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5:23 PMIt seems like it's been a bajillion years since I've done a giveaway! Well, aside from the fact that The Little Bra Company is throwing this fab giveaway for me, I want to celebrate a few monumental moments that have come about recently. Just within these last couple of weeks, my blog has acquired over 3,000 followers, my youtube channel exceeded 30,000 subscribers, and my total hits on frmheadtotoe.com has passed the 3 million mark. I don't say this in a boastful way (hecks no, have you SEEN the crazy number of subbies others get?? ;) but more to say that I am truly astounded at the love and support I've received in the last few months. 3 must be my lucky number since I also have over 3,000 twitter followers, and the number actually means a lot to me spiritually as well. I just feel blessed beyond words that through all the good times and bad, you have stuck with me as a surrogate friend and family. <3 I do have to say, one of the best parts about having this kind of support is the ability to give back. If you saw my Ask Ms: Bra Fitting 101 video, you will know how life-changing finding the right bra was for me. Now, hopefully one of you fellow petites will get the same opportunity. ^.^
To enter the giveaway, there are 3 rules:
1. You must subscribe to frmheadtotoe on http://youtube.com/frmheadtotoe
2. You must officially follow my blog
3. Visit http://www.thelittlebracompany.com and leave a comment on this youtube video of the bra + panty you'd love to have (click in the video to take you to the comments page)
Make sure you respond to your youtube account if you are chosen as the winner! Comments on this blog entry are loved and appreciated, but they will NOT count as an entry.
Giveaway is open to US and Canada only. Must be at least 18 to enter, or have parents' permission. Giveaway closes September 21st, 2010 at midnight CST.
Good luck, and thank you to The Little Bra Company for sponsoring this giveaway! :)
34 comments
- AnonymousSeptember 8, 2010 at 5:36 PM
I follow you with my google account , i click on "private following" I hope its ok...its eclipsia my youtube account is eclipsiia ^^"
ReplyDelete A bra and panty set...how nice! I guess I can't really enter but I'll share the button anyways to spread the word.
ReplyDelete=) nice giveaway jen, I wish i could join but I'm not from those places XD
good luck to all^.^- AnonymousSeptember 8, 2010 at 7:03 PM
would love to win the yvonne set in nude/mocha! thankssss jen!
ReplyDelete oh NOOOOO! I wish you could do a global giveaway...maybe next time~!T.T
I really appreciate your bra fitting video because that finally makes me understand 32A is not my size....Yay, so glad this is open to Canadians!
Ok I'm already a follower of your blog, I'm now a subscriber on youtube (CurlsPearls1 - it was kind of a paining signing up!).
I've always wanted to try the Angela b/c I like a little lift for my little ones :P
And I see there are matching Angela boyshorts!oh shooot!!! i want to join but the regional restriction makes it impossible for me. hope it will be open globally soon!
ReplyDeleteI love your eye make and eye lashes in the "Little Bra Giveaway" Can you post a video tutorial in your next video? pls. Your eye make is great for everyday look. thank you.
ReplyDelete- AnonymousSeptember 9, 2010 at 6:28 AM
great giveaway :) damn it i'm not in us or canada. I've been having trouble finding bras that fit because of my small frame too. wish smaller bras were more accessible.
ReplyDelete Hey Jen
I was wondering how you are going to figure out if all the youtubers that commented on your giveaway video actually subscribed to your youtube and blog account.
I did subscribe to both however my google and youtube accounts are not the same :\I love how I just so happened to be watching True Life: I hate my small breasts when I decided to check your blog. Me and my bras fight all the time, so I think it might be time for a divorce. As cute as y'all are, we're just not a correct fit, hyuk hyuk. <3
Anyways, thanks for doing the bra fitting video! I definitely learned a lot, and I'm off to re-measure myself right now. ^^- AnonymousSeptember 9, 2010 at 11:51 AM
I think this is such a wonderful giveaway :] So, enter me please!
I would have to say, my favorite bra and panties, would have to be YVONNE in Vanilla with the matching boy shorts! I just think it's adorable!
Thank you so much! I subscribed to your youtube (littlebo728), and also became a follower :)
I would love the SASCHA - F001. :)- AnonymousSeptember 9, 2010 at 2:17 PM
Thank you to you & TLBC for such an awesome giveaway. :)
Their shipping to Canada is so expensive ($25!!!). I really hope I win! I commented your video and I'm hoping I picked the right size because the site recommended us to size up since they're petite. Jen, how do I subscribe to your blog? Anyways, I see that you are selling wonder eyelid tape now, cause I sent you an email about it awhile ago. (:
ReplyDelete- AnonymousSeptember 9, 2010 at 8:52 PM
Jennn :(
I am a 34 C so I guess I will be missing out on this giveaway. Thanks so much though! I think lots of other girls would absolutely from this giveaway!!:) your teeth are so pretty and white! do you professionally whiten them, or use any home bleaching products? please share your secrets!
ReplyDeleteps. i posted this on your wedding post but not sure if you read those comments since that post is older..
I have a shoe question- I'm a newcomer to your blog and love it! I'm Korean-American, also short and petite (4'11), and I just got engaged.
My fiance is a lot taller than me.. I was wondering how tall your heels were at your wedding. Do you have any brands to recommend, or tips on keeping feet comfortable?
Also, thanks so much for the bridal makeup tips. I am going for a clean, pinkish, Korean drama look... again thank you so much! <3
God bless <3Omg, I was actually browsing this site and thinking about purchasing a bra!
I would love to win the ISIS bra.
I have a giveaway as well on my blog. http://atasteofkoko.blogspot.com/2010/08/mini-pistachio-tea-cakes-40.htmlSarah: After I choose a winner, I'll verify everything with them. :)
Susan Hong: I don't actually do anything to whiten my teeth other than using that Aquafresh extreme clean toothpaste. Does that count? ^.^
My wedding heels were 4" tall. To keep them more comfortable, look into Insolia heel inserts, which shift the pressure to the back of your feet instead of all on the balls of your feet. Dr. Scholl's also has a similar product that is nice too. Hope that helps!I've been following your youtube(lolicakes) and also your blog for a while. :) Thank you for the helpful video about bras!
I like the ETHEL-L - E003 bras, but I wish I knew my exact size because I don't know if I am a 34B or a 32B.I want to win!! your Sascha bra in 34B and YVONNE nude in medium, i love the design and the strapless thing goes. thank you for the giveaways Jen.
it helps me a lot to know what size am i.So glad to have found your blog. I am learning a lot from your video tutorials. I'd like to enter the Little Bra Company Giveaway please. I'm a follower (Vicky), and I subscribed to your youtube channel. My favorite bra is Angela.
vickysdailyfashion.blogspot.comHi! Jen.
It was very difficult to find my bra.
Im 5.4 foot & 104 lb. I would love to win the yvonne set(thong) in nude/vanilla.
Thank you for doing this for everyone.- OcellianSeptember 12, 2010 at 10:57 AM
Hello Jen,
what is the lipstick you are using in this video and in the video "Ask ms : bra fitting" (guess it is the same) ?
Thank you in advance I subscribed to your youtube channel, but my username isn't the same as on here...it's thekatmac85. I would love to have an Angela Push-Up and the matching boyshort :) I already love the Lucia bras!
ReplyDelete- AnonymousSeptember 20, 2010 at 12:36 PM
i have for years only wore one brand of bras . recently i had gotten a gift it was a bra from another manufacturer and i was so impressed i really loved it. so since then, i love trying new things. please enter me in the giveaway thank you lisa


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In December of 2011, when Frank Ocean, R&B singer and member of hip-hop collective Odd Future, was on a plane from New Orleans to L.A. he wrote a document in text-edit that he has now published on his tumblr which reveals him to be bisexual. The summer that Ocean was 19, he fell in love with his closest friend, a boy of the same age. "I reminisced about the sentimental songs I enjoyed as a teenager, the ones I played when I experienced a girlfriend for the first time. I realized they were written in a language I did not yet speak." His friend, who had a girlfriend, reciprocated his feelings three years later, but it didn't work out between them. "I don't know what happens now, and that's alrite. I don't have any secrets I need kept anymore. There's probably some small shit still, but you know what I mean." [Complex]
Here is the trailer for the newest Tom Cruise action franchise, Jack Reacher. Looks like… oh, like everything, really. Why do people forget he's short? [L.A. Times]
Meanwhile, like the majestic honey badger who don't give a shit, Katie Holmes and Suri went out for ice cream while Jack Reacher spent a sad, lonesome 50th birthday over Iceland. [NYDN]
And Katie's dad Martin reportedly had a big hand in Tomkat's split. [Newser]
Emma Stone on playing Gwen Stacy in The Amazing Spider-Man:
"I've never really played a damsel in distress before. That was a big draw, maybe like a morbid curiosity of mine. I've never played someone who ultimately is reliant on a man, and I found that interesting. I know that's the opposite of what I've usually said, because I love strong, independent female characters; there's not enough of them. But there's also something tragic and head-over-heels in love about Gwen; it's like a Romeo and Juliet situation and something I felt a kinship to for whatever reason. That first love… oh, boy." [Herald Sun]
English comedian Eric Sykes has passed away at 89. He appeared in many 1950s sitcoms as well as appearing as caretaker Frank Bryce in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Sykes and wife Edith celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary this past Valentine's Day, and he also leaves behind one son and three daughters. RIP. [BBC News]
Allow this stern, poorly-Photoshopped eagle I found on a stock photo site to remind you to pay your diligent respects to America because today is its birthday. July 4th, 2012, a day of fireworks, BBQ and ungainly culottes on suburban dads. Fuck yes.
- Now you can spend the afernoon eating quiche with Ian Somerhalder for a good cause. [Express]
- During a Coldplay concert, Chris Martin took a hot second to kiss Gwyneth Paltrow, which they don't normally do. [Express]
- CHER HURT HER FOOT. [Express]
- JON HAMM WEARS LEATHER IN THE HEAT. It's a slow news day because every sane person is out attachment-parenting America. [Page Six]
- Pregnant Snooki draped herself in a blue fabric (sans pants) exactly like Anne Bancroft does in The Ten Commandments at that part where she thinks she's going to marry Charlton Heston. No? Nobody? [Daily Mail]
- Her Jersey Shore co-star Deena was fined $106 for drunkenly dancing and slapping cars in the middle of the street. Calling out, 'round the world, are you ready for a brand new beat?! No? OK. Tough crowd. [TMZ]
- Tallulah Willis allegedly took pictures of herself topless and smoking a joint. [Daily Mail]
- Mila Kunis on dating: "Is a guy going to come up to me and ask if he can take me out on a date? Where can I go and have this date? I can't go anywhere! My house, his house … So what do you do? I'm trying to be like a normal girl and a single girl … but the concept of being single and in my position is just not workable. I couldn't even go on a date if I wanted to!" Go ahead and try, Mila. You are in my prayers. [NYDN]
- Justin Bieber admits the studio tweaks his vocals. And here, exclusively, is how "Mistletoe" sounded without retouching. [Toronto Sun]
- Miley Cyrus, kid, wants lots of kids. [Times of India]
- Marion Cotillard might be the only A-list celebrity who kind of gives zero fucks about charity. [Monsters and Critics]
- Clark Duke might join The Office. [A.V. Club]
- Here are Kathy Griffin, Lisa Rinna and Heidi Montag in patriotic bikinis because AMERICA. [US Weekly]


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Post Conference Information and Links
KMUD and the GRC-2010 Organizing Committee would like to thank all the Conference Participants as well as the SoHum Community for helping to make GRC-2010 an exciting and successful Grassroots Radio Conference!
Approximately 46 people were involved in presenting 40 different workshops during the four day conference with approximately 150 people in attendance. The links below supplement the information about the conference contained in these GRC-2010 web pages.
Read an article written about the conference by Gavin Dahl of RawStory.com (includes an audio clip of Laura Flanders Keynote Address.)
Pictures from the Conference on KMUD's Flickr stream and these as well.
EarthCycles.net coverage with audio clips.
USTREAM.tv coverage of the Conference
Post -Conference Facebook Page in Development


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BeagleBoard/GSoC/2010 Projects/XBMC
Project: XBMC
Student: Tobias Arrskog
Mentors: Mike Zucchi, Mans Rullgard, Søren Steen Christensen
Repository-git: git://xbmc.git.sourceforge.net/gitroot/xbmc/xbmc and branch gsoc-2010-beagleboard
Repository-svn: http://xbmc.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/xbmc/branches/gsoc-2010-beagleboard
Blog: http://xbmc.org/author/topfs2/
Latest blog entries:
What to do when you have the dirty regions
Lightning talk:
Before this summer it was proposed that by limiting what needed to be rendered, when it needed to be rendered and what to be rendered it might just be possible to make XBMC Media Center usable on the Beagle Board. Having XBMC be able to work with a device like beagle board can open a big world for XBMC as it makes it a viable application for use in embedded systems found in TVs, phones, dvdplayers, set-top-boxes. While XBMC is offloading a ton of work to the GPU on an embedded platform such as the beagleboard its not enough to only leverage the GPU one also need to leverage the other processing cores to get the job done and it was therefor also suggested to use the OMAP Overlay to make video decoding alot smoother.
Koen have been nice enough to add a dependency list to narcissus but for those that doesn't want to make a new image here is the package list
opkg install task-native-sdk boost-dev libgles-omap3-dev libsamplerate0-dev liblzo2-dev bzip2-dev libwavpack-dev mpeg2dec-dev libfribidi-dev libpcre-dev libcdio-dev libmodplug-dev flac-dev libsdl-mixer-1.2-dev libsdl-image-1.2-dev alsa-dev enca-dev libxt-dev libxtst-dev libxmu-dev libxinerama-dev curl-dev libmicrohttpd-dev gperf cmake zip git python-devel openssl-dev cvs pkgconfig-dev libxrender-dev libxrandr-dev git glibc-gconv-ibm850 glibc-charmap-ibm850 angstrom-version
Interesting patches for beagleboard
To enable the experimental omap overlay video renderer use configure option --enable-omap-overlay
To enable dirty region based rendering add this as advancedsettings.xml (~/.xbmc/userdata/advancedsettings.xml)
Note that algorithm 0 is just redraw everything always, 1 is unified region, 2 is cost reduction.
Build Instructions (native)
Since XBMC is a big application it takes up the entire ram of the beagleboard on link, this means that we need swap (here is how this can be done http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-8.0-Manual/custom-guide/s1-swap-adding.html)
export CFLAGS="-march=armv7-a -mtune=cortex-a8 -mfpu=neon -mfloat-abi=softfp -O2"
export LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1 -Wl,--hash-style=gnu"
./configure --enable-gles --enable-omap-overlay --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --cache=config.cache --disable-optical-drive
make install
Sit back and enjoy, the build process will take a few hours.
Build Instructions (cross compile)
First begin by setting up OpenEmbedded by following this tutorial http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/building-angstrom
While its ok to build xbmc directly now it will take a lot of diskspace so first build dependencies .
MACHINE=beagleboard bitbake libxmu fribidi mpeg2dec ffmpeg samba fontconfig curl libmodplug libmicrohttpd wavpack libmms cmake-native
MACHINE=beagleboard bitbake libsdl-image libsdl-mixer mysql5 sqlite3 libmms faad2 libcdio libpcre boost lzo2 enca avahi libsamplerate0 libxrandr bzip2 virtual/libsdl
Get ahold of the SDK for SGX and put it into downloads and run
MACHINE=beagleboard bitbake virtual/egl
Koen have already provided a bitbake recipe for trunk but if you wish to follow progress on my branch these are the steps you need to take.
If you wish to follow using git just open the xbmc_svn.bb and switch branch to gsoc-2010-beagleboard. The gsoc branch have all the required patches for crosscompilation so no need for patches. Set SRC_URI to:
SRC_URI = "git://xbmc.git.sourceforge.net/gitroot/xbmc/xbmc;protocol=git;branch=gsoc-2010-beagleboard"
Then all thats needed is to follow my branch is to change SRCREV to be the hash sum of the revision you wish to base from, this is kindof annoying to change all the time so I use a local git which I update instead. Here I have cloned git repository from xbmc to /home/topfs/xbmc/ and using the following recipe http://pastebin.com/cF33fPhg
Now its possible to build xbmc using:
MACHINE=beagleboard bitbake xbmc
Optimizing skins for Beagle Board
There are a number of ways to optimize skins, some of which are general and some are specifically target for embedded and GLES both will be covered in the following section.
General optimizations
On desktop its very rare that the GPU is limiting when rendering XBMC but lower resources could mean less heat generation and slower fanspeeds but also less power requirements which could mean longer battery life or cheaper electric bill. With that said some slower built in graphic cards could still use the performance boost in the higher resolutions. Generally speaking more controls being rendered equals more performance needed thus it makes sense to limit redundant controls if possible. A fluid skin is not just something which runs at a fast framerate when loaded but also a skin which loads each window quickly. Its worth considering that a harddrive might not be as fast on the HTPC as it is on the workstation and by far the thing which takes longest to load are images. While it is possible to background load images to get a fast initial load of a window its not very nice if it takes tens of seconds to get it fully finalized. Scaling and positioning textures in accelerated rendering systems is usually almost for free which means using the border tag in skinning to limit the size of a texture could significantly lower the needed load.
Embedded and Beagle Board specific
Up to and including C4 version of Beagle Board the GPU is the harsh bottleneck and to optimize rendering its worth understanding what takes most resources.
On embedded platforms bandwidth is usually very limited, this is true both in uploading data to RAM/GPU and the bandwidth used to manipulate the backbuffer. To create a fluid skin on an embedded platform its thus vital to limit the needed textures to present the skin, this will limit loading time but also rendering. As a suggestion its very wise to use GIMP or Photoshop to create the mockups since using layers is very useful in the development stage but when the skin is meant to be used on an embedded platform unnecessary layers can take quite a lot of resources to render. This holds true especially when multiple layers are used to form one static image, its alot faster to use GIMP or Photoshop to merge down the layers and only use the one in XBMC. Every layer that could be removed will help alot hence it is worth considering skipping dynamic backgrounds for embedded usage and merge together overlays and backgrounds to a single layer for the skin.
On the beagle board showing a few buttons will yield about 60fps in 720p but also having one non-blended background will make the speed 20fps, and this is only with one merged background! Since the SGX graphics core is designed to be used mostly in low resolution situations the textures used are generally small. If a texture is to big the SGX core might not be able to use the texture cache properly, this means that using textures above 512x512 is significantly slower, regardless of the rendering area. So skinners need to think long and hard before using larger textures and if a large texture is required splitting it into pieces with multiple controls can be alot faster. Also usually using power of two textures are faster so as an example using a 1280x720 texture rendered over the same area as four 512x256 textures will be 20fps against 30fps, the resulting picture is the same to the user but with 50% performance increase!.
Using textures with alpha are a very common practice to create nice looking skins, its worth knowing that rendering with blending enable will use more than twice the amount of bandwidth since it needs to read the backbuffer, blend and then write it back. Without blend it only needs to write. Note that the needed bandwidth is on a per pixel basis so avoiding alpha on big images is key, for example backgrounds. XBMC isn't extremely smart at understanding if the image has alpha or not so for non-alpha images use JPG as its guaranteed to work.
Dirty region rendering
Most of my time during this google summer of code was spent on making the rendering system in XBMC being able to only render what had changed. This is a very common technique when there is little available bandwidth and the interface rarely changes over big areas. In theory a dirty region based rendering should allow quite a big performance increase if the interface is close to static. In XBMC this is generally true but given its meant for TV usage and viewed from a distance its quite normal that rather large parts are changing when something happens. Thus the hard limit for performance increase is up to the skinner if he or she can design a skin which only changes in small areas at one time, this could be accomplised if animations are few or small.
How does it work?
When you use XBMC every view or intend you see is called a window. A skin has the ability to form a window how they see fit. A window is made up of controls or groups of controls. A control could be an inanimate object such as a background image or something you interact with, for example a button. This means the skinner have full control what and how everything is displayed in every window. Under the hood XBMC will process each control and if something changes it will mark said controls covering area as dirty. When every control have had the opportunity to mark, XBMC will try to optimize how it should render the possibly overlapping dirty regions. Note that since opengl is normally flipping back and front buffers by pointer, i.e. The backbuffer or drawing board is not the same as the one just presented, XBMC needs to track dirty regions from the presenting buffer as well. Normally opengl is doublebuffered and thus we track dirty regions for 2 renderings.
Leverage dirty region based rendering as a skinner
The core problem dirty region based rendering tries to solve is to only render what has changed. This is only effective if the changing parts are kept small. While without dirty regions a skinner could create a minimal skin which is rather fast, with dirty region based rendering a skinner have the possibility to present a complex skin with the illusion of fast framerate. What is key here is that if a skinner is able to confine changes to small areas the rendering would be incremental over the entire screen. During google summer of code a cost reduction algorithm was devised to allow for small areas being parted over vast distances to occur. For example if a small change happens in the lower left corner and the upper right corner, the entire screen wouldn't be redrawn.
OMAP Overlay
In the desktop segment XBMC utilizes the GPU to do the YUV to RGB conversion, both to offload these calculations from the CPU but also to limit the uploading bandwidth. This is a very optimized approach if the GPU is powerful enough to do this while still presenting the GUI, on the Beagle board this is sadly not the case. Thankfully the OMAP platform beagle board is based on have a hardware accelerated display driver which is capable of doing this conversion, scaling and positioning in hardware. The result meant offloading both CPU and GPU from the strain to do this conversion and in turn being able to do this up to 720p resolutions. Sadly the player in xbmc isn't optimized enough to give 720p playback on beagleboard using just the CPU for decoding. The driver is also capable of blending the resulting RGB with the other layers to produce the illusion of having rendered stuff over the resulting video. Which is needed when displaying for example volume changes or on screen menus for control the video.
The overlay reads data from the framebuffers found in /dev/fbX. Multiple overlays can read from the same framebuffer and an overlay can be told to read only from a part of the framebuffer. The display area of the overlay can be larger or smaller then that found in the framebuffer and the overlay will then scale it accordingly. Since the overlay is able to read only part of the data from a framebuffer its possible to create a larger framebuffer than the data its meant to hold to create a front- and backbuffer and switch the location the overlay should read from before presenting. Overlay 1 (video layer) is able to read YUV422 (or RGB) which will be transformed, scaled and positioned before presenting and all is done in hardware. Normally X and SGX is rendering to fb0 which is linked to overlay 0 (graphics layer). Graphics layer is above video layer but interestingly enough by default the display manager sets final alpha to zero on graphics layer when mixing making video layer appearing over graphics. This can be changed however, making it possible to render with alpha to framebuffer 0 and having the ability to choose what will and what will not be above video layer. Note that this is only possible if the framebuffer is set to 32bit BGRA, which it should be by default in Ångström.
Using the Overlay
The overlay is available for use by any user in the group 'video'. Its control and used by posix ioctl calls and by filling up the framebuffer with the data. While its perfectly possible to displaying video using singlebuffering doublebuffering will generate prettier and sturdier code. If we only have singlebuffering we would need to make sure we never write something that the overlay haven't read, and it can be very tricky keeping read and write from the different processes in sync. Doublebuffering does need a larger memory but its usually no problem since we are dealing with YUV. Since we want to limit unnecessary copying a smart solution is to use just one framebuffer for doublebuffering. The framebuffer will be twice as large framebuffer and we only let the overlay ever display half of that framebuffer. This means that we dedicate one part of the framebuffer as frontbuffer and the other part as backbuffer. Just before we are stating that we are ready for displaying we switch the offset the overlay will read from, alas we have switched the front and backbuffers.
Here is a quick walkthrough how to set it up for use
- Open /dev/fb1
- Setup memory for the overlay by OMAPFB_SETUP_MEM
- Map the memory the overlay have created on the framebuffer as rw by using mmap.
- Setup the screeninfo by FBIOPUT_VSCREENINFO. Here both xbmc and omapfb uses doublebuffering and as such sets up the virtual resolution of the screen to be double the size. The overlay is able to read from differently coded data and we will select YUV422 to allow the overlay to handle this conversion leaving the CPU free to do decoding.
- Setup the plan by OMAPFB_SETUP_PLANE. Here we define were and how big the output picture should be. This makes both scaling and positioning done by the DSS. This is a method you would want to call at any time when the picture needs to be scaled or positioned differently.
Now when we have setup the overlay, what we need to do now is to feed data into the fb which we have memory mapped. If we have made it doublebuffered we feed only the backbuffer and issue a flip, when the flip have been issued we MUST wait until vsync before filling the new backbuffer otherwise we aren't sure that the data is read and displayed and we could get tearing. If we are doublebuffering we need to before each flip set where our new frontbuffer is (what we just called backbuffer), this is done by calling FBIOPAN_DISPLAY with the correct xoffset and yoffset. To flip the buffer we call OMAPFB_WAITFORGO and then all we need is to wait for vsync.
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Looking back to the beginning of this summer XBMC didn't even compile on Ångström and now its possible to at least use XBMC and Beagle Board as a fully working SD box. While there still probably exist lots of rendering optimizations and there still is a need to create a really optimized skin I would like to say I am happy with the result. Before xbmc ran at about 10fps (with default skin) which now with dirty region based rendering turned on it runs at almost 20fps (default skin), . The POC optimized skin which looks essentially the same as the default skin runs at 30fps with dirty region based rendering turned on it hits the goal I was aiming for 720p!. Its also clear that the greatest bottleneck is still the GPU which will be significantly faster on the Beagle Board xM, as such it might be a very viable HD choice for XBMC. Much of the profiling suggests XBMC being heavy on texture usage, which is of no surprise since every control is using it. As such it would probably be worth checking out texture compression, which is used on desktop versions but mostly to limit decode time of the picture. Texturing with the SGX seems to very much dislike large textures and it probably needs to move lots of data, eating cycles, to handle it. This is the main upside with texture compression for the beagleboard but it might be enough to just allow for 16bit textures or even splitting up textures and use multiple polygons and perhaps even a more advanced shader to allow to still batching the rendering. Tests suggest moving a 720p picture into 4 pieces yields as much as 50% increase which is significant!


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ABOVE PHOTO: Kimberly McCarthy
(Photo by Texas Department of Criminal Justice)
By Michael Graczyk
Associated Press
HUNTSVILLE, Texas — The first woman scheduled to be executed in the U.S. since 2010 won a reprieve Tuesday, mere hours before she was scheduled to be taken to the Texas death chamber.
State District Judge Larry Mitchell, in Dallas, rescheduled Kimberly McCarthy's punishment for April 3 so lawyers for the former nursing home therapist could have more time to pursue an appeal focused on whether her predominantly white jury was improperly selected on the basis of race. McCarthy is black.
Dallas County prosecutors, who initially contested the motion to reschedule, chose to not appeal the ruling.
District Attorney Craig Watkins said the 60-day delay was "appropriate." If no irregularities are discovered, he said he'd move forward with the execution.
"We want to make sure everything is done correctly," he said.
The 51-year-old McCarthy was convicted and sent to death row for the 1997 stabbing, beating and robbery of a 71-year-old neighbor. She learned of the reprieve less than five hours before she was scheduled for lethal injection, already in a small holding cell a few feet from the death chamber at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Huntsville Unit.
"I'm happy right now over that," she told prison agency spokesman John Hurt. "There's still work to be done on my case."
Hurt said McCarthy was in good spirits and "didn't seem tense or nervous" even before she learned she would live.
A Dallas County jury convicted her of killing neighbor Dorothy Booth at the retired college psychology professor's home in Lancaster, about 15 miles south of Dallas.
"We are very pleased that we will now have an opportunity to present evidence of discrimination in the selection of the jury that sentenced Kimberly McCarthy to death," said Maurie Levin, a University of Texas law professor and McCarthy's lawyer.
"Of the twelve jurors seated at trial, all were white, except one, and eligible non-white jurors were excluded from serving by the state. … These facts must be understood in the context of the troubling and long-standing history of racial discrimination in jury selection in Dallas County, including at the time of Ms. McCarthy's trial," Levin said.
Investigators said Booth had agreed to give McCarthy a cup of sugar before she was attacked with a butcher knife and candelabra. Booth's finger also was severed so McCarthy could take her wedding ring. It was among three slayings linked to McCarthy, who'd been addicted to crack cocaine.
McCarthy would have been the 13th woman executed in the U.S. and the fourth in Texas, the nation's busiest death penalty state, since the Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in 1976. In that same time period, more than 1,300 male inmates have been executed nationwide.
Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics compiled from 1980 through 2008 show women make up about 10 percent of homicide offenders nationwide. According to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, 3,146 people were on the nation's death rows as of Oct. 1, and only 63 — 2 percent — were women.


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Charlotte Symphony Summer Pops, CSO, Charlotte Symphony Orchestra, summer pops, outdoor music, outdoor symphony, outdoor concerts, things to see in charlotte, things to do in charlotte, charlotte, nc, north carolina, charlotte photos, photography, lifestyle, family friendly activities, family friendly outings, traditions, summer activities, summer, performing arts, performance arts, professional, cultural, culture, southpark mall, symphony park, summer symphony, ampitheater, pavilion, ampitheatre, band shell, bandshell, charlotte icons, iconic


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Founded in , Park Place Premier Barber School. is a college. Located in Louisiana, which is a city setting in Louisiana, the campus itself is Urban. The campus is home to 22 full time undergraduate students, and 0 full time graduate students.
The Park Place Premier Barber School Academic calendar runs on a Continuous basis. In the school year the student to faculty ratio was 3:1. There are full time instructional teachers. Degrees awarded at Park Place Premier Barber School include: Bachelor's Degree, Masters Degree, Post-master's certificate, Doctor's degree.
Admissions at are considered , with ,0% of all applicants being admitted.
In the school year, of the students who applied to the school, only of those who were admitted eventually ended up enrolling.
0% of incoming freshmen are in the top half of their high school class. 0% were in the top quarter, and 0% were in the top tenth. You can apply online.
We asked, and students answered these important questions about student life at Park Place Premier Barber School.
0 Students rated on-campus housing 0 stars. 0 % gave the school a 5.0.
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The fall 2020 acceptance rate for Park Place Premier Barber School is 100%. That means, out of _____ applications received in 2020 , _____ students were offered admission. The number of males who applied was _____ vs the number of females which was _____.
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All students must apply yearly for financial aid. This process starts with the FAFSA. Though financial aid deadlines vary by school, it is a good idea to apply as soon as possible. For the upcoming school year, you can apply as early as October 1 for the FAFSA. Additional school aid will be dependent on the FAFSA results.
100% of students attending Park Place Premier Barber School receive some sort of financial aid. 100% were awarded federal grants. While 100% received federal loans. Many students do also need to apply for additional private student loans.
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We use student reviews and the most current publicly available data on our school pages. As such, we don't typically remove or edit college information. Sources for school statistics and data include the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics and the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. Portions of college data include copyrighted material, which is reproduced on this website by permission of Wintergreen Orchard House, a division of Carnegie Communications. © 2009-2016 by Wintergreen Orchard House. All rights reserved.
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Enough with reminiscing about holiday cookies past, it is time to kick off this years holiday cookie baking! First up on the list was a classic, coconut macaroons ; not to be confused with macarons . Coconut macaroons are really simple containing just shredded coconut, sugar and egg whites to hold it all together. You bake them in the oven until they turn a nice light golden brown on the outside and after they cool they have an amazing slightly crisp outer layer but the inside is nice and moist and tender and oh so good! If you are a fan of coconut then these macaroons are definitely for you! For a lighter and fluffier version you can beat the egg whites and sugar until they form stiff peaks before folding in the coconut. Speaking of coconut, one of the best things to pair coconut with is chocolate and I could not resist drizzling some melted dark chocolate over my coconut macaroons!
Coconut Macaroons
- 3 large egg whites
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 3/4 cup of sugar
- 3 cups sweetened shredded coconut
- 2 ounces dark chocolate (shaved)
- Mix the egg whites, vanilla, sugar and coconut in a bowl.
- Spoon the batter onto a parchment paper lined baking pan with 1 1/2 – 2 tablespoons of batter per cookie.
- Bake in a preheated 350F/180C oven until lightly golden brown, about 10-15 minutes.
- Let cool for 20 minutes.
- Meanwhile, melt the chocolate in a double boiler and dip the macaroons in the chocolate or drizzle the chocolate on the macaroons.


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Recoverable Depreciation: What Is It? 3 Easy Steps for Filing a Claim
If you've found yourself on this page, you're probably either about to sign an insurance policy, or perhaps you already have. If either of those
A nice breeze on a warm summer day is great. Nature sometimes takes things too far in the midwest, though, and a warm morning can quickly turn into gale force winds, tornados, derechos, and more. When things are settled down, and your buildings, family, lawn furniture, pets and livestock have settled, it's time to assess the situation.
Insurance adjusters often miss repairs that are needed, but more than that, property owners often don't even realize how much wind damage there is. Wind can cause nail pops in drywall, blow out seals in windows, blow water into places that water has no business in (like eaves), rack the framing and cause doors and windows to be out of alignment…
When you've got a Wind Damage claim, you shouldn't have to face it alone.
Advocate Public Adjusters represents you to your insurance company. We have extensive experience with property insurance policies and ensure the full extent of coverage according to your policy and the covered damage, to make sure you get the full settlement you are entitled to. If your insurance adjuster missed needed repairs, or just didn't want to pay what it really will take to fix your property, we will uncover that and negotiate on your behalf.
Wind Damage claims are often underpaid. Some wind damage isn't always obvious. How can you ensure that the insurance adjuster will find all the damage? Things like window replacements, framing askew, and doors that won't close, can be much more expensive to replace than you would think. And they can cost much more to fix than insurance typically wants to pay – if the adjuster notices at all.
Advocate Public Adjusters have construction experience to ensure we provide a complete and exhaustive estimate for the repair or replacement of your damaged property.
Call or email today to discuss your situation. There's no charge or obligation for the call.
Call Advocate Public Adjusters about your claim.
We will send the estimate to your insurance company.
We will give you a thorough estimate of your Wind Damage.
We will negotiate with your insurance carrier for the full cost of repairs of the damage.
File an insurance claim with your carrier. We will walk you through the process.
You receive your settlement, and get your life back.
If you've found yourself on this page, you're probably either about to sign an insurance policy, or perhaps you already have. If either of those
If you own a home, business, or commercial property, you probably hold a property insurance policy to protect your assets in case catastrophe strikes. You
Introduction This checklist will serve as a useful guide when and if you need to hire contractors to work on your home repair project. In


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I enjoy eating dips/spreads as snacks and I am always on the lookout for new ones. When I came across a recipe for muhammara I had to try it. Muhammara is a Middle Eastern dip made from peppers and walnuts. Roasted red peppers are one of my favorites foods and I liked the idea of a dip that was based on them and ground walnuts. I also liked that this recipe includes pomegranate molasses as I picked up a bottle a while ago and I hardly get the chance to use it. Many of the recipes that I came across called for aleppo pepper which I have heard good things about. I searched high and low for it but I was not able to find any so I used chipotle pepper instead. Like many dips, this one was as easy a mixing everything in a food processor. The muhammara turned out really well. It was nice and tasty and I really enjoyed the texture that the ground walnuts provided. All of the flavours mixed well and complemented each other and there was a nice heat to it. I served the muhammara with some toasted bread.
Muhammara (Middle Eastern Pepper and Walnut Dip)
- 3 roasted red peppers
- 3/4 cup walnuts (toasted)
- 1/4 cup whole grain bread crumbs
- 1 clove garlic
- 1 teaspoon aleppo pepper (or chipotle pepper)
- 1 teaspoon cumin (toasted and ground)
- 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
- 2 tablespoons pomegranate molasses
- 2 tablespoons tomato paste
- salt to taste
- Blend everything in a food processor until smooth. Add water to thin if desired.


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Alone At Last
It's time to rewrite the book of love an immerse yourself in the arms of passion!
Now is the moment to embark on the next chapter of your own passionate adventure. Whether it's sharing time with your loved one on an elegant cruise or at a luxurious hotel, our exclusive offers with provide you the most romantic setting for your own private escape.


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A bitter loss to St. John's on Tuesday extended Bishop Ireton's losing streak to five games heading into the final stretch of the regular season.
The Cardinals led the Cadets through the first half, heading into the locker room with a 15-11 advantage. Though they stayed narrowly ahead of St. John's in the third quarter, a monster 32-point effort by the Cadets in the final eight minutes secured the 55-43 win.
The loss ends a disappointing road trip for Ireton's varsity squad, who have gone 1-6 since their last home game. After a better-than-expected start to the season, the Cardinals are 10-11 overall and 2-9 in conference action.
Ireton will face Good Counsel in Alexandria on Friday in their first home court matchup since January 10. They hit the road again Saturday to take on No. 2-ranked Gonzaga.


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Google launched an open source browser extension for IE and Firefox called Google Gears that enables web applications to be available offline.
"Gears is an incremental improvement to the web as it is today. It adds just enough to AJAX to make current web applications work offline. Gears today covers what we think is the minimal set of primitives required for offline apps. It is still a bit rough and in need of polish, but we are releasing it early because we think the best way to make Gears really useful is to evolve it into an open standard. We are releasing Gears as an open source project and we are working with Adobe, Mozilla and Opera and other industry partners to make sure that Gears is the right solution for everyone," explains Google.
Once you install the extension, every Gears-enabled web application will ask your permission before storing data offline.
Depending on the functionality implemented in the application, Google Gears caches resource files so they're available offline, stores data in a SQLite database that has powerful search features and synchronizes data in the background.
Google Gears will enable you to read the most recent messages from Gmail while offline or to edit your documents in Google Docs even without a network connection.
Google Reader is the first Google application powered by Gears. To enter the offline mode, just click on the small arrow and all the recent feed items are downloaded to your computer. You can disconnect from the Internet or click on "work offline" in your browser and you will still be able to read your favorite feeds in Google Reader. Like in any feed reader installed on your computer. Well, almost, because Google Reader doesn't download images or other multimedia files embedded in the posts.
You can even close Google Reader's tab and try to load the site again: it will instantly show the cached data. Try to add tags to a post or star it; once you go back online, Google Reader will synchronize the data.
P.S.: Another nice update in Google Reader is that you can see the exact number of unread posts for each feed. Google Reader learned to count beyond 100.
Update: Here's a presentation from Google Developer Day Sydney that explains the motivations behind this project and shows some demos:


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Do You Qualify for a VA Loan?
A VA loan is a home mortgage loan insured by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and available to most U.S. veterans and other classes of eligible military personnel. This kind of loan allows up to 100% financing, never requires mortgage insurance, and carries flexible underwriting guidelines. VA mortgage rates are often the lowest of all available loan types.
Most active military members, veterans, reservists and National Guard members are eligible to apply for a VA loan. Spouses of military members who died while on active duty or as a result of a combat-related disability may also apply. You may also be eligible for a VA loan if you meet one or more of the following conditions:
- You have served 90 consecutive days during wartime
- You have served 181 days during peacetime
- You have more than six years of service in the National Guard or Reserves
Residences that qualify for a VA loan come in all shapes and sizes. While single-family homes are the standard when pertaining to the VA loan, many condominiums, townhomes, modular homes, new construction homes and manufactured homes may also qualify.
Applicants who meet the basic requirements for a VA loan also must acquire a VA Certificate of Eligibility (COE). A COE is used to verify your eligibility for home loan benefits. A COE is not needed to begin the application process, however. This is something I can help you obtain.
If you are an eligible veteran or military member, you owe it to yourself to use this valuable home loan program to buy or refinance. I would love the opportunity to serve you in a way that will show my appreciation for the way you bravely served our country. Call me today to set up an appointment so I can answer any questions you have.


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2nd body recovered from Va. balloon crash
DOSWELL, Va. (AP) — A second body has been recovered in the fiery crash of a hot air balloon in Virginia.
Virginia State Police said the body was found Saturday as more than 100 searchers continued to hunt for a third victim. None of the victims has been identified.
The balloon drifted into a power line Friday night, burst into flames and crashed. The balloon and the basket holding the pilot also have yet to be located.
The crash occurred ahead of a weekend balloon fest in Doswell, about 25 miles north of Richmond.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
The body of one occupant of a hot air balloon that caught fire and crashed has been recovered and police searched Saturday for two others feared dead, Virginia State Police said.
The three were in a balloon Friday night that witnesses said crashed amid screams for help from the balloon.
The body was found in a heavily wooded area shortly before midnight, state police spokeswoman Corinne Geller said Saturday. The balloon and gondola carrying the pilot and two passengers have not been found, she said.
Because of the time elapsed since the crash about 8 p.m. Friday, the search for two other occupants has shifted from a rescue operation to a mission to recover the remains, Geller said. More searchers were called in Saturday.
Police received eyewitness reports that two occupants either fell or jumped from the burning balloon after it struck the power line.
Carrie Hager-Bradley said she saw the balloon in flames on her way home from the grocery store and heard people yelling, according to WWBT TV.
"They were just screaming for anybody to help them," she said. "'Help me, help me, sweet Jesus, help. I'm going to die. Oh my God, I'm going to die,'" Hager-Bradley said she heard one person screaming.
The crash occurred near the Meadow Event Park in rural Caroline County, where the Mid-Atlantic Balloon Festival was being held. The area is about 25 miles north of Richmond.
Another eyewitness, Nancy Johnson, said the crash occurred in an instant.
"One minute the balloons were hovering in field behind Event Park, the next everyone is pointing at sky," she wrote in an email to The Associated Press. "The crowd went silent in shock. Very sad night."
Donnell Ferguson said he was cutting grass when he saw a couple balloons passing by. One was low, barely at tree-top level.
"At first I saw a cloud of black smoke and then I noticed the basket on fire," he said Saturday. "Then it just took off real fast and disappeared."
The festival was scheduled to begin officially on Saturday, but was holding a special kickoff event Friday for about 740 people. Organizers canceled the rest of the festival.
Twenty balloonists from the Mid-Atlantic region were to participate in the weekend festival, said Greg Hicks, a spokesman for the venue, which also is the site of the State Fair of Virginia.
"It's just a shocking situation for everyone," Hicks said.
Some hot air balloons landed safely in Debra Ferguson's yard, The Free Lance-Star of Fredericksburg reported.
She said one of the men in the balloons pointed up at another still in the air and said he thought it might be in trouble.
"As soon as we looked up, the thing blew up right there," Ferguson told the newspaper. "All I heard was, 'Oh my God, Oh my God,' and all you saw was the top of the balloon still flying, but all of the basket was gone. All of the flames just disappeared. ... It was like a match — poof — and then it was gone."
Caroline County resident Paula Dustin said she and her family and a friend were watching the balloons inflate and take off when they saw one in the distance that appeared to be in distress.
"We saw a glow, and you could tell the bottom of the balloon was in flames," Dustin was quoted by the newspaper as saying.
Associated Press reporter Steve Szkotak contributed to this report from Richmond.
Steve Szkotak can be reached on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sszkotakap .


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Purplish Native American Art Pattern Stripes Cushion Cover
- Secure payments
- Free worldwide shipping
- Easy returns
- Available for Purchase
Cushions and Cushion Covers features:
- Dimensions (approx. inches): 18 x 18
- Dimensions (approx. cm): 45 x 45
- Material: Polyester.
- Soft and pleasant.
- Machine washable as delicate recommended.
- Double-sided print. The design is display on both sides.
- Removable cover with zipper closure.
- The same (filling) cushion can be used for several prints.
- Please note: You may purchase:
- Cushion cover only
- Cushion (cover + white pillow as filling, check sample pictures).
Sample picture (sample design):
We offer free worldwide shipping:
- USA, UK, Europe: 10 - 15 days.
- Canada: 10 - 15 Business days.
- Australia and New Zealand: 10- 15 Business days.
- The rest of the World: 10-15 Business days.
All orders are usually processed within one or two business days. You will receive a tracking number for your order once it has been shipped.
Most of our products are kept in stock to assure you of fast delivery and process. But, as we are trying to maintain a wide printed product collection as we can, to make sure everyone can find their desire, some of the designs are 'out of stock' and will be made to order. So please, allow us a few days to update your tracking information (shipping times include processing and producing).
*Business days: Monday to Friday (holidays excluded).
*Notice: shipping time may increase (delay) during peak season, November, December, and January. Please accept our sincere apologies and thank you for understanding.
We commit to customers' satisfaction and take full responsibility for our products. Therefore, we run a money-back guarantee policy. Meaning customers may return, exchange their product based on "changed of mind" reasons. The return request must be applied within 14 days after receipt.
We offer free shipping and free returns.
Supposing the product(/s) has been damaged during the shipping process. Please contact us as soon as possible for a solution to your choice.
For returns, exchanges, requests, or everyday talk, please contact us in one of the following ways:
- Contact form: "Handful of Prints" contact form here
- Email to email@example.com


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An Eden selected blend of family orchard Great Lakes organic apples and organic Montmorency Tart Cherry purée. 80% apple, 20% cherry. Sweet and mildly tart with no sugar or anything else added. A delicious, good for you dessert or snack anytime, anywhere.
The apples and cherries in Eden Cherry Apple Sauce are organically grown on family owned orchards on the shores of the Great Lakes, one of the best tree fruit growing locations in the world due to the seasonal 'lake effect'. After years of organic management, the healthy trees and soil in these beautiful orchards produce the most delicious fruit we have ever tasted.
Eden Cherry Apple Sauce is made using traditional methods. Organic Montmorency tart cherries are washed, pitted and cooked into a thick puree up to 30 Brix. The Brix scale is a hydrometer scale for measuring the sugar content of a solution at a given temperature. A select blend of apples are hand sorted and washed, peeled and cored, and put through a mill where they are chopped and sliced. Next they are transferred to a stainless steel, steam injection cooker where they're cooked into sauce. The sauce is strained, blended with the organic cherry puree and packed in glass jars. 80 percent apple sauce and 20 percent tart cherry puree.
Eden Organic Cherry Apple Sauce is fat free, cholesterol free, and very low sodium.
A six year Washington State University study comparing different types of apple production recently found that organic fruit growing techniques 'are not only better for soil and the environment than their conventional chemical reliant counterpart, but have comparable yields and, for the organic system, higher profits and greater energy efficiency.' The study also determined that organic fruit is sweeter and more delicious.
It's good to be choosy when picking apples and apple products. The USDA has identified 35 insecticides, fungicides, and weed killers sprayed on apples, even though the Environmental Protection Agency considers them hazardous. Tests by the Environmental Working Group state that these chemicals do show up in supermarkets, so it is especially important to choose an organic apple you can trust.
Scientific research has found that apples and apple juice contain a wealth of phytonutrients that have been found beneficial to health. A study conducted at Rochester, Minnesota's Mayo Clinic reported finding the "powerful antioxidant, quercetin, in apples and apple juice." Quercetin is one of the more potent antioxidants in apples. In the journal 'Nature', 2000, researchers at Cornell University reported that apple components had more antioxidant capability than a 1,500-milligram mega dose of vitamin C. "Scientists are interested in isolating single components, such as vitamin C, vitamin E, or beta carotene to see if they exhibit antioxidant benefits," says Dr. Rui Hai Liu at Cornell. "It turns out that none of those work alone. It's the combination of flavonoids and polyphenols [antioxidant phytonutrients found in apples] doing the work."
The Montmorency is traditionally known as the 'pie cherry' and the 'healing cherry'. Where this cherry variety has been grown for generations, the locals attest to its abilities. A study at Michigan State University found the antioxidants anthocyanins and their anlyon cyanidin compounds in the pigment of the Montmorency cherry. They also found kaempferol, isoqueritrin, and quercetin. Research conducted at Brunswick Laboratories in Massachusetts and the Hollings Cancer Institute at the Medical University of South Carolina found that Montmorency cherries contain ellagic acid, a naturally occurring plant phenolic. Other compounds of note found in Montmorency cherries are perillyl alcohol and melatonin. Dr. Russell Reiter, of the University of Texas Health Science Center, said 'We were surprised at how much melatonin was in cherries, specifically the Montmorency variety.' According to research melatonin is a most potent antioxidant, even more so than vitamins C, E and A; it is soluble in both fat and water and can enter cells that many vitamins cannot.


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There are 3 related terms for artists who draw "Popular" rather than "Fine" art.
Illustrator: an artist who draws mainly "realistic" images that are subordinated to a story, or article. Sometimes the subject matter is fantastic-like Frazetta's. Sometimes it's mundane, like Norman Rockwell.
Of course, they are designy illustrators too, but my definition mainly means-non-cartoony.
Animator: An artist that moves drawings. During the Golden Age of Cartoons, most animators were cartoonists who learned to move their cartoons. Disney introduced the idea of hiring illustrator types, like Milt Kahl and Marc Davis and taught them to move their less "cartoony" drawings.
Cartoonist: An artist who draws funny and lively and not realistic or designy. This concept started around the turn of the 20th century in newspaper comics and continued in animated cartoons until the 1960s, then died. Now "cartoonist" means someone who can't draw. Witness the current comic strips in the newspaper. Sometimes people call modern animators "cartoonists" and that's wrong too.
During the period from roughly 1920-1950, most animated cartoons were animated in a "cartoony" style. Cartoons were extremely popular mainstream entertainment, so they attracted young cartoonists who wanted to grow up to draw animated cartoons. Most animation then was drawn by cartoonists who as a second thought learned to move them. This produced the greatest age of cartoons.
Both comic strips and animated cartoons inspired funny young kids to want to be "cartoonists", not "animators". The two terms were practically synonymous.
In the 30s, Disney introduced the idea of non-funny animation and hired illustrator types and trained them to animate. "The Illusion of Life" brags about how the original animators like Freddy Moore and Bill Tytla couldn't keep up with the more illustrative type of animation that the feature animators developed in the 1940s. I won't argue the contradictions in this. That's for another post.
These drawings have inspired the Cal Arts style for decades. Everyone is still stealing these expressions, only without the solid construction.By the 1970s, there were no cartoons in animation anymore. Not on TV and not in the movies.
No one really aspired to grow up to draw the likes of Scooby Doo or Fat Albert. (Actually a couple did, and I wish I had a picture of them to show you.)
People who wanted to be "animators" only had Disney features to look at and really decadent ones at that. This led to the "Cal Arts style".
These are what I call "Cal-Arts expressions". They aren't funny, and they don't reflect any observation of or comment on humanity.
This is a style that is the opposite of cartoony. It's about moving things smoothly and using the poses and expressions you have seen a million times in Disney and Bluth movies. These types of artists don't have cartoonist personalities. They aren't wacky or zany. They aren't hard-bitten sarcastic men who take a grim realistic view of life and then make fun of it in their cartoons.
The Cal Arts style looks like it's drawn by suburban kids who had a normal easy life and don't have anything to say about the world except that their Mom is pear shaped. You see the same stereotypical vacant characters in all their cartoons, whether 2d or 3d. When they get to write their own cartoons, they tend to have scenes where the Mowgli descendants marry their normal bland suburban pear-shaped Moms. (Treasure Planet, Iron Giant).
This character is technically well-drawn by a talented artist, but is not very fun or cartoony and the expressions don't reflect anything identifiable. They are Cal-Arts expressions.
In 25 years of me meeting and hiring Cal Arts students I have only met about 3 or 4 "cartoonists". Aaron Springer, Jim Reardon and Jeff Pidgeon spring to mind. Somehow these guys emerged after 4 years and a hundred thousand dollars wasted with a style of their own and their own unique view of the world.
Cal Arts often rejects super talented cartoonists just because they are cartoonists. Katie Rice and Matt Danner, 2 of the most talented artists and quickest learners I have ever worked with were both rejected on the basis of their portfolios which when they were teenagers were already better than most Cal Arts graduates. Cartooniness is now a crime amongst animation people.
A real cartoonist is a contradiction. It's usually someone who sees life realistically and has a sarcastic view of all the hypocrisy and insanity in the world, yet he (she) draws in a really happy lively, funny style.
Don Martin, Tex Avery, Virgil Partch, Bob Clampett, Grim Natwick, Rod Scribner, Irv Spence, Carlo Vinci, Milt Gross.
Mike Fontanelli, me, Eddie Fitzgerald, Mike Kerr, Nick Cross, Katie Rice, Bob Jaques, Vincent Waller, Jim Smith.
Unfortunately for the very few existing modern cartoonists, there is no cartoon industry anymore. Cartoons are no longer mainstream. Not because the audience doesn't want cartoons, but because the executives don't understand and fear them; cartoons are "written" now by idiots, rather than drawn by funny artists with life experiences and a funny world view to share.
In TV we have fake cartoons, imitation Spumco cartoons or "designy" angled Cal Arts stuff. In features we have Cal Arts CG or we have Dreamworks executive bad taste numbskull CG. No cartoony vision anywhere. Now that they have almost eliminated classic cartoons from television I fear there is nothing to inspire nature's next batch of potential young cartoonists, so they will just find some other field of work to get lost in.
It's ridiculous and criminal, because cartoons are the perfect artform for regular folks. Cartoons are the folk and rock music for the unwashed masses. They are every democratic person's birthright and the modern world won't give people their due.
Cartoons are supposed to be FUN and creative.
Dan Gordon is a great example of a pure cartoonist. I don't know a heck of a lot about him. He was an animator, storyboard artist (writer) and director for the Fleischers and Famous studios in the 30s and early 40s. He disappears from animated cartoon credits for almost 15 years.
He drew lots of really fun comic books in the 1940s and I collect them.
He has an elusive appeal in his drawings. They aren't perfectly constructed or particularly careful, but the characters all seem really alive and motivated from within. They believe in their little adventures and play their parts with gusto.
A lot of animators in the 40s and 50s drew comic books on the side and it's really interesting to see how they drew when they didn't have to conform to the studio style or the director's style.http://kinky-boot-beast.blogspot.com/2006/12/comic-book-scans.html
Ken Hultgren drew well and perfectly professionally and in a similar style to Dan Gordon's but it lacks the pure fun element in Dan's comics. It's like an illustrator who has been taught to draw cartoons for a living. Chuck Jones' animators drew comics and they are somewhat bland by comparison.
Anyway, here's Dan-as pure a cartoonist who ever held a pencil. This is a guy who is nice to kids.
Thanks to my pal, Tara, who gave me this comic!
Here's more Dan Gordon from Kent Butterworth's collection!
Dan later became one of the key creative founders of Hanna Barbera's TV cartoon studio. I have seen a few of his storyboard panels and his drawings of Ed Benedict's characters are great. Stylish and sooo cartoony and fun to look at.
If anyone has any, PLEASE post them and I will link to you!


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Every year the folks in Junction City, Oregon, gather to celebrate their Scandinavian heritage. They throw quite a party. It's a four day celebration and visitors to the Scandinavian Festival never go home hungry. There's a day for Sweden, a day for Norway, a day for Finland and one for Denmark. Before we tour the fair and its food, I'd like to share a recipe for the best Swedish meatballs I've ever had. They are simple to make, but I guarantee they'll enhance your reputation as a cook. Additional pictures of the fair follow the recipe. Have fun and try not to eat too much.
Swedish Meatballs
4 large eggs, slightly beaten
2 cups milk
1 cup packaged bread crumbs
4 tablespoons butter, divided use
1 cup very finely chopped onion
3 teaspoons salt + salt to taste
2 pounds 85% lean ground beef
1/2 pound ground pork
1-1/2 teaspoons dried dill weed, divided use
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon cardamom
2 (10.5-oz.) can condensed beef broth, undiluted
1/3 cup flour
1/4 teaspoon freshly cracked pepper
1 cup light cream or half-and-half
Garnish: fresh dill or parsley
1) Combine eggs, milk and bread crumbs in a medium bowl.
2) Place 2 tablespoons butter in a large skillet and saute until onion is soft, about 5 minutes.
3) Remove onions from skillet and add to crumb mixture with 3 teaspoons salt, beef, pork, 1/2 teaspoons dill weed, allspice, nutmeg and cardamom. Mix to combine (don't overdo this). Refrigerate, covered, until mixture can be shaped, about 1 hours.
4) Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Shape meat mixture into 45 meatballs.
5) Heat reserved 2 tablespoons butter. Saute meatballs in batches until browned on all sides. Transfer to a large baking pan or roaster with 2-inch sides.
6) Pour off all but 1/4 cup pan drippings. Stir in flour and pepper. Slowly add beef broth and bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Add cream and reserved 1 teaspoon dill weed. Pour gravy over meatballs.
7) Bake, uncovered for 30 minutes. Garnish with fresh dill. Yield: 6 servings.
Recipe adapted from The New McCall's Cook Book
This recipe is being linked to Designs By Gollum - Foodie Friday


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ROCK HILL, S.C. – Authorities in South Carolina say a man who was not in good humor smacked an ice-cream truck driver with a fudge bar in a dispute over correct change after his daughter bought the frozen confection.
The ice cream vendor told Rock Hill, South Carolina, police the man accused her of not giving his daughter correct change after a purchase. That's when the fudge bar was allegedly employed as a weapon.
Police officers who responded to the call Wednesday reported they saw a red mark on the driver's arm.
The driver gave officers a description of the man and the white truck he used for a getaway vehicle. The police report did not say whether he took the fudge bar with him.


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Former US Senator Chuck Hagel, US President Barack Obama's nominee for Secretary of Defense, reviews his notes during a recess during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on January 31, 2013.
Credit: AFP/Getty Images
© 2024 Blaze Media LLC. All rights reserved.
"Until the committee receives full and complete answers, it cannot in good faith determine whether you should be confirmed as secretary of defense."
WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 31: Former U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee during his confirmation hearing to become the next secretary of defense on Capitol Hill January 31, 2013 in Washington, DC. President Barack Obama nominated Hagel, a controversial choice as Hagel opposed former President George W. Bush and his own party on the Iraq War and upset liberals with his criticism of a gay ambassador, for which he later apologized. Credit: Getty Images
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A Senate panel on Wednesday abruptly postponed a vote on Chuck Hagel's nomination to be defense secretary amid Republican demands for more information from President Barack Obama's nominee about his paid speeches and business dealings.
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, had hoped to vote on the nomination on Thursday during a separate hearing on Libya, but Levin issued a statement late Wednesday saying no vote would occur this week.
"The committee's review of the nomination is not yet complete. I intend to schedule a vote on the nomination as soon as possible," Levin said.
Hours earlier, committee Republicans said they were dissatisfied with information Hagel had provided the panel after his confirmation hearing last week, and no vote should occur. They focused on his speeches and affiliations with organizations such as the Atlantic Council, a nonpartisan public interest group.
Hagel, a former two-term Republican senator from Nebraska, has faced strong opposition from his ex-GOP colleagues who have questioned his past statements and votes on Israel, Iran and nuclear weapons. It was unclear whether the delay in the vote would derail the nomination or merely postpone action on Obama's choice to replace Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.
In a letter to Hagel, Republicans complained that he failed to answer several questions, including details on all compensation of more than $5,000 that he had received over the past five years. They also had pressed him on his recent speeches, the groups he has addressed and their donors.
"The committee, and the American people, have a right to know if a nominee for secretary of defense has received compensation, directly or indirectly, from foreign sources," Senate Republicans wrote. "Until the committee receives full and complete answers, it cannot in good faith determine whether you should be confirmed as secretary of defense."
The Associated Press obtained a copy of the letter, which was signed by more than two dozen Republicans, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
Freshman Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who opposes Hagel's nomination, had complained to his colleagues about the information the nominee provided during a closed meeting on Tuesday. Other Republicans raised objections to a vote.
"I'm not going to make any decision on Sen. Hagel until we get all the information we've requested," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told a small group of reporters Wednesday. "I don't think we should be voting."
Hagel, in a separate letter to committee Republicans, had tried to explain that some of the information they were seeking was not available.
"My role with respect to the entities you identify is as a current and former board or advisory board member. I was not involved in the day-to-day management of any of these firms, and have not been involved with some for the firms for years now," Hagel wrote. "Thus, as a matter of fact, I do not believe I have any of the information requested. More importantly, the information you seek is legally controlled by the individual entities and not mine to disclose."
Senate Democrats, who hold the majority, continue to stand behind the nomination, and no Democrat has said he or she would vote against the president's pick for his second-term national security team. Hagel, 66, is a decorated Vietnam combat veteran.
About a dozen Republicans have said they would oppose their former colleague and several others have indicated they were likely to vote no.
Democrats hold a 55-45 advantage in the Senate, and two Republicans have announced their support for Hagel - Sens. Thad Cochran of Mississippi and Mike Johanns of Hagel's home state of Nebraska. More than a handful of Republicans, including Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., have said they oppose a filibuster of the nomination.
Last month, Hagel told Pentagon officials he would divest some of his financial holdings and resign from several corporate boards and public interest groups to avoid potential conflicts of interest if he wins Senate confirmation.
He said he would resign his corporate board post at Chevron Corp. and shed investments in the energy company, a major government contractor. He also would cut ties and investments with the McCarthy Group LLC, an Omaha-based private equity firm.
Hagel also pledged to cut ties with several academic and public interest groups, including Georgetown University and the Atlantic Council.
Featured image via AFP/Getty
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text: 6-in-drain-cover-black 2023-09-15T18:09:45-04:00By French Drain Man|Comments Off on 6-in-drain-cover-black Share This Story, Choose Your Platform! FacebookXRedditLinkedInPinterestVk About the Author: French Drain Man Robert Sherwood is a professionally licensed builder at the design, building and consulting company Sherwood Landscape Construction L.L.C. in Romeo, MI. He is an expert in drainage issues teaching homeowners in water management. He has worked thousands of projects successfully removing water from properties. Over the years these clients have benefited and saved money in the preservation of home and property. Robert Sherwood is currently the project manager at Sherwood Landscape Construction L.L.C. and French Drain Man.


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I'm in the Yes-Yes camp, and I was surprised that doubting one's own free will was so common among the conference participants. It is striking how unrepresentative this result is for the general population who likes to hold on to the belief that personal choices are undetermined and unpredictable. In a cross-cultural study with participants from the United States, Hong Kong, India and Colombia, Sarkassian et al found that more than two thirds of respondents (82% USA, 85% India, 65% Hong Cong, 77% Colombia) believe that our universe is indeterministic and human decisions are "not completely caused by the past"(exact wording used in the study).
One of the likely reasons many people believe in free will is that if fundamentally there is no such thing as free will, how come that most of us* have the feeling that we do make decisions?
Lacking a good theory of consciousness, it may be that rather than making decisions, the role of our consciousness is to simply provide aggregated information about what our brain and body was doing, is currently doing, and provide a crude extrapolation of this information into the future. As we grow up, we become better at predicting what will be happening next –in our surrounding as well as with our own body and mind – and may mistake our prediction of what we will be doing for an intent to do it, and our imperfection of making precise predictions creates the illusion that we had a choice. (I doubt I'm the first to have this thought. If you know a reference with similar spirit, please let me know.)
This would mean, if you slap your forehead now, rather than consciously deciding to do so and making the choice to perform this action (which we may call the "standard interpretation") your neuronal network has arrived at the necessary state that immediately precedes this action and your consciousness notes that next thing that will likely happen is you'll be slapping your forehead, which it interprets as your impulse to do so (we may call it the "self-extrapolation interpretation"). You are not entirely certain about this since you have learned that your subconscious on occasion makes twists that your consciousness fails to properly predict, thus the possibility remains you'll not be slapping your forehead after all.
It has in fact been argued that the reason why most people reject determinism it is their inability to predict actions, first by Thomas Reid I am told, and later by Spinoza, not that I actually read either. So possibly theoretical physicists are more inclined to believe in determinism because making precise predictions is their day job ;-)
Sean Carroll recently argued that free will can have a peaceful coexistence with modern science on an emergent level, in an effective description of human beings. That only works though if in the process of arriving at that effective level you throw away information that was fundamentally there. I believe Sean is aware of that when he writes "But we don't know [all the necessary information to predict human decisions], and we never will, and therefore who cares?"
Well, I'd say that if you make room for free will by neglecting in principle available information, then his notion of free will is an empty concept that, as I've learned from the comments to his blogpost, the philosopher Edward Fredkin more aptly named "pseudo free will."
I'm only picking around on Sean's post because it's short enough for you to go and read it unlike hundreds of pages that some philosophers have spent to say essentially the same thing. In any case, it is interesting how some scientists desperately try to hold on to some notion of free will in the face of an uncaring universe. I believe one of the reasons is that rejecting free will sheds a light of doubt on ones' moral responsibility, and since I feel personally offended, some words on that.
Whether the universe evolves deterministically, or whether its time evolution has a random element, an individual, fundamentally, has no choice over his or her actions in either case. It is then difficult to hold somebody responsible for actions if they had no way to make a different choice. This and similar thoughts have spurred a number of studies that claim to have shown that priming people's belief in a deterministic universe reduces their moral responsibility.
For example, a study by psychologists Kathleen Vohs and Jonathan Schooler (summary here) had half of the participants read a text passage arguing against the existence of free will. All participants then filled out a survey on their belief in free will and completed an arithmetic test in which they had an option to cheat, but were asked not to. It turned out that disbelief in free will was correlated with the amount of cheating. Also, in the previously mentioned study by Sarkassian et al, most participants held the opinion that in a deterministic universe people are not responsible for their actions.
However, the issue of moral responsibility is a red herring, for morals are human constructs whether or not we have free will . From the viewpoint of natural selection, the reason why most of us don't go around cheating, stealing, or generally making others suffer is not that it's illegal or immoral or both, but that our self-extrapolation correctly predicts we will be suffering in return. Not primarily because we may be thrown into jail but because our brains would keep returning to that moment of offense, imagining how other people suffered because of our wrongdoing, telling us that way that we did act against the interests of our species, and more generally reducing our overall fitness.
In fact, that our species still exists and seems to be doing reasonably well means that most of us do not take pleasure in letting others suffer. The reason we don't perform "immoral" acts is that we can't: We're the product of a billion years of natural selection that has done well to sort out those who pose a risk to our future, and we've called the result "moral." (I am far from saying one can derive morals.)
The less consequences an act has for ones' own future and that of others the larger the variety in people's behavior. (There are more people jaywalking than strangling talk show hosts in front of running cameras.) That we have laws enforcing rules is because there remain people among us whose brains are some sigma away from the average and our laws are one more channel of natural selection, keeping these people off the streets, trying to readjust their brain's functionality, or at least generally making their lives difficult. David Eagleman recently made a very enlightened argument for a rethinking of our justice system in light of neurobiological evidence for our reduced capability to change our brain's working.
In a world without free will, we should not ask if a person is worth blaming, but simply look for the dominant cause of the problem and take steps to solve it.
Similarly, instead of asking if who is morally responsible we should ask what incentives do people have. The problem with the above mentioned test for moral responsibility in a deterministic universe it that the consequences of the alleged "immoral" act of cheating are entirely negligible. Putting forward the plausible thesis that the illusion of free will is beneficial to our brain's performance (or otherwise, why is it so universal?), the test subject's cheating might have been simply a reassurance of their illusion. If one would replace the temptation to cheat on a test with a questionnaire for the participant's likings in food and then offer snacks, chances are those who were suggested a deterministic universe would feel the urge to select a food they do not usually prefer. Better still, one may have told the test subjects that the better their brains in the deterministic universe are adapted to living a modern life in modern times, the less likely they will be to perform "immoral acts" that violate the (written or unwritten) rules and values of that society (whether that is true or not doesn't matter).
Predetermined Lunch: Not Free Either
That our decisions are determined does not mean that we do not have to make them, which is a common misunderstanding, nicely summarized by Sean Carroll's anecdote
"John Searle has joked that people who deny free will, when ordering at a restaurant, should say 'just bring me whatever the laws of nature have determined I will get.'"
The decision what you will eat may be predetermined, but your brain still has to crunch the numbers and spit out a result. One could equally well joke that your computer, rather than running the code you've written, returns it back to you with the remark that the result is predetermined and follows from your input. Which is arguably true, but still somebody or something has to actually perform the calculation. Though in a deterministic universe it is in principle possible, it is highly questionable that the cook will be able to make the prediction about your order in your place, even after asking Laplace's demon for input.
In other words, even if you don't have a free will, to make a decision you still have to collect all the information you deem necessary and scan your memory and experience to build an opinion, or perform whatever other process you have come to think is a good way to make decisions, may that be rolling a dice or calling your mom. Whether or not you believe you have a freedom in making a decision doesn't save you the energy needed to do it.
The original version of this post had a poll included on the question "Do you believe in free will?" but the applet is no longer functional. The results were
- I believe human decisions are in principle predictable and there is no free will. 35.4% (45)
- I believe human decisions are in principle predictable, but still there can be free will. 28.3% (36)
- I believe human decisions are not predictable, neither in practice nor in principle, and we have free will. 27.6% (35)
- I believe something else that I'll explain in the comments. 8.7% (11)
* The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, describes Depersonalization Disorder as follows: "The essential features of Depersonalization Disorder are persistent or recurrent episodes of depersonalization characterized by a feeling of detachment or estrangement from one's self. The individual may feel like an automaton or as if he or she is living in a dream or a movie. There may be a sensation of being an outside observer of one's mental processes, one's body, or parts of one's body."
Thus, interestingly enough, not all of us share the feeling of being in charge of one's actions. That the failure to relate to oneself is filed under "disorder" seems to me to show that believing in free will is beneficial to the individual's functionality and well-being.