algorithm I
This algorithm has some interesting characteristics. First, the octree (or kd-tree) is very easy to construct, since no splitting occurs. In fact, building the tree can be done while loading the scene from disk. It's also very easy to rebuild parts of the map at runtime: Polygons can thus be moved freely around. This means that there is no need to have a distinction between moving objects (actors) and static scenery, and this implies that moving objects will occlude geometry (nodes) the same way as the static scenery does. The s-buffer is expensive, especially for complex scenes, since it gets slower when more spans are already in the lists. But the algorithm does support very 'nasty' scenes, like imported 3DSMax files with very small polygons, intersecting polygons, tiny gaps and so on. Everything will be sorted out by the s-buffer. And, a hole will only cause further traversal of octree nodes when it is at least a single pixel on-screen: That means that the occlusion is pixel-based. For very large, truely dynamic scenes with relative low local complexity, this seems to be a good algorithm. Note that it is also very simple to implement. The s-buffer insertion routine is probably the hardest part. Finally note that this algorithm will perform relatively better in software than in hardware, since the overhead for hardware rasterization is rather big. |
Algorithm II
There exists an alternative for the s-buffer. This
alternative is called the 'c-buffer', which stands for
'coverage buffer'. It has several advantages over the
s-buffer, but is also limited in some ways:
The c-buffer represents the covered pixels on the screen.
Inserted spans may not be (partially) in front of existing
spans, since no depth information is stored in the c-buffer.
The c-buffer assumes that inserted spans are already drawn
on the screen, so no texture info is stored. The only thing
that the c-buffer does is clipping newly inserted spans
against existing spans, because spans are considered to be
inserted front-to-back. The c-buffer is therefore much
faster: It's insertion routine performs simpler clipping,
and stores less, and inserted spans are never removed
because of newly inserted spans. Since the c-buffer does
not have any information about the contents of the spans
except for which pixels are covered, spans can be merged
when new spans touch existing spans. That means that a
scene that fills the entire screen will result in a c-buffer
with a single span per screen line. The c-buffer performs
thus much better with scenes that have many polygons,
especially when these polygons are inserted with some
spatial coherence. A good thing is that we have some spatial
coherence: Polygons are inserted per octree node, and it's
therefore unlikely that they are far apart. There is one big problem with the c-buffer: It requires the spans to be inserted in the perfect front-to-back order. This means that we have to split polygons against octree node boundaries, and that the polygons inside the node need to be sorted perfectly. Painters is not enough here: We need so-called "mini-bsp's" for each node. Now the scene compilation process becomes much more time consuming: Each inserted polygon is clipped against every node that it is in, and once a node contains 50 polygons or less, these 50 polygons need to be processed using a BSP compiler. The c-buffer can be used to test for (partially) visible nodes, just like the s-buffer. So, now we have a cheaper algorithm for visibility calculations, and we can still use it for 'dirty' scenes, with intersecting polygons, tiny holes and so on, but at a cost: The scene needs quite a bit of preprocessing. It should still be possible to perform this processing while loading the scene. |
Notes On Algorithm II
Compiling a random scene to an octree with splitted
polygons and perfect sorting is a relatively expensive
process. It is obvious that this results in a much less
dynamic scene: Recalculating parts of the scene is possible,
but it takes some time. If many nodes are affected by the
changes, this might take too much time to call the renderer
'real-time'. In practise, I think it is possible to process
explosion damage and one-time changes in the geometry, like
adding buildings, but it is not very well possible to move
large things smoothly through the scene. It is probably best to move the dynamic parts of the scene out of the basic algorithm, and draw them using z-buffering once the scene is finished. This still allows modifications to the static scenery, like the explosion damage I mentioned. It also allows for real dynamic objects that animate and/or move every frame. These objects cannot occlude nodes however, since they are not considered while traversing the octree. The price for inserting them in the octree is probably higher, though. Note that dynamic objects can still be occluded by the environment: By placing an actor in the octree nodes that intersect it's bounding box or -sphere, the actor can be discarded if none of the nodes that it is in are marked as visible. This algorithm should perform much better in terms of rendering speed: Maintaining the c-buffer is considerably cheaper than maintaining an s-buffer, and drawing the actors once the scenery is drawn using the z-buffer is probably cheaper than adding 500 or more actor polygons to the s-buffer every frame (not to mention the changes in the octree). This algorithm is also better suited for hardware rendering, since the z-buffer in hardware is virtually 'free'. Just rendering actors, and discarding the possible occlusion of nodes caused by their presence is very likely faster than the full occlusion culling that the previous algorithm provides. |
Comparison Of Algorithm I & II
Both algorithms are interesting ways to perform visibility calculations for rendering 3D scenes at interactive rates. Neither algorithm 1 nor algorithm 2 return a perfect visibility test: Algorithm 1 does however return a 'perfect set' for a raster image. This perfection comes at a price, though, especially when actors with high polygon counts are inserted into the s-buffer. Note that really dynamic scenes are rare: Not every game requires lots of moving polygons. Most scenes still consist of mainly static polygons, and that's not just because engines can't handle more dynamic scenery. Note that true dynamic scenes make various other often used techniques impossible: Lightmaps generated using radiosity are usually not calculated at runtime. Both algorithms provide great freedom for the input set. The algorithms do not rely on perfectly sealed worlds or precisely aligned volumes, like Quake does. They simply render the input. This can ease the creation of scenes for computer games dramatically. |
Extension Of Algorithm II
The final part of this document describes a highly
experimental extension of the second algorithm. I must
emphasize, even more than at the beginning of this document,
that this is not tested, it's just interesting, I hope.
Before Chris Babcock (another cool 3D researcher) explained
to me that octree boundary planes can be tested against the
s- and c-buffers, I tried to cull nodes against a beamtree.
This beamtree was to be filled with polygons from the
mini-bsp's at the final nodes of the kd-tree. This approach
introduces many problems, although it would be resolution
independent, which is a very nice feature. Edward Kmett
pointed out that especially bad input sets and numerical
instability would cause great problems with the beamtree.
However, it is still possible to extend the second algorithm
with this beamtree, as Conor Stokes explained to me this
morning: If we build the beamtree using only the 'large
occluders', we can first test the nodes against the beamtree
(effectively, see if they are behind one or more of the
solid regions in the beamtree), and if this test fails, we
can still test the nodes against the s- or c-buffer.
Good thing about this approach is that testing a node
against a simple beamtree is much cheaper than testing the
node faces against the s- or c-buffer.
Bad thing is that when the node is visible anyway, we have
just wasted extra time. This obviously requires some
experiments. The first thing that I asked Conor Stokes was: "What is a big occluder?" - A small polygon can be a large occluder when it is very close, and a large polygon can be a small occluder when it's far away, or looked at from a big angle. The answer is simple: Count the pixels that it covers in the c-buffer. If it exceeds a fixed constant, add it to the beamtree. |
Another Addition: Mixing 1 And 2
Martin Hristov just sent me a note: It is possible to mix algorithm one and two. The c-buffer needs perfectly sorted polygons, and a mini-bsp can do that. However, the mini-bsp makes it very hard to modify a node at run-time. There's however another technique for getting perfect sorted spans to the c-buffer: The s-buffer... That's right, we can use a 'local s-buffer' at the octree node level for drawing just the spans in the octree node, and once this set of spans is completed, it can be sent to the screen and the c-buffer. Now we have a faster s-buffer, because it always contains as much polygons as an octree node contains (rather than all the polygons that are visible at once), and the nodes are much more dynamic. We still need to split polygons against nodes, but that can be done at run-time, much faster than recalculating the whole mini-bsp. Also note that ONLY nodes with moving polygons need to be processed using the local s-buffer technique: All other nodes can still be handled with a mini-bsp. This enhancement makes algorithm 2 better than algorithm 1 in most cases. Only in case a lot of polygons are moving around so that even just splitting is too much, the use of a global s-buffer becomes interesting. |
Final Words
The algorithms that I presented here both provide a way
to perform visibility calculations for arbitrary input sets
with low local complexity. The second algorithm scales well
with increasing complexity, but it is not resolution
independent, and will therefore be considerably slower at
higher resolutions. The first algorithm allows big changes
in the scene at runtime. Both algorithms are relatively
easy to implement.
If you have any thoughts that you wish to share, or if
you see any problems that I overlooked, please contact me: E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com Happy coding, Jacco Bikker - a.k.a. "THE PHANTOM" |
Article Series: |


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If you like chicken soup, you're going to enjoy this cream of chicken soup.
When I think of cream of chicken soup, I'm reminded of the Campbell's condensed version my mom served us growing up. Loved it back then.
I even used it as a base in college for my mac and cheese dinners for an inexpensive culinary delight. As much as I enjoyed Campbell's growing up, I think you will find this version a little different.
This is a great recipe to use up leftover roasted chicken that you may have in your refrigerator. Take the meat off the bones and use the carcass to make homemade chicken stock.
You can be elaborate and follow the recipe on the link or just boil the carcass for a quick and easy chicken stock that can be used in other recipes. I do this all the time especially when preparing risotto.
You can use this as a road map for making cream of chicken soup but don't be shy from playing around with ingredients and come up with your own version. Change an herb, add another ingredient, have fun with it.
📖 Recipe
Cream of Chicken Soup Recipe
- 8 tablespoons butter 1 stick
- 2 stalks celery chopped
- 4 carrots chopped
- 1 medium onion diced
- ½ cup flour
- 7 cups chicken stock homemade but commercial works too
- 1 bay leaf
- 3 sprigs fresh thyme
- 3 cups chicken shredded, chopped or diced
- ½ cup heavy cream
- salt and pepper to taste
- Start by heating up a large soup pot over medium heat and then adding the butter. Once the butter melts, add the celery, carrots and onions and cook until the vegetables soften up. This should take about 10 minutes.
- Add the flour and cook for a couple of minutes being sure to keep stiring until the flour is incorporated nicely with the vegetables.
- Add the chicken stock and bring to a boil but this time use a whisk to keep the liquids moving in the pot.
- Make a sachet, a small bag of cheesecloth, with the bay leaf and fresh thyme and tie it closed with a piece of kitchen twine. You can add other herbs and spices to add additional flavors to the soup. Place the sachet into the pot.
- Lower the heat to a simmer and cook for 15 minutes. Add the chicken and continue cooking long enough to heat up the cooked chicken.
- Whisk in the heavy cream, taste and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper.
- Before serving, remove the sachet. Nobody wants to find a sachet in their soup.
- If you have some parsley, you may want to use it as a garnish to make the soup look even better. Homemade croutons are good too.
- Enjoy!


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How Anger Fuels Atheistic Arrogance
The majority of people in the world believe there is a God. Many of them don't yet know Him personally through faith in Jesus, but they nevertheless accept the fact that He exists. Atheists, on the other hand, act like their subjective opinion on the matter carries the weight of a Papal Edict. They believe their enlightened wisdom is infallible. In that sense, atheists collectively represent "the papacy" for unbelievers. In their estimation, they are at the highest level among non-Christians.
Natural man is very proud of himself. His achievements and knowledge are exceptionally impressive to him. The extreme example of this attitude is atheism. It represents the proudest of the proud. There is no room in atheistic thought for a contrary viewpoint. Atheists like to think of themselves as being open-minded, but they are in fact among the most close-minded people on the planet. Their faith necessitates a closed mind. They would not be able to hang on to their faith if they allowed their mind to become open.
Natural man gets angry very easily. It doesn't take much to set him off. This inclination begins to display itself very early in life. When natural man embraces atheism, you often end up with a ticking time bomb. The seething anger lies just beneath the surface for many atheists. Even for those "sophisticated atheists" who are able to put up a good front for the public, their "inner workings" are usually filled with rage against God and Christians.
In that sense, atheists unwittingly help to prove the truth of Christianity by their hatred for it. Jesus told his disciples, "If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first." (John 15:18) Real Christians don't hate atheists. Real Christians love atheists. That is the supernatural grace of God at work in the life of a believer. Real atheists, on the other hand, have an inner hatred for Christ that gets directed at believers. That is the natural result of man rejecting God as His Creator. Hundreds of millions of people have been slaughtered by dictators who hate God and hate their own "perception" of religion. Their perception destroys them and those around them.
The warm embrace with atheism begins for some in college as an enjoyable intellectual exercise. This "intellectual fornication" combined with an "anti-religious buzz" produces a spiritual high for the user. It feels good in the heart of natural man to rebel against parents, religious leaders, and especially God. It is very stimulating because intellectual pride puffs a person up. It makes him feel important in the grand scheme of things. We all want to feel important.
What begins as an enjoyable exercise often turns into a crusade. It is not enough for many atheists to espouse their worldview and harbor deep-seated feelings of anger and arrogance. They want to make others just as arrogant and angry. It is the nature of the beast. It lusts for the defilement of those who are impressionable and especially of those who have some measure of faith in God's supernatural power. The greatest anger is reserved for those who believe in Jesus as Savior and in the Bible as God's inerrant Word.
In contrast, Christian faith produces the opposite of arrogance and anger within the human heart. It produces true humility and a deep love and compassion for others. Christians cannot take credit for these admirable qualities. These traits come from Christ who lives within those who trust Him and follow Him.
Christians long to see others accept Christ and the Bible for the opposite reason of why atheists carry out their mission. Christians want to help people solve their issues with pride and anger. Christians want people to experience God's love and forgiveness so that they will be freed from hatred and brought into Christ's spiritual realm of compassion. The motive is pure and noble and just. Rather than lusting for the defilement of the innocent and the faithful, it longs for the redemption of those who are lost, suffering, and angry.
That is not to say that Christians don't struggle with their own human tendency towards arrogance and anger. We do, and we admit it. But it is not the overriding characteristic of a genuine follower of Jesus Christ. When a Christian yields his life to the influence of Jesus and the Holy Spirit, the result is that we think very little of ourselves and very much of Christ. Our anger is replaced with peace and love as we submit ourselves to His will hour by hour.
It would be judgmental for me or any Christian to say that we are better than atheists. We are all sinners before God. "There is no one who does good, not even one." (Romans 3:12) To be judgmental is to look down on others and to think that you are better than them. This is the attitude which atheism produces. It is also produced by natural man's sinful condition, whether that man is an atheist or a professing Christian.
It is not judgmental to evaluate the fruit of various worldviews. When we evaluate the fruit of atheism and the fruit of Christianity, it is so obvious to see throughout history which one flows from the Truth and which one doesn't. If everyone in the world was an atheist, the population would shrink drastically and violently. Human arrogance and anger doesn't put up with too much before it goes ballistic and begins to wipe out the "enemy."
If only the atheists would come to realize that their most dangerous enemy lies within their own soul. Until that realization occurs, the arrogance and anger will just continue to spew forth in dangerous ways. The real essence of atheism is not unbelief. That is just the fruit of atheism. The root of atheism is hatred, and it is relentless. The only One strong enough to deliver us from ourselves is Jesus Christ.
If you are an atheist, here are 11 words you won't say from your heart unless you choose to open your mind to be a "freethinker" for Christ: "Lord Jesus, forgive me for my hatred toward You and others." Wow! You would rather die than sincerely pray those words wouldn't you? That's because a hatred for Jesus fills your heart, as it would mine without Christ. You tell yourself it is just unbelief in Jesus. That is only the "fruit of it." The "root of it" is hatred towards God.
Jesus is your only path to freedom from anger and arrogance. Once you are free of the anger, the atheistic theories you now hold so dear will begin to dissipate in your mind. Most of you would have prayed those 11 words as a child if your parents had invited you to do so. It would have kept so much hatred from spilling into your heart. There is still time to renew that childlike faith and innocence. As with all of us, there is much in your life that needs to be forgiven. If you choose love right now rather than hate, you can begin to get free of it.
Some of you right now are having a very strong reaction to this idea. Recognize it. Own it. Overcome it. Or not. The choice truly is up to you. Your reaction is evidence either of your atheistic anger, or of God's grace at work in your soul. You can't get around it. One or the other is happening right now.
At the end of the day, God won't force you to start loving when you are forcing yourself to continue hating. Imagine the irony if your recognition of your hatred for God became the very thing that finally convinced you of His existence!


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Welcome to Stoney Creek Supernatural. Here at SCS, I like to take a different group of close friends out with me each and every time. We are all from Stoney Creek, Ontario, Canada and all share a common interest, the unknown. Most of us have known eachother for quite some time now, some more than others. We try to visit as many "haunted places" as we can throughout all of Southern Ontario (mainly in the Hamilton-Wenthworth, Halton and Niagara regions). I have been doing this sort of thing on a regular basis for well over 5 years now and I am growing to love it more and more each and every time!!!
If anyone has a fear or love for the supernatural, this site is definately for you (skeptics always welcome). Here at SCS I would like to share my supernatural experiences with the rest of the world. Even if you do not believe in any of this sort of stuff, I'm sure this site will still be very interesting and entertaining for you. This site is PERFECT for anyone who lives in Southern Ontario, mostly in the Hamilton, Halton and Niagara areas. Enjoy surfing around the site and please feel free to check out the links page as well for even more supernatural occurances. Also, DON'T be affraid to go out on your own 'ghost hunts', they are actually quite fun...Enjoy!!!
take my poll at: SCS Poll: htmlGEAR.com
What's New?
Thursday, July 20/06 - Ok so for that whole major update thing coming very soon, well i have decided just to keep things the way they are. So i will just be continuing to update this site like i also have been. Whenever i upload stuff or change something on this site i will let you all know about it right here. For now, I have updated the Fallen Spirits page and the Movie pages in the A&E section. So still keep checking back frequently for daily updates. Thanks again!!! Tuesday, July 04/06 - Major update coming very soon, within the next couple days or so. Until then, I have added a new 2nd page to the Freaky links section. Keep checking back frequently for daily updates. Enjoy!!!
Thursday, July 20/06 -
Tuesday, July 04/06 -
News Archive
Latest Updates: 07.20.06 - Fallen Spirits: New pic & info. 07.20.06 - A & E: Updated movie info. 07.04.06 - Freaky Links: Added new links page.
Site Created & Maintained By: Adrian D.


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Olivia Wilde Shares Her Food Diary
The "Drinking Buddies" actress reveals her favorite diet splurges.
Sept. 6, 2013— -- intro: Olivia Wilde has encouraged women to enjoy their lives, and she's definitely taking her own advice. When she was interviewed for the October issue of Food & Wine magazine, on newsstands Sept. 13, the actress gave insight into how she eats. From pasta in Manhattan to deep-fried peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in California, she and her fiancé, actor Jason Sudeikis, aren't afraid to think outside the box. Click to see a few of her favorite treats!
quicklist: 1title: Deep-Fried PB&Jtext: Wilde told the magazine that she first tried the fried treat while visiting the Malibu Inn bar with Sudeikis. "I didn't know that existed, and now I'm ruined. I'm gonna turn into Marlon Brando," she said. "They use waffle batter, so it's not too bready. The way the peanut butter and jelly melt together is far better than I could have imagined. It's pretty much the ultimate stoner food."media: 20170880
quicklist: 2title: Beertext: In her new movie, Wilde plays a brewery employee, so it's not surprising that she learned a thing or two preparing for the role. "I have become a total beer snob," she said, adding that while she loves Guinness, she tends to reach for "a good aromatic IPA." "I'm the annoying person who takes forever in the beer aisle at Whole Foods, because I'm standing there going, 'Hmm. I'm not sure. I'm not sure if that's a good selection. Do you have anything in the back? Is this local? I've never heard of this one. How hoppy is this?'" she continued. "Other people are just like, 'Please, move on.'"media:20171308
quicklist: 3title: Italian Foodtext: "For me, my number one comfort food—the food that really feels like a hug on the inside—is pasta," Wilde said. "Probably a fresh linguine with arrabbiata sauce would be my top pick." She's also obsessed with an Italian eatery in New York City, Carbone, where she orders linguine vongole and sea urchin. "It's just garlicky and buttery and amazing," she said.media: 20172841
quicklist: 4title: A Nice Red Wine text: She may know beer, but Wilde's first love was wine. "I'm a wino," she said. "I won't say there's one grape I like best, though, because I do like blends. Do you know The Prisoner? That's a blend of Zinfandel, Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah. That's just a fabulous wine." But her number one suggestion for a good bottle of red? Scarecrow. "It's mailing-list only, so it's hard to find, but if you ever see a bottle of Scarecrow, get it," she said.media:20173553
quicklist: 5title: "Basic Carby Things" text: When she wants comfort food, she may reach for a bowl of pasta, but Wilde's love of grains doesn't stop there. "Maybe I'd have some bread on the side, with some cheese or olive oil, too," she said. "I guess I crave the basic, carby things that we're not supposed to eat."media:20172405


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Scientists have found tiny fragments of plastic in the digestive systems of fish pulled from the English Channel.
The discovery, by a team from Plymouth University and the UK Marine Biological Association, highlights the growing problem of plastic contamination of marine environments.
Of 504 fish examined, more than a third was found to contain small pieces of plastic less than one millimetre in size, referred to by scientists as microplastics.
Professor Richard Thompson said:
We have previously shown that on shorelines worldwide and on the sea bed and in the water column around the UK, these tiny fragments of plastic are widespread.
Our recent reseach has shown that such fragments are also being ingested by fish. Laboratory studies on mussels have shown that some organisms can retain plastic after ingestion, hence microplastic debris could also accumulate in natural populations.
This, say researchers, could carry serious physical consequences for fish, creating blockages in their digestive systems or giving them a false sense of being full.
It could also make it easier for pollutants in surrounding waters to make their way into organisms, as chemicals latch on to the plastic fragments.
The study, published in Marine Pollution Bulletin, looked at fish caught ten kilometers off the coast of Plymouth.
But scientists have been finding plastics in increasingly remote places. A recent voyage to the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica found the once-pristine waters littered with plastics from far-flung places.
This debris comes from a number of sources. Some of the fragments come directly from personal care products, such as face scrubs and exfoliators, which contain microplastics as abrasives. Others form from the break-down of larger items such as bags and bottles.
But Thompson is optimistic that, with the right measures, plastic pollution is a problem that can be tackled without sacrificing the many benefits which come from the use of plastics in the 21st century. He said:
We don't need to have plastic debris in the sea. These materials are inherently very recyclable, but regrettably they've been at the heart of our throw-away culture for the last few decades.
Earlier this month, Unilever announced that they are to cut plastic 'microbeads' from all of their personal care products by 2015. And Thompson believes that, with actions such as this, industry has an important role to play. Thompson added:
We need to recognize the value of plastics at the end of their lives and need help from industry and manufacturers to widen the potential for every day products to be reusable and recyclable.


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Cool stuff! Techniques with Theresa Thinking beyond the pattern Watch this space Knit like a man Knittyspin Mittens 101 Why ply? Designing trees Purple chihuahua
By Michele Lock
Ply Types and Knit Stitches
Next time you visit a yarn shop, take a good look at the wool yarns. Besides color and weight, you'll notice another big difference among them -- the way the yarns are plied, the way the individual plies of wool are twisted around each other to make the final yarn. There are four main ways of plying that are done nowadays -- conventional, single, cabled and multi-strand - and these can cause some noticeable differences in the way that stockinette stitch will appear in your knitting.
When you use these four kinds of yarns, you likely don't think about their construction in such detail. Isn't all that matters that your knitting looks fine and you've gotten the correct gauge?
Maybe not. The way a yarn is plied can cause it to lie differently after it's knit into a fabric. This especially shows up in stockinette stitches, where you see the two halves of the V that form each stitch on the right side of the piece.
Have a look at the following photos to see what's going on. (Note -- the photos are been enlarged to show more detail).
Conventionally Plied yarns
These are the workhorses of wool yarns, and have been spun for decades. Most often you'll see four plies of yarn twisted around each other, like in the Debbie Bliss Merino Aran shown at left.
Each ply is called a 'single' because it can't be broken down into more strands; if you try pulling one of the singles apart, you get loose fiber. You can also find yarns of only two or three plies spun like this.
The final yarn is twisted in the 'S' direction. What this means is if you overlay the letter 'S' over the yarn strand, you can see that the middle bar of the letter mimics the direction of the final twist. This direction is also pointed out by the arrow.
Stockinette stitch with 4-ply yarn
The two halves of each knit stitch are slanted at nearly the same angle, and each side of the stitch is almost the same width.
When knitted up, it looks as if the left side of each stitch is twice as wide as the right side and tilted at a different angle. The right-side stitches appear to be forming one continuous vertical column.
There's nothing happening wrong with the knitting; this is simply how the yarn wants to lie, so there will be no stress or bias in the fabric.
You can take conventionally S-plied yarns, and make a thicker yarn out of them by doing a one more twisting in the Z direction. This is how a cabled yarn is made; the final yarn has the look of a cabled cord. All this twisting results in a firmly spun yarn. Adrianne Vittadini's 'Trina' is an example of this.
The final yarn, which has its twist in the Z direction, consists of 4 strands. Each strand is made from 2 singles twisted around each other. In the photo, the third strand has been untwisted, to show the loose fibers from the two singles.
In the final yarn, you can see some of the little twists from each of the four strands, which gives this yarn its distinctive 'cabled' look. And with a cabled yarn, stockinette stitch looks rather distinctive too. Both halves of each knit stitch are equal in width, and tilted to the same degree.
However, you can make out the little twistings within each of the four strands, which gives the fabric a slightly textured look.
In the past 10 years or so, these yarns have become more and more available. They are called a number of different names -- multi-strand, multiple stranded, multi-ply, many-plied, Merino S twisted, and S-on-S multi-strand. Occasionally they are called 'cabled' yarns, but that's confusing with the real cabled yarns shown above. Plus, these multi-strand yarns are made in a completely different way.
Aurora 8 yarn from Karabella is a multi-strand yarn. The final yarn is made from 8 thin 2-ply strands; hence the number '8' in the name. The 8 strands are twisted around each other again in the S direction.
It may appear that the final yarn is tightly twisted, but it's not. It's just the way the eight thin strands want to lie next to each other. If you untwist the yarn, you can see that it's not overspun. In fact, the yarn feels quite soft and flexible, and has good elasticity.
Why would a mill go to the trouble of spinning thin little 2-ply strands, if they are just going to twist a bunch of them together to make a thicker hand knitting yarn? At first glance, it seems like a lot of effort to go through.
Most of these yarns are spun in Italy, and that's the big reason why this multi-strand business is done. A spinning mill can make the thin 2-ply yarns for commercial knitwear. The spinning mill can also make hand knitting products by simply twisting several of these 2-ply yarns around each other, then skeining off these thicker yarns into 50- or 100-gram balls.
A spinning mill covers a lot of bases by doing things this way. First, the mill spins and dyes the thin 2-ply yarns for commercial knitwear. Then the mill can take four, six, eight or ten of the thin 2-ply yarns, and twist them together to make, respectively, fingering weight, DK weight, heavy worsted and bulky weight yarns.
Not a bad way to keep commercial and hand knitting customers happy and well fed.
The bottom line in all this is that there's nothing wrong with your knitting, and nothing wrong with the yarns. They aren't poorly made, over-twisted or under-twisted as people sometimes think. And you don't need to wrap your yarn differently to try and get rid of the slants in the stitches.
So the next time you go to your LYS, take a good look at the wool yarns. Appreciate the differences and knit away, now that you know the appearance of your knitting is exactly what it should be.
Michele Lock loves to feel yarn. She collects yarn skeins the way other people collect stamps. A chemist by training, she often wonders why one yarn feels/looks/knits differently than another.


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The seed for the brewing session was planted last May when I did a comparative tasting of two versions of my LimeLight witbier, one fermented with my usual 3944 Belgian Wit yeast, and the other with 3942 Belgian Wheat. Using the 3942 was a case of having to use what was readily available in order to meet a deadline, and the local homebrew shops not having any 3944. When I tasted the two versions, I was struck by the difference in colour, but from the comments that followed the post, it became clear that the age of the extract was the most likely cause of the differences. I thus hatched a plan.
My plan was really very simple, brew three batches of the beer in a single day and ferment with three different yeast strains. Thankfully LimeLight is an incredibly simple recipe, because it is the only beer I brew that gets all its fermentables from dry malt extract. The recipe for each 2.5 gallon batch was as follows:
- 3lbs Muntons Wheat DME
- 0.5oz 3.9% Saaz hops @ 60 minutes
- 0.25oz 3.9% Saaz hops @ 15 minutes
- 0.5oz fresh lime peel @ 15 minutes
- 0.5oz cracked coriander seed @ 15 minutes
- 0.15oz dried sweet orange peel @ 15 minutes
- 0.25oz 3.9% Saaz hops @ 1 minute
To ensure, as much as possible, consistency across the three batches, I made sure that I followed the extract same procedure for each. The DME was added to 1.5 gallons of water, while 1 gallon was chilled in advance and put into the fermenter when required. I had played with the idea of brewing a single batch and then splitting it into the three fermenters, but my brew pot would not have been big enough. Thankfully all three brews were remarkably similar, all with an OG of 1.050 and looking like the sample below.
On the yeast front, I used:
- 3944 Belgian Wit
- 1010 American Wheat
- 3068 Weihenstephan Weizen
The beers are the Belgian at the back, American in the middle and German at the front. As ever I named the beers and created labels. LimeLight itself remains LimeLight, but the version with weizen yeast is called Rampenlicht, the German word for "limelight", while the American is Broadway American Witbier. The beers will stay in primary for 14 days before being bottled and left for a few weeks, being ready around the middle of July.


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TF2 Scout
In Team Fortress 2, the Scout is your typical messenger: quick, snarky, and a lot tougher than he appears. He likes to inflict damage with his baseball bat and escape before the opponent knows what hit him.
Buy Items
- Enzyme Army Cap in Black
- 3M Peltor Optime Earmuff
- iMicro Headset with Microphone
- Customized Military Dog Tags
- Fruit of the Loom T-Shirt in Pacific Blue or True Red
- Dickies Original 874 Work Pants in Air Force Blue or Charcoal
- Black Canvas Military Web Belt with Silver Buckle
- Hanes White Over the Calf Tube Socks
- Adidas Samba Soccer Sneakers in Black
- ACE White Sports Tape
- Black Sling Bag
- Louisville Slugger Youth Wood Baseball Bat
- Black Electrical Tape
- Bonk Atomic Punch
- Team Fortress Atomizer Bat
35 Comments
that's me 4 halloween
how about soda instead of the bat :)yum
I bought this bag instead since it is more cylindrical than what is listed above. There is a mesh section in the middle but I stuffed a few black shirts in the bag to give it weight and hide the mesh.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001GKO2NO/ -
Cheers, Im from New Zealand and im totally going to wear this at armegeddon ( New Zealands version of comic con) Team Fortress two is a great game
This is why im looking at it, i have never done cosplay so i thought this would be an easier one, and its for armeggeddon expo aswell
Thank you for posting this! This is incredibly helpful for a first time cosplayer.
How do you get the earmuff to work since you are only suppose to have the left one? I have thought of sewing onto the hat but is there any easier way?
Hi! so just cut off the left earmuff and stick the speaker part of the headset in the earmuff, drill a hole in the bottom of the earmuff and fit the wire trough, Requires some soldering work but nothing much…
This is perfect for me for halloween.
i want it ssoooo bad
This is good, except I found that the Adidas Sambas are closer to the scout's shoes than the Adidas Gazelle.
Make a one for the medic
I would say that you can add the bonk! Atomic punch 12oz tumbler from the valve store.
Thanks! I found this helpful. Made some modifications, the most beneficial of which was to substitute actual boxing hand wraps for the tape. These cotton wraps are washable and reusable, and have a thumb loop to help start the wrapping. Plus experimenting with different wrapping techniques (thanks to online videos intended for boxers) is fun.
The ones I ended up with were the Arellano 108″ Boxing Hand Wraps in white. Benefits of this particular item:
White is white, not "natural" or "buff", so it's true to the TF2 Scout.
The shorter 108″ length is plenty for costume purposes. You don't want 140″ or 180″.
The tag can be removed with careful use of a seam-ripper, without compromising the stitching on the nearby velcro.
Price was right! -
im going to be scout for the next hallowen spelt it rong i do not care
Um… Do I brake of the microphone from the head set and put it on the ear muffs? And then do I brake off one of the ear muffs so it's one sided??? Please Explain
You can use either one, or you could do that i suppose
I'm noticing that Scout's shirt is paler than the one in the example. Hanes shirts fit the Scout more closely, since they're paler than Fruit of the Loom shirts. Other than that, fantastic job!
By "in the example", I meant the shirts you had in the list of what we should buy, in case I wasn't clear.
What is the black electrical tape used for?
The black electrical tape is for the tip of the bat
Has anyone figured out how to go about crafting the headset?
Definitely going to be using this! Though, I'd change the pants, as Scout's don't go all the way to his ankles, but rather a more mid-shin length.
Seeing as how the bag isn't actually black, I found one that's essentially the same, but actually black —-> https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00PCQKDVS/ref=ox_sc_act_title_4?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A21RNIK9GMQ4ZG
For the headset: We found these ear muffs at Harbor Freight for just $3! (And later saw a similar pair at Dollar Tree for a buck!) Easy to modify. Just twist the ear attachment of one of the ear pieces to vertical and it easily pulls through the slot to remove. We wired a mic arm from another dead headset we had around the house to it and covered the wire with black tape.
For the white hand wraps, we cut up an old white crew/sport sock. (Cut sock off at mid-foot, cut a small hole in heel for your thumb. Ribbing end goes on the wrist.) Way more comfortable than having your hand wrapped in tape all day/night!
Hey mate. Valve recently added this to their store.
It's an atomizer replica, if you want to add it to the list
Please can you make the rest? Thank you for your time.
sadly some stuff does not work any more :(
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Joe Lauzon faces Jim Miller at UFC 155 in a lightweight battle that will
serve as the night's co-main event before the heavyweight title rematch between Junior dos Santos and Cain Velasquez. But it was a 2007 heavyweight title scrap that stands as Lauzon's favorite fight ever.
Click here to watch Lauzon's favorite fight
For me the Octagon moment that jumps out in my mind more than any other fight is when Randy Couture fought Tim Sylvia.
Randy came out there and he dropped Sylvia right off the bat. At the time, I really didn't like Tim Sylvia -- I thought he was a jerk.
A few events before the Couture-Sylvia fight I had made my UFC debut at UFC 63 and beat Jens Pulver. About a month later at the next event, my brother Dan came out and fought Spencer Fisher. My brother took the fight on about 10 days' notice, and he lost.
Backstage after the fight, Tim was being a jerk and saying some really unnecessary things to my brother about his loss. He kind of kicked Dan when he was down. Tim went over to Dan and said "Nice 2 minutes, ha ha," and walked away. After that I instantly named him my nemesis, and obviously I had this intense hatred for Tim Sylvia more than any other fighter on the planet.
So a few months later Randy and Tim fought at UFC 68, and we went over to my buddy Chris' house to watch the fights with friends. Randy was supposed to be the wrestler and Tim Sylvia was supposed to be the elite striker. And there was Couture dropping Sylvia, just putting him on his butt right away.
When that happened, I jumped out of my chair. It's actually probably the only time I've ever jumped out of my chair watching a fight. Randy was my hero from that point on.
As for my own best fight, I think fighters are hesitant to name match-ups they were involved in as their favorite fights because there is so much that goes on leading up to fight night. A lot of people say they enjoyed my fight against Melvin Guillard, and that is always awesome to hear. But I had the most horrid camp ever for that fight. It was basically injury after injury. There was all kinds of crap that went on leading up to the fight.
Everyone else can see it as 45 seconds and an awesome finish, but I see it as three months of trouble and one thing after another. I'm glad other people appreciate it but that's definitely not one of my favorite fights.
But that fight with Randy vs. Tim is definitely my favorite. Me and my brother Dan still talk about it to this day.
Jamahal Hill Talks UFC 300 Main Event
Hall Of Fame


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In the meantime, here is the story of how the Calendar Doc series began back in June 2007.
Long ago and far away, there was a medblogger named TrenchDoc. TrenchDoc was an ER doc. Supposedly, the ED where TrenchDoc worked had a calendar made up of pictures of half-nekkid manly residents posed in compromising positions and/or funny outfits. Every once in a while, to the delight of his female readers, TrenchDoc would post one of these calendar pictures on his medblog.
Unfortunately, TrenchDoc, without any warning, had to shut down his medblog. Something about the CIA, an angry jealous husband, and/or a salad bar incident involving SeaSpray. You get the picture.
Seeing a legit opportunity to post pictures of half-nekkid men on my blog, I immediately stole the calendar idea from TrenchDoc before his blog was even cold. In all fairness, though, I did make TrenchDoc my first Calendar Doc. I added dinosaurs and women to the mix (although I'm still not sure what kind of pictures to post for them), and this month, the series will feature non-MD healthcare professionals. [if that's not a correct way to say that, let me know.]
At one point, there was a little controversy surrounding the Calendar Doc series. It seems some people thought I was featuring too many ER docs. Now, seriously, can one ever have too many ER docs? Here's some Calendar Doc trivia. Scalpel's Calendar Doc picture gets the most hits from random strangers searching for pics of hot half-nekkid men. Only one doctor has failed to respond to my invitation to be a Calendar Doc. I like to think my e-mail got lost in his inbox.
The calendar series has been a lot of fun for me. I want to thank the past Calendar Docs, the special December calendar folks, and all of you readers who have encouraged me with your e-mails, comments, and visits. I also want to say a special thank you to KevinMD and GruntDoc for linking the calendar posts.
Y'all are going to enjoy the holiday series. The answers are great and very entertaining.


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Astronaut's View on Israel-Gaza Conflict: No Borders Visible from Space
Earlier this week, German astronaut Alexander Gerst posted photos of Israel and the Gaza Strip from space. He reported, with sadness, that he could see rocket explosions over the region as he passed overhead at night.
The images went viral. As of this morning (July 25), one of the pictures has been retweeted more than 39,000 times. And today, Gerst reflected on the grief he felt as he saw signs of the deadly conflict from the International Space Station, at an altitude of 248 miles (400 kilometers).
"Some things that on Earth we see in the news every day and thus almost tend to accept as a 'given,' appear very different from our perspective," Gerst wrote in a blog post on the European Space Agency's website. [Photos: Amazing Images of Earth from Space]
"We do not see any borders from space," Gerst said. "We just see a unique planet with a thin, fragile atmosphere, suspended in a vast and hostile darkness. From up here it is crystal clear that on Earth we are one humanity, we eventually all share the same fate."
While world leaders push for a truce, the death toll from the 18-day conflict now includes more than 800 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and 36 Israelis, mostly soldiers, the BBC reported.
Gerst explained that he noticed unusual streaks of light and "orange fireballs" on the planet after he floated into the space station's cupola — a dome with seven large windows that look down at Earth. He said he didn't realize what he was looking at until after he snapped a few photos. Though he didn't capture any explosions in the pictures, Gerst said he saw several blasts.
"What came to my mind at the time of this photo was, if we ever will be visited by another species from somewhere in the universe, how would we explain to them what they might see as the very first thing when they look at our planet?" Gerst wrote. "How would we explain to them the way we humans treat not only each other but also our fragile blue planet, the only home we have? I do not have an answer for that."
Gerst left Earth on May 28 for a 5.5-month stay aboard the space station. He launched inside of a Russian Soyuz capsule with NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman and cosmonaut Maxim Suraev. Those three men, along with NASA's Steve Swanson and cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev, make up the Expedition 40 crew currently living inside the $100 billion orbiting lab.
Follow Megan Gannon on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.
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We have updated our popular Castle for Sale section with some new castles for sale in France.
The first castle for sale in France is Le Château de Bazaneix, which is located in the south-central part of the country. The castle was first built in the fourteenth century and saw action in the Hundred Years War.
The second is a castle in the Epte Valley in Normandy which dates back to the late-eleventh or early-twelfth century. The castle, which is in a ruined state, is for sale for 430 000 euros.
The third castle is located in Dordogne region of France, and is also in ruins. Dating back to the thirteenth or fourteenth century, this castle comes with over ninety acres of heavily wooded land.
We also have included a Castle for Sale in Italy, which can be found just south of Ancona. Rocco di Bolignano was built in the early fourteenth century to help defend the city from its neighbours.


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