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Machine Consciousness
I have been working with colleagues at other universities to establish the investigation of machine consciousness as a valid scientific enterprise, as well as making my own technical contributions to the field. I am PI of the EPSRC Adventure Fund project "Machine consciousness through internal modelling." This is a joint project with Professor Tom Troscianko and Dr Iain Gilchrist (Department of Psychology, University of Bristol). The Essex-based funding is Ł314,781 and the total for the two universities is Ł493,290; the proposal was one of thirteen selected from almost 700 in the Adventure Fund competition. I was one of the organisers of the first international workshop on conscious machines in 2001, which led to a book (click (see here for a recent review); I have been an invited speaker at several subsequent machine consciousness events. In the UK, I am involved with a Grand Challenge for computer science incorporating this theme, and I am a member of the Foresight Cognitive Systems Project; in the US, I was an invited participant at the DARPA workshop on Self-aware Computer Systems, held in April 2004.
In our project we are looking at machine consciousness in a strongly embodied context. You can find a presentation of our core ideas in an unnecessarily large file here. To be convinced of our commitment to embodiment, see the section below on anthropomimetic robots. More details of the machine consciousness project can be found at the project website here.
Anthropomimetic robots
We have long been used to the idea of the humanoid robot a robot with two legs, two arms, a torso, and a head, and with the proportions and outward appearance of a human. In the last decade we have also become used to the reality of the humanoid robot. Universities, research institutes, automobile and consumer electronics companies, and even toy manufacturers have surrounded us with demonstrations, prototypes, and commercial products, and we can see them walking on two legs, picking up small objects, and so on. Some of the more volatile minds in our society have recently begun to fret about the possibility that humankind may become dependent on, and perhaps subservient to, the descendants of this first wave, and may even be replaced by them. We dont think theres any danger of that because, with a very few exceptions such as MITs COG project, the only resemblance these robots have to real humans is external and superficial: they look like us, but their operational principles are so far removed from our own that there is little prospect that their incremental refinement will result in anything better than more of the same.
What is the problem? Skin. This opaque envelope conceals its contents from our perceptual apparatus, and prevents us from paying enough attention to what lies within. We therefore overvalue human-like shape, and undervalue human-like functioning. However, when what is inside is revealed to our senses as in the brilliant plastination preparations of Gunther von Hagens we immediately and irreversibly become more aware of our true physical nature. But there is more to how we work than what we are made of, and even von Hagens process yields no more than static displays. Take what was once regarded as a key human attribute raising us above other animals bipedal walking, which all humanoid robots must of course be able to do. Do they do it like us? Many of the best modern humanoids give clues that something may be wrong. Look at the movies of them walking and ask yourself Did even Groucho Marx walk like that? And then look at a movie of Steve Collins passive dynamic walker) no motors, and no electronics, and yet it clearly walks in the same way as we do! If you use the right principles, you get the right output. Our claim is that humanoid robots should be designed using human-like principles, and we believe this approach needs a new name: anthropomimetic robotics.
Here at Essex we are exploring this new field with the CRONOS series of robots, designed and constructed by Rob Knight. The inspirations for the first examples are the human skeleton and its musculature. We are all familiar with the skeleton, and to some extent with muscles, but we are much less familiar with the ways in which the muscles are connected to the skeleton and act on it to produce movements and to exert force on the external world. CRONOS, a design study, illustrates our approach. The robot has a skeleton of rigid bone-like elements (hand-moulded from the modelling polymer Polymorph) linked by joints of various kinds (cast-in ball and socket, plain, and needle-roller). Many of the bones and the degrees of freedom of the joints have been modelled using Grays Anatomy and other medical texts as sources. The muscles are servomotors, but they are connected to the bones by elastic tendons (bungee and shock cord) forming a series-elastic combination similar to the actuators used at MIT in the 1990s. (Series elastic actuators solve many of the problems caused by using conventional motors and gearboxes rigidly coupled to limbs and other robot body parts for a good summary of these issues see the Yobotics web site and the patent.) What makes CRONOS different from other robots is that the positions and lines of pull of the muscles are also similar to those of the corresponding real muscles, and the tendons are positioned in biomimetically consistent ways. For this initial investigation, not all muscles were represented some were replaced by tendons alone, appropriately tensioned.
Even before powering CRONOS up, it is clear that there is a fundamental difference between this and the conventional approach. You take his hand and shake it: it moves easily, and so does his whole skeleton. This multi-degree-of-freedom structure, supported by the tensions between dozens of elastic elements, responds as a whole, transmitting force and movement well beyond the point of contact. You take his arm and push it downward: the elbow flexes, the complex shoulder moves, and the spine bends and twists. When the robot is powered up, it will move to some equilibrium posture, but the character of the movement is again highly distinctive, because the disturbances due to the robots own movement are propagated through the structure just like the externally imposed loads. After the first encounter, your impressions will tend to coalesce in a single thought: this is a crazy way to build a robot. And so it is, if all one wants is a robot that fits into a human envelope, is able to operate in limited ways on a largely static and predictable world, and is tractable from the point of view of control. But if we want to end up with a robot that as far as possible works in the same way as a human an anthropomimetic robot we must face up to the problems that robots like CRONOS present.
Perhaps the best way to appreciate what is involved arises from a simple and well known experiment, or party trick. Make an object that looks exactly like some everyday object, but is much lighter than it should be, and ask someone to pick it up and hand it to you. We are all familiar with the effects: the persons hand shoots up into the air, because the motor program being executed was compiled in the expectation of the object being what it appeared to be. But next time you see it, dont watch the hand; instead, watch the rest of the body. If the object is the real thing, the body will scarcely move at all, but if it is the fake, there will be lots of movement. Why? Because the original motor program did not deal only with the hand and arm, but with the whole body. With the real object, as well as directing the reaching, grasping, and lifting, it would have anticipated and cancelled the effects on the rest of the body caused by the movement and the load. With the fake, the movement and load are different, and so the body makes unexpected movements, which are reactively compensated by postural and other reflexes, producing movement out of all proportion to the cause. In a rigid robot, there would be no need for any of this unless the new load and movement affected the robots balance. However, with CRONOS, we will be forced to develop complete whole-body predictive motor programs in order to produce human-like reaching, grasping, and lifting from an apparently stable platform.
CRONOS was an initial design study, investigating materials, actuators, joints, and morphology. We have now moved on to the second phase, the prototype CRONOS2. It retains all the principles of CRONOS, but uses much more powerful motors, and some engineering simplifications. For example, CRONOSs shoulder was faithfully modelled on the human, so much so that it could be dislocated in the same way; CRONOS2 has a more conventionally engineered multi-degree-of-freedom shoulder that reduces complexity without affecting the central ideas. CRONOS2 will also be the platform for studying the neck and head. The neck will be a structure similar to the spine, and the head will carry and direct the camera(s) for the visual system.
Since vision will be the robots major source of information (as in humans), we will again try to achieve a degree of fidelity in this area. The control of gaze direction is of crucial importance to any visual system; for this, most robot implementations rely on a basic pan-and-tilt camera rigidly mounted on a rigid body structure. Gaze direction control using such an arrangement reduces to a rather crude analogue of eye movements alone, and is simply a matter of issuing the appropriate pan and tilt coordinates. However, in ourselves and in the robot, gaze direction involves not just eye movements, but also head and body movements and of course the characteristics of the last two are those of the CRONOS concept, potentially involving the whole elastic body in a nexus of predictive corrections in order to achieve stability.
The picture left shows the first prototype of the neck, head, and eye system mounted on CRONOS2. In order to provide more mobility, the neck is rather longer than the human equivalent, so much so that the robot could inspect its navel if it had one. The single eye consists of a 640x480 colour CCD sensor mounted in a spherical analogue of an eyeball which is moved by analogues of human eye muscles to give pan, tilt, and rotation. The foveal acuity of the current system is at about cat level - around 20% of the human level - but the total field of view is rather narrow, at around 25 degrees. (The eventual camera system will provide increased foveal resolution and a field of view of 90 degrees.) In order to evaluate the prototype, eye movements will initially be controlled using a saliency mapping system.
We're also working on the hips and legs. The picture on the left shows the initial design study, aimed at investigating and exploiting intrinsically stable structures for standing and walking. Once again, anthropomimetic design produces engineering benefits. The knee joint, seen here without the patella, combines rolling and sliding motions, delivering increased mechanical advantage when bent, and a distinct locking characteristic when straight. The foot, with a fixed arch out to the little toe and a jointed and tensioned big toe, works in conjunction with the ankle both to adapt to the terrain and to stiffen under load. The entire assembly is passively stable when the legs are straight, and can safely be deflected at the hip for a couple of inches. The next step will be to power the relevant degrees of freedom for controlling walking; we believe that the passive stability already obtained, combined with the use of the passive dynamic principles mentioned above, will deliver low power walking with some intrinsic adaptation to the terrain.
Were still feeling our way in this territory, and wed be happy to receive any comments on the approach, or new information about similar projects, whether humanoid or not for example, our ideas have lots in common with Peter Dilworths project on the robotic dinosaur Troody, and there is some overlap with Aaron Edsinger-Gonzales' DOMO at MIT.
There's more information about the construction of the latest version here, in a draft of a paper to be presented at the AISB Symposium on Biologically Inspired Robotics. The picture below shows what the robot looked like a couple of weeks ago; here is a 6MB movie of us trying out its brand new shoulder-blade-equipped left arm via remote control. More videos can be found on the machine consciousness lab home page.
History of Cybernetics
With Professor Phil Husbands of the University of Sussex, I am writing a history
of early British cybernetics, based on the Ratio Club, a cybernetic dining club
which met from 1949 - 1955, and which included in its membership Grey Walter, Alan
Turing, Ross Ashby, and other key figures of the period. The eventual output will
be a book, probably in 2006.
I am particularly interested in Grey Walter's robot tortoises and other cybernetic artefacts - please let me know if you have any unpublished information about them.
The Flying Gridswarm, and the UltraSwarm
These two projects are exploring ways of getting a group of small
aircraft to fly like a flock of birds, while at the same time
performing non-trivial task-related distributed computation across a
wireless network. The UltraSwarm is the indoor version; the initial development used
Proxflyer miniature helicopters. This work is in collaboration with John
Woods and Adrian Clark from the Electronic Systems Engineering
Department, and with computer science PhD student Renzo de Nardi
who does most of the work,
and it was initially funded by the University of Essex Research Promotion Fund. The construction of the first
prototype UltraSwarm node has been successfully completed - it is fitted with a Gumstix
miniature Linux computer and a Bluetooth module, and we believe it
is currently the smallest flying web server in the world - in the
picture it is serving up the project web page over the Bluetooth
link! We're now evaluating a new aerial platform - the
Hirobo Lama XRB SR. When the flock
has been completed, the Bluetooth modules will be configured
as a single Piconet with the master on the arena-based computer
system. Like the prototype, each helicopter
will also carry a stripped-down colour
video camera (a spycam) which will be used both for flight control,
and for gathering data for a cooperative visual task. The background of this project is described here,
in a paper presented at the IEEE
Swarm Intelligence Symposium in June 2005. There is a more up to
date version featuring the new platform
For the Flying Gridswarm, I am again working with several members of the Electronics Systems Engineering Department at the University of Essex (John Woods, Adrian Clark, Martin Fleury, and others). The project is based around a commercially available model aerobatic trainer - a very powerful machine capable of 120m.p.h. We have fitted the first aircraft with an autopilot system, and are currently evaluating its performance. The next stage will be to add a Linux-based miniature computer system, such as Gumstix, along with an 802.11 wireless LAN, and then to explore appropriate methods of enabling and controlling flocking, but first we have to find somewhere safe to do it... For some details of this project, and some useful links to related projects, see gridswarms.essex.ac.uk
Extended Particle Swarm Optimisation
I was an active member of the EPSRC Research Cluster in Swarm Intelligence (July -December 2003), along with Prof. Riccardo Poli at Essex. As one of the outcomes of the cluster, we have obtained funding from EPSRC for a major multi-site project on Extended Particle Swarm Optimisation (total 912,702 - Essex's share 262,295) involving five universities, six international visitors, and an industrial partner (BTexact). The project started in October 2004.
Walking with Robots
I am a Co-investigator for the 260,000 EPSRC public engagement
Walking with Robots, which is led by
Professor Alan Winfield at
UWE. The aim is to promote public awareness of and interest in
robotics, and over the next three years the project will organise
presentations, demonstrations, and debates involving a dozen of the
UK's leading robotics researchers. Find out more


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The majority of questions I receive are always about the overall safety of insurance carriers. Ever since 2008, people are understandably concerned about the solvency and financial stability of insurance companies.
If you think the world is going to end, then there are no arguments for any investment, including annuities. Please spare me with your Armageddon scenarios and go ahead and put your money in a hole in the backyard while the rest of us try to provide realistic portfolio solutions.
Annuities have historically proven to be one of the safest strategies for your money, but you still have to do your homework before placing your hard earned funds with an insurance carrier.
Below are some key points that you need to know before making any decision to own an annuity.
COMDEX Score
The easiest way to see if your agent is qualified is to ask them for a current listing of COMDEX scores of insurance carriers. If your agent responds "What is COMDEX?", then there is no need to work with that person any longer.
COMDEX is a compilation of ratings from different ratings services, and provides a formula scoring system that ranges from 0 to 100. 100 is perfect, and as safe as is gets for an insurance carrier. There is an annual cost that the agent has to pay to receive these scores, so usually the experienced agent is the only one who understand how valuable this score is when choosing the right company.
Ratings Services
A.M. Best, Standard & Poors, Fitch, Moody's, Weiss are the primary rating agencies that cover insurance carriers. As I stated above, I prefer using the COMDEX scoring system because it is a compilation of ratings services. However, each if these individual ratings services provide a great resource of information, and can be a part of your overall due diligence process.
State Guarantee Fund
Annuities are regulated and backed at the state level, not federal. To find out what your specific state guarantee dollar amounts are, go to www.nolhga.com. If you are really worried about the safety of insurance carriers, but still want a contractually guaranteed annuity strategy, then I would recommend buying annuities within your specific state dollar guarantee limit and diversifying among more than one carrier.
Carrier Balance Sheet
The vast majority of insurance carriers will provide their balance sheet and fixed-income holdings that, in essence, backs up the annuity policies. If the carrier is publicly traded, it is even easier to access that type of information, and you can contact that company's investor services department for specific information.
Now that you know exactly what resources to use when doing your own annuity research, below are some unfortunate and common sales practices you need to watch out for from your local annuity agent or the mega online annuity promoters.
- · Showing only one rating agency
There are many times an insurance carrier might have an A- rating from one agency, and the other rating agencies have them less than A. Guess which one the agent tells you about? That's the reason you need to request the company's COMDEX score, because it is a compilation of ratings and the agent can't cherry pick the best one.
- · Using the State Guarantee Fund in the selling process
This is illegal in most states, and can cost an agent their license if they are caught. Go to www.nolhga.com to see the rules for your specific state. Your State Guarantee Fund is not FDIC, so don't let your agent make this inappropriate and incorrect comparison.
- · Showing only one carrier or product recommendation
An ugly truth is that most agents are one trick pony's and only sell one product, even though they tell you that they represent multiple carriers. This is very true with the aggressive online annuity promoters. Always ask to see three to five different carriers that contractually solve for your specific situation or goal.
- · Putting too much or all of your assets into an annuity
Having managed money in my previous life at some of the major wire house firms, I understand the need for diversification and proportion within a portfolio. That being said, it is typical for most agents to try to move ALL of your money into an annuity strategy. In the overwhelming majority of cases, this is not suitable or appropriate and should be a large red flag if this is the agent's recommendation.
So is your annuity policy and the company that issued it safe? To the terminal sky is falling crowd that is hording dry goods and gold bars, they can always find a reason for the answer to be no. For the rest of us that are a tad more rational and see the world from a more glass half full viewpoint, annuities can be a very safe place to put your money and transfer your risk to the carrier instead of choosing to shoulder it yourself.
Remember, annuities are really just confidence products, and the large conglomerate of insurance companies are going to do whatever it takes to not upset this profitable apple cart by losing the confidence of the investing public and the 10,000 baby boomers that retire every day.
That internal industry oversight, in my opinion, might be the real reason your money is safe in an annuity.

subset: commoncrawl


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Blockbuster Comeback for Netflix
Anyone investing in movies should know it's a hits business – you tend to make it big or lose almost everything. At least recently, the same has gone for shares of Netflix.
The DVD and video-streaming company's stock rose nearly tenfold between 2009 and June 2011, then fell 74% in the second half of last year. That made it the second-worst performer in the S&P 500 during those six months, just a whisker behind embattled renewables firm First Solar.
But since Netflix began adding subscribers again and getting attention for new programming – like Lillyhammer, its Norway-based mafia series – market sentiment has turned on a dime. Netflix is the top-performing stock in the index so far this year, up 87%. Among other stars: some of the worst dogs of 2011, like Sears Holdings, Bank of America, and First Solar. If Netflix's story takes another scary turn, the company could consider pitching its own script. –John Jannarone


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Making things is just so much fun and taking on new projects is a rewarding experience where you can learn something new. Take this SpinArt machine for example. I went to the local ReUse center last week and as usual, I didn't know what I was going to find. I didn't have the desire to make a SpinArt machine at the time, but the idea came to me when I found an old school desk there for $10. I thought it would be a great "ReUse" to put a rotating platter inside the flip up top and call it a SpinArt machine. Of course, the "Art" part of the name as it relates to the methodology is subjective and I really want to call it a "Centrifugal Pigment Accelerator", but in the name of effective communication I will reluctantly call it a SpinArt Machine.
Now, a SpinArt machine, no matter how good it looks, really isn't a piece of furniture I need around my house. It was great fun to make and even the first few paintings were fun, but it should find a new home and I know just the place where this will be right at home and that is the Mt Elliot Makerspace in Detroit. I have been spending a fair amount there recently helping my friend John setting up the wood shop. There is a lot of work to do still, but it is nice to see progress being made. This weekend we were painting the ceiling in the wood shop. I also took a break to paint the SpinArt machine desktop when I was there. I plan on taking the SpinArt machine down there next time I ride in a truck and hopefully I will be able to get some video of the thing in action. It is a little hard to film and operate it at the same time.
According to the Wikipedia entry for Spin Art, this method of painting has been documented since 1958. The way "SpinArt" works is that you have, whatever it is that you want to paint, attached to the platter, then you turn on the machine to spin the platter and when it is up to speed, you drop paint onto whatever it is that you are painting. If the platter is spinning fast enough, the coefficient of friction between the paint and painted surface is high enough and the viscosity of your paint is low enough, the centrifugal force acting on the rotating paint will draw itself out radially from the center of rotation. Several things will affect the pattern as it is painted. Most notable are the aforementioned angular velocity and paint viscosity ,but also, the rate of change in angular velocity will impact the finished painting.
|Here is the "before" pic of the desk as it sits outside the ReUse Center
I think the picture below will give you a good idea of everything that is going on here. There is a motor underneath the wooden disk inside the desk. Outside is the speed control (more on this later) attached to the side. You can also see a lamp and the cord to power it all on the ground. It really is that simple, but I will go into some details in a moment.
The fan motor is an induction motor and as such, cannot be speed controlled with an ordinary incandescent dimmer switch. I confirmed this to be true by trying to use a lamp dimmer to control the speed of the motor with nothing attached to the output shaft. Then, I tried adding a 60W light bulb in series with the motor. This allowed me to have the speed control I desired using a cheap ~$8 triac chopper dimmer (aka ordinary incandescent lamp dimmer). I believe this changes the power factor of the motor allowing the necessary speed control.
So, the wiring goes like this. The hot leg of the 110VAC coming into the blue speed control box on the side goes to one lead of the lamp dimmer. The other lead of the lamp dimmer goes to one lead of the lamp base cord, I chose the center pin lead to be consistent with conventional wiring and not the threaded part of the lamp base. The other leg of the lamp cord goes to what used to be the hot side of the motor switch and the neutral side of the fan switch goes to the neutral lead of the wall power. Turn the 3-way power switch that came with the box fan to the highest setting and pack it all neatly in a plastic 2-gang switch box making sure all wires are properly and securely connected.
Here is the original motor speed selector switch getting wired up to be put in the blue speed control box. I set it to the highest setting before connecting the dimmer and closing up the box.
I made the rotating platter by cutting a disk from a piece of 3/4" birch face plywood then cleaning up the cuts on an upright belt sander. A thru hole was drilled for the diameter of my motor shaft and a counterbore was made for the left hand motor shaft nut to sit in. This way the motor shaft nut will not protrude above the surface and "dome" your painting. I chose 13.9" as O.D. (outside diameter) of the platter because Pythagoras told me to. That is the "hypotenuse" of a standard sheet of paper 8.5"x11" thus, a piece of printer paper will fit just right on the platter. You can download a drawing I made of the platter here.
After installing the platter on the motor shaft I measured the runout on the O.D. to be no more than 0.01". It is important to remember that this platter is going to be spinning pretty fast so you want it to be well balanced. Mine actually has a vertical deflection when it rotates and I need to look into this as it creates a vibration at a particular speed. Currently, I just don't run it at that speed instead, going faster or slower.
And speaking of mounting the platter to the motor shaft, it was necessary for me to buy a motor shaft collar from the hardware store. You can see it on the motor shaft in the picture below. I set it so that the distance from the top of the shaft to the top of the shaft collar was less than the thickness of my wooden platter (3/4") and then turned the grub screw with an allen key to lock it in place. In the picture below the collar is not set to the correct height yet, it is intentionally set too high for the sake of picture clarity.
I decided to paint the top of the desk "SpinArt" style before mounting the motor in place. I found a couple of cans of house paint in the woodshop at the Mt Elliot Makerspace so, that is how the color was decided. I quickly found out that I needed to thin the paint with water instead of using it straight out of the can to help it flow better and fling out. To spin the top I very carefully measured the center of the desktop and mounted the box fan propeller to the underside of the desktop with 3 screws. I slipped this onto the motor shaft and with paint applied set it spinning. You can see how that all went in the raw and unedited footage below.
Weird stuff happens in the end of the first video here. I think the way the camera draws the lines of each frame of video and the rotating of the desk lid makes it look like it is morphing into a different shape. I assure you it is not. There are some pics below of the same phenomenon.
After the spinning stopped this is what the desk lid looked like. I can see where some of the paint started drying before it got all the way out to the edge. I think it looks pretty neat and it figuratively says "I am a SpinArt desktop", but as you can see in some later pics it literally says "SpinArt" on it because my mother was nice enough to cut out a custom stencil and stencil the word on there for me.
Here is a pic I took while the desktop was spinning and paint was getting on my leg hairs. There is a pretty interesting digital photography anomaly going on here.
For a finishing touch I bent a coat hanger and put some heatshrink on the ends to hold this wire basket for the paint bottles. As far as paint goes, I have both washable and Tempera paint. Again, thin it out before use.
I use "Removable Mounting Putty" to stick the paper to the platter. It seems to work pretty well.
As an extra precaution, I decided to make a cardboard paint guard to stop stray paint exiting the desk cavity. It also keeps the inside of the desk a bit cleaner and you can just throw the cardboard away when it gets to much paint on it and make another one. It folds up when you are done and can be stored inside the desk.
So, this was a pretty fun project and I think a good "ReUse" of the school desk. It took about two days and ~$30 to make but I did have a lot of materials already. There isnt much more to say about it so I think I'll just bang a few more photos up here and maybe a vid and call it a day.
In this video, you can hear the paint splattering off and hitting the cardboard.


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- Band-in-a-Box
- RealBand
- Mega RealCombos: Over 500 RealTracks in 300 Bands, 74 MIDI SuperTracks
- Over 2,000 MIDI Styles
- Over 300 MIDI Soloists
- Over 200 MIDI Melodists
- 63 Artist Performances
- Over 1000 Loops
Band in a Box has an enhanced the GUI for an improved look and feel, and many new time-saving features have been added like automatic track labels and video tutorial-help buttons. They've added direct support for 64-bit VST plugins (using jBridge purchased separately). Load, play, view and slow down videos that you have already downloaded from YouTube or elsewhere into the Band-in-a-Box Video window to extract the audio and slow it down great audio quality. And much more!
What is Band-in-a-Box?
Band-in-a-Box is an intelligent automatic accompaniment program for your multimedia computer. You can hear and play along to many song ideas and go from "nothing" to "something" in a very short period of time with Band-in-a-Box as your "on demand" backup band.
Band-in-a-Box is so easy to use!
Just type in the chords for any song using standard chord symbols (like C, Fm7, or C13b9), choose the style you'd like, and Band-in-a-Box does the rest, automatically generating a complete professional-quality arrangement of piano, bass, drums, guitar, and strings or horns in a wide variety of popular styles plus optional live audio tracks with RealDrums and RealTracks. And that's not all...
Band-in-a-Box is a powerful and creative music composition tool for exploring and developing musical ideas with near-instantaneous feedback.
Over the years many features have been added to Band-in-a-Box, Notation and Lyrics, Piano Roll, 16-channel MIDI Multitracks, Harmonization, the StyleMaker and StylePicker, a live performance Conductor window, Medley Maker, and 24 substyle Multistyles. The Soloist and the Melodist are popular "intelligent" features that generate professional solos or even create whole new songs from scratch. RealDrums adds the human element of a live drummer while RealTracks add even more live session musicians, bringing the entire Band-in-a-Box arrangement to life. The Audio Chord Wizard has the amazing ability to analyze, extract, and show the chords from audio recordings on-screen and then write them to the Band-in-a-Box chord sheet.
The inclusion of digital audio features makes Band-in-a-Box the perfect tool for creating, playing, and recording your music with MIDI, vocals, and acoustic instruments. Band-in-a-Box for Windows can also record an acoustic instrument or voice to add to the composition, with processing through its own DirectX audio effects. Its built-in TC Helicon audio harmonies will turn your audio track into multiple harmony parts or adjust its pitch, with vibrato and scooping effects for realistic vocal styles and up to sixteen choral parts.
You can print out your finished creation with lyrics, chords, repeats and endings, DC markings and codas, or save it as a graphics file for web publication or to e-mail to a friend. And when you're ready to let others hear your composition, you can burn it directly to an audio CD. Or save your composition as a Windows Media File (or in any other compressed formats you have) for a file that's "Internet ready."
You'll have even more fun making automatic medleys, playing your favorite song lists in the Band-in-a-Box Jukebox, and singing along to your Karaoke files with CDG graphics.
What is RealBand?
RealBand is a fully-featured and powerful music arranging, sequencing, and digital recording program.
It combines the most popular features from PG Music's PowerTracks Pro Audio and Band-in-a-Box programs into an all-in-one sequencing program with automatic accompaniment.
With RealBand you can create an arrangement with Band-in-a-Box tracks; type in the chords, add RealTracks and RealDrums that follow the chord changes, add your own tracks, and then edit and produce the finished song without ever leaving the program! RealBand is loaded with powerful features that make it easy to produce your own song arrangements as if you were in the recording studio with top session musicians.
RealBand offers powerful features for musicians, students, and songwriters. With intelligent automatic arrangements, RealTracks live instrument tracks, RealDrums live drum tracks, the amazing Audio Chord Wizard, seamlessly integrated digital audio/MIDI recording, built-in DirectX effects, and notation, RealBand turns a typical PC into a music production powerhouse.
Product Details
Product Details
|Manufacturer Part #
|Windows Only
|System Requirements (Windows)


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ATTENTION: The COMPASS placement test will be discontinued nationwide on November 30, 2016, and no longer available. All COMPASS tests must be completed by that time, or scores will be lost. New placement tests will replace the COMPASS test at Seattle Central on December 1, 2016. Please check with the Testing Office for details about the new tests, schedule, and fees.
COMPASS Testing
COMPASS is the computerized English & Math placement exam at Seattle Central College. All tests are multiple–choice and done with a keyboard and/or mouse. Appointments are not made for COMPASS. COMPASS testing is strictly walk–in. You must arrive at least 45 minutes before closing to begin testing.
COMPASS Testing Times (September through November 2016)
- Mondays: 8 a.m.–4:30 p.m. (must arrive no later than 3:45 p.m.)
- Tuesdays: 4:30 p.m.–6:30 p.m. (must arrive no later than 4:45 p.m.)
- Wednesdays/Thursdays/Fridays: 8 a.m.–4:30 p.m. (must arrive no later than 3:45 p.m.)
- Weekends: CLOSED
COMPASS Prep for College Success
Don't take the COMPASS cold! Prepare for the COMPASS Placement Test. Go to beforeyoutest.org.
- What You Need to Know Before You Test
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- You will need to know your Student ID Number (not your Social Security #) from Admissions to take COMPASS. (Running Start students should visit the Running Start Office.)
- There are 16 COMPASS stations: first come, first served. (Busiest times are 12 p.m. to 3 p.m.)
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- Testing Policies
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There are two types of English Test:
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Sample questions for this test can be found at: act.org/esl/sample.html
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You should take this test if you are a native speaker of English. You may also take this test if you are bi–lingual in English and another language. You will be tested in Writing and Reading.
Sample questions for this test can be found at: act.org/compass/sample/
Both tests have the same level of difficulty, and both can place you in classes from pre–college English to English 101. You should only take one type of English test. It is not necessary to take both.
- Math Testing
If you take the Math Test:
- Viewing the sample tests available in the Testing Office is strongly recommended.
- Sample questions can also be found online at: act.org/compass/sample/math.html
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Easier Items (Basic Math, Math 081 & 084),
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AOI | by Fr. Johannes Jacobse | 3/10/2010
Metropolitan Hilarion's warning deals with what Nietzsche called the "transvaluation of values" — what his dark prophesy warned would happen in the West because "God is Dead," by which he meant that Western culture was entering into a period where it functioned within the cultural structures shaped by Christianity but without concrete, existential communion with the Savior — the kind of communion that would lead to martyrdom if required. Those structures would weaken as the historical memory of Christianity grew increasingly dim from one generation to the next.
That is the period we are in today, call it secularism, but understand that secularism is just a layover from one city to the next. We have left the City of God (recalling Augustine) for what — Islamic domination? Perhaps. Man cannot live by bread alone, and that includes the secularist as well as the believer.
Met. Hilarion calls for nothing less than the spiritual transformation of culture. His clarity comes from the cleansing of the persecution of the Orthodox Church by Communism, that ghastly and barbaric attempt to build a Tower of Babel on materialist principles — principles in which God, and thus any appeal to transcendent values that shape morality and meaning, were violently expunged. It unleashed a horrible evil, and that experience of suffering contributes today to the clarity of vision and great boldness we see in Met. Hilarion's call for renewal and accountability.
Compare this to the impoverished thinking on human value coming out of Constantinople that we have been discussing on this blog the last few days. The reason Constantinople's compromise with the dominant culture concerning abortion is dangerous is this: If the devaluation of the human person is justified by any hierarch, the moral tradition that he represents and that the West so desperately needs for cultural renewal, is presented as a perversion of itself. Abortion is always the way that social engineers begin their retooling of society. Once society accepts the devaluation of unborn life, it is much easier to devalue all other life.
Russia already went through it. We are next. Don't believe me? Read Solzhenitsyn's warning years ago.
(Some of you might be interested in an article I wrote several years ago that shares some of the ideas Met. Hilarion spoke about: The Artist as Vandal: Culture and the desecration of religious symbols.)
9.03.2010 · Analitics, DECR Chairman Russian Orthodox Church – Department for External Church Relations
If it does not cooperate with the Church, culture today is at risk of turning into a destructive anti-culture carrying a negative moral message, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate's department for external church relation, said in an interview to the RIA Novosti news agency.
Speaking about the Patriarchal Council for Culture established by the Holy Synod on March 5, he said, 'The point is not control or censure. The point is constructive cooperation between the Church and those representatives of the world of culture who wish this cooperation. The Church does not impose anything on anybody; she only offers her participation and assistance to those who wish it'.
The Church does not have 'an ideology' of her own, he said, unless it is viewed as ideology that she 'is called to save people, to make their life better, purer and brighter. And this is unachievable without having a spiritual and moral pivot'.
According to him, culture is not neutral spiritually and morally as 'it can carry both a positive and negative moral message and can equally create and destroy'.
'If the Church does not participate in the development of cultural life in the country, culture faces a risk of turning into an anti-culture, as was repeatedly the case in the past', the DECR chairman warned.
In order to avoid the mistakes of the past, His Eminence Hilarion urges, 'the wall erected between the Church and culture during the Soviet times should be removed once and for all to be replaced by a model of such relations between church and culture as to avoid putting any fetters on the development of culture but rather to create an additional potential for its comprehensive development and flourishing'.
Asked about the heated public debate about the return of valuables from museums to the Church, Metropolitan Hilarion expressed the conviction that the Church and museum workers should deal together with the problem of preserving church valuables.
'An exchange of open letters and mutual accusations will hardly help to deal with this problem effectively. A more constructive approach would lie in direct dialogue between the Church and museum workers. This dialogue can be carried out within the framework of the Patriarchal Council for Culture', the metropolitan stressed.
He believes that 'a church should be a church, not a museum; the place of an icon is not in a museum, but in an acting church; the place of the Eucharistic cup or paten is on the altar, not in a glass showcase'. At the same time, he added, 'it does not mean that old churches representing architectural monuments cannot function at the same time as museums and that icons kept in a museum church cannot be placed under security'.
As a positive example of church-museum cooperation, Metropolitan Hilarion mentioned the Icon of Our Lady of Vladimir placed in St. Nicholas's-at-Tolmachi, which is part of the Tretyakov Gallery museum compound. This icon is under round-the-clock observation by specialists. 'There must be much more of such examples', the metropolitan said.
Among other areas of concern for the Patriarchal Council for Culture, not involving the problem of returning valuables, the metropolitan mentioned the restoration of church monuments of architecture and art, development of religious and secular architecture, as well as literature, poetry, painting, applied arts, cinematography and television.
As a composer, Metropolitan Hilarion believed it important that the Church should participate in the musical life of countries in the post-Soviet space. 'We should move from one-time events, such as festivals or particular concerts, to systematic planning… The Church should promote the popularization of the musical works which carry a positive spiritual and moral message, giving special attention to Russian musical tradition and supporting young composers and performers', he said.
Along with spiritual culture, the Council will be concerned with physical culture and cooperation with the 'world of sports'.
'It is quite logical to have the Council led by the Patriarch since any other level would not be appropriate today considering the scale of tasks facing the Church in her dialogue with the world of culture', the metropolitan remarked.
The membership of the Council will be adopted by the next session of the Holy Synod. 'Clearly, the Council will include people of creative professions as well as church workers who are linked with the world of culture in this or that way', the Metropolitan informed the RIA Novosti.
Archimandrite Tikhon Shevkunov, father superior of the Sretensky Monastery, who is a film director by education, has been appointed as secretary of the Council.
HT: AOI Blog


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Tomic in hot water after spa fight
Former Australian Davis Cup coach Roger Rasheed says Bernard Tomic needs to step away from tennis to settle his off-court issues following another run-in with police on the Gold Coast.
Tomic was reportedly involved in an altercation with a friend during his 20th birthday celebrations with police called to a disturbance at a spa in a Surfers Paradise apartment tower in the early hours of Monday morning.
Queensland Police said no arrests were made or charges laid.
"We spoke to a couple of males and that was it," a police spokesman said.
According to the Gold Coast Bulletin, police "separated the two men before the tennis ace turned on officers".
"He reminded police of 'who he was' and accused officers of running a hate campaign against him," the newspaper said, citing police sources.
The incident comes just a week before Tomic is set to face court to challenge traffic charges stemming from an Australia Day incident where he is alleged to have driven his high-powered V8 BMW M3 in breach of special licence conditions.
Tomic is also accused of failing to stop for police and not keeping to the left of double dividing lines on the road.
The talented Australian has endured a tough year on the court as well, his world ranking sliding from 28 to 49 and having to deny accusations of tanking during his US Open loss to Andy Roddick in September.
Rasheed, who used to coach Lleyton Hewitt and is currently mentoring France's Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, said Tomic needs to get his life in order and should stay away from tennis until that happens.
"I think there's a lot of work to do off the court," Rasheed told Sky Sports Radio on Tuesday.
"I wouldn't hit another ball if I was Bernard Tomic. I would just sort everything out, see where I'm at. (Even) if it took him three months now, six months or whatever it took him.
"You need to sort out the basics and the platform otherwise it'll raise it's ugly head again. It's unfortunate."
Rasheed also believes Tomic's entourage has a lot to answer for and while his father John has done an admirable job to get his son into the world top 50, it is time for the pair to re-think their relationship.
He says appointing a widely regarded coach as well as sorting out what motivates Tomic to play tennis will be a key to revitalising the youngster's career.
"To be honest, I think he's rebelling against the whole system," Rasheed said.
"He's talented but he's not Lleyton, he's not Rafa (Nadal) and he's not Novak (Djokovic), he's not those guys. You see what those guys were doing at the same age, they were in a different ball game, a different class.
"I'm not sure if he's got the people in front of him to be able to position him in the right place right now. Which is unfortunate.
"His father's aware of it but he needs a coach, there's no doubt about it. His father's done a great job to get him to position A but position A is not where it's at now for him.
"If he wants to keep excelling he gets a legitimate coach and decides what he wants out of the game."
Topics: tennis, sport, surfers-paradise-4217, qld, australia
First posted


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R.A. Dickey: Baseball's Most Important Pitcher
By J.R. Lebert aka jrlebert
NOTE: At the time of this article, R.A. Dickey sports a 14-2 record, a 2.83 ERA, and 147 K's in 146.1 IP.
Before this season, you may have heard the name R.A. Dickey a few times. He finished 7th in the ERA race in 2010, with a mark of 2.84. He compiled a rather pedestrian 19-22 record in the previous 2 seasons, albeit with a sparkling ERA of 3.08. And yes, you probably had heard that coming into this season he was baseball's lone remaining knuckleballer. But unless you are either a fan of Dickey himself, or a pretty fervent fan of the New York Metropolitans, I doubt that the career of one Robert Allen Dickey would have registered on your radar.
Flash forward to the end of July 2012, and R.A. just may be baseball's most important pitcher of the last 20 years. Not best, although he is certainly giving that title a run this year, but definitely the most important, not only to his team, but to the very history of the grand old game of baseball.
Baseball has seen its fair share of curiosities. Mark "The Byrd" Fydrich, Bill "Space Man" Lee, and Jose Lima are three of baseball's biggest characters to ever grace the mound. Other pitchers, such as Steve Carlton, Mariano Rivera, or Pedro Martinez, had or have such devastating pitches that they have changed the game with their style and effectiveness. Some, like Jamie Moyer or Nolan Ryan, seemed to get better with age, pitching well into their late 40s with great success. Greats John Smoltz and Dennis Eckersley were able to save their careers with transformations from dominant starters to shutdown closers.
In my opinion, however, not since Hideo Nomo in 1995, was a pitcher as important to his craft has R.A. Dickey has become in 2012.
Nomo is single-handedly responsible for the recent influx of Asian talent to the major leagues, both pitchers and hitters alike. Had the "Nomo Experiment" failed, we may never have seen Ichiro, Hideki Matsui, Daisuke Matsuzaka, or any of the countless position players and pitchers that have been brought over from the Far East. Had Nomo just been able to tread water, or turned in the career of contemporary Mac Suzuki, we may have never had the chance to see current rookies Yu Darvish or Wei-Yin Chen. Being responsible for an entire generation of players from an entire region certainly qualifies as important. However, Dickey may be responsible for an entirely different generation of pitchers, all while being charged with saving baseball's most unique and difficult pitch to master, the knuckleball.
The knuckleball's history stretches all the way back to around 1905, with one of baseball's most infamous players, Eddie Cicotte of the 1919 Black Sox scandal, credited for its invention. Behind the knuckler and an array of other trick pitches, if not for the scandal, Cicotte would probably be a Hall of Famer. Tom Seaton became the first knuckleballer in the National League in 1912, and the following year led the league in wins, innings, and strikeouts, finishing 11th in the MVP vote. The knuckler had arrived in both leagues, and for the next 99 years, seemed destined to stick around.
In a career spanning 19 years through the 20s and 30s, Jesse Haines threw the pitch all the way to Cooperstown, elected in 1970 by the Veterans Committee. The 1940s could be seen as the golden age of knuckleballing. Jim Tobin threw a no hitter in 1944, on his way to an All Star appearance and a top 20 MVP vote. The Hall of Fame career of Ted Lyons was coming to a close, notching the final 39 of his 260 wins in the decade, while compiling a fantastic 2.97 ERA, .70 lower than his career mark. The ultimate barrage of knucklers could be found playing in the nation's capital, Washington D.C. The 1945 version of the Senators trotted out an almost all-knuckleball rotation of Mickey Haefner, Emil Leonard, Johnny Niggleling, and Roger Wolff, on their way to 20 games over .500 and a second place finish in the league.
From the 40s to the close of the century, many other pitchers sported long careers chucking the knuckler. Hall of Famer Hoyt Wilhelm racked up 143 wins and 227 saves in a career spanning 21 seasons. Bob Purkey racked up three All Star appearances, and pitched a fantastic 1962 season, with 23 wins. Phil Niekro joined the exclusive 300 win club in a stellar 24-season career also ending in a HOF nod. Wilbur Wood tallied four straight 20-win seasons and three All Star berths. Relievers Jim Bouton and Eddie Fisher dominated hitters during their long careers, mastering the knuckler out of the bullpen.
The 80s and 90s saw Charlie Hough and Tom Candiotti pitch their way through long careers. Knuckleballs from Kirt Ojala were responsible for both Barry Bonds' 400th home run and one of Sammy Sosa's 66 home runs in 1998. Even Wade Boggs threw the knuckleball, throwing 16 of them out of 17 pitches in a relief appearance for the Devil Rays. Steve Sparks, Dennis Springer, Charlie Haeger, and Jared Fernandez brought the knuckler with them into the 2000's. The reigning godfather of the knuckler, Tim Wakefield, retired after the 2011 season at an even 200 wins, tying a Boston Red Sox record with 186 wins, and striking out over 2,100 hitters over a 19 year career.
With Wakefield out of the game, that left just one player throwing the knuckleball, the Mets enigmatic Dickey. Pitching for 4 different teams in his first 8 seasons, as well as being sent to the minors twice and having his roles switched from starter, to reliever, and then back to starter again, the magical ride Dickey has enjoyed in 2012 almost never happened. Luckily, the Mets gave Dickey one last shot, in 2010, and he has rewarded their faith with both great pitching and leadership in the clubhouse over the past 3 years.
As the last active knuckleballer, Dickey is charged with carrying the torch of one of baseball's strangest pitches. Just being in the big leagues is not enough to make the pitch last, which makes his 2012 performance all the more important. Leading the majors in wins, with 14, and having a sparkling ERA is a great start. Throwing the pitch differently than most others, using a "fast" knuckler, a slower one, and having an above average fastball has caught the eye of many major league observers.
Overcoming quite a bit of personal tragedy, including enduring unspeakable horrors as a young child, has only served to endear even more fans to Dickey and his quirky pitch. He has used the platform he has earned to bring light to children who have experienced similar fates, and this, in turn, has shed more light on the pitcher and his amazing pitch. Undoubtedly, Dickey's remarkable combination of overcoming personal tragedy, developing his unique pitch over a tumultuous career, coming back from the minors not once but twice, and now pitching at an All Star level, will serve to inspire a whole new generation of knuckleballers, and quite possibly save the knuckleball.
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The Mets' First No-Hitter
about 6 years ago - No comments
By J.R. Lebert aka jrlebert 50 years. 8,019 games. To type those two numbers seems almost laughable, but there they are, in black and white. Tim Kurkjian and Jayson Stark of ESPN marvelled at the streak's length. Gary Cohen and Howie Rose, the Mets' play-by-play voices on television and radio, thought it would never…
Gary Edmund Carter
about 6 years ago - No comments
By J.R. Lebert aka jrlebert A decade and a half before we would come to know a certain center fielder in Seattle by the same nickname, fans of the Expos and Mets began a 30-year love affair with the original "Kid", Gary Edmund Carter. As a lifelong, die hard Mets fan, it was easy to…


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Trick Tip: Three Shuvs
The 360 shuv it is where the board spins horizontally under your feet, 360 degrees. It's the next step up from a regular backside shuv it, and will help you move into backside big spins as well. Here I am going to explain how to do a reentry 3 shuv, but this trick can be done anywhere on the wake or in the flats. Since I am behind a boat, this is my favorite place to do them. You can use the wake like a ramp, so it's almost like doing it on a quarterpipe.
Before we get started, here are a couple things to practice to warm up to this trick:
-reentry ollies coming up and back down the wake.
-Regular backside shuv its
Got it? Ok, you are ready.
Frame 1
Set your backfoot all the way on your tail with your toe on the toe edge of the board. Put your front foot just a little bit further back on the heel edge then it would be if you were doing a regular shuv.
Frame 2
Start to drift up the wake.
Frame 3
As you get towards the top flatten off so the board doesn't shoot into the middle of the wake. This is a mistake a lot of people make, so don't feel bad if it happens the first couple times.
Frame 4
Initiate the shuv. Control the board with your front foot keeping it flat so it doesn't rotate off axis. The actual shuv is done mostly with your back foot.
Frame 5
Shuv the board out in front a little bit to keep the board with you.
Frame 6
You have to wait a little bit longer than on a regular shuv. Wait and watch for the tail to come around.
Frame 7
Catch the board. Try to catch it as close the position you ride the board in as possible, but you might have to adjust a bit.
Frame 8- Frame 10
Ride away on your heel edge and enjoy what you've just done.


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At a Glance Plus + Excellent seats, great ride comfort, mind-blowing acceleration, thrifty fuel bill
Minus - Smallish trunk
Total mileage: 11,383
And at the end of the day, that's what the BMW 335d is. It's a hotrod oil-burner, a diety among diesels. Although we expound on its fuel economy, the car will kick serious ass at the drop of a hat. Show me another vehicle that can do that, and do it with the grace and style of a BMW.
Fuel Ecomnomy: 32 mpg
We had a goth kid working here a while back. Festooned in black jeans and t-shirts, he spent the better part of every morning crying. I guess that's part of the goth mystique. It's romantic or something.
In truth, I don't think this dude knew why he did what he did. For some unexplainable reason, he thought it was cool.
I see the same thing happening with hybrid cars. Currently the darling of the "two-minute media," hybrids have become something of a fashion accessory. Pulling up in a Toyota Prius at your movie premiere is a great way to tell everyone how much you care about the Earth. Forget about the pesky batteries going to seed... you'll cross that expensive bridge when you get there.
It's enough to make an engineer wince.
BMW has been quietly developing its diesel technology for decades. The company has essentially re-written the diesel rules, developing cars both clean and efficient that could replace hybrids and electric cars. Moreover, a BMW diesel will run circles around the best hybrid, and the driver will have more fun while doing so.
Our BMW 335d is a genuine sport sedan. I can say that without the least hesitation, as its 425 lb-ft of torque will snap head with the slightest provocation. The looks from startled passengers is typically punctuated with: "This thing is a diesel? Really?" Yes, it's really a diesel, part of the new breed that's fighting hard to overcome the American public's conception of the old oil-burner.
Troy, our former head of IT, recently purchased a BMW 135i. I helped him spec it out and even threw in a set of Nitto NT05 tires. It's been a great car for him, both exceeding quick and a fantastic handler.
I let Troy drive the 335d for a day. Like most IT dudes, he's addicted to his BlackBerry and messages constantly. I figured I'd be getting a stoplight-to-stoplight description of his entire day, from burnouts to shift points.
I got a single text eight hours later... :)
That single, stupid smiley face spoke volumes.
"If I had been offered a diesel option, I would have taken it instantly," he told me later. "I never realized turbodiesels were this much fun."
Perhaps the most impressive part of the BMW 335d is how perfectly it replaces its gas-powered counterparts. There's not one ounce of compromise in this car. Its acceleration, braking and handling are exceptional. That it runs on cheaper fuel makes it that much more incredible.
I had to ferry my daughter 450 miles north for her first semester of college. Like most women, she had more gear than my three boys combined. We needed something big like Mom's Suburban. Equipped with four-wheel drive, 21-inch wheels and three rows of rear seats, the Suburban could have done the job, but at a sizable price. It costs more than a hundred bucks to fill the tank and it typically goes through a gallon of gas every 14 miles. We would need at least 2.5 tanks. Ouchie
The alternative was taking two cars: the VW Jetta TDI and BMW 335d. After doing the math we came out ahead nearly $90; moreover, I could duck out before the wife started weeping about "her baby girl." I figured she'd need about four extra hours before she let go.
Sure, I misted up. And then it was over. The kid is going to have a great time and I'm gonna be broke for the next four years. Time to go home.
With the cruise control set at 78 mph, the 335d averaged 32 mpg. Just before heading up the I-5 Grapevine, I pulled out a wad of crumpled bills (ones mostly) and bought five gallons of low-sulphur diesel. I found myself doing the math: 5 x 32 = 160. I could make it home with 40 miles to spare. Not bad for a high-performance BMW.


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text: It is true when you live in a home that you feel is just lovely, that not everyone may feel that way, however enter Aunt Mary. Mary had found us on the web and thought our front porch might just be the spot for her to honor her niece Kelly, and hostess a bridal luncheon. Many of you may ask, a bridal luncheon, what's that? Do you bring a gift, like for a bridal shower? It turns out, you don't, a bridal luncheon is a relaxed gathering of the ladies in the bridal party and the brides future Mother in law and her Mom, and other family and friends, bridal luncheon's are quite popular in the South, not so much in the Northern states. When I met Mary in October, I must say I was intrigued and couldn't wait to see how it all turned out, and it was a wonderful gathering, very relaxed and yet with a bit of a formal spin. Mary had chosen a vintage theme, turns out she had been buying bits and pieces here and there and as you can see by some of the photos, it turned out just lovely. Lunch was just delicious ( I would be a slacker if I didn't mention the food), curried chicken salad, and a green salad, croissants, a rhubarb infused champagne cocktail, and a too die for berry sorbet. It was lovely, right down to the last detail. A special memory of Kelly's wedding weekend, and a definite high point for us here at the Lindsay House. Thank you Mary and Kelly and all the ladies for a great day and some wonderful memories.


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Most wanted works of art,
Legal materials
Several international conventions provide a legal frame for the protection of cultural heritage as well as for tackling transnational crime.
These legal tools can assist member countries in developing appropriate national legislation to curb this type of crime.
- United Nations Security Council Resolution 2199 (2015)
- United Nations Convention against Corruption (2003)
- United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (2000)
- International Convention for Suppression of Financing Terrorism (1999)
- UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects (1995)
- Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property (1970)
In addition, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has developed a database of National Cultural Heritage Laws freely accessible on its website.
Most wanted works of art,
December 2018


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March 8, 2008
Nashville, TN - The temperature may have been frigid in Auburn, Alabama, but the Lady Bison pitching was scorching.
Cold weather in Auburn, Alabama forced the Lady Bison softball team to reschedule its games against Georgia Southern and Auburn, but this did not phase them any.
Clutch pitching from sophomore Christen Campbell helped the Lady Bisons pick up the 3-2 win against Georgia Southern Saturday afternoon.
Campbell pitched the complete game for the Lady Bisons, scattering eight hits, striking out four batters, and allowing only one earned run.
Lipscomb earned the first run of the game when the Lady Bisons got in the head of the Georgia Southern pitcher and loaded the bases in the top of the fourth inning and walked in sophomore third baseman Kellie Sirus for a run.
The top of the fifth inning proved just as fruitful when Sirus hit a sacrifice fly to score senior right fielder Sara Simons.
The third run for the Lady Bisons came in the sixth inning when sophomore centerfielder Lauren Dortwegt placed an RBI single into right field to score senior catcher Jennifer Allsup.
Lipscomb batters picked up nine hits in the game. Sophomore centerfielder Lauren Dortwegt, went two for four with an RBI. Kellie Sirus went two for three with an RBI and one scored run, and senior first baseman Heather Collins went two for two. Three other batters picked up a run each.
The Lady Bisons improve to 7-9 and take on host team Auburn at 3:00 PM on Sunday afternoon.


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Gravitational Waves III
Almost everything that moves produces ripples in space and time known as gravitational waves. Most of them are tiny — like the ripples produced by a mosquito landing on Lake Michigan — far too tiny to detect. The biggest ripples — like those produced by splashing boulders — come from some of the heaviest and fastest objects in the universe, like merging stellar corpses — and those are the ones that scientists are trying to detect.
RAAB: We're looking for warpages in space that are traveling at the speed of light and are generated by big violent motions like the formation of a black hole from the merger of two neutron stars.
Fred Raab is the supervisor of a gravitational-wave detector at Hanford, Washington. Along with a second detector in Louisiana, they form LIGO — the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory.
Each detector measures the distance from a laser light source to a mirror that's four kilometers away. Each detector has a pair of these laser "arms" set at right angles to each other. If a gravitational wave passes by, it'll cause a tiny change in the length of the detector arms. David Reitze is the head of the LIGO scientific collaboration:
REITZE: When a gravitational wave passes, what it will do is, it will alternatively stretch and compress each arm of the interferometer differentially, so while one arm is compressing, the other arm is stretching.
The effect is tiny and subtle, though, so it can get lost in the rumbling and jiggling of the detectors themselves. More about that tomorrow.
Script by Damond Benningfield, Copyright 2011
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Marijuana is supposed to be soothing, but regulating the drug has apparently stressed out city officials.
The City Council on Tuesday approved an emergency ordinance for a 60-day moratorium, ending Aug. 18, on issuing new business licenses for medical marijuana dispensaries and production facilities.
The citys moratorium will be in effect when the states moratorium on medical marijuana dispensaries is lifted July 1. In Colorado, medical marijuana businesses are regulated by both state and local governments.
A 60-day extension of the moratorium is to give the city time to deal with regulatory issues that have risen over the last three years of allowing medical marijuana businesses.
Because its a cash-only business, officials wonder if the city is receiving the right amount of sales tax. Were not accusing anyone of anything, but there needs to be an audit, said City Attorney David Smith in an interview
The city staff also is concerned its fees and fines are not covering the costs of regulating marijuana. City officials said Durangos fines appear to be low when compared to other communities in Colorado, and thats not something to be proud of, Smith said.
Smith also noted in a memo that medical marijuana facilities require virtually constant inspections by Code Enrollment officers and violations of Code provisions and state regulations are not infrequent.
As outlined by Smith in the memo, other regulatory issues include:
Whether the city should approve medical businesses in the downtown business district or within mixed-use buildings where people also live.
The appropriate distance between medical marijuana dispensaries and schools, parks, rehabilitation facilities and other medical marijuana facilities
To what extent dispensaries should be allowed to cultivate and grow marijuana within city limits, if growing marijuana in a house necessitates a home-occupation permit
Issues related to facilities making products infused with marijuana, such as cookies and other baked goods, and the tracking and destruction of medical marijuana plants.
If the city needs more time to work on regulations and a new fee and fine schedule, the moratorium could be extended, Smith said.


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blackjack68 wrote:PghSkins wrote:blackjack68 wrote:How safe is the area around Hard Rock/Magnificent Mile? Am I safe to walk back from O'Toole's or better off cabbing it?
How far is Wrigley from that area?
Googlemaps tells me it's 4 mi from Wrigley to the John Hancock Center on the MM. Believe it's safe to walk, YMMV on whether you want to spend the time and energy to do it.
I'll probably take the train (red line) to Wrigley. Walk several other places. Thanks.
This is def the way to go. Don't sprint out of the stadium, walk around th estadium and see the bars on the home plate side. The line to get back on the L looks huge right after the last out, but it dwindls pretty quickly.
Where you're staying is pretty safe from sunrise to maybe 1 am. Perhaps a little iffy after that, but not a big deal. I was there at about 5:00 am last Sat morning to catch a bus to the Ryder Cup, and didn't see any reason to be nervous. Like any city, any place can be the wrong place at a given time, but this area isn't always the wrong place.


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The mission of the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry (AAPD) is to advance optimal oral health for all children by delivering outstanding service that meets and exceeds the needs and expectations of our members, partners, and stakeholders.
As advocates of children's oral health, the AAPD works closely with legislators, professional associations and health care professionals to develop policies and guidelines, implement research opportunities in pediatric oral health and educate pediatric dentists, health care providers and the public regarding pediatric oral health.
AAPD Advocacy strengthens the voice of pediatric dentistry on behalf of children's oral health at the national and state level. These activities bring pediatric oral health to the forefront of health policy deliberations. A strong, organized and informed advocacy network is essential to ensure effective communication within and among the AAPD headquarters and district and state unit organizations, and to promote effective state and national policy decisions.
This advocacy section provides summaries and resources on current legislative and regulatory issues affecting pediatric dentistry and the various AAPD efforts on your behalf. The reference materials are designed to assist in your advocacy efforts and provide opportunities to become more involved through advocacy training, participation in grassroots efforts and joining our E-Advocates network. All AAPD members are strongly encouraged to become involved in efforts to enhance the oral health care of children.
For further information, please contact AAPD Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel C. Scott Litch Esq., CAE, at firstname.lastname@example.com.


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UAlbany plans layoffs, program cuts
Layoffs, elimination of programs are coming
ALBANY -- University at Albany President George Philip on Friday warned the school will be downsizing in coming months with "unavoidable" layoffs and the probable phase-out of five programs, thanks to funding cuts including a $12 million reduction in state assistance during this fiscal year.
By 2012, he said UAlbany will lose the equivalent of 160 full time positions, bringing the total loss to 360 since 2008. "Notwithstanding these efforts, involuntary terminations of employment will be unavoidable," according to a news release recapping a campus-wide Town Hall meeting to discuss the coming challenges.
Additionally, Philip on Friday ordered the suspension of all new admissions to five programs: Classics, French, Italian, Russian and Theatre.
Suspending new admissions means those programs are likely to be shut down as students cycle through the system.
"I think it's far to say they are planning on closing these programs," remarked Phillip Smith, president of United University Professions, the union representing SUNY professors and other employees.
Smith and other UUP members, who were in Buffalo for an assembly of union delegates, said they were just learning of the looming cuts on Friday.
"We're concerned. We need more information and once we get more information we'll have more to say about it."
UAlbany President Philip noted that the campus over the past three years has seen a drop of $33.5 million, or 30 percent, in its base allocation of state aid.
"Given the University at Albany's reduced revenue base it is critically important for the University to rethink, balance and reallocate resources to support its core academic and research mission," he said.
"Non-strategic and opportunistic short-term measures are simply not compatible with operating an organization on a sustainable basis," he said in a prepared statement.
Philip added that the school's administrative and support units will shoulder many of the cuts and most of the job losses will occur there in order to protect faculty positions.
He also said UAlbany was also preparing for the final year of Project Renaissance, a freshman program dating to 1996, which has been billed as an innovative arrangement designed to evoke a small college experience.
Philip added that SUNY leaders had been hoping to get campuses more leeway in setting their own tuition rates, which are now controlled by the Legislature. But lawmakers haven't approved such proposals.
SUNY's four-year campuses, including UAlbany, charge $4,970 per year in tuition.


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Joe Stephens needed a new web page design and created a contest on 99designs.
A winner was selected from 17 designs submitted by 7 freelance designers.
Im a 25 year old with a full time job looking to grow my side job: fixing and troubleshooting anything Apple makes. I got certified by Apple 2 years ago as a Certified Apple Technician and with 2 years of side work under my belt im ready to take this to the next level.
Monmouth and Ocean County, NJ, USA residents who own an Apple Product. i.e. Macbook, macbook pro, apple tv, time machine ipod, ipad, iphone etc etc.
I am looking for a web presence to represent my business. I want potential clients to be able to click to my website and get the basics about what I do. If possible, be able to see scheduling? Not sure if thats available with the basic package. Basically the site is for information about my business and maybe some faq's or basic self-help? If nothing else, the site needs to be professional, i want my 'potential' clients to know that I am a professional.
Here's a site I love: http://vaynermedia.com/
The design is clean, easy to navigate and there's no clutter!
This is what I don't like (it looks like a 10 year old made this):


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Patrick Kane is a gentleman.
Sure, a simple Google image search might return, uh, some shots of less gentlemanly behavior. But the 'Hawks winger has been named a finalist for the 2013 Lady Byng Memorial Trophy, awarded to the player who has "exhibited the best type of sportsmanship and gentlemanly conduct combined with a high standard of playing ability."
But what exactly is it about Kaner that makes him worthy of such an honor? Just take a look at this gentleman off the ice.
Want more? Discuss this article and others on RedEye's Facebook page.


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Soulja Boy Uses T-Pain's New Auto-Tune App For Iphone & Take A Close Up Look At T-Pain's Big a$$ Chain!
Soulja Boy & T-Pain backstage
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Special Collections Research Center
Otto F. Ege (1888-1951) was the Dean of Education at the Cleveland Institute of Art and Lecturer on the History of the Book at the School of Library Science, Western Reserve University, now Case Western Reserve University. During his early teaching years he learned of the art of fine printing and became passionate about its history and that of early manuscripts. His collection of manuscript leaves, some of which are available in the Special Collections Research Center at Case Western Reserve University, became well known all over the country. This site includes leaves from famous books written between 1122 A.D. - 1923 A.D. Among the examples are Mohammad's The Koran Manuscript, Livy's The History of Rome, and Erasmus' Adages. This web version of the collection is presented with written permission of the Elizabeth Ege Freudenheim Estate. The leaves are available in the Otto F. Ege Collections in Digital Case, presented with written permission of the Elizabeth Ege Freudenheim Estate.
1. Mohammed, The Koran - Manuscript, written in Cairo, 1122
2. St. Jerome, The Vulgate Bible - Dominican Manuscript, written in Paris, circa 1240
3. Aristotle, Ethics - Manuscript, written in Erfurt, 1365
4. Livy, History of Rome - Manuscript, written in Italy, 1436
5. Book of Hours - Illuminated Manuscript, written in France, circa 1460
6. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Sentences - Humanistic Manuscript, written in Italy, 1470
7. Cicero, On Duty - Incunabulum, printed by Wendelin de Spire, Venice, 1472
8. Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers - Incunabulum, printed by Nicolas Jenson, Italy, 1475
9. Voragine, The Golden Legend - Incunabulum, printed by Antonio de Strata, Venice, 1480
10. Dante, Divine Comedy - Incunabulum, printed by Petrus de Piasio, Venice, 1491
11. Schedel, The Nuremberg Chronicle - Incunabulum, printed by Anton Koberger, Nuremberg, 1493
12. Herodotus, History - printed by Aldus Manutius, Venice, 1502
13. The Justinian Code - printed by Thielman Kerver, Paris, 1512
14. Chronicles of England - printed by Julian Notary, London, 1515
15. Pliny, Natural History - printed by Johann Froben, Basle, 1525
16. Ovid, Metamorphoses - printed by Helizabeth de Resconibus, Venice, 1527
17. Erasmus, Adages - printed by Jerome Froben, Basle, 1528
18. Suetonius, Lives of the Twelve Caesars - printed by Robert Estienne, Paris, 1540
19. Aeschylus, Six Tragedies - printed by Adrian Turnebus, Paris, 1552
20. Vesalius, Anatomy - printed by Johannes Oporinus, Basle, 1555
21. Petrarch, Sonnets and Canzoni - printed by Gabriel Giolito, Venice, 1559
22. Barclay, Ship of Fools - printed by John Cawood, London, 1570
23. Jovius, Lives of Illustrious Men - printed by H. Petri, Basle, 1577
24. The Writings of Hippocrates - printed by Lucantonio Giunta, Venice, 1585
25. Gerard, History of Plants - printed by John Norton, London, 1597
26. Hakluyt, Voyages - printed by George Bishop, Rolfe Newberrie, and Robert Barker, London, 1598-1600
27. The Works of Chaucer - printed by Adam Islip, London, 1602
28. Cervantes, Don Quixote - printed by Juan de la Cuesta, Madrid, 1608
29. King James Authorized Version - printed by Robert Barker, London, 1611
30. Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, The New Atlantis, On the Wisdom of the Ancients - printed by John Haviland, London, 1638
31. Shakespeare, The Fourth Folio - printed by H. Herringman, E. Brewster, and R. Bentley, London, 1685
32. Johnson, Noetica and Ethica - printed by B. Franklin and D. Hall, Philadelphia, 1752
33. Johnson, Dictionary - printed by W. Strahan, London, 1755
34. Virgil, Poems - printed by John Baskerville, Birmingham, 1757
35. Thomson, The Seasons - printed by Giambattista Bodoni, Parma, 1794
36. Beowulf - printed by Kelmscott Press, London, 1895
37. Montaigne, Essays - printed by Riverside Press, Cambridge, 1902-1904
38. Milton, Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes and Other Poems - printed by the Doves Press, London, 1905
39. Boccaccio, The Decameron - printed by the Ashendene Press, Chelsea, 1920
40. Homer, The Iliad and Odyssey - printed by Bremer Press, Munich, 1923


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Lenovo, Linux, and the Coming of the Chromebooks
Jan 21, 2013 5:00 AM PT
However great the strides made by user-friendly distros such as Ubuntu and Mint in recent years, it seems fair to say that Linux has not yet enjoyed any sweeping successes on the desktop the way it has on the mobile side with Android.
That, however, may be changing.
Thanks once again to none other than Google, Linux is now appearing with increasing frequency in the PC lineups of hardware makers including not just Acer and Samsung -- whose Chromebook is no less than Amazon's top-selling laptop -- but now Lenovo as well.
Schools may be the initial target for Lenovo's machines, but given Samsung's success, in particular, there's no telling what may come.
Bottom line? It just may be "another nail in Microsoft's coffin," as it was recently put.
A Rapturous Response
Now, mention the words "Microsoft's coffin," and you'll soon get the rapt attention of more than a few Linux fans.
Attribute it to something Linux-based -- such as Chrome OS -- and you'll have a party on your hands.
That, indeed, was pretty much the scenario down at the Linux blogosphere's Punchy Penguin Saloon when news of Lenovo's new machine arrived.
Linux Girl fired up her Quick Quotes Quill and recorded as much as she could.
"Hopefully Lenovo is just the next in a long line of hardware manufacturers," enthused Google+ blogger Linux Rants, for example.
"The environment is fast, stable, and safe from many of the threats that plague modern day PCs," Linux Rants explained. "Add to that that they're remarkably inexpensive, and you've got a winning combination for a sizable percentage of computer users.
"Add that to Android tablets, and you've got enough to put some serious hurt on Microsoft and its waning desktop domination," he added. "The sooner the better."
'People Don't Want M$ Crapware'
In fact, "I would say, What took you so long, Lenovo?" Google+ blogger Alessandro Ebersol told Linux Girl. "Chromebooks are hot, and it's their prime time.
"You see, all that BS that the netbook is dead, is, indeed, just BS," Ebersol explained. "People just don't want winblow$ + Intel (Ok, winblow$ definitively not, but Intel can slip through, folks will accept it)."
Microsoft "proclaimed the netbook dead because it could not succeed on that market," he suggested. "Intel also is not good with ant-sized processors. Now, we're seeing a boost in Chromebooks sales."
So what's the lesson here? "It's not that people don't want small computers; people don't want small computers loaded with M$ crapware (and worse, paying a premium for it)," Ebersol opined. "I would like to be a tiny fly on the wall in Redmond and see the red face of Mr. Throwing Chairs, when he realizes people are buying the 'dead' netbooks (Chromebooks) and Surface is just getting dust on retailers' shelves."
'This Will Open the Door'
Thoughts on Technology blogger and Bodhi Linux lead developer Jeff Hoogland saw it similarly.
"I certainly hope more companies start selling Chromebooks," Hoogland agreed. "At the very least this means more devices that are coming Windows-free (and thus cheaper cost) by default."
Small, light and cloud-oriented computers "seem to be the future," Google+ blogger Gonzalo Velasco C. mused.
"In that sense, Lenovo is welcome," he told Linux Girl. "I think this will open the door for some GNU/Linux distributions into some other models of Lenovo, and other computer makers. Once their Chrome OS computer is a hit, they'll taste the Linux world. So be it!"
'This Fits the Trend'
And again: "There is a definite trend to having content live on the Internet and just accessing it with your device, and this fits the trend," Google+ blogger Kevin O'Brien concurred.
"Think of streaming music, streaming video, and how phones and tablets are used to access them," he explained.
"The big weakness with phones and tablets is that typing is very hard," O'Brien pointed out. "A Chromebook gives you that with six hours or more of battery life and reduced weight. It won't make all laptops obsolete, but you can see where it fits."
'Put Down the Crack Pipe'
Hardware vendors essentially have no choice, Slashdot blogger hairyfeet opined.
"Not only does Win 8 make Vista look like a hit, not only is it driving sales down when the OEMs were already hurting thanks to brain-dead ideas hoisted on them by Wintel like ultrabooks and touchscreens where they made no sense, but MSFT has made it clear that they see the future as 'MSFT hardware running MSFT software that can only get programs through a MSFT app store' a la iOS," hairyfeet explained.
"I've said it before and I've said it again: the board at MSFT needs to put down the crack pipe before it completely obliterates what Bill took 30 years to build," he concluded.
'Competition Is a Great Thing'
"Sticking with Wintel may provide a slowly sinking revenue forever, but Lenovo requires growth," blogger Robert Pogson pointed out. "They had to break the mold to get that.
"For most of Wintel, OEMs were in fierce competition with tiny margins," Pogson explained. "Thanks to M$, they could not cut prices for the OS. They had to cut on hardware, which made competition even more difficult."
Then, "when ARM became popular on smartphones, many millions saw that Intel was not required to have fun, a lot of fun," he suggested. "Lenovo could not ship ever-more-powerful Intel processors to retain market share. Every OEM now has to ship ARM and x86/amd64 with GNU/Linux and Android/Linux in order to avoid losing share to those rapidly growing segments."
Now it's become clear that "smart thingies are not just accessories but main computers for people," he added. "Lenovo sees that and has to ship what people want or they will get it elsewhere."
In short, "competition is a great thing," Pogson concluded. "Thanks to M$'s inability to fit a rapidly changing market, we are returning to a free market after decades of corrupt anti-competitive deals. It had to come eventually, but it's better late than never."


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Chicago IX: Greatest Hits
QRS Cat #662081
25 or 6 To 4
Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?
Colour My World
Just You 'N' Me
Saturday In the Park
Feelin' Stronger Every Day
Make Me Smile
Wishing You Were Here
Call on Me
(I've Been) Searchin' So Long
What You Receive: The original audio CD plus a 3-digit access code for this CD. This will access and synchronize the corresponding SyncAlong piano files for this CD, which are contained on the CompactFlash card shipped FREE to first-time SyncAlong CD purchasers. Free Updates to these Piano Files will be issued regularly via this website.
Piano Transcribed & Played by: Christopher Sierzchula
Chicago IX: Greatest Hits
QRS Cat #662081


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House Majority Leader Dickey Lee Hullinghorst, the sponsor of a bill that would move Colorado to a predominantly mail-ballot system, said Thursday that the measure amounts to "a 21st Century approach to voting."
Gunbarrel Democrat Hullinghorst's House Bill 1303, which was introduced Wednesday, would require Colorado's county clerks to send mail ballots to all eligible registered voters, including those who under current law are on "inactive" lists because they didn't participate in a recent general election.
People could mail their completed ballots back or drop them off at designated locations. Voters who prefer showing up in person to cast their ballots still could do so, at early-voting centers before Election Day, or at centralized voting locations on Election Day. County clerks would no longer have to provide neighborhood precinct polling places.
Hullinghorst said her bill -- entitled the "Voter Access and Modernized Elections Act" -- would provide "full voting options for all of the voters in the state of Colorado" while simplifying and standardizing voter-registration and ballot-casting systems for would-be voters and for county clerks.
The most controversial changes being proposed in the bill have been provisions that would allow Coloradans who are qualified to vote -- but who aren't on voter-registration rolls -- to register on the same day they seek to cast their ballots. Under current law, people must be registered at least 29 days before an election in order to cast a ballot in that election.
"This is nothing more than a partisan power grab by Democrats, taken at the expense of integrity in our elections," said Colorado Republican Committee chairman Ryan Call.
"The last thing Coloradans want is the legitimacy of our elections cast into doubt because of the serious potential for voter fraud," Call said in an April 1 news release. "Our current system helps prevent ineligible or multiple ballots from being cast, but same-day voter registration opens the door to fraud in a way that all citizens should find deeply troubling."
Hullinghorst, however, said the bill would provide more security against fraudulent voter-registration or voting.
HB 1303's legislative declaration says the measure intends "to remove barriers to participation in the electoral process by making both voting and voter registration more convenient and accessible." The bill's first stop in the legislative process is to be a Monday afternoon hearing by the House State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee.
As for GOP opposition to the bill, whose critics include Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler, House Speaker Mark Ferrandino, D-Denver, said Thursday that "the vast majority" of Colorado's county clerks are Republican, and that their clerks' association supports the measure.
Boulder County Clerk and Recorder Hillary Hall, a Democrat who's noted the annually increasing popularity of mail balloting in Boulder County , could not be reached for comment on Hullinghorst's bill on Thursday afternoon.
Of the 184,778 "active" voters on Boulder County's registration rolls -- those who voted in last November's general election or who have registered or updated their registration information since then -- 127,074 of those voters, about 69 percent, have asked to permanently be on mail-ballot status, according to the county clerk's office.
In last fall's general election, the 180,712 Boulder County voters' ballots counted included 130,252 mailed-back or dropped-off mail ballots; 17,750 voters cast ballots in person at early-voting locations, and 32,710 voted in person at precinct polling places on Election Day.
John Fryar can be reached at 303-684-5211 or email@example.com.


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