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I know it has not been reported anywhere and everyone takes it as a given if someone interviews they absolutely will take the job if offered.
Garth Snow may not get his first choice here either if he has made up his mind which is someone no one has written about.
The potential coaches are people first and anything else second with family and financial considerations as well as relocating. A contract has to be worked out and given Neil Smith's circumstances that person no doubt will make sure it's binding and official from day one if they hired an agent. There can also be a question of that former club requesting compensation as the Isles needed permission just to interview.
Of course most clubs prefer to get any lingering commitment to a coach off their books but a team like Boston may want back that second round pick for Nokelainen to allow Scott Gordon to leave his spot in Providence. Peter Chiarelli had to go through this to get out of Ottawa but that was more about tampering claims and was not allowed to start in Boston until mid-July.
For all of the potential coaches there is also a question of a coaching staff, past practice here has seemingly been coach picks his own assistants. What will this mean for Ted Nolan's staff if a new coach wants his own assistants he feels comfortable working with?
Also a coach considering this job will want to know what Mr Wang's plan is if his Lighthouse Project is not approved whether I will have a job beyond his term as owner if he puts the club up for sale?
Finally that person has to decide if this is what they really want at this time for themselves (like anyone) and if the contract term is acceptable. Anyone going in knows coaches here last two seasons, it's Garth Snow's first hire and that may be unfair given ownership/gm changes but that is the history of this franchise back to Al Arbour.
Beyond Mr Botta's comment a while back Garth Snow to his knowledge has not been given a contract extension.
You look at a man like Paul Maurice and by any hockey/business standard the man has had two very tough years in Toronto on and off the ice with a general manager who wanted to fire him in season (John Ferguson) before the interim gm in Cliff Fletcher let him go. Sure we can talk about his overall record and what he would do (or fail to do) here but that's something that also could play into things for Paul Maurice.
Bob Hartley has had a nice break for himself and some separation from what happened in Atlanta, however he also has some players like Jon Sim and Andy Sutton to consider working with again and relocating along with the dollars and where his career is at this time.
Scott Gordon if he leaves a program in Providence on top will have to relocate and for now will inherit a club with really no prospects on his NHL defense with a lot of veterans to start the season up front in Guerin, Weight, Sillinger and a lot of older players on the backline in Sutton, Witt, Streit and Martinek. The role best suited to his skills may come in season if the club drops out of contention and many of those veterans at forward are traded/retire as more opportunities are available for prospects.
If he is the choice he will have a fourth line with potentially his former player in Andy Hilbert and Ben Walter. Richard Park does not make this a group of young prospects but of course all AHL clubs carry veterans.
We'll see, it is never as easy as Garth Snow picking up the phone and offering someone the job once he makes up his mind.
With that it's time the New York Islanders hire a coach.


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Hillary: Why Is Barack's Bigger than Mine?
Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton spoke at Furman University in South Carolina last week -- but sources say Clinton is pissed because Obama upstaged her -- literally!
On Tuesday, Barack was given access to Furman's 1,400 capacity McAlister Auditorium -- while Clinton made her Thursday speech from the smaller, 500 capacity Younts Conference Center. Apparently, size does matter!
We're told Hillary's people were steamed when they realized that BO had a bigger room -- and complained to the organizers of the events. A call to Clinton's people was not returned.

subset: commoncrawl


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The ingredients and method are in my Banana Salsa YouTube video. |
This feels like a cool refreshing beverage kind of day. Maybe a pitcher of margaritas, or just some fresh mint tea over ice. Speaking of refreshments, how about making a batch of salsa for appetizers tonight? If you already have my Sensational Salsas, from Apple to Zucchini book, then you already have the recipe for my favorite Banana Salsa. But if you don't have the book, click on the link and check out my salsa video, here. And if you go to this link, you'll see that both my Salsas and my Homemade Crackers with Herbs books are on sale right now.
Lori & Tom Hess. Lori weaves pine needle baskets, Tom makes his famous pie plates. |
Summer is also pie weather. I've been visiting with Tom and Lori Hess at the Reeds Spring (Missouri) Evening Farmers Market (you can see more photos on the market's FaceBook page). Tom Hess is famous for his incredible pie plates, hand-thrown in his shop. They're deeper than a regular pie plate, made of unglazed clay, and the pie crust actually cooks perfectly on the bottom of the pie.
Fine Cooking magazine (2006) declared Tom's plates as The Perfect Pie Plate. |
That's it, that's just about all there is of Round Top, TX, population 50. |
Round Top, TX is a little bit of a place, even smaller than the town where I grew up. You wouldn't think of it as the kind of eating destination that would be nationally known, would you? Nor would you look at Royers Cafe and immediately think, "Wow, I gotta stop there!" But for those of us who are adventurous-eating-travelers, it's exactly the kind of place we look for.
On a balmy evening this spring when I'd finished with my responsibilities at the herb festival at nearby Festival Hill, I stopped by Royers Cafe just as they were closing. Kind and genial hosts as they are to everyone who steps over their doorstep, they invited me to sit on the front porch and visit. It's a family place and the entire Royer family keep the place running smoothly. Even after a long, tiring day, they found the time to visit with a pie-hungry traveler.
It's fun to see a family that not only works together, but can laugh and like each other at the end of the day! |
CBS Morning Show conducted a nationwide survey of great cafes. Royers came out in the top 3 or 4 in the nation! |
These are the real deal, homemade, over-sized, melt in your mouth pies. |
Peach on the left, apple, their top seller in the middle, cherry on the right. Mmmmm. |
Getting married? You can order a wedding pie. Why not? Cakes are boringly same. |
People send thank you notes, signs, photos. This is just one tiny spot on a wall that's completely covered with notes from happy customers. All the walls, and the ceiling, too, are covered. |
That pretty well says it all. |


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I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with the Arduino. But if I had two serious gripes about the original offering it was the 8-bit CPU and the lack of proper debugging support. Now there's plenty of 32-bit support in the Arduino IDE, so that takes care of the first big issue. Taking care of having a real debugger, though, is a bit trickier. I recently set out to use one of the cheap "blue pill" STM32 ARM boards. These are available for just a few bucks from the usual Chinese sources. I picked mine up for about $6 because I wanted it in a week instead of a month. That's still pretty inexpensive. The chip has a lot of great debugging features. Can we unlock them? You can, if you have the right approach.
The Part
For a few bucks, you can't complain about the hardware. The STM32F103C8T6 onboard is a Cortex-M3 processor that runs at 72 MHz. There's 64K of flash and 20K of RAM. There's a minimicro-USB that can act as a programming port (but not at first). There's also many 5 V-tolerant pins, even though this a 3.3 V part.
You can find a lot more information on this wiki. The board is a clone–more or less–of a Maple Mini. In fact, that's one way you can use these. You can use the serial or ST-Link port to program the Maple bootloader (all open source) and use it like a Maple. That is, you can program it via the USB cable.
From my point of view, though, I don't want to try to debugging over the serial port and if I have the ST-Link port already set up, I don't care about a bootloader. You can get hardware that acts as a USB to ST-Link device inexpensively, but I happen to have an STM32VLDISCOVER board hanging around. Most of the STM32 demo boards have an ST-Link programmer onboard that is made to use without the original target hardware. On some of the older boards, you had to cut traces, but most of the new ones just have two jumpers you remove when you want to use the programmer to drive another device.
The "blue pill" designation is just a common nickname referring to the Matrix, not the pharmaceuticals you see on TV ads. The board has four pins at one edge to accommodate the ST-Link interface. The pin ordering didn't match up with the four pins on the STM32VLDISCOVER, so you can't just use a straight four-pin cable. You also need to bring power over to the board since it will have to power the programmer, too. I took the power from the STM32VLDISCOVER board (which is getting its power from USB) and jumpered it to my breadboard since that was handy.
The Plan
Programming the board is easy — I knew the community had done a lot of work to create a support package for it. You do need a recent version of the Arduino IDE (not the one that shows up in the default Ubuntu repositories). I downloaded version 1.8.1 from the Arduino website, just to be sure. That was the first step of my general plan of attack:
- Load the latest Arduino IDE
- Set the compile messages to verbose
- Use the Board Manager to install the STM32 F1 packages
- Get more tools
- Capture the build directory
- Run the right version of GDB
The recent versions of the Arduino IDE let you select platforms by using the Board Manager (available from the Tools | Board menu). However, if you look, you won't see this board on the list. You'll need to tell the IDE where to get the third-party support package. To do that, you can go to the Preferences menu item (on the File menu for Windows and Linux; I understand it is on the Arduino menu on the Mac). You need this same preferences dialog for step two, also.
Step 2 isn't strictly necessary, but it will make step 5 easier. Just check "Show verbose output during compilation." What you really need to know is the temporary directory the IDE uses for your build and this is the easiest way to do that, as you'll see.
Further down the preferences screen is an entry for "Additional Boards Manager URLs." If there's already something there you should click the little button to edit the list. If it is empty, you can add this URL:
Now you can go back to the Tools | Board menu, pick Board Manager, and search for STM. You'll probably see a few packages (I had three) but the one for the F1 will specifically mention the blue pill. Click the button to install and wait for it to do its thing.
Once installed, you'll have some new entries on your board menu. When you have the blue pill selected, you'll be able to pick a few options for uploading including the one we want: ST-Link.
The package has all the stuff you need to build and download programs using a variety of methods, including ST-Link. However, it doesn't have the particular tool you need to do debugging.
It is simple enough to build the tools. The GitHub repo has the code and some simple build instructions. You do need libusb and CMake, but the page explains all that and once you have all the pieces, the build goes fast. For many OS choices, there are pre-built binaries you can use, too.
You'll also need to know the USB ID of your ST-Link board and add it to the udev rules for Linux. If you don't do this, you'll need to be root to program the device and that's not a good idea. However, depending on which ST-Link interface you use, it may already be there from other software or from the Arduino install. I'd try a test first and if it only works as root, you'll need to update udev.
If you did your own build, I suggest running the tool stlink-gui to perform the test. You can also run st-info --descr
If you run stlink-gui, press the connect button with the ST-Link and blue pill powered up and connected. You should get the information about the device. If not, try as root. If that works, you need to update udev. I created a file, /etc/udev/rules.d/45-stlink.rules.
ACTION=="add" SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR(idVendor)=="0483", ATTR(idproduct)=="3744", MODE="0666", GROUP="usbusers"
You'll need to modify that for the USB ID of your particular interface (mine was 0483:3744; the lsusb command can help). The mode allows all users to read and write the device. I made the group owner usbusers, but since everyone can access the device that probably isn't strictly necessary.
Once you can do all that, try running the blink sketch from the IDE examples. Be sure to pick "Upload Method: STLink" from the Tools menu of the Arduino IDE. If it doesn't work, you may need to use the tools you just built instead of the ones that come with the Arduino IDE. Mine worked but the debugging required the custom build (because the Arduino package didn't ship with that particular tool built).
Finding the Tools and Build Directory
The Arduino IDE is pretty friendly, so it doesn't try to install things like boards for all users, since that would require root. The board package you loaded winds up in your home directory under ~/.arduino15/packages/STM32/tools. There's an STM32Tools directory and a few more levels down you'll find copies of the ST-Link tools. If they don't work, you can manually run the tools you built in the previous step to do your uploads. When we debug, we are going to do that anyway.
What's really important though is back under the STM32/tools directory is another directory with the compiler that the IDE uses to compile your code. There's also a matching version of GDB — the GNU Debugger — there that you will have to use.
If you loaded an example, make sure you save it to your own directory (I hate saying sketchbook). If you don't, the IDE will make a private copy of any changes you make and things will get confusing.
Do a build (the checkmark icon) and — assuming you checked the box in step 2 — you'll get a lot of output from the build tools. You might verify that the compiler in use is the one we mentioned above. You'll also see that your program gets added to other things and put in a directory named something like /tmp/arduino_build_XXXXXX where the XXXXXX is a number. Your source code will be in this directory named something like sketch/Blink.ino. In the top-level directory will be the executable Blink.ino.elf. This is what you need to debug.
If you are comfortable editing your Arduino settings file (just be sure the IDE isn't running first) you can also force a build directory using the build.path key. The IDE does have an "export binary" command (on the Sketch menu) that compiles to your sketch folder. However, this .bin file doesn't have enough information for the debugger.
Debugging at Last
Finally, you can debug. Use the arm-none-eabi-gdb executable from the same directory as the GCC used to compile your program. This is important. If the versions don't match you'll get strange errors even though many things will seem to work. Provide the name of the elf file as an argument to GDB.
If you like, you can use the -tui flag to GDB to get a sort of text-based GUI. Either way, you have one more step to go. The st-util tool you built earlier can listen to the ST-Link interface and provides a socket that GDB can use to do debugging.
Start it like this:
st-util -p 1234
That will make it listen on port 1234. If you already use that port for something else, pick another one. Just remember that on Linux only root can listen on ports below 1024, so pick a bigger number.
Once that is running, you fire up GDB with your elf file name and issue the command:
target extended-remote :1234
Or, I've recently started using:
target remote :1234
You can run the two parts on different computers, so use a hostname if necessary (that is, devbox21:1234). Most times, the programs are on the same box and you can use localhost or omit it like I did. The difference between remote and extended-remote is that the server does not shut itself down at the end of an extended-remote session. It often works, but I have seen cases where I had to restart the server anyway, so lately I've been using plain-old remote to force me to restart it with each session.
A "load" command to GDB will now flash your program to the board. A typical session after a load might be:
break main continue list n n n
The "n" command steps to the next instruction.You can find a lot more about using GDB in an earlier post. You also might find it easier to watch the walkthrough in this video:
A few caveats. First, optimization can cause your lines to execute out of order, or even go backwards. It can also cause variables to not be visible where they have been optimized out. The other thing to watch out for is that, in some cases, the debugger internally single steps. This can cause very slow execution of delay routines, for instance. You might reduce or remove delays while debugging or be careful where you try to single step instead of placing breakpoints.
Final Thoughts
It would be neat if the Arduino IDE let you debug inside of it. However, there are ways to do that using Eclipse (and GDB) or Visual Studio (if you use Windows). If you are like me and OK with the command line, you might think about using one of the Makefiles for Arduino instead of the IDE. If you aren't OK with the command line, there are GUI shells for GDB that you could try. If you'd rather hack the ST-Link firmware, we've seen that done, too. If you miss doing printf's, you might want to try a Black Magic probe, which ought to work about the same as the ST-Link interface, but also provides a serial port for printf and other mischief.
By the way, Arduino isn't the only choice for this board. It is possible to use mBed and other development tools with them. But that's a topic for a future post.


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Columns Retired Columns & Blogs |
Having read this review and the Mark Levinson review above, I'm having my doubts about class-D. It's been around for a while (not sure, did 47's Gain Card first employ this?) and certainly has its benefits in getting a lot of power out of a small package. Ideal for subwoofers I think, but what about the rest of the system? Do you think this technology will further develop into something truly great, or will class A/AB rule the roost?
Also a minor typo: a price discrepancy: "costs $3499 each, $7498/pair" the specs section has what appears to be the correct price though.


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This article is more than 1 year old
Intel debuts '3D transistors' with 22nm chip recipe
How do ya like them, Apple?
Intel has unveiled its 22nm manufacturing process.
The process marks the debut of Intel's "Tri-Gate" transistors, first revealed as a research project over eight years ago, and the company has demonstrated its first microprocessor built with the new process, a chip codenamed "Ivy Bridge".
Equipped with a three-sided gate – the portion of a transistor used to control current – the Tri-Gate provides 50 per cent less power consumption than existing planar transistors as well as "unprecedented" performance gains, according to Intel. Chipzilla boasts that this is "the world's first 3D transistor".
"This transition to 3D devices will help us extend Moore's Law," Bill Holt, Intel senior vice president and general manager of Intel's technology and manufacturing groups, said Wednesday morning at a press conference in San Francisco.
Prior to the press conference, Intel said it would make its "most significant technology announcement of the year", and it was widely expected that this would involve the switch to 22nm. In recent days, rumors have indicated with the new process set to roll out, Intel is hoping to land a new breed of lower power processors on Apple's iPhone and iPad.
A transistor consists of three basic components: a source, a gate, and a drain. When a voltage is applied to the gate, electrons flow from the source to the drain, turning the transistor "on". When a different voltage applied, current between source and drain stopped, turning the transistor "off".
You can imagine the source and drain as two ends of a square pipe through which electrons flow. Existing transistors are "planar". The gate, which controls the flow of electrons, sits atop the pipe, touching it on only one surface. The Tri-Gate is nonplanar. The gate wraps around the pipe, touching not only the top plane of the pipe but the two sides as well. Unlike with planar transistors, electrons can flow across three planes, moving significantly more current through the transistor than would be the case with a planar transistor of the same size.
This allows the Tri-Gate to operate at a low voltage, with lower current leakage. Intel can maximize current when the transistor is on, and minimize current when it's off. The company says that the 22nm Tri-Gate provides up to a 37 per cent performance increase at a low voltage compared to its 32nm planar transistor, as Intel Fellow Mark Bohr explained at the press conference. The transistor also consumes less than half the power as a 32nm planar transistor at the same performance level, the company said.
The new transistor is "ideal" for use in small handheld devices. Naturally, Apple was not mentioned. But the company did say it intends to use the new process with its mobile-centric Atom chips. The cost of building the chips with the new transistors, Bohr said, is two to three per cent higher per wafer.
Today, Dadi Perlmutter, executive vice president and general manager of Intel's architecture group, demonstrated the new "Ivy Bridge" chip, part of the company's Core family of microprocessors. It will be used in PCs, notebooks, and servers, and Perlmutter indicated that chips will arrive in volume early next year. The company did not give a timeframe for Atom's switch to 22nm. ®


text: On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 10:18:40PM -0700, Mark Hahn wrote: > > This reminds me to ask about all the Xen questions.... Virtual machines > > (sans dynamic migration) seem to address the inverse of the problem that > > MPI and other computational clustering solutions address. Virtual machines > > assume that the hardware is vastly more worthy than the OS and application > > where Beowulf style clustering exists because the hardware is one N'th what is necessary > > to get to the solution. > > I don't agree. virtualization is a big deal because so many servers > run at low duty cycles (utilization). VM lets you overlap them in time > while preserving the fiction that they're on separate machines. this > is perfect for latency-tolerant operations (like anything involving > humans...). virtualization is a throughput thing. That fiction also permits the guests to run disparate OS stacks and permits software to live on when the host that ran it falls over. Finally, the fiction permits moving guests from one physical host to another. All good qualities for suitably chosen apps. -- David N. Lombard, Intel, Irvine, CA I do not speak for Intel Corporation; all comments are strictly my own.


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All exhibits free unless otherwise noted.
The Art Room Artwork by J. Scott Hovis, open house noon-4pm Saturday, May 21. 294 W. 22nd
Jordan Schnitzer Art Museum "Video Works, 1996-2006" by Peter Sarkisian, opening reception 6-8pm Friday, May 20; "Keseys Jail Journal," through June 26; "Diaspora, Identity & Race: Cuba Today," through June 13. UO Campus
Marinas Art Studio Sculpture and photography from Marina Hajek, Kelly Tavares & Jessica Zapata, through June 4. 2650 Willamette
Maude Kerns Art Center "Oregon Made for Interiors" artistic furnishings, opening reception 6-8pm Friday, May 20. 1910 E. 15th
The Karin Clarke Gallerys "Painting in Brittany" features work by Margaret Coe; see Whats Happening for the gallerys Marche dinner Monday |
The Art Annex Work by Lynn Ihsen Peterson & Jill Atkin. 749 Willamette
The Arts Center "Time," work by inmates of the Oregon Correctional System. 700 S.W. Madison, Corvallis
B2 Wine Bar "Into 2011," work by Richard Quigley. 2794 Shadow View
Backstreet Gallery Painting, photography, ceramic works & multi-media by Meredith Draper. 1421 Bay, Florence
Big City Gaming "Fools Gold," work by Brian Knowles, Marlitt Dellabough, Keegan Gormley, Andrea Alonge, Tim Jarvis & more. 1288 Willamette
Bonnie at Play "Ceramic sculpture" by Bonnie King.1082 W. 2nd
Books on Main "In Between the Lines," mixed-media paintings by Beth Kruziki. 319 E. Main, Cottage Grove.
CALC"Childrens Artwork from the Co-op Family Centers Annual Art Show," paintings, mixed media collage, clay works & works on paper by young artists ages one to 11.458 Blair
Chelitas Taqueria Aztec & Mayan influenced work by Isabel Dutroncy. 321 Main, Spfd
David Minor Theater Paintings by Jordan Limbach, through June 2. 180 E. 5th
David Joyce Gallery "Oregon Wine Country," featuring artists from the Plein Air Painters of Lane County. LCC Campus
Davis Restaurant Work by Eric D. Peterson, through June 1. 94 W. Broadway
DIVA "The Last Album: Eyes from the Ashes of Auschwitz-Birkenau," photography by Dr. Ann Weiss, through June 4. 280 W. Broadway
Don Dexter Office "Exploration," work by Tara Kemp, through May 31. 2233-B Willamette
Dot Dotsons "Your Instructors on Display!" LCC Photography Instructors Photography Exhibit. 1668 Willamette
ECO Sleep Solutions Felted wool art by Tylar Merrill, pottery by Annie Heron, whimsical dolls by Mari Livie, & luminescence light sculptures by Stephen White. 25 E. 8th
Eugene Storefront Art Project "Arte del Sur" with work by Isabel Dutroncy, Samuel Becerra, Kelly Tavares, Jessica Zapata, Marco Moncayo, Erin Bucklew, & Selma Burgoin, Latin Music & Folkloric dances with Ballet Alma de México; R.T. Gossamer, Robin Saxton, Michael Perkins, David P. Miller, Linda Perkins, Sean Sbragia, R.Z. Fulton, work by kids from the Head Start program. Various locations
Eugene Whiteaker Intl Hostel "Sensuous to Sharp,"fashion, pencil drawings & acrylics byDhakaya Jaianjali Fanna-ma & others.970 W. 3rd
Florence Events Center "Adventures in Aqueous Media" by Bernie Herr; "Exposure 2011" photography from local artists, through June 30. 715 Quince, Florence
Full City Coffee Roasters Mixed media art by Kelly Locke, photography by Jordan Brandt & Bryce Mayall, acrylic paintings by Audrey Betenson. 842 Pearl
Goldworks Jewelry Art Studio "Colors of Loreto ã Images of Baja California," watercolor & photography by Robin Marks-Fife. 169 E. Broadway
Harlequin Beads and Jewelry Original beaded jewelry by Harlequin Staff. 1027 Willamette
Healing Scapes and Sound Body Healing Arts Mixed media, charcoal & acrylic work by Katey Seefeld.1390 Oak, Suite 3
Heartwood Naturals Co-op "Birds of a feather" watercolors, watercolor-pastels & silk paintings by Merideth Ferrell, through June 3. 566 Olive
Imagine Gallery Photography by Katharine Emlen; jewelry, pendants, through May 27. 35 E. 8th
Jacobs Gallery"Revealed," featuring work by Jenny Gray, Richard Norman, & Vince Carl, through June 11. Hult Center
Jawbreaker Window Gallery"Whats ART?" byArtTrek.796 W. 4th
The Jazz Station Paintings by Sarkis Antikajian. 124 W. Broadway
Karin Clarke Gallery "Painting in Brittany" by Margaret Coe, Bets Cole, & Erik Sandgren, watercolors by Nelson Sandgren, through June 11. 760 Willamette
Knight Law Center Gallery "Portland Panoramas," photography by Stuart Allen Levy, through July. UO Campus
LCC Art Gallery "surface.(ed)" sculpture and ceramics by Eric Shultz & Anna Stehle, through May 19. LCC Campus
Lane County Historical Museum "Tie Dye & Tofu: How Mainstream Eugene Became a Counterculture Haven" through September 30. 796 W. 13th
MECCA "Let It Shrine," artwork by Michael deMeng & Kathy McConnell, through May 28. 449 Willamette
Michael DiBitetto Ethereal, exquisite etchings, clothing art.201 Blair
Museum of Natural and Cultural History "The Last Polar Bear: Facing the Truth of a Warming World;" "Oregon: Where Past is Present," ongoing, "Making Faces," masks by museum visitors & UO students;"Face to Face with Masks from the Museum Collections," North American, African, & Oceanic mask collections. 1680 E. 15th
Museum of Unfine Art Kelly Briggs, Erin Even, Selena Fields, Nate Klute, David Norem & Leland Vesey.537 Willamette
New Frontier Market "Pictures of Spring," acrylics on canvasby Marilyn Kent; "Fire of Desire," New Phoenix oil paintings by Nicola Noetic,through May 20.1101 W. 8th
The New Zone Gallery "HOLY LANDS: A Mothers Passion, A Sons Legacy (A Photo Collaboration)" work by Lorri Goodman & son Eli Espinoza Goodman; "Honoring Motherhood." Music provided by Po OHara. 164 W. Broadway.
Ninkasi Brewery"New paintings from Mexico" by Kari Johnson,(minors until 8pm),continuing.272 Van Buren
Olive Grand "Elegant Wood Meets •a la fresco," wood creations by Dennis Hepler, paintings & sculpture by Karen Russo. 1041 Willamette
OPUS VII "Just Dancin," oil paintings by Anne Teigen, through June 11. 22 W. 7th
Oregon Arts Alliance "Reclaiming Real," photography by Alex Levine, through May 21; Photography by Patrick Plaia & Michael T. Williams, through May 28. 881 Willamette
Passionflower Design The Fourth Annual Susan Goodwin jewelry trunk show. 128 E. Broadway
Pizza Research Institute "Autism Rocks,"mixed mediafundraiser, ongoing. 530 Blair
The Redoux Parlour "Fashionable, eclectic local art,"ongoing.780 Blair
Sam Bonds Garage "The Mount Crackle Debacle," paintings by Aaron Sullivan, through May 26.407 Blair
Springfield City Hall Gallery "Earth Textures," oil paintings by Charlene Eckman, "Seascapes," acrylic paintings by Shirley Reade; through June 16. 225 5th, Spfd
Springfield Museum "Presentations in Pure Pigment" work by pastel painters, through May 28. 590 Main, Spfd
Storefront Art Installation Artwork from University of Oregon Art Installation class. 329 Main, Spfd
Studio CFlamework beads by Teague Cohen, artisan jewelry by Tracey Bell.245 Blair
Studio West Solvent transfers by Cameron Kaseberg. 245 W. 8th
Territorial Vineyards Various watercolor society artists.907 W. 3rd
Vistra Framing and Gallery Jewelry by Cecile Haworth, Laurel Caccivio and Lynn Taylor, boxes and books by Pat Carroll, fused glass by Gretchen Delius, and artist conks by Danny Haworth. 160 E. Broadway
The Voyeur "Vanishing Time," photographic work by Maria Cardenas, through May 20. 547 Blair
Wandering Goat Coffee Co."/is/ this really /is/ worth it," photography by Kari Spohn, through May 25.268 Madison
White Cloud Jewelers Student artwork from University of Oregon Art Installation class. 715 Main, Spfd
White Lotus Gallery "Faces," portraits and faces from 19th century Japanese woodblock prints, work by contemporary artists, through May 28.767 Willamette
The Woodpeckers Muse "More Orange than Blue"by Peter Herley, through May 28. 372 W. Broadway
WOW Hall Cigar Box Guitars by Braxton Nagle, through May 31. 291 W. 8th
ZDREAMZ Gallery "Electronic (computer graphics) & Fine…" by Ron LaFond.937 W. 3rd


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Green Bay, city, United States
Jean Nicolet established a trading post on the site of Green Bay in 1634; many notable French explorers and missionaries followed. The permanent settlement, the oldest in the state, dates from 1701. The key to the Fox-Wisconsin water route and thus an entry to the Midwest, Green Bay became a fur-trading center and was occupied successively by the French (1717), the British (1761), and the Americans (1816). With the settlement of the Old Northwest after the War of 1812 and the decline of the fur trade, Green Bay became the trade center of a lumber and farm area.
Of interest are the National Railroad Museum and many historical buildings, including the Tank Cottage (1776). A branch of the Univ. of Wisconsin and a technical college are in the city, which is also the home of the Green Bay Packers professional football team.
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2024, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: U.S. Political Geography


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Google has completely rewritten the Quality Ratings Guideline, the resource that their team of quality raters uses to rate websites for Google. This one is a brand new version, rewritten from the ground up, so it isn't just a refresh of the old one (and most doesn't even resemble any of the old Guidelines that SEOs scrutinized in detail whenever one got leaked). It has some great new insights into how Google is approaching the search results and what it takes to be a top ranked website.
The new version 5 is just three months old, and shows how Google is placing much more emphasis on their knowledge graph style results that seem to be taking over the Google search results, as well as reputation, authority, and of course, the case of advertisements on a page.
Google is now putting a high emphasis on sites that are considered to have a high level of expertise, authoritativeness or trustworthiness. This is something that Google has been working on in their algorithms for some time, and shouldn't be much of a surprise for webmasters to see this.
Lacking in E-A-T
Google's brand new emphasis in the new Quality Rater's Handbook is the idea of E-A-T, which is a website's "expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness".
Likewise, Google is stressing that sites that lack expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness should be awarded the Low rating when a page or site is being assigned a rating by one of their quality raters. And more importantly, Google says that lacking a certain amount of E-A-T is enough of a reason for a rater to give any page a low quality rating.
This means that webmasters will need to do what they can to ensure their sites pass the newly minted E-A-T test.
Google also warns the quality raters about sites with user contributed content, such as forums or other sites that allow users to submit articles or information. They urge caution because pages on the sites may not be trustworthy and many lack appropriate amount of E-A-T.
That said, there are some types of user generated content that have an extremely high level of expertise, such as forums that are frequented by experts on specific topics, and Google asks the raters to try engage the experience and expertise of those authors to try and determine if a page should be considered trustworthy or not.
What makes an expert?
As part of their new E-A-T, Google does stress to raters that there are many kinds of experts, all dependent on the topic area. Not every subject area has a way to qualify expertise. It is easier to determine a medical expert than an expert for a hobby site.
Raters are also supposed to consider everyday expertise, even in "Your Money or Your Life" (YMYL) areas – something that the last publicly available version of the guidelines stressed. Specifically, support forums are an excellent resource for specific diseases, since they have input from those who are suffering from the disease. Those contributors might not be physicians, but their life and everyday experiences with the disease make them an expert on sharing those personal experiences. That said, for specific medical advice, it should still come from doctors or health professionals.
For SEOs, this is going to be crucial that you establish your writers as authorities or experts in your field. You want people to trust your site – not to mention Google is clearly emphasizing the role of authority and expertise in websites already, so going the next step further definitely isn't surprising in the least.
Knowledge Graphs
A significantly higher portion of the guidelines covers Knowledge Graphs, and shows that they are having their raters spend quite a bit of time rating just the knowledge graphs alone, showing Google plans to continue their march on the search results real estate percent.
Previous versions talked about Title Link Result Blocks (TLRB) and No Title Link Result Blocks (NTRB) as the way Google differentiates between two distinct styles of knowledge graphs the company uses. The first, TLRB, displays a clickable headline at the top of the area, while NTRB blocks do not.
Vital versus non-Vital Knowledge Graphs
Google also asks raters to specify a Vital rating for TLRB which give all the needed information for the query on the TLRB's landing page. This hints even more that Google is putting a lot of resources into knowledge graphing up the web and it's here to stay (much to the delight of searchers but not so much webmasters).
Many Ads = Low Quality
While the page layout algo has be attempting to reduce the prominence in the search results of pages that are heavy on advertising, the previous versions of the quality raters guide didn't place much emphasis on advertising on a website unless it was deceptive or spammy. Now, the new guidelines definitely want raters to look at advertising on the page to determine if there is an overabundance of it.
Google specifically mentions layouts that are all advertising at the top, and requires scrolling to see the content – to the point where people could initially believe that there is no content on the page at all. The same for advertising designed to look like navigation links or secondary content.
However, this also is completely opposite from what AdSense likes their publishers to do – not perhaps to the extreme where you need to scroll to see content, but they are constantly reminding publishers that they can add additional ad units or replace smaller ad units with larger ones.
They also state that pages should get the Lowest rating if the rater feels the design tries to manipulate the user to click the ads, inline ads or download links.
Supplementary Content
While previously the quality rater's guide focused on the main content of the page, with only a brief mention of supplementary content, now there is a new emphasis on not only supplementary content, but types of supplementary content as well. Gone are the days where you can have a high quality page with just navigation for the supplementary content. (Added: Read more in our Supplementary Content Analysis: All About Supplementary Content in the Google Quality Rater's Guidelines)
While most people consider secondary content to be strictly navigation and perhaps the footer, Google now wants raters to look at other types of secondary content, with a particular emphasis on content that suggests related content on a site.
The quality of that content is of higher importance now. Previously, Google only specifically mentioned supplementary content in two ways – additional suggested videos on a page about a Saturday Night Live episode, as well as what many would consider important features of a recipe site – printable features, reviews and nutritional information. Now, Google wants to see a wide variety of supplementary content on a page, and are putting a greater emphasis on it as being an important and integral part of a page that is worthy of a High or Very High rating.
Now, Google considers valuable supplementary content to include not only those things but also showing similar makes or models of an item on a shopping website, ability to multiply or divide a recipe,
Google also wants supplementary content to have a higher emphasis for those pages that could be considered High or Highest quality.
Google's rule of thumb for quality raters on determining what is secondary content: anything on a page that isn't the main content or advertisements. They consider it important to the overall user experience.
Google does caveat that some times of webpages lack secondary content but aren't necessarily low quality – such as community or local sites. Likewise with PDFs or images, secondary content isn't needed in those cases either.
Bottom line, if you don't have useful secondary content on your website currently, you should begin working on that as soon as possible, because this is clearly where Google wants to head.
Bad Supplementary Content
Google has been stressing the use of deceptive ad placements and pages that are very ad heavy as being subject to the page layout algo. Now Google considers any site or page with bad supplementary content as being worthy of a Low rating. Primarily, they are warning about deceptive ad placement where users can accidentally click on an ad or are lured to click an ad, believing it to be content on the site and not an advertisement.
They also specifically mention advertisements placed under headers such as "Top Posts", which has been against the Google AdSense terms for quite some time, but which we still see used with AdSense and other ad networks.
Essentially, if the secondary content is unhelpful or distracting, that's a Low quality rating.
Poor Page Design
Google mentions the many typical things that advertisers trying to squeeze every last penny out of a webpage do, such as popups, large quantity of ads with only minor content and text ads in navigation.
Google is also calling out a specific advertising tactic that many, many websites use – and that is inserting advertisements a few times in the middle of the main content, breaking it up with main content – ad – main content – ad – main content. This is used on many newspaper and magazine sites – and if this gets factored into the algorithm, you can be sure newspapers will complain about it (or paywall instead).
If you are using ads within content – it is probably a good idea to consider restricting it to one, as Google sees it as jarring when a user has to go back and forth between content and ads too many times. And those fancy links in navigation that are really ads? Webmasters should probably start rethinking those too.
Google had some pretty specific list of features that rater's should use to determine if a site is a true merchant site or not – something that had some companies concerned if they did not offer it. For example, many merchants that are legitimate might not offer a wish list feature, a gift registry or a user forum, but some SEOs were pressuring that it was "needed" simply because the quality rater's guide included it on a list of features for true merchant websites.
In the new handbook, this has been removed. Instead, Google asks raters to look for pages such as contact information, return and exchange policies. This does bring it more inline with what many smaller merchants offer, who either don't have the budget, technical know-how, or even the need for some of the features Google listed previously.
Rating forums and Q&A
Google wants raters to determine not only the expertise of the site itself, but also who are participating in the particular thread that is being rated. Also considered are whether new threads being added, if many people participating and whether the conversations are in-depth?
While many of us think of Q&A sites as low quality with crappy content, there are some gems out there, so Google does warn not to assume all Q&A sites are low quality.
Q&A Without the Answer
We have all ended up on a Q&A page only to discover there is no answer posted yet, even for questions asked years ago, or the answer is hidden behind a paywall. Google considers pages of this type without the answer given are Low quality.
They did mention this previously in the older version of the guidelines, but they removed the part stating that unhelpful answers should be given a Low quality rating – hopefully they removed it because it is common sense that an unhelpful answer is bad.
Inline Advertising
Are you one of the few people who are still using inline advertising? Well, its days could be numbered, as Google considers this distracting and can make the main content on the page difficult to read, which equals a poor user experience.
Inline advertising, those double underlined links that pop up an ad when you mouseover the link, has definitely lost popularity over the years, and it isn't that common to see it anymore, except on spammy pages.
Curiously, reference to "thin" affiliate sites has been removed from the new guide. Previously Google warned about thin affiliate sites not being a high quality site, and how raters could determine if a site was an affiliate site or not.
Is Google confident in how they are currently ranking affiliate sites and not letting "thin" affiliate sites rank well? That doesn't seem to be the case, particularly in some competitive spaces. Panda did make a considerable dent in the affiliate rankings, at least for those run by less savvy SEOs. But the fact they removed the warning altogether raises the question that Google feels spam affiliate sites are a thing of the past and don't rank today anyways, that poor quality sites would get a low rating regardless, or that they are happy for affiliate sites to rank, as long as they have some of the other criteria needed for an above average rated website.
Reputation Research
Website reputation has been given a boost in the new version of the guide, and it is clear that Google is putting a greater emphasis on reputation than they did before.
Of course, webmasters have to consider that reputation is going to be given a boost in the search algorithm too, since Google is clearly wanting their rater's to take this into a fairly significant account for rating any website. Although Google has previously said that rater's themselves do not affect search results, we often see changed within the guide that has a greater impact.
Google does include a caveat that small, local businesses or community organizations might not have any online reputation because their web presence is relatively small compared to word of mouth. But Google now expects to find reputation information for any large business or organization.
Most importantly, Google stresses that a webpage cannot be given a High rating if the site has a negative reputation.
They are also asking raters to give the lowest rating to any page where there is sufficient evidence of fraudulent or malicious behavior on behalf of the website.
With a greater emphasis on reputation for quality ratings, it could be a sign that reputation from credible sources could be someone added to the algorithm, or we might see a new penalty specifically targeting sites with negative reputations (Hello Puffin update?)
Where's the Spam?
Another curious omission is the fact all reference to spam has been removed from the new guide. Previously there were sections describing spam and how to check for it, but in the new guide, the only reference to spam is in regards to sites with a large amount of spam comments or forums that have been spammed.
Where's the Cloaking?
There was previously an entire detailed section explaining what cloaking is and how raters can identify whether a site is cloaking or not. But this has also been removed from the new guide.
Distracting Content
Yet another item removed from the examples of low quality content is the reference to "other distracting content". The only reason for this removal is that Google considers other types of distracting content to more clearly be considered secondary content, which is pretty specific about pages needing to be rated lower when the rater is presented with distracting content – particularly when dealing with advertising as secondary content.
Low Quality Pages Now Never Acceptable
Previously, the guide stated "Low quality pages may only be acceptable to users if there are no other higher quality pages." This has now been removed. Does Google believe there is always a higher quality page for every low quality page out there? Possibly, with the rate the web is still growing.
But clearly, they don't want higher ratings being given, which could confuse engineers basing algorithms on raters and pages, simply because there isn't a better quality alternative out there.
Lack of Purpose
Google now refers to all gibberish and auto generated pages as pages that have lack of purpose and should always be rated Lowest.
Hidden text
Google previously asked raters to investigate any white spaces at the right or bottom of the webpage if it seemed to be there for no reason as well as using Ctrl-A, turning off CSS and turning off javascript to identify hidden text. But they are no longer asking raters to check for this anymore… again possibly because Google feels they can usually catch this algorithmically now.
About Us and Contact info
Previously, Google stressed that pages in YMYL areas need to have a page about the site ("About Us"), contact or customer service information, and who is responsible for the upkeep and content of the website. Now, Google wants raters to look for at least some of this information on all websites.
If you have a website that is strictly information and didn't really have a need for these types of pages, now would be a good time to go back and add those pages. They do say that some non-YMYL pages can still garner a High or Highest rating with a simple email address, it is a good sign that Google is looking to put a greater emphasis on this as a sign of a high quality website in the algo.
Hat tip to SEOs
A new mention in the latest guide is a mention that webmasters read these guidelines and include information specifically to influence quality raters. It was mentioned specifically in the section regarding a website's reputation.
More followup
Each day for the next week or so, we are going to do some in-depth analysis of the new parts of the guidelines, particularly how it will impact SEOs and what SEOs should start to think about differently. Please be sure to follow us on Twitter and/or Facebook to get the latest updates. And you can also follow @Jenstar too.
Here is our first one: All About Supplementary Content in the Google Quality Rater's Guidelines
2nd: The Role of Reputation in the Quality Rater's Guidelines
3rd: How Google Views Advertising in Quality Rating Guidelines
Added: Someone else has uploaded a copy, so you can read it (all 160 pages of it!) here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/217994742/General-Guidelines-1
Jennifer Slegg
Latest posts by Jennifer Slegg (see all)
- 2022 Update for Google Quality Rater Guidelines – Big YMYL Updates - August 1, 2022
- Google Quality Rater Guidelines: The Low Quality 2021 Update - October 19, 2021
- Rethinking Affiliate Sites With Google's Product Review Update - April 23, 2021
- New Google Quality Rater Guidelines, Update Adds Emphasis on Needs Met - October 16, 2020
- Google Updates Experiment Statistics for Quality Raters - October 6, 2020


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How We Test
Along with an array of flash drives, we've included the Western Digital 4TB 3.5" 7200RPM and Western Digital Velociraptor 1TB 10,000RPM hard drives for comparison's sake. Other SSDs tested have controllers such as the SandForce SF-2281, JMicron JMF616, Intel PC29AS218A, Marvell 88SS9174, Toshiba TC58NCF618GBT and Samsung S3C29MAX01. Our testing suite consists of four synthetic benchmark programs and our own file copying and load time tests.
As you likely know, while manufacturers claim impressive peak I/O performance out of the box, this performance can diminish over time. Unlike a conventional hard drive, any write operation made to an SSD is a two-step process: a data block must be erased and then written to. Obviously if the drive is new and unused there will be nothing to erase and therefore the first step can be bypassed, but this only happens once unless the drive is trimmed.
Considering this, we'll test how much performance you can expect to lose from each SSD over time. We'll examine all drives in their clean unused state, and then run the HD Tach full benchmark several times to fill the entire drive. This simulates heavy usage and clearly indicates how performance will be affected after normal long-term use.
All drives in this roundup support the Windows 7 TRIM function, which is meant to counteract these negative effects.
Test System Specs
- Intel Core i7-4770K (LGA1155)
- x2 4GB DDR3-1600 G.Skill (CAS 8-8-8-20)
- Asrock Z77 Extreme9 (Intel Z87)
- OCZ ZX Series (1250w)
- Western Digital Black 4TB
- Western Digital Velociraptor 1TB
- Samsung SSD 840 Evo 1TB
- Samsung SSD 840 Evo 250GB
- SanDisk Extreme II 240GB
- OCZ Vector 150 240GB
- OCZ Vector 512GB
- OCZ Vertex 450 256GB
- OCZ Vertex 4 256GB
- OCZ Agility 4 256GB
- OCZ Octane 512GB
- Crucial m4 256GB
- Intel SSD 520 Series 240GB
- Intel SSD 510 Series 120GB
- Samsung SSD 840 Pro 512GB
- Samsung SSD 830 512GB
- Gainward GeForce GTX 780 (3072MB)
- Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 (64-bit)
- Nvidia Forceware 331.65


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Trichotillomania (hair pulling) Therapists in Tennessee
Trichotillomania is a mental health condition involving repeated hair-pulling that results in noticeable hair loss. It's common for those with trichotillomania to pull hair from the scalp, but some individuals may also pull at eyelashes, eyebrows, the pubic area, hair anywhere else on the body, or pull hair from other people or pets. Trichotillomania is often distressing and can lead to feelings of anxiety, shame, or embarrassment.


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TechRadar Verdict
- +
Very, very quick
- +
Gets around the current SATA limitations
- +
Not as expensive as you might expect
- -
Performance not entirely consistent
Why you can trust TechRadar
Ever the SSD innovator, OCZ's PCIe-based RevoDrive is a bit of corker. While the SATA 3Gbps and SATA 6Gbps interfaces are still along way off causing major bandwidth problems for mechanical hard drives, the same cannot be said for SSDs.
And for manufacturers wanting to bring out faster performing drives both now and in the not too distant future, these interfaces are increasingly causing storage bottleneck problems.
What's needed is a completely fresh way of looking at how you get data on and off the drive and, for that matter, what you perceive as a storage drive anyway. One of the leading manufacturers in this quest to use something other than the standard I/O interfaces is OCZ.
The RevoDrive 120GB, is a storage drive that uses the motherboard's PCIe bus to overcome the performance issues with the SATA I/O interface. Basically the way to think of it is as two 60GB OCZ Vertex 2E drives with the external cases removed and the memory chips placed on a PCB which has a PCI-E x4 interface (but don't worry if your board doesn't have one, it'll fit into a spare x16 PCI-E slot) together with a couple of SandForce controllers and a RAID controller.
This 120GB version sits towards the bottom end of a range that runs from 50GB to 480GB capacities.
Build quality
Built on a pretty compact PCB, (125 x 181 x 21.6mm) the RevoDrive 120 uses 32 4GB, 34nm Intel/Micron MLC (Multi-Level Cell) modules to achieve its capacity. With them being arranged 16 per side of the card.
Each 64GB memory partition is controlled by an 8-channel SandForce SF-1222TA3 SBH controller and the data flow is controlled by an on-board SATA 3Gbps RAID controller. This uses a pre-built RAID 0 (Stripe) array.
You might be wondering about the holes drilled into the PCB, these are the fixing points for the daughter cards that are used to support the memory chips for the larger capacity cards.
Unlike other manufacturers drives using the SF-1200 and related firmware, OCZ's close relationship with SandForce has enabled it to pair the controllers with the latest SF-1500 firmware, which gives better random write speeds.
The card has an x4 PCI-E 2.0 slot, potentially giving a huge 2GB/s of bandwidth (500MB/s per lane). The interface actually runs at PCI-E x1.1 which gives half the bandwith at 1GB/s, with a bridge chip connecting the two together.
Even this is far in excess of the 550MB/s of bandwidth that is supported by a pair of SATA cables and the reason why OCZ claims maximum read/write speeds for the RevoDrive 120 of 540MB/s and 480MB/s respectively.
However not everything in the garden is rosy. While the SandForce controllers support the Windows 7 TRIM command, the SIS RAID controller doesn't, and actually blocks it, so instead algorithms programmed into each of the controllers sort out the garbage. What does that mean in English?
Well it simply means that the RevoDrive has the potential to really suffer from a downward spiral of performance coinciding with its long term use.
Likes em big
As for performance, well somehow fast doesn't quite do it justice. OCZ claims maximum sequential read and write performance of up 540MB/s and 480MB/s respectively, which was more or less confirmed in our own testing.
Using the ATTO benchmark, it returned figures of 528MB/s read and 490MB/s write, while in the HD Tach burst speed test it turned a figure of 491MB/s.
To give an idea of how much faster in these tests than a standard 120GB SSD we put it up against a Kingston 100V+ 128GB, which gave a HD Tach burst speed figure of 248MB/s and ATTO read/write figures of 234MB/s and 198MB/s. A Corsair Nova V128 offered up 195MB/s from the HD Tach benchmark and 247MB/s and 238MB/s from ATTO.
The more demanding AS SSD benchmark though returned more modest figures for the RevoDrive of 384MB/s and 134MB/s respectively. However the 4K random read/write results from the AS SSD benchmark showed the drive in a different light with figures of 24.93MB/s and 82.51MB/s respectively - not that much better than either of the standard interfaced drives.
So it's more adapt at shunting around those big files rather than dealing with the everyday tasks of moving small bitty files. This was shown up by its dealing with our 1GB zip file test. The test file is made up of loads of little files and the RevoDrive struggled to put daylight between itself and the two standard drives.
It finished the extraction in 38 seconds compared to the 42 seconds for the Corsair drive and 46 seconds for the Kingston. You may be wondering why, if the RevoDrive uses 32 4GB memory chips it has only a 120GB capacity and not 128GB (32 x 4 = 128 surely). Well that's down to something called 'over provisioning'.
Over provisioning is one method of maintaining an SSD's performance by dedicating a chunk of memory for use as empty blocks for jobs such as address mapping, writing and the removal of dead blocks without reducing the drives capacity or performance and increasing the life of the drive.
How much space is provided for this purpose is controlled by the SandForce firmware and in the case of the RevoDrive 120, two NAND chips (8MB) are used for the job. After the standard formatting, address table formation etc, the capacity ends up at a usable 119.14GB.
Another thing to note - if you want to use the RevoDrive as a boot drive then you'll need to download the drivers from the OCZ web site and drop them on a USB key or CD to use during the Windows installation, otherwise it won't be recognised.
Forty seconds
OCZ's RevoDrive then is an interesting way of getting around the current limitations of the SATA interface by using the PCIe bus, and we can only imagine what the performance would be like if drives like this could access the full bandwidth of the PCI-E 2.0 specification.
As it is it's a stonkingly fast, but by no means perfectly, performing drive. Still, we were pretty much blown away seeing a functional version of Windows 7 sat on screen around forty seconds after hitting the power button.
While it may be more expensive than either a single 120GB Vertex 2 drive or even a pair of 64GB ones, its somehow not quite as expensive as you might think given the technology it uses on that PCB. For the price then you get a mighty fast drive that wont clog up any SATA ports.
Follow TechRadar Reviews on Twitter: http://twitter.com/techradarreview
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A layered dessert recipe with chocolate pudding, cream cheese and cool whip on top of a pecan shortbread crust. Also called Better Than Sex Cake, Robert Redford Pie and 4-Layer Delight!
JUMP TO RECIPEMy perfect day is getting to spend all day in the kitchen trying out a new recipe, perfecting an old one or just tinkering around. I tell you this because it makes what I'm about to say a little bizarre.
My all-time favorite dessert is one of those whip-it-up jobs that uses semi-prepared shortcut items like Cool Whip and instant pudding.
It never occurred to me to post this recipe because it's so popular in my family I assumed that everybody and their dog had it. Then I was making my grocery list one day and didn't have the recipe with me so I searched online expecting to find 40'leven recipes for it… and I couldn't find it.
At least not the way we make it.
There are versions of this out there but they vary greatly and I had a hard time finding one with the same pecan shortbread crust.
That and the fact that my posting a picture of it on the Facebook page resulted in you guys demanding the recipe told me I should post my family's version of this recipe.
Chocolate delight (aka Better Than Sex Cake, Better Than Sin Cake, Chocolate Layered Dessert, 4-Layer Dessert, Robert Redford Pie and many other names, I'm sure) is a simple layered dessert that includes a pecan shortbread crust, a cheesecake-y cream cheese layer and a rich chocolate pudding layer that's all topped with whipped topping and pecans.
And seriously, I think it's the pecans that make it. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!
If you love layered icebox desserts like this, check out a few of these recipes too!
- Paula Deen's Banana Pudding - The iconic recipe made with cream cheese and butter shortbread cookies that's Not Yo' Mama's Banana Pudding!
- Red, White & Blue Cheesecake Salad - This berry cheesecake recipe is the perfect patriotic dessert with strawberries, blueberries and cream cheese filling.
- Chocolate Nutter Butter Icebox Cake - A chocolate layered dessert with peanut butter cookies, whipped cream and peanut butter drizzle like a chocolate peanut butter lasagna!
- Strawberry Cream Cheese Icebox Cake - An easy no-bake layered dessert with graham crackers, cheesecake filling and fresh strawberries.
- Italian Bakeless Cake - A layered dessert with pineapple, vanilla wafers, cool whip, coconut and cherries.
- Peanut Butter Ripple Nutter Butter Banana Pudding - Banana pudding made with Nutter Butter cookies and layers of peanut butter ripples.
Recipe for Chocolate Delight
Chocolate Delight
- 1 cup all purpose flour
- 1/2 cup butter, at room temperature
- 1 1/2 cups finely chopped pecans, divided
- Pinch of salt
- 8 oz. cream cheese, at room temperature
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- 16 ounces Cool Whip, divided
- 2 small boxes instant chocolate pudding
- 3 cups milk
- Combine flour, butter, 1 cup of pecans and salt then press into the bottom of a 13x9 baking dish. Bake at 325 degrees for 25 minutes. Cool completely.
- Mix cream cheese and powdered sugar with an electric mixer until smooth. Fold in half of the Cool Whip then mix until combined. Spread cream cheese mixture evenly onto crust.
- Mix pudding mixes and milk with an electric mixer until combined then mix on medium speed for two minutes. Spread chocolate mixture evenly onto cream cheese layer.
- Spread remaining Cool Whip onto chocolate layer then sprinkle with remaining chopped pecans.


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- City Fajr Shuruq Duhr Asr Magrib Isha
- Dubai 05:31 06:45 12:35 15:51 18:20 19:34
A car bomb killed 53 people and wounded 200 in central Damascus on Thursday when it blew up on a busy highway close to ruling Baath Party offices and the Russian Embassy, Syrian television said.
TV footage showed charred and bloodied bodies strewn across the street after the blast, which state media said was the result of a suicide bombing by "terrorists" battling President Bashar Al Assad.
Central Damascus has been relatively insulated from almost two years of unrest and civil war in which around 70,000 people have been killed across the country, but the bloodshed has shattered suburbs around the capital.
Rebels who control districts to the south and east of Damascus have attacked Assad's power base for nearly a month and struck with devastating bombs over the last year.
The Al Qaeda-linked rebel group Jabhat Al Nusra, which claimed responsibility for several of those bombs, says it carried out 17 attacks around Damascus in the first half of February, including at least seven bombings.
Activists said most of the victims of Thursday's attack in the city's Mazraa district were civilians, including children, possibly from a school behind the Baath building.
Opposition activists reported further explosions elsewhere in the city after the explosion which struck shortly before 11 a.m. (0900 GMT).
One resident in the heart of the capital heard three or four projectiles whistling through the sky, followed by explosions. At least one of them landed in a public garden in the Abu Rummaneh district, she said, but no one was hurt.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors violence via a network of sources inside Syria, said the Mazraa car bomb detonated at a checkpoint close to the Baath Party building, located about 200 metres (660 feet) from the Russian embassy.
Russia's Itar-Tass news agency quoted a diplomat as saying the blast blew out windows at the embassy but no employees were wounded. "The building has really been damaged ... The windows are shattered," the diplomat said.
The vehicle was carrying between 1 and 1.5 tonnes of explosives, Damascus Governor Bishr Sabban told Reuters.
A correspondent for Syrian television said he saw seven body bags with corpses at the scene. He counted 17 burnt-out cars and another 40 that were destroyed or badly damaged by the force of the blast, which ripped a crater 1.5 metres deep into the road.
Later, the Observatory reported, two car bombs exploded outside security centres in the northeastern district of Barzeh, but there were no details of casualties.
Syrian TV said security forces detained a would-be suicide bomber with five bombs in his car, one of them weighing 300 kg.
In the southern city of Deraa, where the uprising against Assad erupted in March 2011, warplanes bombed the city's old district for the first time in nearly two years of conflict, killing 18 people, activists said.
A rebel officer in the Tawheed Al Janoub brigade which led a rebel offensive this week in Deraa said there were at least five air strikes on the city on Thursday.
"The (rebel) attacks on several major checkpoints in the Hay Al Saad neighbourhood and its declaration as a liberated area has prompted this response," said Abdullah Masalmah, an activist from the city, reached on Skype.
Fighting has intensified in southern Syria in recent weeks, leading to a sharp increase in refugee flows to neighbouring Jordan, according to officials. A Jordanian military source said 4,288 refugees arrived in the last 24 hours alone.
Nayef Hawatmeh, head of the Damascus-based Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was lightly wounded by an explosion in a mosque next to his office, a DFLP official said.
Talal Abu Tharifa, told Reuters in Gaza that glass fragments had caused a slight wound to Hawatmeh's hand.
Follow Emirates 24|7 on Google News.


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While President Obama's supporters bask in re-election glory, America's conservatives have been left asking themselves how and why their man managed to lose this election and what they can do to ensure a Republican win in 2016.
The truth is that it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why Romney lost. His failure is obvious to anyone who exists outside of the conservative bubble. People voted not just against Romney, but against his party's values and what the Republican Party has come to stand for, particularly on social issues like race, women's rights, gay marriage and immigration, in recent years. The question now is what the future of the party is.
When, after the 2008 election, the party took a sharp shift to the right and fully embraced the Tea Party as its "base", it embraced ideology over pragmatism, and decided that fanaticism based on nostalgia for a (older, white, male, deeply religious, exclusive) America of yesteryear was better than keeping up with the pace of progress.
The Tea Party – and other radicals like those in the Birther movement who have spent a great deal of time on petty issues such as demanding President Obama's birth certificate – was allowed to become synonymous with mainstream conservatism, even though it is really a fringe group made up of a small number of people. This led to the Republican brand falling into an even sadder state than it had been after eight years of George Bush's contentious presidency.
Unable to accept the shifting social, cultural and demographic realities of modern America, the Republican Party clung to the idea that it could fight the direction in which the country is moving and thought little of alienating key voting blocs such as women and minorities – to its own detriment.
These past two elections have seen a huge increase in non-white voters and increased support from women, youth and minorities that was enough to swing the vote in President Obama's favour in 2012 as they did in 2008. Whether or not conservatives like it, these groups hold the key to the future and will only gain in power and number. In other words, they will not be ignored.
In the post-election analysis, some have started to acknowledge this fact, with former House speaker Newt Gingrich admitting that he and others like Karl Rove were "wrong" about Romney's prospects. "We all thought we understood the historical pattern and the fact that with this level of unemployment, with this level of gasoline pricing what would happen…," he said.
On the Huffington Post, a Republican strategist also outlines the level of disconnect that the current party has with the country:
- We thought young voters would not turn out at the same level as 2008. They did. In fact, they represented 19 per cent of the electorate per exit polls–as high, if not higher, than four years ago.
- We said that Democrats would not be +6 over Republicans and if they were, Obama would win. Well, they did and he did. Again, exit polls say Democrats were +6. Romney needed the proportion of Republicans and Democrats to be even to win.
- We thought minority turnout would be lower than 2008. It was not. In several important precincts in key states, minorities voted in numbers equal to – and in some cases better than – four years ago.
- We thought Romney would win Independents by double digits. He won them, but by just five points.
- We thought Romney would have a huge gender advantage among men; it was only seven points. Meanwhile, the President won women by 11 points.
- We thought Romney would dominate on being "better able to handle the economy." He only beat the President on this issue by a few points. Not enough.
This level of flawed thinking is stunning.
If the Republican Party is to move away from being seen as fringe and disconnected, it needs new leadership that will embrace the mainstream, acknowledge the country's changes and face reality head on. It needs people who actually understand modern America – perhaps themselves young, brown, female. But this must go beyond mere tokenism.
Republicans would do well to denounce the deeply unpopular Tea Party as its base and admonish the racist, misogynist, fanatics that it brings with it. It would benefit from separating itself from people like the sensationalist Donald Trump, Todd "legitimate rape" Akins (who lost his Tea Party seat in Missouri) and people of their ilk, moving away from the extreme right to a more palatable middle ground for those who may be fiscally conservative yet socially moderate or liberal. It should speak to people and ask them what they need and what they'd like to see from the party.
Those who put millions of dollars into super PACs with very little, if any, return on investment should realize that more than money, the party needs a strong sense of purpose and vision that resonates with a wider range of Americans.
I'm no Republican, but even I have been shocked by the party's lack of understanding about the direction of the country and their arrogance in believing that somehow they can ignore, dismiss, denigrate and insult large swathes of the voting population and still win. The Republican Party of today risks becoming irrelevant in future years if it cannot get with the programme.
It is time for a new "base", one that accurately reflects the direction in which America is moving. Whether or not such leadership can emerge from the Republican Party, however, remains to be seen.
It is Charles Darwin who said "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change." If the Republican Party is to survive, it must listen to Darwin's words. Its current choice is to evolve or die.


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Report: Texas regent talked to Saban's agent
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -- A few days after Alabama won the 2013 national championship, a University of Texas regent and a former regent talked with Nick Saban's agent about the possibility of the Crimson Tide coach replacing Longhorns coach Mack Brown, The Associated Press has learned.
Regent Wallace Hall of Dallas told the AP he spoke by telephone with agent Jimmy Sexton a few days after the Jan. 7 game. Tom Hicks, a former regent who is the brother of current Regent Steve Hicks, also was on the call. Tom Hicks, the former owner of the Texas Rangers, the Dallas Stars and the English professional soccer team Liverpool, was a regent in 1997 when Brown came to Texas and was instrumental in hiring him away from North Carolina.
Two days after the call with Sexton, Tom Hicks met with Brown over lunch and told him about the call, according to several people who spoke with the AP. He asked Brown if he was ready to retire.
Brown, who had just finished his 15th season at Texas, said he wanted to keep coaching and the matter was dropped.
Brown, who is under contract until 2020 and will be paid $5.4 million this year, won the 2005 national title and lost to Saban's Alabama team in the 2010 championship game. The Longhorns are 23-18 since that defeat and Brown is under fire from fans upset about a 1-2 start this year after consecutive lopsided losses to BYU and Mississippi.
Brown has said he plans to coach through his contract. But three sub-par seasons and two consecutive losses this year have led to speculation about Brown's future and Saban is often mentioned as a potential target as a replacement. Saban has won four national championships, one with LSU in 2003 and three with Alabama in 2009, 2011 and 2012. Saban earns $5.6 million per year, but Texas -- the nation's wealthiest athletic program -- could certainly afford him.
Whether Sexton initiated the contact with Texas is unclear. He did not return a telephone message from the AP on Thursday. Alabama spokesman Jeff Purinton also declined comment.
Hall said a person he would not identify called him, unsolicited, and proposed an introduction to Sexton.
"I notified then-chairman Gene Powell, who then informed vice chairman and athletic liaison Steve Hicks, which resulted in a conference call with Mr. Sexton," Hall said in a prepared statement to the AP. "Introductions were made and then I withdrew from the process."
Tom Hicks declined comment on the call and the meeting with Brown. Steve Hicks told the AP he was in Australia the second week in January and said never talked to Sexton, Brown or Saban about the matter.
"Wallace Hall brought this to the chairman and myself. Nothing was authorized by the board and the chairman and myself thought the board should not be involved," Steve Hicks said. "Tom and Mack are friends and talk often. They simply visited and just talked the idea through. It was dropped and nothing happened ... It was a short conversation."
Powell did not respond to messages seeking comment.
Joe Jamail, a billionaire trial lawyer who is one of the top donors to Texas, is Brown's attorney. When asked about the conference call with Sexton and the lunch meeting, Jamail suggested Hall was acting on his own and threatened to sue anyone outside the university if they try to pressure Brown to resign.
"If there are any more, get ready for a lawsuit," Jamail said. "Mack has publicly stated he wants to coach."
After Brown and Tom Hicks spoke, Sexton was informed that Brown would not retire, Hall said Thursday. He said he has not been in further contact with Sexton and didn't know if anyone else from the university had spoken with the agent.
Hall is under impeachment investigation by the state House of Representatives and lawmakers have complained that Hall has tried to force out university President Bill Powers, who has been a strong advocate for Brown. Steve Hicks has been among the regents backing Powers in a public spat that has embroiled the board members and state lawmakers for more than a year.
The conversation has been rumored for months. That a regent participated --whether on behalf of the board or on his own -- underscores the pressure Brown is under to turn around his struggling program.
Texas went 69-9 from 2004-2009. But the Longhorns slid to 5-7 in 2010 before seasons of 8-5 in 2011 and 9-4 in 2012. With 19 returning starters, Brown suggested before the season that Texas was on the verge of returning to national prominence. Instead, the losses to BYU and Ole Miss have left Brown fending off questions about his future every week.
On Monday, Brown dismissed "rumors" about his job.
"They've been swirling for 16 years," Brown said.


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Jul 16, 2009 (CIDRAP News) – Citing the questionable usefulness of reporting pandemic H1N1 case counts and the burden it puts on countries experiencing widespread transmission, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced today it will no longer issue regular reports of confirmed global case totals.
The WHO has issued 58 such reports since the start of the novel H1N1 outbreak, the last one on Jul 6.
In a statement today, the WHO said countries with sustained community transmission are having an extremely difficult time confirming cases through laboratory testing. In addition, counting individual cases isn't essential for monitoring the level or nature of risk posed by the virus or implementing response measures.
Detecting and confirming all possible cases is highly resource-intensive, the WHO said. "In some countries, this strategy is absorbing most national laboratory and resource capacity, leaving little capacity for the monitoring and investigation of severe cases and other exceptional events."
For these reasons, the WHO said it will no longer issue reports of confirmed cases. However, it said it will provide regular updates on the spread of pandemic flu in newly affected countries.
The focus of surveillance activities in countries where the virus is already established will shift to existing systems for monitoring seasonal flu, the WHO said. Countries are no longer required to submit regular reports of individual confirmed cases and deaths to the WHO.
Monitoring for unusual events such as clusters of severe or fatal cases or changes in clinical patterns is important and should continue, the agency said. It added that countries should maintain vigilance for changes in transmission patterns, such as rising rates of school or work absenteeism, and also surges in emergency department visits, which could foreshadow increasing numbers of severe cases.
Keeping close track of changes in the pandemic virus is also essential for case management and vaccine development, the WHO said. It recommends that even countries with limited lab capacity to follow up initial viological assessment by testing at least 10 samples a week.
CDC says change is no surprise
Tom Skinner, a spokesman for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said the change in the WHO's case-reporting policy isn't unexpected, because the WHO and CDC have been emphasizing over the past several weeks that the number of lab-confirmed cases is just the tip of the iceberg of the true number of people who are or were sick with the novel H1N1 virus.
Specific case counts were once needed to help characterize the early spread of the disease, he said. Now that the virus is widespread and poised for a potential surge in the fall, "specific case counts are no longer needed, and since they don't represent the true picture of the situation, they are not necessary," Skinner said.
The CDC will likely make a similar move to downplay the number of confirmed cases, but it will maintain, if not expand, surveillance to gauge the health impact of the pandemic and the severity of the illness, he said.
Michael T. Osterholm, PhD, MPH, director of the University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, publisher of CIDRAP News, said he fully supports the WHO's policy change. The media and other groups have made too much of the case numbers, which grossly underestimate the illness burden, he said.
"This a good thing, but it's only the beginning of what needs to be done," Osterholm said, adding that he hopes the WHO will introduce other comprehensive surveillance measures to more accurately gauge pandemic morbidity and mortality.
Case counts give wrong impression
Peter Sandman, PhD, a New Jersey-based consultant and risk-communication expert, told CIDRAP News that early on in the novel H1N1 outbreak the WHO had a good technical reason to urge countries to track the number of confirmed cases—to help assess community transmission—but the usefulness of the numbers quickly waned.
"The big problem is that almost everyone has used the number of confirmed cases as if it were the true number of cases," he said. "Everyone was pouncing on those numbers." Sandman said even CIDRAP News has made this mistake, repeatedly reporting the number of confirmed cases as if the number meant anything other than how many confirmatory tests were being done.
The downside of the focus on the confirmed case numbers has been that the public perceives the pandemic as less pervasive than experts know it to be, Sandman said. When a public health official makes a reasonable extrapolation of the burden of disease, the number of confirmed cases seems puny by comparison. "Reputable experts are dismissed as nuts," he added.
Sandman said another problem is that an emphasis on the number of confirmed cases, along with the number of deaths, gives the public—and even some government and public health officials—an inflated impression of the case fatality rate.
"The pandemic H1N1 virus could get more deadly at any time," Sandman said. "But if you compare the number of pandemic deaths in the US to the CDC estimates of how many people have already had the disease, it calculates out that the pandemic is less deadly than seasonal flu so far."
However, most people don't do that calculation, he said. "People compare the number of deaths to the number of confirmed cases, and that makes the pandemic look much more deadly, because all the cases that never got confirmatory testing are missing from the denominator."
See also:
Jul 16 WHO statement


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SPONSOR'S INTRODUCTORY REMARKS: Sen. McCAIN: This bill is designed to begin a meaningful and shared effort among the emission-producing sectors of our country to address the world's greatest environmental challenge--climate change.
The National Academy of Sciences reported, "temperatures are, in fact, rising." The overwhelming body of scientific evidence shows that climate change is real, that it is happening as we speak.
Terrible things are happening at the poles, which will have global implications. Amplified global warming, rising sea levels, and potential alterations in ocean circulation patterns are among the global concerns.
The International Climate Change Task Force recommended that "all developed countries introduce mandatory cap-and-trade systems for carbon emissions and construct them to allow for future integration into a single global market." That is already being done in Europe as we speak, which is the substance of this legislation.
If we do not move on this issue, our children and grandchildren are going to pay an incredibly heavy price because this crisis is upon us, only we do not see its visible aspects in all of its enormity. We have done relatively nothing besides gather additional data and make reports. That is what the US national policy is today: gather information and make reports. I would argue that is a pretty heavy burden to lay on future generations of Americans.
LEGISLATIVE OUTCOME:Referred to Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works; never came to a vote.


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Comeback of Lace Traditions in Brittany
Hello again. It's been awhile since I've posted here. Got busy with my day job and life in general. Even so, my passion for wearable art is still alive and well.
I want to share a fascinating article from the April issue of National Geographic about the lace traditions of small villages located in the northwest corner of Brittany, France. Young women are connecting with their cultural traditions by wearing outfits dating back to the 1800s at some Breton rituals and social groups called Celtic circles.
Here are a few of my favorite headdresses and costumes from the article.
Each ensemble is specific to an individual village and sometimes the surrounding area.
These tall headdresses are from Brittany's Finistère area. Notice the embroidery on the dresses.
There are even ensembles for mourning. The outfit pictured here would only be worn in the later stages of mourning due to the use of embroidery on the shawl.
Notice the delicate collar, as well as the intricate head covering.
Check out more of these creations on National Geographic. If you're in Brittany, visit the Breton Museum in Quimper to learn more about the Breton artistic and ethnographic heritage.


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Tornado Watch And Severe Weather Expected For NYC Tonight - Be Careful Roosevelt Island
The Roosevelt Island Operating Corp (RIOC) adds:Severe weather is expected in NYC through tonight. A Tornado Watch is in effect until 10 PM. Get forecast updates: https://t.co/7AegMdYbvP.— NYC Mayor's Office (@NYCMayorsOffice) July 1, 2016
The National Weather Service has issued a Tornado Watch for the New York City area until 10:00 PM on Friday, July 1st, 2016. A Tornado Watch indicates that conditions are favorable for a tornado to form. A tornado has not yet developed or been reported.
Tornadoes can cause flying debris, turn unsecured objects into projectiles, and cause power outages. Therefore, please ensure all items that may be stored outdoors, specifically on terraces and patios, including patio furniture, are secured.
To prepare for power outages, charge cell phone batteries, gather supplies (bottled water, flashlights etc.) and turn refrigerators and freezers to a colder setting.
If you are affected by an outage, turn off all appliances and keep refrigerator/freezer doors closed to prevent food spoilage. Do not use generators indoors. If traveling, stay clear of downed power lines.
If anyone using Life Sustaining Equipment (LSE) needs immediate assistance or in the event of an emergency, please contact the Roosevelt Island Public Safety Department at 212-832-4545 or dial 911.
For real-time weather information, visit the National Weather Service.


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Weekly Vegan Menu has a face-lift! It will no longer be published at this address.
It is now moved to Zsu's Vegan Pantry.
Please visit the new site and bookmark or follow it.
Many thanks to those who have visited and have shown interest in this blog and its food.


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