text:
Texas Eyes PACE Loans to Boost Energy Efficiency
In Texas, where oil lubricates the economy the same way it does pickup trucks, energy consumption is no exception to the state's everything-is-bigger reputation. The nation's leading energy producer also uses more energy by far than any other state.
As the state's population keeps surging, demand is expected to grow, prompting leaders to think about how it will ensure that the lights will stay on.
Now, a diverse coalition, which includes renewable energy advocates, city officials, bankers and others, is racing to institute a plan to increase energy and water efficiency upgrades that supporters say could help Texas improve its conservation record and become a model for other states.
"We're such a big energy user," said Kip Averitt, a former Republican state senator who is part of the effort. "That means our opportunity to be efficient is huge as well."
Supporters acknowledge the challenge of avoiding pitfalls that have tripped up similar efforts elsewhere.
The approach, known as Property Assessed Clean Energy, or PACE, addresses the biggest barrier to efficiency investments: initial costs that can take years to recoup. A law allowing cities and counties to set up programs passed this year with overwhelming support in the Legislature.
PACE allows the owners of commercial and industrial property to use a property tax lien to finance energy efficiency upgrades like solar panels and water recycling systems. PACE programs bill an owner through the lien and forward payments to a private lender. Under a smooth-running program, property owners pay less than what they save on their energy bills. If a property is sold, the new owner would inherit the debt — a rule meant to further reduce the risks of investment.
Tony Bennett, the president of the Texas Association of Manufacturers, said that after scrutinizing PACE, his group was backing the plan. "We don't like subsidies," he said. "We don't like picking winners and losers." But PACE is different, he said, and it would spur investments that could help his group's 450 businesses cut costs.
Thirty other states allow similar financing plans, though most apply only to energy, unlike in Texas. Most of the states have stumbled, largely because of the objections of mortgage regulators, who feared that PACE liens would take precedence over mortgages if a homeowner defaulted. And in California, one of few states that has had investment under PACE, observers say, a patchwork of rules across cities has discouraged investors from financing projects statewide.
"We have some baggage to overcome," said Charlene Heydinger, a lawyer leading the Texas coalition, called Keeping PACE in Texas. But she and her colleagues say they benefit from their state's late entry to the movement and ability to learn from others' stumbles.
The coalition is devising what it calls "PACE in a Box," a model it hopes many of Texas' 254 counties and more than 1,200 cities will adopt, encouraging consistency in a state that values local power. It plans to unveil the program by the end of the year, and it is raising money to travel and make pitches to local governments.
Many PACE supporters would prefer the program to apply to home upgrades as well. But by focusing solely on commercial and industrial properties, advocates have garnered support from bankers.
In a state where industry guzzles more than half of the energy used and makes up close to 20 percent of all the industrial consumption in the United States, the narrowed focus could have an impact on energy demand.
"The scale here is so much bigger, said Doug Lewin, the executive director of the South-central Partnership for Energy Efficiency as a Resource, based in Austin. "I think Texas could be a leader in energy efficiency."
Texas Tribune donors or members may be quoted or mentioned in our stories, or may be the subject of them. For a complete list of contributors, click here.
Information about the authors
Learn about The Texas Tribune's policies, including our partnership with The Trust Project to increase transparency in news.


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(Jesus Diaz) Father Martin McVeigh was giving a talk to 26 parents and one 8-year-old kid when computer disaster struck. He connected his USB drive into a PC to start his Powerpoint presentation and, instead of the word of God, a hardcore gay porn slideshow started—thanks to Windows' autoplay.
Some parents—who were there to hear McVeigh talk about First Communion—were angry. Others were in shock. Just like McVeigh. He was so embarrassed that, according to witnesses, unplugged the USB drive and walked out of the room without uttering a single word. Later he declared to the press:
I don't know how it happened but I know what happened. There are people making innuendoes who weren't even there but in this day and age these stories grow.
Well, Father, I think there's little space for innuendo after showing gay porn in church. McVeigh, however, claims there is an explanation for all this.
The Archdiocese of Armagh, where the parish belongs, called the police and gave them the USB stick for inspection. The police told them there was no crime in gay porn and the drive didn't contain any pedophilia. It was just normal gay porn.
According to The Ulster Herald, "an emergency meeting was held in the parish last night." You know, because gay priests are such a rare event that emergency meetings need to be held with the utmost urgency, so everyone can slam someone who mistakenly made his sexual preferences public. Embarrassment is not enough! To the fire with him.
How to avoid these embarrassing situations
This is a good reminder for anyone who has porn in their computers or USB drives and is giving presentations: people, turn off the autoplay feature in your Windows computer. Just go to your Start button, click on Control Panel, click on Hardware and Sound, and then click on AutoPlay. There you will be able to turn it on or off for each media type.
You should do the same with the address autocomplete feature in your browser—which will populate your address bar with your latest YouPorn antics if you forgot to use anonymous browsing. Since you you are it, turn off the most visited sites front page in your web browser too. The locations of these preferences will change depending on your preferred browser, but they should be easy to find.
And never, ever leave your screensaver pointed to a folder which may contain porn, as the screensaver may fire up during your presentation.
One last thing: if you have OS X Lion, remember its new application document handling: when you open an app, OS X will automatically open whatever documents were opened the last time it was running. Like a reader pointed out, this may lead to some embarrassing situations. Always close any potentially embarrassing documents before closing the app itself.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Altronix Corporation is a leading designer and manufacturer of low voltage electronic components. Altronix offers a comprehensive line of Security, Fire, CCTV, Access, Nurse Call, and Automation products.
The security industry requires electronic components which can perform flawlessly under rigorous conditions, twenty-four hours a day. Incorporating cutting edge design and engineering, Altronix has secured an unprecedented reputation synonymous with quality, service, and reliability. Most of our products carry a 'Lifetime Warranty' and are proudly 'Manufactured in the U.S.A.'
In addition to producing a wide range of components, Altronix offers OEM design and manufacturing services to create custom electronics for commercial and industrial applications.
Altronix serves both domestic and international markets through a worldwide network of distributors. Founded in 1983, our headquarters are based in Brooklyn, New York.


text:
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executive chauffeurs london chauffeur services
Especially when it is a private limousine
Wedding, bachelorette or bachelor party, graduation, getting a new job ... There are plenty of occasions to celebrate. It is worth doing everything to make these moments truly special. When preparing, our list includes booking a table in a restaurant, buying a suitable outfit, inviting family and friends. What about commuting? Ordinary taxi? Or maybe a pre


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HowTo:Be Korean
So, you've heard all about Korea, or maybe even visited there a few times. After some contemplation about the merits and disadvantages of the Land of the Morning Calm, you are finally driven to ask the question: how can I be Korean?
Scenario 1: You Are a Korean Citizen[edit]
Then you are already Korean, and don't need any of this.
You twit.
Scenario 2: You Are Not a Korean Citizen[edit]
Well, that is most unfortunate. You will have to actually make an effort to be Korean, unlike those who are already Korean and so didn't really need to follow this guide anyway. The major distinction from UK or US nationality laws is that citizenship is not decided by jus soli, i.e. being born on Korean soil. Getting your parents to Korea before you are born will not suffice; your citizenship must be by jus sanguini, i.e. by blood ties. Until recently, it was possible to exploit a loophole in the nationality code and become a Korean citizen by getting a blood transfusion from a Korean person; however, the Korean Supreme Court has officially declared this a misinterpretation of the implicit meaning of "blood ties" and, in addition, "just plain silly."
Therefore, pretty much the only way you will be Korean is by having Korean parents or undergoing the naturalisation process. Unlike Japan, immigration to Korea is more strict, as you have to marry a Korean. For the principal method, let's assume that you have access to time travel.
Main Method: Time Travel[edit]
Now, I hear you ask: what does time travel have to do with Korean citizenship? To this I answer, nothing, but I'm writing this guide, not you.
If you do have access to time travel, then congratulations! Either you are an extremely unconvincing liar, or you know one of the greatest temporal physicists who ever lived. Knowing that you're reading a HowTo, it's probably the former. But in any case, with the power of time travel in your hands, becoming a Korean citizen will be extremely easy—so easy, as a matter of fact, that you now have two ways to go about it.
Option 1: Meet Your Parents[edit]
If you know anything about time travel—which you don't, since you're a very unconvincing liar—you know that meeting your own parents in the past is a almost a rite of passage anyway with a time machine. Therefore, meet your parents some years before your conception, and convince them that becoming a Korean citizen is the best possible thing they could do. (Note: for this option, the period from 1910 to 1945 is best avoided in all circumstances, since this may cause you to be tried for and convicted of treason and summarily executed by the Japanese occupying the country back then.)
Some people like to show off by exploiting a clause in the nationality code, which states that you would still be a Korean citizen if your father dies before your birth but nonetheless was a Korean national. If you really, really didn't like your father, go ahead and flaunt your time-travelling power by taking his life. In this case, the grandfather paradox you may have heard of will not be problematic at all, since you're a homicidal maniac that has retroactive patricidal tendencies, and the world would be a better place if you were to prevent your own birth.
Option 2: Sell the Time Machine[edit]
Think, <insert name here>! You're close enough friends with this genius to be able to get to his/her time machine; why not steal the technology and sell it to the South Korean government? After all, Article 9 of the Nationality Law of South Korea does state:
" | With respect to an alien who has rendered especially meritorious service to Korea, the Minister of Justice may ... permit the naturalization of the alien with the approval of the National Assembly. | " |
What could be more meritorious service to Korea than providing it with the power of time travel? I know this sounds utterly ludicrous when you read it aloud, but trust me, if you have access to time travel, and aren't an entirely unconvincing liar, you can't fail with this option! (Note: for this option, the period from 1910 to 1945 is best avoided in all circumstances, since this may cause you to be tried for and convicted of treason and summarily executed. Even the period between 1950 to 1953 should also be avoided. And finally, do NOT sell the time machine to the North Korean government. Ever.)
Alternate Method: Bureaucracy[edit]
What's that? You don't have access to time travel? Well, that's a disappointment. This will make your goal even more difficult to attain. You essentially have no choice but to live in South Korea (or North Korea if you are communist) and be naturalised. Should you go ahead with this route, I can only bid you good luck. The British civil service is nothing compared to the level of bureaucracy involved in the naturalisation process.
At first, the criteria are reasonable. Basic requirements to qualify include:
- Residency in Korea for at least five years; this is reduced to three with marriage to a Korean citizen, which is only slightly harder to obtain than Korean citizenship.
- Good behaviour. Government officials will check your name with your conscience and Santa-ssi.
- Willingness to surrender your current citizenship (if you are under 21). The Korean government can't have you double-dipping on citizenship until you are 21 years of age.
If you like Korea and Korean people, these should not be problematic.
Now, beyond this, there are a slew of documents over two rounds of submission. The first round of documentation includes:
- your birth certificate, assuming you have already been born;
- your passport;
- any marriage, divorce, remarriage, adoption, birth, and death certificates of your family or yourself (if you plan on submitting your own death certificate, please note that being dead or horribly unconvincingly lying about your own death is frowned upon in Korean culture as well as some others—ed.).
If you like Korea and Korean people, it is likely that you have not died in the past, so these should not be problematic.
The second round of documentation is even more intensive, and includes but is not limited to: the names, addresses, contact information of family and friends overseas, as well as everyone you have ever met in your entire life; a list of any addresses of residence since birth, including university housing, Underground stations, and pieces of sidewalk; history of residence in Korea, including addresses, favourite foods, subway usage, and nose-picking activities; records of employment, income, taxes, ownership, automobile purchases, television programme viewings, and video game of choice (NB: Owning a copy of Starcraft is required by law in Korea. Ownership of any video game is also required-ed.)
If you like Korea and Korean people, and have been sufficiently assimilated into Korean society at the time of your application, these should not be problematic, although it will probably still be pretty embarrassing when civil servants reading your records find you've been watching a Korean dub of Pokemon every day.
When you submit your application to your local Hoju branch (Hoju being the Ministry of Justice, not an alcoholic drink made from soybeans, that's soju), this is followed by a year or so of processing documentation and sensitive personal information and laughing at them before a judgement is carried out on whether you have suffered through enough scrutiny and bureaucracy to become a Japanese citizen. In addition, you will undergo an interview in which you need to have adequate skills in the Korean language. (Fortunately, no test of Korean history is done, which is to be expected since it spans 5000 years and a dozen different eras, and not even Korean people are expected to know it all that well—ed.) You will also need to prove that you are 20 years or older physically and mentally, and take a written test at second grade level.
If you are not an idiot, these should not be problematic.
So this just about covers becoming a Korean citizen. As you can see, it's an incredibly rigorous process, but if you really do want to be Korean, it should be all the more worth the triplicate signatures—
Uh, this is awkward.
What is?
Scenario 3: You Don't Really Want to Be a Citizen of Korea, and Just Wanted to See Me Make Fun of the Koreans[edit]
Yeah, this is awkward.
But it also explains a lot. Not only does it explain why you've been so patiently reading this guide to the very end with that mad look on your face, but also it explains why you're on this sick, sick website in the first place. Have you no sense of "racial sensitivity", at long last? It's because of senseless maniacs like you that eat up these stereotypes about different groups of people that movies like North are even green-lighted! Don't even try to deny it; we already know how unconvincing of a liar you are—and a racist utterly unconvincing liar at that!
I hope you learnt something from this guide, like the fact that since you're the kind of desensitised hateful person that reads these HowTos, you should go back in time and murder your own father! You'd be doing him a big favour by preventing you from ever ruining his good name by being born, you know! And I bet you wouldn't mind either, you twisted troll!
You know what? I was going to try and calm down and tell you to take a trip to Korea (either one, take your pick) and see if that changes your mind or something, but you know what? You don't deserve the chance. All you'd do is make fun of everyone as soon as you got there. You'd make fun of the guy that looks at your passport, the customs agent, the hotel receptionist, random people carrying their mobile phones. You'd even make fun of the Koreans for eating dog.
So no, I'm not going to let you redeem yourself. You couldn't possibly ever manage it.
Everything's expensive so be rich if you can help it, have slanted eyes, be slim, be sexist and sleazy and sex-hungry because it's perfectly okay over there, never pass on kimchi or dog, play up on Starcraft and Maple Story, copy lots from Japanese culture, never surrender the superior Korean culture for Japanese culture, be really good at English, never think for yourself, be obsessively clean, watch a lot of Korean drama series and listen to K-pop, call the Japanese jjokbari (pig feet) and bash (or even kill) the Japanese for committing what happened in Korea, and overwork your salaryman self to suicide. Oh, and don't mention the war. No, that was Germany. I guess don't mention Japan.
See also[edit]
HowTo This article is part of Uncyclopedia's HowTo series. See more HowTos |
- HowTo:Be Japanese
- Korea
- North Korea
- South Korea
- Kimchi
- Politically correct
- Starcraft
- Immigration to South Korea
This page was originally sporked from HowTo:Be Japanese. |


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The Country's Oldest and Priciest Cheddar
A very special gift arrived from a very special friend last month.
A block of vivid orange, it's believed to be the oldest, most expensive cheddar in America.
Made with utmost patience by award-winning cheese-maker, Hook's Cheese Co. of Mineral Point, WI, it was a holiday gift from my friend, Karen Herzog, a food writer at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
When Karen first wrote about this special cheese for her newspaper, it created a sensation. NPR, CNN, CBS News, Yahoo News, and newspapers around the globe picked up her story about this cheese that had been aged 15 years and was selling for $50 a pound.
Yes, a 15-year-old, cow's milk, sharp cheddar. That's like half a century in wine years and an eternity in dog ones.
Apparently, the cheese started out as part of a 5,200-pound batch, most of which was sold when it reached the 10- and 12-year maturity marks. But the flavor seemed to improve so much over time that the Hooks decided to hang on to 1,200 pounds to let it continue to age.
The result?
A crumbly, yet extremely buttery cheese with a pungent fragrance that grabs your attention from the get-go. The taste is sharp and strong, but not with the wincing tang of younger sharp cheddars. Powerful, yet balanced, it knocks every taste bud in your mouth into overdrive. It's a knockout paired with a substantial red wine such as a big California Cab or an earthy French Bordeaux.
I've been nibbling on the cheese since I opened the package in the mail a couple weeks ago. A little goes a long way, so a tiny nugget will satisfy in a massive way.
With the world-wide attention, the 15-year-old cheddar sold out. But those hankering for a taste will be glad to know that Hook's plans to release a new batch in March.
So how did my friend Karen enjoy her first taste of this coveted cheese? Not quite like she had planned. You're sure to laugh when you read her account. And don't miss her husband's retort, too.
Karen and I first met long ago when we were both news reporters at the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel. She was a police reporter; I was a city government reporter. She was from a small farm in Iowa. I was from cosmopolitan San Francisco. I loved gourmet eats. She lived for burgers and fries, and tried to convince me that eating carrot sticks dunked into creamy, rich dip counted as her daily requirement of vegetables.
Who knew we'd not only end up the best of friends, but both successful food writers years later, too?
A cheese that's 15 years old is quite special, indeed. But it's got nothing on a friendship that's endured for 24 years and is still going strong.
Another Interesting Cheese: Capricious, an aged goat's cheese with a most unusual rind


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Statement by Secretary POMPEO
January 23, 2019
The United States recognizes Juan Guaido as the new interim President of Venezuela, and strongly supports his courageous decision to assume that role pursuant to Article 233 of Venezuela's constitution and supported by the National Assembly, in restoring democracy to Venezuela. As President Trump said, "The people of Venezuela have courageously spoken out against Maduro and his regime and demanded freedom and the rule of law."
The Venezuelan people have suffered long enough under Nicolas Maduro's disastrous dictatorship. We call on Maduro to step aside in favor of a legitimate leader reflecting the will of the Venezuelan people. The United States supports President Guaido as he establishes a transitional government, and leads Venezuela, as the country prepares for free and fair elections. We urge all Venezuelans to support peacefully this democratic process, as granted in the 1999 Constitution.
We will work closely with the legitimately elected National Assembly to facilitate the transition of Venezuela back to democracy and the rule of law, consistent with the Inter-American Democratic Charter. The United States also stands ready to provide humanitarian assistance to the people of Venezuela as conditions allow.
The Venezuelan people are clamoring for a free and democratic Venezuela. As we have said before, the United States, with the international community, including the Organization of American States, the Lima Group, and the European Union, support the Venezuelan people as they seek to restore their democracy. We repeat our call to the Venezuelan military and security forces to support democracy and protect all Venezuelan citizens.
The new Venezuelan government carries the flame of democracy on behalf of Venezuela. The United States pledges our continued support to President Guaido, the National Assembly, and the Venezuelan people.


text:
The Case for Making Bike-Share Membership an Employee Benefit
With bike sharing programs growing, organizations start offering access as wellness incentive.
New York-based tech company Percolate, a small marketing firm that helps businesses create content pegged to social media, takes pride in promoting an active employee lifestyle. The company sponsors a variety of health and fitness clubs started by workers — running, bike riding, yoga, and cooking, to name a few. Earlier this month a handful of employees rode bicycles anywhere from 30 to 155 miles out to Montauk, on the eastern tip of Long Island.
"The goal of all these things is to be very mindful of the fact that we're working with talented people in a high-intensity start-up culture, and more than anything we want to make sure we're keeping them healthy," says co-founder James Gross. "That's not just making sure they don't have diabetes or heart attacks — we mean are they mentally healthy, clearing their minds and getting out and doing active things."
So when Gross and business partner Noah Brier first heard about Citi Bike, New York's new bike-sharing system, they figured it was in keeping with the Percolate spirit to cover the annual fees for any of their 47 staff members who wanted a membership. After announcing the benefit at a meeting last week, Gross tweeted the decision, saying it "feels right." Pretty soon he had a bunch of retweets and favorites, and received a general response he describes as "overwhelming and all really positive."
NEXT STORY: Thomas Jefferson: Home Brewer


text:
Before you read any further, I suggest that you first take a quick read of note #102 and #103 first. This article is basically a follow up to those articles with specific advice towards female students in starchitecture school.
Unlike the lopsided gender ratio that you might find in the proportion of actual female starchitects to male starchitects as exemplified in the pool of Pritzker recipients, architecture school and the Starchitect Staffers Club has a close to even male to female ratio. Peter Zumthor's office for example has a ratio that tips in the favor of females which makes him one of the worlds foremost starchitects in the way of gender equality for women. The good news is that within these two institutions, gender equality is real and it is here, however it needs to be navigated well if you are aiming to get through it and become a female starchitect.
Getting in the club;
In note #102 I mentioned that you should be outstanding and that as a student you are never evaluated by just your work. Every single aspect is taken into consideration when your starchitect professor selects a student for internship in his office.
I listed a number of random factors and possible selection criteria if you will. Among them was sex appeal. Since the great majority of starchitects are men by far, then for women, sex appeal becomes an important determinant.
If you are a long time reader of this blog, then you may have noticed that I am a fan of collecting data, analysing them to find patterns and making prediction models based on these patterns and findings. A good example would be my Pritzker Prize analysis: From that data one can conclude that any future Pritzker recipient will most likely be an Asian or Caucasian male Starchitect from Europe, the USA or Japan.
So in this context let me share a simple yet powerful observation.
I have done a similar study (albeit empheracally) on the types of students likely to be selected for internships in a starchitect office. Lets just say it is a casual observation from being around the starchitecture school environment for some time. After seeing several types of students being selected for internships, I have noticed a number of patterns. Among them is this: if you are a certain type of female student, then your chances of being selected for an internship increases dramatically.
What is the type?
I like to call it the Designer Chic Type: The type of woman that is fashion conscious and elegant as was with Jacqueline Kennedy. This type fits all the cliches of what you think of when you close your eyes and imagine the female designer or architect.
The picture of the lady above fits this category perfectly. First and foremost is that she has an elegant sense of style that carries through in the way she dresses and carries herself. Women of this type are generally the smart and intelligent type that communicates very well, but then again so are most of the women who make it to starchitecture school.
Men of power, especially starchitects, love women of this type and they tend to like to have many of them around them (did I mention Peter Zumthor earlier?). As a result, starchitects tend to select female students for internships who fit this type more often than other female students who don't. In other words, if you are a smart female student, you produce good work and communicate very well, but do not fit this profile, then chances are you have a lower possibility of being selected for an internship than another female student who does.
I have seen this happen so often I am confident that if you were to put me into a studio run by a starchitect at Harvard's GSD, the Architectural Association or Columbia or any other Starchitecture school and you say to me "Conrad which one of these female students will be asked to be an intern?" After 2 to 3 days of observation I would be able to guess with reasonable accurately which ones will be selected, just like I can guess with reasonable accuracy that the next Pritzker Prize will be an Asian or Caucasian male Starchitect from Europe, the USA or Japan..
So what does this mean for you?
If you fit this profile or close to it, then great. All you have to do is be aware of it. If you notice that your starchitect professor spends significantly more time at your desk during studio visits, then you are doing well. If you catch him admiring you or flirting with you, then its almost a done deal. That is your cue to flirt back with him a little bit. The warning I give to these girls, and you should see it coming, is it is also likely that your starchitect professor will make sexual advances on you. If this happens, gently deflect them, but keep him interested.
Its a dangerous game and you will need a strong nerve. You will have the full and undivided attention of a world famous architect trained on you. You will be inundated with the charm of a guy with a charisma so enigmatic that he has got a huge following spanning a whole profession. Can you resist that?
You have got to! under no circumstances should you have sexual relations with your starchitect professor.
If I were to completely suspend all and any ethical predispositions that I may have about this and discuss it just in terms of a career path, I would give you the same advice. Here is why:
True! there are many a girls that get into a sexual relationships with their starchitect or even non-starchitect professor and it results in an internship and even a successful relationship and lifelong professional partnership. Elisabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio is a perfect example. Ricardo Scofido was the starchitect professor and Elisabeth Diller was his student. They had a sexual relationship and it lead to one of the most successful and influential starchitecture firm in the world today. However, for every Elisabeth Diller there hundreds, if not thousands of girls that slept with their professors and got discarded afterwards - never even setting a foot into the starchitect staffers club.
But as I said in my earlier note, if you want to gamble this is your decision to make. The odds are against you.
What if you are not the Designer Chic kind of girl?
This is an interesting question. Its a given that if you made it to Harvard or Princeton then chances are, you are intelligent and can communicate well. Not every last one of you, but a good lot out of the bunch are. What if you are all that, but not the Designer Chic Type?
My response is that not being the Designer Chic Type does not automatically exempt you from being a sexual object or prey for your starchitect professor. Starchitect professors come in many different types and have a wide array of preferences: some like the tom-boy type, some like the dominating type, some even like dumb girl type. Some are even gay, in which case it is the boys that are then the sexual objects. My observation is just that most of them seem to like the Designer Chic type.
So I would actually give you the same exact advice as I gave the Designer Chic Type:
Be aware that as a woman, you are a sexual object. If there is anything you can do to increase your sex appeal, go for it! Use it to your advantage, but above all do NOT sleep with your starchitect professor.
After you get in the Club
Freeze your eggs!: Whether you think you want children in the future or not, go to a clinic and harvest and freeze your eggs: as mentioned in the previous note, all the alumni of this club seem to agree that the lifestyle that you will endure in the Starchitect Staffers Club is a torturous, painful, demeaning and unhealthy one. It is characterised by sleepless nights, little or no time off and massive amounts of stress. You can not have a child and be in this environment at the same time. Getting pregnant is like a silver bullet to the gut of the vampire that is the starchitect staffer. Even if you have made up your mind that you will not have children ever, it is still a good idea because there is a slight possibility that you might change your mind when you hit 40.
Some of you may say, why this advice for women and not for the men?
Although, parenting is a joint responsibility, your male counterparts will not have to make this choice should their wives or girlfriends becomes pregnant. Our society and profession do not expect men to make a choice between career and children. Is it unfair? yes, but to that I will tell you "suck it up!! and get over it already!!!" life is unfair and its not constructive to spend spend your time dwelling on the unfairness of things. If you feel that strongly then you should quit architecture and become an activist and devote your life to doing something about it. Otherwise you accept that it is what it is and move on. You are not going to be the next female star-architect if you let things like this affect you. With every situation you have advantages and disadvantages and you will have to take a hard and honest look at it and figure out an effective way forward.
Think about it, Zaha Hadid is not or have never been a feminist. She is an egoist! she discusses the unfairness of situations in relation to gender only (and absolutely ONLY) when it suites her. If she is criticized in the press, she will say it is because the critic is sexist and or say if I were a man then they would not have said this or that. For her the whole feminist movement centers around one female and her name is Zaha Hadid. If you want to be the next female starchitect, take a page from Zaha and drop the feminist agenda. The only woman that matters is you. Get comfortable with the phrase kicking the ladder behind you. If the woman in front of you falls, step over her, but make sure no one sees you.
Ready for some more advice?
Let talk about sex:
If you took my advice above and used your female radiance as part of your strategy to get into the Starchitect Staffers Club (...and in many cases even if you did not), there is a strong chance that the starchitect will make sexual advances on you.
Do not under any circumstances capitulate to any of these advances. Politely redirect them.
If you did not recognize the elegant lady in the picture that I fist showed you above, that is Ann Tyng. She was partner at Louis Kahn Architect and has been referred to as the geometrical strategist and muse behind the famous architect. As smart and talented as she was, she made the mistake of having a sexual relationship with her starchitect boss and eventually got pregnant. When it became apparent, she was sent to Italy to have the child in order to mitigate the scandal. Soon after the relationship ended and with it the career she could have had.
Similarly, this also happened with Harrit Pattison, a landscape architect who worked at Kahn's office. She also made the mistake of sleeping with the starchitect and getting pregnant. Guess what happend? Discarded and career ended? Yep! you guessed it!
Let me retort, for every Elisabeth Diller there are hundreds or perhaps thousands of Harrit Pattisons and AnnTyngs. I am not your father or grandfather, so I have no interest in keeping you a virgin until you die, I don't know you and you do not know me either, and for all I know we will never meet each other. So why this insistence that you do not sleep with the starchitect. It is strategically stupid and the odds are against you.
If you prefer to think strategically and make intelligent decisions, I would like to point you to this video.
Exit Strategy
As I mentioned in the previous note, as you approach your late 30's or early 40's, this lifestyle might get a bit tiring and impractical for you especially if you are thinking about starting a family or just realizing that this life style is not sustainable.
Most of you will take option 1 and go and work at a regular architecture firm and spend the rest of your days telling your star-struck colleagues stories at the lunch table about the good old days when you used to work for Richard Mier or Aldo Rossi.
Some will take the option of being a full time mom or some combination of this with the above option. This is not an option for your male colleagues. It partly explains why despite the relatively even gender ratio in the Starchitect Staffers Club, that there is such a low ratio of women that actually go on to become starchitects. If you took my advice and froze your eggs, for those of you who are exiting in your early 40's, this is where your frozen eggs will come in handy. If you watched the video above and did your homework, you may have found a suitable partner and not the guy closest to you when the music stopped. You can now unfreeze your eggs have children with him or her and live happily ever after.
Unfortunately only the few will take option 3 (starting your own firm with the intention of being the next starchitect), which most likely means not having children. For you, I give you the same advice as in previous note. Go to OMA and find a partner (preferably male) your chances of becoming a star will increase tremendously. If you came this far, I congratulate you. I might actually meet you or hear of you after all. I will be down here in the trenches writing and campaigning on your behalf when the Pritzker committee passes you over and hand your husband a Pritzker Prize for the work that you both accumulated over the life of your practice without as much as a mention of your name.
Conrad Newel,


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The idea of having customer service "best practices" can be comforting for those striving to create a great customer experience. And it works well as long as the provider doesn't make the mistake of assuming that the prescribed, standard way of proceeding is right for every customer.
Standards (which is what I prefer to call best practices) always need to be tailored to account for the customer's actual, individual situation. Your organization can prescribe the best way to usually greet someone, but that's as far as it can go. Reading and reacting to the individual customer is a crucial adjunct to the cookie cutter you started out with: "It's a great day at Applebee's, how can I serve you?" isn't going to make the day of someone returning from a funeral. For example.
I'm going to argue, today, however, that there are customer service worst practices, approaches to be avoided at almost all costs and in almost all situations. With no room for argument or equivocation.
Here are a few--a few of the very, very worst. Please let me know what I've left out, and I'll update this article as need be.
1 Worst Practice: Failing to hire employees with the right traits for customer-facing work. How much easier it is for everyone -- the customers, the leader, and even the employees -- to start out with human material that is most suitable. I know it's frustrating that not everyone is cut out to work face to face (or phone to phone, or terminal to terminal) with employees, but it is the reality. I suggest the acronym WETCO as your shortcut to the five traits most crucial in employees with frequent customer contact: Warmth, Empathy, Teamwork, Conscientiousness, and Optimism. I discuss customer service hiring, and the details of WETCO, here.
(Bonus worst practice: Hiring by hunch, firing by fiat. Hiring needs to be a scientific process. Hire to a profile, study your results, revise your profile, and keep at it. Hiring on a hunch is deadly, and -- very, very often -- discriminatory. And the best organizations I know and work with stay far far away from Tony Hsieh's soundbitey statement that he "hires slowly and fires quickly." Rather, they hire slowly and then spend a lot of time and effort making the fit right for the employee, whether that means adjusting duties or switching departments, they don't throw employees in the trash heap if they can help it.)
2 Worst Practice: Thinking that customer service training is a "Day One and Done" kind of thing. Day One, a powerful orientation process and moment, is indeed important. But you also need to commit to periodic customer service training, review, reinforcement. It's like washing your hair. You can't take wash it once (even if you not only rinse but repeat!) and expect that will permanently protect you from grime and grit in the days that follow. As my fellow customer service aficionado Bill Quiseng likes to quote from Samuel Johnson, "People need to be reminded more than they need to be instructed."
3 Worst Practice: Failing to invest time, effort, and flexibility toward the goal of seeing things the way your customers see them. Don't wait for Undercover Boss to call; you should be practicing what Peters and Waterman long ago christened (among my tribe, who don't have christenings, per se, we should call that "bris-ened" I suppose) "MBWA": Managing By Wandering Around – and so should your employees. You wander, your employees wander; you park where the customers park, you come in the entrance your customers use, you call in on the phone lines and use the same retail website and perhaps laborious login routine you make your customers go through, and you'll learn a lot. Sit by yourself or use reserved parking or the employee entrance and your intranet, and you won't. You'll learn about your company's problems on Yelp rather than from your own eyes.
4 Worst Practice: Missing your quality miscues, because you think the technical quality of your service is all that matters. This is a big problem for lawyers, doctors, engineers, and artisans of all types. For a civilian (your customer), determining what is a good result in any particular situation is hard. Even in litigation, where results would seem to be black and white, it is difficult for your client to determine what a good result is in a particular case, considering the particular strengths and weaknesses of their case and the range of outcomes that are possible.
So what can (and do) customers can judge you on? Dirty shoelaces. Lipstick on your teeth. Surly and neglectful office staff. Blocked exit doors. Archaic and clunky websites. And so forth.
5 (Bonus worst practice: Ignoring the power of language. Many of the quality and service miscues you're giving off relate to language:Language needs to be gentle, kind, and brand appropriate—without sounding stilted. And language includes getting the "words without words" right at your company as well: yielding the right of way to customers, never having your back to a guest, and so on.)
6 Worst Practice: Misunderstanding, or failing to be generous with, or failing to be realistic about, time.Being late or misleading about timetables, being insensitive to the timing issues and pacing preferences and expectations of your customers. Remember: a perfect product, delivered late, is a defect. Great institutions are doing everything possible these days to adjust themselves to the customer's perception of time: this includes self-service options for project tracking (a simple example of this is the Domino's Pizza Tracker, but even USAA Insurance allows you to see the progress of your insurance claim online, 24/7), flexibility on delivery times, guaranteed times for menu items in fast casual restaurants, and more.
7 Worst Practice: Misunderstanding the meaning of money. Money means different things to different customers. Money means different things to the same customer, at different times or in different contexts. Different amounts of money mean different things to the same customer. And so forth. It gets exhausting for someone in business, someone who's hoping to please as many customers as possible. The bottom line is this: Money is highly, in fact only, symbolic. Which means that the following equation is one you need to watch out for: Small amount of money + unfair circumstances = big customer problem. Even the smallest amount of money, demanded of or taken from a customer under circumstances the customer considers "unfair," will have a disproportionate impact (negative, of course) on your business – while a large amount of money, required of the customer under circumstances that seem fair and square, will seem an understandable part of doing business with you. Adjust your way of thinking of money to match the customer in front of you. Or else.
8 Worst Practice: Discriminating by channel. Gift cards that only work on the web. Items for sale at your brick and mortar storefront that can't be returned by UPS--you got the customer to shlep into town once to visit you, don't force them to do it again to return the one item that didn't go with the rest of their décor. Items for sale online that you can't return in-store (why in the world wouldn't you want a web shopper to visit your store--even if it's for a return?) In a single buzzword, what I'm talking about is failing to commit to true omnichannel is a nonstarter with today's, and especially tomorrow's, customers.
9 Worst Practice: Winging it every time something goes wrong.Not having a first-rate client recovery process in place is not acceptable. No matter how superb your product or service is, every company that's in business needs a service recovery process with the goal of restoring (or even enhancing) customer satisfaction, as well as reducing the possibility of a recurrence.
10 Worst Practice: Flubbing your beginnings and endings—the two most important moments as far as a customer's memory is concerned.
10.1 (Bonus worst practice: Not realizing the beginning starts before the beginning—that customers are picking up info and implications about you before they ever arrive at your official website or the front door of your establishment.)
Micah Solomon is a customer service consultant, customer experience speaker, and bestselling author. Thanks also to fellow customer service thinker Bill Quiseng for contributing to this article.


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The LispWorks manual set comprises the following books:
The books above are available in HTML format. Commands in the Help menu of any of the Common LispWorks tools give you direct access to the online documentation in HTML format, using the HTML browser that is supplied with LispWorks. Details of how to use these commands can be found in the Common LispWorks User Guide .
The LispWorks manuals are all available in Portable Documentation Format (PDF). You can use Adobe Reader to browse the PDF documentation online or to print it. Adobe Reader is available for free download from Adobe's web site,
Please let us know if you find any mistakes in the LispWorks documentation, or if you have any suggestions for improvements.


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Big Sunday happily welcomes you to Our Really Big Community Calendar.
We try to include all kinds of volunteering and helping opportunities for all kinds of interests, talents, passions, and ages! As you'll see, these include volunteering opportunities (one-time and long-term) as well as the chance to support a nonprofit by attending fundraising events. Plus, of course, we include all of Big Sunday's homegrown events, too! Whoever you are, and whatever you do, there is someone out there who could use your help.
If you have questions about our calendar, or would like to add a listing, please contact firstname.lastname@example.com or submit your event/opportunity via the button below.
17 Wed |
North Hollywood Interfaith Food Pantry
North Hollywood Interfaith Food Pantry
Nov 17 all-day
The North Hollywood Interfaith Food Pantry is always delighted to have new volunteers and there are several ways to get involved: There are several packing teams who pack groceries at Temple Beth Hillel. Dates and[...]
The Center in Hollywood
@ The Center in Hollywood
The Center in Hollywood
@ The Center in Hollywood
Nov 17 all-day
Regular volunteers commit to serving at The Center 1+ days a week in the capacity of participating in or leading groups, attending coffee hour, cleaning, or assisting with office work. Weekly shifts range from 1.5-8[...]
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Inner-City Arts
@ Inner-City Arts
Inner-City Arts
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Nov 17 @ 8:00 am – 2:30 pm
STUDIO VOLUNTEERISM Studio volunteers work alongside teaching artists to support K-12 students as they explore their own creativity in one of our seven studios: Visual Arts, Ceramics, Creativity Lab, Media Arts, Drama, Dance, and Music.[...]
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@ Downtown Women's Center
Nov 17 @ 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm
Are you a natural problem-solver? Do you want to build relationships with DWC's residents? Join our Residence Host team! DWC provides 24-hour/7 day-a-week staffing of our Residence to answer questions, troubleshoot problems, and provide support[...]


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Rule #1 - Be Patient - Rule #2 - Don't ask when, if you don't contribute - Rule #3 - You have coding skills - LinuxMCE's small brother is available: http://www.agocontrol.com
Heres hoping for you............L3mceHey Ted with those commands is there any chance of wiping my existing RAID array
Great job LMCE Dev Team.Core - Installed as described in the wiki. Ran apt-get update and sudo apt-get dist-upgrade, without changing sources list. (all ran good, with a couple of 404 error, but nothing serious).Ran the LMCE ICON - took about 3 hours to finish, but eventually did. Rebooted the system, got AVwizard and setup finished. Had to configure DHCP IP Range was the only change I made.Ran the diskless MD script, libdvdcss on Core to enable cd/dvd play - no problemsMD1 configured nicely - ran libdvdcss, upgraded HULU in KDE. (dvi=720p, sound = spdif) this system is working like a charm. Had to ensure that I selected the correct resolution, where in 0710 it was already set to 60hz, in 0810 if you don't have a local monitor attached, you'll need to arrow over and down arrow once to ensure the setting.MD2 configured nicely - where this system is a s-vidoe configuration, it's always been difficult to setup, was a breeze.All-in-All a great piece of work and I wanted to share my appreciation to those that have worked their butts off to get it to this point.


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Crispy Quinoa Sliders.
Welp. Seems like I've got an addiction of sorts.
Can't stop making these burgers and sandwiches with beans and potatoes and actual vegetables (if carrots count) and a variety of flavors. Have I ever told you how TEXTURE makes my life? It does. And even though I keep posting basically the exact same thing every week (sorry… sort of… but not) with a different taste and maybe a slightly different method, it's only because each one keeps getting bettttttter and better. At least in my delusional world.
But no, in the real world too.
Like… this quinoa?
It gets so crispy I can hardly STAND it. The outside is so crunchy and golden and the insides are soft, but thanks to some coarsely chopped garbanzos and (ugh) carrots, it's not like they are complete mush. They are hearty and just… crazy. I had to make mine into sliders because I've had an ongoing convo with a twitter friend over some quinoa burgers she ate a few weeks ago, and I'm enamored with all things mini… and am also fanatical over anything in burger form with a million toppings. Mini just means you get to eat more and when that means eating more burgers?
Don't gotta twist my arm.
I've been super obsessive lately. I get in moods.
I have this odd obsession going with the movie The Kids Are Alright (watch it every week) and an even odder obsession with hummus on really thick toast (eating it like thrice a day). I'm obsessed with returning fall TV and every second that plays out on Boardwalk Empire and how weirdly sexy I find Kevin Costner (sort of had an issue with Dances with Wolves back in the day) and planning a trip to NYC and holiday nail polish colors and buying too many purses in shades of hot blue and purple that I'm not even stylish enough to use. I'm obsessed with saying the word obsessed even though I hate the word obsessed but am either 1. too lazy to look up another fitting synonym or b. not smart enough to know if those synonyms even work in these things I call run-on sentences. Ugh. It's all very tiring. It's like my mind is running a marathon.
One thing I'm not obsessed with at all is Monday. Like the day. In general. Yeah yeah. I know. Another person to whine about Mondays. Great. So original. Not like they're going anywhere. I just can never get back into the groove. But I'm sure if I stopped partying like it was 1999 on the weekends (and by partying I mean laying around doing absolutely nothing and sleeping in and eating large amounts of macaroni and cheese and trying to disconnect my mind from the world for a hot five secs) it would be so much easier. And the other thing is that there is only one thing that really saves me on Mondays and it's food… so there's that. I attempt to plan for something really delicious but not food coma inducing; something I look forward to all day and something that gives me a lot of options for the rest of the week in case my motivation wears off by the time ABC programming rears it's ugly (I mean beautiful) head Monday evening.
… bingo.
I think these quinoa burgers are one of the most versatile meals I've made… because the crunch means they can go on ANYTHING. No, seriously. Anything. Sandwiches, salads, as a side dish ('cause you know this would never fly as a main dish in my house) with ketchup, as a cold snack, or even chopped up and mixed with rice or pasta or… something like that. Whatever you want to do, do it. Just because.
Crispy Quinoa Sliders
- 1 cup uncooked quinoa, rinsed
- 2 cups vegetable or chicken stock
- 1 cup cooked chickpeas
- 1/2 cup freshly grated provolone cheese
- 1/4 cup panko bread crumbs
- 1/2 cup chopped carrots
- 2 green onions, thinly sliced
- 2 garlic cloves, minced
- 1 large egg + 1 egg white, lightly beaten
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon pepper
- 3 tablespoons olive oil
- 12 multigrain slider buns or dinner rolls
- 2 avocados, sliced for topping
- 1/2 cup chipotle mayo for topping
- Add quinoa and stock to a medium sauce pan and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cover, cooking for 15 minutes or until can be fluffed with a fork. You can do this ahead of time or even the night before (and store quinoa in the fridge) so the quinoa can cool.
- While quinoa is cooking, slice the green onions, chop the carrots, mince the garlic and grate the cheese. Place it all in a bowl, then add panko and mix. Coarsely chop the chickpeas and add to the bowl. One quinoa is finished cooking, add it to the bowl and mix well until incorporated. If needed, let cool or place in the fridge for a few minutes to cool. Add in beaten egg + egg white, salt, pepper and mix well. Form into patties (I really squeezed a handful of quinoa together and smoothed it into a round, it may take some squeezing and form to get the patties to stick) that fit the size of the buns you have.
- Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat and add 1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil. Once hot, add 5-6 quinoa patties and cook until deeply golden brown and crispy, about 5 minutes. Gently flip and cook 5 minutes more. Remove and continue with remaining olive oil and patties. Serve with sliced avocado chipotle mayo!
Did you make this recipe?
Be sure to follow @howsweeteats on instagram and tag #howsweeteats. You can also post a photo of your recipe to our facebook page.
I appreciate you so much!
Still obsessed though.


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(Reuters) - Walt Disney Co has gained marketing and distribution rights for any future "Indiana Jones" films under an agreement with Paramount Pictures, the studio that released the first four movies in the blockbuster franchise.
Paramount, a unit of Viacom Inc, will retain distribution rights to the original four films, the companies said in a statement on Friday. The "Indiana Jones" movies were produced by Lucasfilm, which Disney acquired in 2012.
Disney has not announced plans for a fifth "Indiana Jones" movie, though the new deal could make it easier to move forward on a new installment. Paramount will receive an undisclosed share of the proceeds from any future films.
The series began with 1981 film "Raiders of the Lost Ark" starring Harrison Ford as a hero archeologist. Ford starred in three later films, most recently "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" in 2008. Steven Spielberg directed each of the four movies, which have grossed $1.9 billion worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo.
(Reporting by Lisa Richwine; Editing by Ronald Grover, Richard Chang and Tim Dobbyn)


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You can get a reader by downloading one to your computer. The simplest way is to sign up to a free web-based service such as Google Reader.
'Share this page', or social bookmarking tools, are a method for internet users to store, organise and share web page bookmarks on the internet. Unlike storing bookmarks on your computer using the favourites menu, social bookmarking stores your bookmarks on a website such as del.icio.us.
The key advantage of social bookmarking is its public nature. This means your saved bookmarks are not confined to one computer but you can access them anywhere, and they can be shared with anyone using the internet.
Most social bookmark services encourage users to sort and organise their bookmarks with informal tags. The tags can be searched by other users, enabling them to discover new and relevant materials tagged by others on the internet.


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Saturday, June 30, 2007
Must. Buy. iPhone. Must. Buy. iPhone....
What about the open phones? Well, OpenMoko is running late, but is just about to ship developer phones for real, however the version that will have WiFi is their second revision that is months away, and their software is still being developed. However Gumstix are also very close to getting their new "Goliath" phone kit out, and that is a much more flexible design, where I can add WiFi etc. without replacing anything else, and I can wrap my own case design around the 4.3" LCD. The software is rudimentary, but we intend to port the OpenMoko packages to the Gumstix based "myPhone", and tinker with it to do whatever we want. In the meantime, I will soon have a phone that "just works" better than anything else....
Monday, June 25, 2007
Updates: AdSense, FON and Millicomputing
There is a global commercial WiFi service that has good coverage in places like Hotels and Airports called Boingo. They aggregate services that are not branded under their own name, but if you have a Boingo account you can use the service. Last month they announced a deal to include FON in their network, more than doubling the number of access points to a few hundred thousand. This month they announced an annual flat rate plan for $39 per month. Very cool! Global WiFi access at a low flat rate.
I'm posting a series of updates at Millicomputing.com that describe a detailed design for an Enterprise server Millicluster. Its a radical improvement in terms of performance per watt and performance per dollar for some kinds of applications.
What the iPhone doesn't do, why not, and why I still want one...
Back in January, I wrote a summary of thoughts on the iPhone from the perspective of typical product development practices. That post got a lot of traffic, it seemed to be very popular in Germany, where there is a great tradition of quality product design (I can't think of a German designed product that isn't well engineered).
Overall, with the additional advance information that has been released so far I don't think I was too far off the mark. I did expect that support for Adobe Flash and Java would be included, but they both appear to be missing. This is going to be the biggest pain, as there are a lot of web sites that use Flash or Java applets. Given time I expect these issues will be addressed.
I talked about Minimum Marketable Features (MMF) which are described in a book called Software by Numbers, written by my good friend Mark Denne. Its a philosophy of development that optimizes product features by releases over time. Many of the iPhone's shortcomings are explained by an initial focus on the needs of people who have never used a "smartphone" before, (rather than a focus on the business market) and a close integration with other Apple products that support an "insanely great" combination of product features.
For integration with non-Apple products, there is a two pronged strategy. One is to provide basic file viewers for Microsoft Word and Excel documents that are common email attachments. The other approach is to leverage Google's web based application suite within the Safari browser, which now includes Word, Excel and Powerpoint, Gmail etc, and also integrate with the Google maps application on the iPhone itself.
For the question of whether the iPhone can be used in corporate environments, there are two issues - virtual private network (VPN) access to get at internal web sites, and email integration with Microsoft Exchange. There have been some hints that the standard MacOSX VPN functionality is included, and Apple states that syncing is supported with Outlook/Entourage contacts and calendars. For actual Exchange email access, the Exchange server would have to support IMAP or POP (most aren't setup this way) or the Outlook Web Access client could be used in the Safari browser on the iPhone.
Safari is key. It is not only the way to manipulate documents and corporate email, its also the designated "API" for new iPhone applications to be developed. Apple stated that Safari will have access to many of the internal functions of the iPhone, so that the primary programming language for developers becomes Javascript. For all the people with existing mobile applications this is a pain, as they want to have J2ME to get them ported quickly. However, the iPhone is a huge leap forward in user interfaces, and to provide the consistent look and feel that magnifies the ease of use, Apple are enforcing Safari as the only framework for extending the iPhone. This makes perfect sense as a product strategy. It has upset many developers, but the laser-like focus on ease of use greatly increases the iPhone's perceived value and total addressable market. More users will be willing to pay more, increasing Apple's sales. Later on, perhaps Apple will focus more on the "traditional" smartphone market, but for now they are simply going to redefine what that market is.
How many people have both iPods and cellphones in their pockets? This fall, how many students will turn up at college with an iPhone in their pocket?
My work machines are a MacBook Pro and a Blackberry. I'm building the homebrew myPhone design (more on that later), but I think I'm getting tempted by the user interface, I want an iPhone....
Saturday, June 23, 2007
FON: World WiFi Domination?
The incentive in the short term is that you can get a high quality router at a very low price. FON has been giving routers away to seed markets and to surround Starbucks stores. The incentive in the longer term is that if you have a FON router at home, you can use any FON router you find on your travels for free.
I've had a FON router for some time. I met CEO Martin Varsavsky when he gave a talk at eBay last year, and got one of the initial Linksys units with custom firmware. When their own hardware solution came out it had a much nicer feature set, so I upgraded to La Fonera as they call it. I've been using it as my primary home router for about six months now, and its an excellent design. Its been much more reliable than the other low cost routers I've owned (Netgear and Linksys) and works as well as the much more expensive Apple Airport Express that I've had for a long time.
FON just released a booster antenna "La Fontenna", it is designed to give 6.5dB of extra signal strength and project further out than the standard antenna. The idea is that you mount it on the window facing the street, and it covers a larger area. I just got one, and while it seems to work fine, it doesn't appear to be giving me as much signal strength or range as I expected. I wandered around outside with my MacBook using iStumbler's WiFi monitoring widget to track signal strength, and it showed a bit more gain than my Airport. I think I need to experiment a bit more with positioning La Fontenna.
So next time you need a router, don't just buy a normal one, join Fon and support world domination!
Ads that don't make sense
Friday, June 22, 2007
Jobs at Netflix: Capacity/Performance and Storage Admin
I just hired an engineer for my own group, but we have a lot more openings:
We are looking for a performance and scalability oriented Java/Oracle developer
Senior Performance and Scalability Engineer
My good friend Ed Wustenhof just joined Netflix to manage the System Administrator group, he's got two open positions, a storage oriented one:
Sr Unix Administrator - Storage Focus
and a Capacity Planning and Performance Tuning one that I've copied the full info for below.
Senior Unix Administrator - Capacity Planning & Performance Tuning
Design, Plan, Deploy and Support all aspects of Netflix's server and storage environment with a focus on Performance Tuning & Capacity Planning.
The SA team at Netflix is a crucial component to the success of the day to day operations of the company. We are a highly motivated and capable team that is seeking a new member that can take a key role in the provisioning and support of our unix/linux servers while ensuring performance stays within thresholds.
Being the second line of support and subject matter expert, you will take individual responsibility for resolving system, storage and application issues reported via the Netflix Operations Center. You will be expected to resolve tactical issues while providing structural solutions. Your area of expertise is performance tuning and capacity planning.
Part of the position will require travel to and from the data center (15-20min or ~10 miles), sometimes multiple times/week. On-call responsibilities, night and weekend projects are also to be expected.
The candidate will often be the technical lead on short term projects. They will be the Subject Matter Expert with its associated responsibility. Some level of project planning and coordination of resources is to be expected. This includes vendor and contractor coordination.
We are looking for someone with the following technical experience:
•Deep experience of Unix with at least one of the following operating systems: AIX, Linux or Solaris.
•Expert in capacity planning and performance tuning.
•Strong experience in web based environments and supporting such architectures such as Java, Tomcat, Apache and other web applications.
•Knowledge of IBM enterprise/midrange systems and storage virtualization is a plus.
•Strong coordination and analytic skills.
•Project planning experience and the ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously.
•10+ years IT experience with at least 8 years as System Administrator.
•BS or MS degree in Computer science or equivalent experience.
Exposure to the following highly desirable:
•Experience with Symantec/Veritas product like VxVM and Netbackup
•Strong expertise with SAN-based storage/application required.
•Large Scale (5Tbyte +) Storage solutions deployment experience.
•Unix shell and Perl programming.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Using Occam to Simulate p2p Web Services
About a year ago I gave a paper at an IEEE E-Commerce conference that described how I used the latest pi-calculus enhanced version of the old Inmos Transputer language Occam to build a very efficient massively threaded simulator for large scale p2p web services that ran on my laptop.
I blogged this at the time, but The paper itself is subject to the rules IEEE sets out for peer-reviewed conference papers and you need to be a member or pay a fee to get it from http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/CEC-EEE.2006.81
However, I wanted to share this more widely and have just posted a pdf of the presentation slides for my IEEE paper. Here are the first few slides, and a description of the Tools section:
Simulation of Skype Peer-to-peer Web Services Choreography Using Occam-Pi
Complex web services are very difficult to test and verify before deployment on a large scale.
A semantically equivalent in-memory simulation can be built using Occam-pi that runs up to 100,000 nodes about a million times faster than real life.
Rapid protocol development and detailed behavioral analysis using simulation supports the development of robust services that can scale.
The implementation of a simulator that models centralized web services and application to application messaging over the Skype Peer to Peer network is described.
- The Landscape
- The Problem
- The Tools
- The Solution
- Implementation
- Running the Simulation
- Conclusion
- References
The Tools – Pi Calculus
- WS-BPEL, SSDL and WS-CDL are based on Pi-Calculus
- Pi-Calculus is based on Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP)
- Pi-Calculus provides a formal model of parallel message based computing
- Occam-Pi
- The Occam language is based on CSP, and has been extended to add the Pi-Calculus extensions to form the Occam-Pi language.
- The primary implementation of this language is known as KROC, the Kent Re-targetable Occam Compiler
- KROC is freely available from the University of Kent at Canterbury, UK
- Runs on Intel architecture Linux, MacOS X, and Microsoft Windows/Cygwin platforms. Older versions exist for SPARC, PPC etc.
The Tools – Occam Language Constructs
- The constructs that are used in Web Services choreography map directly to Occam language constructs
- The Occam language has direct support for sequential, parallel and alternate processing blocks, complex protocols, and channel based communications
- Occam-Pi adds more dynamic constructs to the language
- Mobile channels - pass a channel end over another channel
- Mobile processes - suspend a process, pass it over a channel and resume it in a new context
- Dynamic process forking with barrier synchronization
- Rigorous Occam-Pi Compile-time Checks
- Processes or expressions are not allowed to have any "side effects"
- Syntax and usage of all protocols, data and constructs is checked
- Occam is designed to allow very comprehensive static analysis
The Tools – Occam Runtime Characteristics
- There is no need to use XML message encoding or namespaces
- since the compiler can check that a protocol is being communicated correctly
- At runtime, the Occam-Pi language is fast small compiled code
- with its own threading model, in a single process
- The Occam-Pi runtime detects and reports deadlock
- including the line number in the code at which each process was stalled
- Occam-Pi is very efficient
- All communication takes place in a single address space at memory bus speeds
- Basic process creation takes 20 nanoseconds on an 800MHz PC
- Basic channel communications takes 70 nanoseconds
- Compared to typical web services transactions over the internet these transactions are about a million times faster
- The language is also very compact, and one hundred thousand to one million threads can be created within a 2 GByte address space.
- [Cygwin] "GNU + Cygnus + Windows", http://www.cygwin.com/
- [GraphML] "Graph Modeling Language ", http://graphml.graphdrawing.org/
- [Hoare78] C. A. R. Hoare. "Communicating Sequential Processes." Communications of the ACM 1978.
- [Hoare85] C. A. R. Hoare. Communicating Sequential Processes. Prentice Hall, 1985.
- [KROC]. "Kent Retargetable Occam Compiler" http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/projects/ofa/kroc/
- [Occam2] Inmos Ltd, Occam 2 Reference Manual. Prentice Hall, 1988.
- [Milner99] Robin Milner, "Communicating and Mobile Systems: the Pi-Calculus", Cambridge University Press, 1999.
- [Skype]. "Skype Developers API" https://developer.skype.com
- [SSDL] Webber et al. "Asynchronous Messaging between Web Services using SSDL." IEEE Internet Computing Vol10, No1 2006.
- [WS-BPEL]. "OASIS Web Services Business Process Execution Language" http://www.oasis-open.org
- [WS-CDL] "Web Services Choreography Description Language", http://www.w3.org
- [yEd] "Graph visualization and editing tool", http://www.yworks.com/
Friday, June 08, 2007
Aftermath is finally released...
Its available on Fractal's site at fractal.bebo.com and via the iJigg widget below.


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This article is more than 1 year old
Xandros celebrates Microsoft union with patents
Exchanges emails
Xandros is licensing key communications protocols from new best friend Microsoft on email and collaboration - areas where they compete.
The open source specialist will implement Microsoft's ActiveSync and Outlook-Exchange Transport protocols, enabling over-the-air synchronization of email and calendaring between mobile devices and servers, and improved communication between email on Windows clients and Xandros's Scalix sever.
Scalix is an email, calendar and messaging subsidiary owned by Xandros, whose eponymous server is pitched as an alternative to Microsoft Exchange.
Xandros hopes Scalix can now rival Microsoft Exchange in terms of connectivity and interoperability with Windows Mobile based smartphones, and Windows desktops, laptops and handhelds. Scalix claims more than one million deployed mailboxes.
Despite the companies' potential rivalry, Microsoft called the agreement a milestone in Xandros's vision to deliver a complete Linux stack and "make certain that its stack is interoperable and integrates within existing customer IT infrastructure ecosystems, for both platforms, applications and messaging".
The deal is one of the first tangible deliverables to emerge from the companies' relationship, announced amid much controversy in June. Under that deal, Microsoft promised to license a broad set"of its server communications protocols.
Microsoft stands to gain in a number of ways. It is likely to try and convert Xandros and Linux users to Windows over the long term. Interoperability will also help continue sales of Microsoft's Windows software in environments where Linux has become established or is gaining credibility.
Microsoft is also likely to take licensing revenues from Xandros. Under the typical five year ActiveSync licensing deal Microsoft charges $100,000 or the first year's royalties - depending on which is higher - with a per unit royalty charged after that.
Interestingly, Xandros' partnership with Microsoft is slated to last five years. Terms of this particular segment in the companies' alliance, though, were not revealed.®


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Recorded by Agusti Fernandez himself, these are lovely dialogs between the pianist and Derek Bailey on electric; rich and reserved conversation with free improv's elder statesman.
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Sample The Album:
Derek Bailey-electric guitar
Agusti Fernandez-piano
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Label: Incus
Catalog ID: CD58
Squidco Product Code: 11825
Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2009
Country: UK
Packaging: Jewel Tray
Recorded at La Pedrera Barcelona on Tuesday, May 12, 2005 by Agusti Fernandez.
Recorded by Agusti Fernandez himself at La Pedrera Barcelona as part of a series of concerts "De Prop" curated by Laura Herrero and Roger Roca, these are lovely dialogs between the pianist and Derek Bailey on electric; rich and reserved conversation with free improvisation's elder statesman.
"The British free improvising guitarist Derek Bailey relocated to Barcelona in 2003. During his time in this vibrant city there were numerous musical meetings. This live duo concert recording with Agusti Fernandez at La Pedrera in May 2005 was one such occassion.
A Silent Dance is released on Incus Records under the umbrella of "The Barcelona Chronicles". These recordings document Derek's new approach to his instrument, whilst dealing with the complex and progressive limitations caused by Motor Neurone Disease. Here was someone for whom obstacles were occasions for necessary creativity. This was to be his last public performance."-Incus Records, from the back cover.
The Squid's Ear!
Artist Biographies
• Show Bio for Derek Bailey "Derek Bailey (29 January 1930 - 25 December 2005) was an English avant-garde guitarist and leading figure in the free improvisation movement. Bailey was born in Sheffield, England. A third-generation musician, he began playing the guitar at the age of ten, initially studying music with his teacher and Sheffield City organist C. H. C. Biltcliffe, an experience that he did not enjoy, and guitar with his uncle George Wing and John Duarte. As an adult he worked as a guitarist and session musician in clubs, radio, dance hall bands, and so on, playing with many performers including Morecambe and Wise, Gracie Fields, Bob Monkhouse and Kathy Kirby, and on television programs such as Opportunity Knocks. Bailey's earliest foray into 'what could be called free improvised music' was in 1953 with two other guitarists in their shared flat in Glasgow. He was also part of a Sheffield-based trio founded in 1963 with Tony Oxley and Gavin Bryars called "Joseph Holbrooke" (named after the composer, whose work they never actually played). Although originally performing relatively "conventional" modal, harmonic jazz this group became increasingly free in direction. Bailey moved to London in 1966, frequenting the Little Theatre Club run by drummer John Stevens. Here he met many other like-minded musicians, such as saxophonist Evan Parker, trumpet player Kenny Wheeler and double bass player Dave Holland. These players often collaborated under the umbrella name of the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, recording the seminal album Karyobin for Island Records in 1968. In this year Bailey also formed the Music Improvisation Company with Parker, percussionist Jamie Muir and Hugh Davies on homemade electronics, a project that continued until 1971. He was also a member of the Jazz Composer's Orchestra and Iskra 1903, a trio with double-bass player Barry Guy and tromboneist Paul Rutherford that was named after a newspaper published by the Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin. In 1970, Bailey founded the record label Incus with Tony Oxley, Evan Parker and Michael Walters. It proved influential as the first musician-owned independent label in the UK. Oxley and Walters left early on; Parker and Bailey continued as co-directors until the mid-1980s, when friction between the men led to Parker's departure. Bailey continued the label with his partner Karen Brookman until his death in 2005[citation needed]. Along with a number of other musicians, Bailey was a co-founder of Musics magazine in 1975. This was described as "an impromental experivisation arts magazine" and circulated through a network of like-minded record shops, arguably becoming one of the most significant jazz publications of the second half of the 1970s, and instrumental in the foundation of the London Musicians Collective. 1976 saw Bailey instigate Company, an ever-changing collection of like-minded improvisors, which at various times has included Anthony Braxton, Tristan Honsinger, Misha Mengelberg, Lol Coxhill, Fred Frith, Steve Beresford, Steve Lacy, Johnny Dyani, Leo Smith, Han Bennink, Eugene Chadbourne, Henry Kaiser, John Zorn, Buckethead and many others. Company Week, an annual week-long free improvisational festival organised by Bailey, ran until 1994. In 1980, he wrote the book Improvisation: Its Nature and Practice. This was adapted by UK's Channel 4 into a four-part TV series in the early '90s, edited and narrated by Bailey. Bailey died in London on Christmas Day, 2005. He had been suffering from motor neurone disease." ^ Hide Bio for Derek Bailey • Show Bio for Agusti Fernandez "Agustí Fernández (Palma de Mallorca, 1954), with a perfectly based career and a well-deserved international reputation, is one of the Spanish musicians of major international projection and a world reference in the field of improvised music. Fernández has worked with famous musicians of the free improvisation scene like Peter Kowald, Derek Bailey, Butch Morris, Evan Parker, Barry Guy, Mats Gustafsson, Joel Ryan and Peter Evans a.m.o. He is a member of the Blue Shroud Band, Mats Gustafsson NU Ensemble and Barry Guy New Orquestra. Up to the current date he has published more than 80 CD's He has also worked with the recognised composer of contemporary music Héctor Parra, who composed in collaboration with the pianist FREC, a solo for expanded piano. FREC has been premiered at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in 2013 with the collaboration of the video artist Lucas Caraba. He has conducted various improvised music ensembles like Ad Libitum Ensemble (Varsaw), Free Art Ensemble (Barcelona), Ansambl Studio 6 (Lujbljana) Orquesta FOCO (Madrid), Entenguerengue (Jérez de la Frontera), Impromtu Ensemble (Valencia), etc. Along his professional life Agustí Fernández has received much recognition. His solo for piano "Mutza" presented in New York in 2007 was distinguished by the New York magazine AllAboutJazz as one of 10 best concerts from that year. The CD "Un llamp que no s'acaba mai" on PSI (Agustí Fernández, John Edwards and Mark Sanders) has been distinguished by Allaboutjazz as one of the best 10 cd's in 2009; the CD "Aurora" on Maya Recordings (Agustí Fernandez, Barry Guy and Ramón López) was selected by Cuadernos de Jazz magazine as the best CD in 2007, by the Jaç magazine as the best fourth disc of the history of the Catalan jazz and it was Disc d'émoi (February, 2007) for the French Jazz Magazine. The "Agustí Fernández Aurora Trio" received the second prize at the BMW Welt Jazz Award 2012 celebrated in Münich, Germany. In 2000 he received the Festival Altaveu Award, Sant Boi de Llobregat (Catalonia). In 2001 he received the FAD - Sebastià Guasch Award, Barcelona (Cataluña) with Andrés Corchero por el or the performance "A modo de esperanza". In 2011 Agustí Fernández was the main character of the documentary film "Los dedos huéspedes" by Lucas Caraba, which has been screened in several international festivals of documentary. In 2014 the Ad Libitum Festival (Warsaw) dedicated a monographic edition to celebrate Fernández's 60th Birthday. He's professor of improvised music at the Escuela Superior de Música de Catalunya (ESMUC). He's developing an important teaching activity in the field of improvised music and, among other, he has been teaching in IRCAM in Paris, the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre de Tallin, the Royal Conservatory in The Hague (Holland), the Conservatory in Arhem (Holland), the Taller de Músicos in Gijón (Spain), the Taller de Músics in Barcelona (Spain) and the Conservatorio Superior de Música in Salamanca (Spain)." ^ Hide Bio for Agusti Fernandez
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A game for little programmers!
A fun Way to Learn to Code! The most backed board game in Kickstarter history sneakily teaches preschoolers the fundamentals of programming, from coding to functions, while making silly turtle noises! Before you know it, your little one will be writing computer games rather than just playing them!