text:
Q. Name 3 authors that you would love to sit down and spend an hour or a meal with just talking about either their books or get advice on writing from?
Just three?! Well, First I would pick Edie Ramer. She sent me a book review almost a year ago I think, and ever since we've been in contact every month or so, mostly about books. But she's a great lady with a great talent for story telling and I would love to hear some of those stories over a good meal and a glass of wine.
Second, I would pick Ilona and Gordon Andrews (counts as one since they are a writing team). Because of all the wit and humor and action they put into their books, I bet they would be really fun to get to know. Even on twitter seeing some of the funny things Ilona posts is just hilarious. Not to mention always stalking their blog.
Third, Jennifer Estep. I love her Elemental Assassin series and I'm so excited for her Mythos Academy book. I would probably find myself talking about either Gin or her hunky new boy toy, Owen. But mostly, I would want to talk about how she goes about creating her stories because they are just gripping and funny and Gin is always finding herself in a tight spot and manages to always get away. I want to know what goes on in Estep's head when all that happens.
Bookshelf Tour: Where do you keep your books at home? Are they organized?
Oh man, are they not organized. I won't even post a picture of it. I've just moved since I got married so some are in boxes, some are stacked (gulp) on top of each other in a very small portion of the guest closet with the rest of my junk. The house is much to small to really have a book case so I'm not sure what we will do with them. They might stay in boxes. We do plan on buying a new home after 2 or 3 years with my hubby's new promotion, so hopefully they will have a great home in the new home.


text:
Stossel presented skewed 20/20 segment on "stupid" public schools
Research ››› ››› JULIE MILLICAN
ABC's John Stossel presented a "special report" on the failure of American public schools that included a series of misleading claims, a lack of balance in reporting and interviews, and video clips apparently created primarily for entertainment to argue for expanding "school choice" initiatives such as vouchers and charter schools.
On the January 13 broadcast of ABC's 20/20, host John Stossel presented an hour-long "special report" on the purported failures of public schools in the United States. Titled "Stupid in America: How We Cheat Our Kids," the report tilted heavily in favor of those who advocate for expanding such "school choice" initiatives as voucher and charter school programs, ostensibly as the means for increasing academic achievement.
Through a series of misleading claims, a lack of balance in reporting and interviews, and video clips apparently created primarily for entertainment, Stossel's report failed to offer viewers an accurate picture of the debate over charter schools and voucher programs, and gave significantly greater coverage to the arguments of "school choice" proponents, with Stossel frequently criticizing public schools. At one point, the reporter warned, "Most Americans don't know what stupid schools are doing to American kids."
School voucher programs, such as those highlighted by Stossel, allow parents to withdraw their children from public schools and enroll them in private schools with the help of vouchers for a set amount of public funding that is then transferred to the private school. Such programs are usually promoted under the rubric of "school choice." According to edweek.org, the website of Editorial Projects in Education (publisher of Education Week and Teacher Magazine): "At its most basic and uncontroversial, school choice is a reform movement focused on affording parents the right to choose which school their child attends." In recent years, with the advent of school voucher programs and charter schools, the issue of "school choice" has become more contentious. According to the ERIC Digest, proponents of school choice incentives such as vouchers argue that, among other things, the resulting "increased competition from voucher schools will force public schools to improve, or risk closure"; opponents worry that such school choice initiatives will "drain money from public schools, cull the most highly motivated students and parents, violate church-state separation, be costly to administer, and raise property taxes."
Another facet of "school choice" is that of charter schools, which are public schools that are often freed from the regulations that apply to their non-charter counterparts, ostensibly to better serve a specific and often narrowly defined mission adopted by the school as part of its "charter." From the U.S. Department of Education:
A public charter school is a publicly funded school that, in accordance with an enabling state statute, has been granted a charter exempting it from selected state or local rules and regulations. A charter school may be newly created, or it may previously have been a public or private school; it is typically governed by a group or organization (e.g., a group of educators, a corporation, or a university) under a contract or charter with the state. In return for funding and autonomy, the charter school must meet accountability standards. A school's charter is reviewed (typically every 3 to 5 years) and can be revoked if guidelines on curriculum and management are not followed or the standards are not met.
Stossel's "evidence" of poor public schools
Throughout his report, Stossel repeatedly presented out-of-context material in making derogatory statements about the state of public schools, teaching methods employed, and students' general knowledge.
For example:
- Responding to a disgruntled student's comments that his school was like a "hellhole," Stossel aired footage taped at a different high school of a teacher using the board game Monopoly to teach students geography.
- After airing the results of a Stossel-administered "international test" in which students in a Belgian classroom scored significantly higher than students in an "above-average New Jersey school," Stossel questioned whether American students were "stupid." He showed a clip of the "Jaywalking" segment from NBC's Tonight Show with Jay Leno, in which Leno roams the streets asking people "totally simple questions" and airs clips of those who make notoriously ill-informed responses. Stossel then attempted to imitate Leno's routine by asking a class of New Jersey students such basic history questions as, "What is the purpose of the Bill of Rights?" and, "What was the major cause of the Civil War?" The only response Stossel aired to his history quiz was one student saying, "I don't know."
- Stossel also aired clips from the 1989 film Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, the 1986 film Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and the 1995 film Clueless, then asked, "Is school as bad as the movie suggests?"
Misleading claims
As Media Matters for America has previously noted (here and here), Stossel has a history of making misleading or false claims to make his point, and in "Stupid in America," Stossel and his guests made a series of false or misleading claims in support of school choice:
- Competition improves schools. Stossel spent a significant portion of the program endorsing the concept that school choice would improve public schools as a whole because the resulting competition between public, charter, and private schools, Stossel claimed, "forces schools to try harder." To illustrate this point, Stossel interviewed Harvard University economist Caroline Hoxby about her studies of the effects of competition among schools on student performance. Using a Milwaukee, Wisconsin, voucher program as an example, Hoxby claimed that after its implementation the test scores of students at both public and private schools improved "by leaps and bounds."
"Of course they did," Stossel added. "That's what competition does." But, contrary to the definitive way in which Stossel presented the results, Hoxby's studies are far from conclusive and some have garnered significant criticism. While Milwaukee students' test scores have improved (though they recently appear to have leveled or slowed), other research studies have yielded conflicting explanations for the improvement in test scores. For instance, Cecilia Elena Rouse, a Princeton University economics professor, noted that three different studies on Milwaukee schools all reached different conclusions. Rouse concluded that "the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program is too small to provide insight into the potential student achievement benefits of an unrestricted voucher program." Also, Helen F. Ladd, Duke University professor of economics and professor of public policy, criticized the findings in one of Hoxby's studies. Ladd claimed that Hoxby, in touting the academic achievement of students attending private schools via voucher programs, neglected to note that there were "no statistically significant average differences between the achievement of voucher and non-voucher students"; additionally, Ladd noted that other research from Texas and North Carolina "indicates that students in charter schools experience smaller gains in achievement than they would have had they remained in the traditional public schools."
- Charter schools are succeeding. Touting the success of charter schools, Stossel misleadingly claimed, "Many charter schools are succeeding." In fact, as a whole, charter school students have actually posted lower test scores than their public school counterparts. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) --the "primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education" -- found (NAEP data is compiled here) that charter school fourth-graders had lower average reading and math test scores in both 2003 and 2005 than non-charter school fourth-graders. Eighth-grade non-charter school students nationally posted 2005 NAEP average scores that were 10 points higher in math and five points higher in reading than their charter school counterparts. Although some advocates of charter schools argue that this is because they have significant populations of students who have failed at public schools, Stossel never informed his viewers that the debate even existed.
- Insufficient funding is not the problem. Stossel also attempted to debunk educators' concerns that low funding is "the biggest problem facing public schools" with his interview of Jay Greene, senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute for Public Policy Research, who offered data purporting to show that increased funding has no effect on student achievement. "We doubled per-pupil spending, adjusting for inflation, over the last 30 years and yet schools aren't better...," Greene claimed. "We now spend more than $10,000 per pupil per year," he said.
In fact, according to the latest U.S. Census Data from 2003, per-pupil spending in the United States averages $8,019, with an average of $4,902 going toward instruction. Also, an analysis of several research studies exploring the roles of school funding and student achievement by researchers Bruce J. Biddle, professor emeritus of psychology and sociology at University of Missouri, and David C. Berliner, regent's professor of education at University of Arizona, found that most "strong studies" -- research studies whose methodology is not disputed -- concluded that school "funding has substantial effects" on student achievement. And because of new demands on schools outside of their academic mission, Biddle and Berliner argued that to view school funding only in terms of an increase in dollars over the last 30 years does not adequately address the issue of the impact of funding on educational achievement:
Another claim sometimes made by critics of public schools is that aggregate funding for schools has increased sharply in recent years, but this increase has not generated achievement gains.
[R]ecent legislative mandates and court decisions have created a host of new responsibilities for our schools designed to meet the needs of disadvantaged students -- those with physical and mental handicaps, those from impoverished homes, those representing racial and ethnic minorities, those from immigrant families who do not speak English at home, those who are unruly and unmotivated, and the like -- mandates that have often been underfunded but, taken together, have raised costs for public schools significantly. As a result, Miles and Rothstein found, about one-third of net new dollars during this period went to support special-education students; 8 percent went to dropout prevention programs, alternative instruction, and counseling aimed at keeping youths in school; another 8 percent went to expand school-lunch programs; another 28 percent went to fund increased salaries for a teacher population whose average age was increasing; and so forth. In contrast, during these years very few additional dollars were provided for needs associated with basic instruction.
Stossel provided no evidence to counter Greene's assertion, nor did he identify Greene's affiliation with the Manhattan Institute or Greene's fellowship there. According to Media Transparency -- a website that tracks grants made to conservative organizations -- the Manhattan Institute for Public Policy Research is heavily funded by the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, Inc. and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Inc.-- three of the top four conservative foundations known as the Four Sisters. Together with the Carthage Foundation -- another foundation controlled by the Scaife family -- the three foundations granted the Manhattan Institute more than $11 million between the years of 1985 and 2003.
Stossel complains of cherry-picking, but does his own
During his "Stupid" report, Stossel complained of difficulties he said he had gaining access to public schools with news cameras, claiming, "It's hard to get our cameras into schools." Stossel continued: "New York City's school district wouldn't allow us in at all. Washington, D.C., steered us to the best classrooms, like this one taught by Jason Camorras, the national teacher of the year. ... But we wanted to tape typical classrooms. We were turned down in state after state. Finally, Washington, D.C., did allow us to give cameras to a few students they hand-picked at two schools they hand-picked." Yet Stossel himself cherry-picked the charter schools he chose to highlight in his special, apparently choosing only schools with reported successes and ignoring studies that, again, show that in the aggregate, charter schools posted lower test scores.
Lack of balance
The 20/20 "Stupid in America" report skewed heavily in favor of "school choice" and school vouchers, both in the number of people interviewed and of time devoted to allowing them to make their argument. While Stossel's report included portions of interviews with eight "school choice" or school voucher advocates, he interviewed only two who opposed either vouchers or charter schools. (See table below.)
Stossel placed those two opponents of "school choice" at a further disadvantage by providing significantly more coverage to charter school and voucher supporters, as shown in the second table, below.
School choice advocates
School choice opponents
Harvard University economist Caroline Hoxby
South Carolina state Rep. J. Todd Rutherford (D)
Manhattan Institute senior fellow Jay P. Greene
South Carolina Superintendent of Education Inez Moore Tenenbaum
Kevin Chavous, a former Washington, D.C., councilman and current fellow at the pro-school choice organization Center for Education Reform
Ben Chavis, charter school principal
South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R)
New York City School Chancellor Joel I. Klein
Michael Cordell, chief academic officer of Friendship Charter School
Word count -- public school critics
Word count -- public school supporters
About 1,400
About 360
- Posted In
- Education, School Vouchers
- Network/Outlet
- Person
- John Stossel
- Show/Publication
- 20/20
Instructions for signing up and claiming your comment history are located here.
Updated rules for commenting are here.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Sleep Inns Mount Airy hotels are listed below. Search for cheap and discount Sleep Inns hotel rates in Mount Airy, NC for your upcoming individual or group travel. We list the best Sleep Inns Mount Airy hotels & lodging so you can review the Mount Airy Sleep Inns hotel list below to find the perfect place.
Our page will list Mount Airy, NC properties that have similar star quality of Sleep Inns.
Booking a group or meeting? Set up a group hotel block in Mount Airy NC
How should we direct your call?


text:
The Bayside Commodores (7-2) lost their second game in a row to the August Martin Falcons (6-3) by a score of 6-0. The Commodores gave up 195 yards of offense, with Falcons senior quarterback Ricky Dunbar completing 4 of 8 passes for 85 yards. Dunbar also accounted for the lone touchdown of the day, rushing for 15 yards on six attempts and the score. Richard McKoy led all Falcon rushers with 57 yards on 14 attempts. Senior Clinton Westmoreland Jr. added 27 yards on the ground in nine attempts. The Commodores will be the fifth seed in the playoffs and face off against the fourth seeded Tilden Blue Devils (8-1). The Falcons are the second seed and will have a bye.
In their last game, the Beach Channel Dolphins (6-3) dominated the Springfield Gardens Golden Eagles (2-7) by a score of 28-0. The Dolphins had a total of 261 offensive yards while only giving up 47 yards to the Golden Eagles. For the Dolphins, junior Breland Archbold completed 8 of 16 passes for 117 yards and a touchdown and also added a touchdown on the ground. Junior Justin Zemser led all rushers with 94 yards on three attempts and two touchdowns. On defense, sophomore Chris Reed had an interception. The Dolphins are the sixth seed in the playoffs and will face the William E. Grady Falcons (7-2) who are the third seed.
The Long Island City Bulldogs (2-7) lost the last game of a disappointing season by a score of 44-20 at the hands of the Jamaica Beavers. The Beavers had a total of 438 yards. Senior Brandon Sims threw a 57 yard touchdown pass. Senior Jaquan Jarvis led all rushers with 283 yards on 20 attempts. In addition, Jarvis crossed the goal line twice. Sims added 82 yards on the ground with two touchdowns on six attempts.
The Campus Magnet Bulldogs (6-3) lost to the Tottenville Pirates by a score of 44-19. The Bulldogs outshot the Pirates on office, 310-267. Although Kahlik Greenwood threw for 158 yards and a touchdown, he struggled to get the ball to his receivers, throwing four interceptions. In comparison, Pirates' senior Brandon Di Girolamo completed 5 of 8 passes for 61 yards and three touchdowns. For the Bulldogs, junior Asaikie Blake led all rushers with 76 yards on five attempts and a touchdown. Greenwood also added a score on the ground. The Bulldogs are seeded 8th in the Championship playoffs and will face off against the 9th seeded Curtis Warriors (6-3).
The Spartans (4-5), who lost their last game of the season against the Flushing Red Devils (5-4) by a score of 32-14, will face the top seeded Abraham Lincoln Railsplitters (9-0) as the 16th seed. This marks the first time the Spartans will make the playoffs in the Championship division in at least 10 years. The Red Devils, who are seeded 11th, will face the Boys and Girls Kangaroos (6-3) who are seeded 6th.


text:
You are hereHome ›
Narrow Search
Now showing results 1-1 of 1
Learners will investigate, compare, and describe patterns in Solar System data. They will then hypothesize about the formation of the Solar System based on data and explain how extrasolar planets can be discovered. In the first activity, the... (View More) students investigate Solar System data to find clues to how our planetary system was formed. By the end of the activity, the students come to understand that other stars form just like the Sun, and, therefore, many stars could have planets around them. The second activity examines how scientists can find these extrasolar planets. By observing the behavior of a model star-planet system, the students come to understand that it is possible to see the effect a planet has on its parent star even if the planet cannot be seen directly. By comparing the properties of our Solar System with other planetary systems, we can gain a deeper understanding of planetary systems across the Universe. Note: The MESSENGER mission to Mercury that is mentioned in this lesson ended operations April 30, 2015. For the latest information about MESSENGER and NASA's solar system missions see the links under Related & Supplemental Resources (right side of this page). (View Less)


text:
Our Price: £95.40
Rear Brake Caliper Right Hand (o/s)
To Fit: Saab 900 1988 -1993 all models
These calipers are remanufactured to a very high quality, brand new pistons, seals and other components are fitted as standard, the caliper body is shot-blasted and electro-plated, finally all calipers are individually pressure tested on purpose built rigs.
Calipers are sold on an exchange basis, with the core deposit being refunded to you upon return to us of your existing caliper (conditions apply).
Available Options:
Exchange Fee:Refundable Deposit (+£48.00)
VAT (Value Added Tax) is charged at 20% on all purchases shipped within the EEC (with the exception of certain items such as books).
1) Prices displayed on this website are VAT inclusive where the selected currency is an EU currency.
2) All non EU currency prices displayed do NOT include VAT.
3) Orders shipped to addresses outside the EEC will NOT be charged VAT, once shipping address is set and you are logged into your website account, VAT is automatically removed from all prices.
4) Orders being shipped within the EEC will be VAT inclusive where applicable.
5) If you are viewing prices in a non EU currency, prices displayed DO NOT include VAT.
PFS Parts Ltd. is registered for VAT in the United Kingdom, VAT no: GB809914994
To accurately identify manufacturer specified vehicle model year (which can frequently be different to year of registration), please enter your 17 digit VIN or Chassis number below. This number is generally located at the base of the windscreen, or on the vehicle documents.
Only Suitable for Vehicles 1986 onwards


text:
$array[ 0 ] =~ s/[^\w\d\._]+/_/gomx ;
It took me some re-reading and reminding to decipher what it is supposed to be doing.
The brackets are holding a group, which contains everything that isn't a word character, a digit character (which is also a word character, so it is redundant), a period or an underbar, and replaces it with an underbar.
The carot (^) is a negator, and the square braces are a group. [^A-Z] matches any character which isn't a capital ASCII letter, which is to say, any character that is not in the group of letters between A and Z.
The flags, "/gomx", prove to me that this is my code, and it dates it to a point after I had bought and read through Perl Best Practices (where Damian Conway recommends to always use /m and /x) but before a presentation in my Perl Mongers group argued that the /o flag was useless. The usage, if I correctly recall, was to "precompile" the regular expression, making repeated uses faster. The speaker benchmarked it and found it didn't affect performance, or didn't affect performance positively, or didn't affect performance much. Looking in perlre, I'm not seeing evidence that /o is still in the language.
/g means global. Normally, regular expressions work on the first thing it matches, but this flag means it works on everything that matches.
/x extends formatting, allowing you to separate and document your regular expression. I clearly didn't do that. If I had documented this code, I wouldn't be blogging it now. /m allows you to treat multi-line strings like one-line strings. This code runs on tab-delimited data, line-by-line. Damian Conway's suggests in Perl Best Practices that you always use these, even when you don't need them. Randal Schwartz told me on Google Plus that this is paramount to cargo-cult programming. (I don't believe I have done terrible damage in my attempts to present their positions. I also don't believe I have standing to argue on one side or the other. For further details, talk to them.)
So, this code takes everything that isn't in the small set of characters and replaces groups of them with a single underbar. Another redundancy is that underbars are word characters. m{[\w]} matches '_' just as m{[\w_]} does. It would be a better regex if it didn't match _, so that a string like '%^&_%*(&' would become '_' not '___'. This would be a better regex:
$array[ 0 ] =~ s/[^A-Za-z0-9\.]+/_/gmx ;
And it would be better still if I documented it. So, this is clearly a case where I had a problem, brought in regexes, and now have two problems. Thank you JWZ.


text:
You are hereHome ›
Narrow Search
Now showing results 1-8 of 8
This is a lesson about the magnetic field of a bar magnet. The lesson begins with an introductory discussion with learners about magnetism to draw out any misconceptions that may be in their minds. Then, learners freely experiment with bar magnets... (View More) and various materials, such as paper clips, rulers, copper or aluminum wire, and pencils, to discover that magnets attract metals containing iron, nickel, and/or cobalt but not most other materials. Next, learners experiment with using a magnetic compass to discover how it is affected by the magnet and then draw the magnetic field lines of the magnet by putting dots at the location of the compass arrow. This is the first lesson in the first session of the Exploring Magnetism teacher guide. (View Less)
This is a lesson to demonstrate magnetic field lines in 2- and 3-dimensions. In the first activity, learners sprinkle iron filings over a magnet underneath a paper and record their observations. The second activity involves building a 3-D magnetic... (View More) field visualizer using a clear plastic bottle, a cow magnet and iron filings. This is the second lesson in the first session of the "Exploring Magnetism" teacher guide. (View Less)
Materials Cost: $1 - $5 per group of students
This lesson is an introduction to the use of a magnetic compass. At a specific location, learners will locate an object using a compass, identify its bearing, and others will attempt to locate the object by only knowing the bearing reading and the... (View More) corresponding location where the bearing was obtained. Next, learners will develop a method for determining if a magnetic storm is occurring, and they will test this method using online information and a compass. This activity requires compasses and access to the Internet. This is Activity 5 in the Exploring Magnetism on Earth teachers guide. (View Less)
Materials Cost: $5 - $10 per group of students
This is an activity about depicting magnetic fields. Learners will observe two provided drawings of magnetic field line patterns for bar magnets in simple orientations of like and unlike polarities and carefully draw the field lines for both... (View More) orientations. This is the third activity in the Magnetic Math booklet; this booklet can be found on the Space Math@NASA website. (View Less)
This is an activity about depicting magnetic polarity. Learners will observe several provided drawings of magnetic field line patterns for bar magnets in simple orientations of like and unlike polarities and carefully draw the field lines and depict... (View More) the polarities for several orientations, including an arrangement of six magnetic poles. This is the fourth activity in the Magnetic Math booklet; this booklet can be found on the Space Math@NASA website. (View Less)
This is an activity about mapping magnetic fields. Learners use a test magnet to create a map of the magnetic field region around a bar magnet. A Magnaprobe, or other similar test magnet, is required to do this activity. This is the third activity... (View More) in the Mapping Magnetic Influence educators guide. (View Less)
This is an activity about depicting the relative strength of magnetic fields using field line density. Learners will use the magnetic field line drawing of six magnetic poles created in a previous activity and identify the areas of strong, weak, and... (View More) medium magnetic intensity using the density of magnetic field lines. This is the fifth activity in the Magnetic Math booklet; this booklet can be found on the Space Math@NASA website. How to Draw Magnetic Fields - II in the Magnetic Math booklet must be completed prior to this activity. (View Less)
This is an activity about using models to solve a problem. Learners will use a previously constructed model of the MMS satellite to determine if the centrifugal force of the rotating MMS model is sufficient to push the satellite's antennae outward,... (View More) simulating the deployment of the satellites after launch. Then, learners will determine the minimum rotational speed needed for the satellite to successfully deploy the antennae. This is the seventh activity as part of the iMAGiNETICspace: Where Imagination, Magnetism, and Space Collide educator's guide. Instructions for downloading the iBook educator's guide and the associated Transmedia book student guide are available at the resource link. (View Less)


text:
BART verdict: Oakland damage extensive from unrest; at least 80 arrested
Crowds of people roamed the streets following Thursday's verdict into early Friday, smashing storefront windows, stealing merchandise, setting trash fires and tagging walls.
According to Oakland police, more than 80 people were arrested. Among the stores looted included a Foot Locker, Sears, 24 Hour Fitness as well as jewelry stores.
As of Friday, officials said calm had returned, and BART service -- which was stopped at some stations during the unrest -- had resumed.Men sprayed graffiti on walls and windows on Broadway; one outside Tully's Coffee read: "You can't shoot us all." Large fires billowed out of dumpsters on 20th Street and Telegraph Avenue.
At 20th Street and Broadway, authorities released smoke to disperse a crowd that was overrunning police and throwing bottles at officers, according to Oakland Police Chief Anthony Batts.
Batts said there were probably about 100 troublemakers out of up to 800 people who showed up at 14th Street and Broadway after Thursday's verdict, in which former transit Officer Johannes Mehserle, a white man, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter for the fatal shooting of Oscar J. Grant III, an unarmed black man, at the Fruitvale BART station on Jan.1, 2009. Prosecutors had sought a stronger conviction of second-degree murder.
"This city is not the wild, wild west," he said. "We will allow people to protest, but we will allow it to be done peacefully."
Workers in Oakland evacuated the downtown core after news broke that the verdict was to be read, and store owners boarded up windows.
The demonstration throughout the early evening was largely peaceful but tense. People held up photos of Grant as police equipped with helmets and riot gear looked on. A sign draped over a light post read: "Oakland says guilty."
As darkness fell about 8 p.m. and most of the demonstrators went home, a group of people dressed in black and wearing black masks moved toward police.
"It was clear that they were taking an aggressive posture. ... We started taking a number of rocks and bottles," Batts said. "We then made a dispersal order."
By 8:30 p.m., the looting began. People broke windows at a Rite-Aid drugstore. A California Highway Patrol car window was smashed, as was the window of a news television van.
Residents could be heard yelling at the younger protesters in the street to "go home. This is our city. Don't destroy it."
The reaction in Los Angeles, where the trial was moved because of intense publicity in the Bay Area, was peaceful. A group of people upset with the verdict gathered in Leimert Park late Thursday, but the event was so peaceful that even the police left before the end.
Grant's uncle, Kenneth Johnson, 48, came to see the rally but did not stand up to speak. Johnson, who lives in Los Angeles, said he was unhappy with the verdict and thought justice had not been served.
He was, however, glad to see Angelenos rallying for Grant.
"L.A., Oakland, the same things go on both places," he said.
-- Maria L. La Ganga in downtown Oakland; Abby Sewell in Leimert Park; and Rong-Gong Lin II and Louis Sahagun in Los Angeles
Photo: A demonstrator taunts officers in downtown Oakland. Credit: Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times


text: Buncombe County Parks and Recreation Services has seven river parks located throughout Buncombe County. These facilities offer grills, picnic tables & river access. Table: River Park Locations Park Address & Directions (select address for map) Alexander River Park 2589 Old Marshall Highway Alexander, NC 28701 Bent Creek 1592 Brevard Rd. Asheville, NC 28806 Corcoran Paige 9 Pinners Rd. Arden, NC 28704 Glen Bridge 77 Pinners Rd. Arden, NC 28704 Hominy Creek 194 Hominy Creek Rd. Asheville, NC 28806 Ledges Whitewater 1080 Old Marshall Hwy Alexander, NC 28701 Walnut Island 3042 Old Marshall Hwy Alexander, NC 28701


text:
English- Japanese Translator
Presupuesto €30-250 EUR
I need a high level English-Japanese translator who will translate brochures, and some event materials for an AFRICAN SAFARI industry. The content have some jargons and would be highly context-based translation hence, the person has to be well-versed in both in written English and Japanese.
- Five brochures with a total of 2,370 english words
- Banners and business card with a total of more or less 100 words
26 freelancers están ofertando el promedio de €100 para este trabajo
Having trouble with a foreign text? Hiring a professional translator is what you should do first and We are here to Help You. Relevant Skills and Experience The satisfaction and trust of my clients is my main concern, Más
Greetings! Do you want manual language translations? If so, then you should definitely consider the eTranslators services. We offer high quality translations to our customers and understand the importance of precise Más
Dear Sir/Madam, Native English to Japanese translators are ready to work with you. We ensure the quality,deadline and best price for your project.100% human and accurate translation guaranteed ! All our translatio Más
Hello Sir/Mam Thank you for checking my proposal. Please consider my application. I am a native English to Japanese and vice versa speaker with training in translation. Will translate your documents in time. I n Más
Dear Client, In response to your job posting, please consider my application. I'm happy to provide accurate, professional translation services. Beyond general translation, we have translation expertise in web con Más
Dear sir/mam, We are a professional native English-Japanese translators team. We provide high quality translation service. Really we are very interested to work on your project. Relevant Skills and Experience Our tran Más
Hello , I am certified bilingual and will translate from English to Japanese and vice versa. Translations are done manually and I always proofread before delivery. I also make sure that your documents are 100% con Más
Hello Sir/Mam, We are a group of professional translators who provide high quality and error-free translations. We are very interested in this project. Our NATIVE and EXPERIENCED JAPANESE translator could help yo Más
Hello, We are a group of native and professional translators who provide high quality and error-free translations. We are very interested in your project. Our NATIVE Japanese translator could help you with it. Más
Our translation services are available in an amazing number of different languages, over 76, including common languages such as Arabic, English, Italian, German, French, Russian, Chinese and Japanese as well as Greek, Más
Our native accredited translators ( English And Japanese ) provide the highest quality translations that drive this translation service and give you the results you expect. We can provide notarization and company cert Más


text:
If you love entering sweepstakes or giveaways online,You must read my posts. Here I will post some ongoing sweepstakes links.Its really fun that you can win some good stuff from clothes to electronic gadgets. My punchline:- "Who says there are no free Lunches". I will also post about free samples, coupons and reviews of products.
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)


text:
UPDATE: Watch Swimmer Ian Thorpe Come Out As Gay In Australian TV Interview
Updated Sunday, 9:35 a.m. PST
As previously discussed, Australian Olympic swimmer Ian Thorpe came out as gay last night during an Australian television interview.
Watch as he opens up publicly for the first time in these two clips:
Congratulations, Ian! Thoughts, Instincters?
Original Post
Talk of Australian Olympic swimmer Ian Thorpe's sexual orientation has regularly overshadowed discussion of his triumphs in the pool. That may no longer be the case now that Thorpe is officially coming out as a gay man in an interview airing tonight on Australian television.
The Daily Telegraph reports:
After years of personal struggle, Olympic hero Ian Thorpe has bravely revealed he is gay.
The 31-year-old confirms his sexuality for the first time Sunday in an exclusive interview on Channel 10, telling all to veteran British interviewer Sir Michael Parkinson.
It's understood the interview, which Parkinson has described as one of the best he has ever conducted, includes a full admission from Thorpe that he is gay despite having dated women in the past.
In the emotional sit-down shot last month, Thorpe also details the years of depression he has battled while denying his sexuality from the world. Part of that concealment included his own autobiography This Is Me, published in 2012, in which Thorpe wrote that he found questions about his sexuality hurtful.
What do you think of Thorpe's decision to come out of the closet after years of public denial??
(H/T: Towleroad)
Usually these comments with very homophobic/racist remarks come from internet trolls that do it just for the reaction. The more comments they generate by their remarks, the cooler they are. I think this is a good time to ask where are the admins of this site, and what do they do in these cases, because anonymous comments with homophobic and racial slurs appear on every single post. Anyway, good for the Thorpedo.
Totally agree with you. The kind of sex any of us get shouldn't be of anyone's concern. I remember when I told my folks I was dating a guy, after I had chosen to divorce from my ex-wife. My dad simply came to me and told me he had no peace of mind ever since because he couldn't imagine what things another man and I were doing in bed. I was so taken aback I just told him that was pretty sick, as I never spent any of my time trying to imagine he and my mom fucking... and if he did that, imagining me and other guy in bed, he did have issues and should get professional help. He never mentioned that again...
I find it appalling that there are some gay men here who don't seem to understand that every time a gay man comes out of the closet, it educates people in our society. Interviews for celebrities and sports figures who come out, educates an even wider range of people in this world who have been taught that homosexuality is a choice. We cannot judge why any of our own kind may have denied their sexuality for so long. There are many reasons and we have to understand that. I am just happy when one does decide in his or her own way that the time is right for them. The more of us who come out, the more the world will realize it is just as natural to be homosexual as it is to be heterosexual. It may take many generations until this is a universally accepted belief, but we have to start now. Thanks to Ian Thorpe and to the interviewer for making it public. I wish him all the best and I feel he is in a much better place in his life now that he can live his truth.
I find it appalling that this should be an issue. Gay men lilve their lives. It is only the militant queens who don't define me or many of my friends who find it important to "OUT" people. Being gay is one part of who I am, and I'm sure, it's only part of who Ian Thorpe is. To the rest of you 100% gay men who obsess about other people, GET A LIFE!
I think Ian has done the right thing, and I am always so very proud of anyone who finally finds themselves in the right place and time to come out. He is exactly right about all the depression that comes with living in the closet and having to date girls and pretend to be straight. It is such a travesty. I applaud him, I am happy for him, and I can tell him from my own experience that he will be so much happier and free now...it is hard to put into words how wonderful it its. If we thought he was a terrific man before.... just see what all he will be able to accomplish now that he can be his true self. Congratulations, Ian, and thank you for coming out and sharing your story. You are a wonderful role model to others in the same boat. More and more, our world is slowly learning that being gay is NOT a choice. We are born with our sexual orientation. It come as naturally to a gay man to be attracted to men as it does for a heterosexual man to be attracted to women. They don't just up and decide one day they are attracted to women. It happens naturally when their hormones kick in when they see a female just as our hormones as gay men kick in naturally one day when we see a man!! I knew I was different at the age of 6, but I grew up in the 50's, 60's and 70's in a conservative environment. There was no internet and I had no idea there were others like me in the world! I got married and had a family because I thought that was the only way I could survive in this world. I am now 65 and have been out for 10 years. They have been the very best years of my life!!!! I am happy for Ian that he can come out at an early age. He will be a much better man for doing it!!!!
AWESOME!! Congrats Ian!! I only wish more celebs/athletes would come out and show the world they are not afraid to show that they are who they are and that 'Love is Love' no matter what!! Several have already and the world has not come to an end nor have their careers suffered or have they lost fans because of their sexual orientation!!


text:
Chad Gross needed a new logo design and created a contest on 99designs.
A winner was selected from 76 designs submitted by 30 freelance designers.
Layton Flower Technologies is in need of a new corporate brand, starting with a new logo. We are a services firm wanting a sleek & sophisticated logo, but with a bit of an edge.
Layton Flower Technologies
We are going through a restructure and spinning off our services side into a new, separate company. We're young, creative & driven and want that reflected in the design. Once we have the logo, we are looking for a continued relationship with the winning designer to also assist with designs for stationary, business cards, & our new website.
What we do: We provide IT Consulting & Support services for small to medium businesses. Our target customer is a tech saavy organization that views technology as an asset that can provide them a competitive edge. However these organizations cannot justify the expense of hiring full-time network administrators, a CIO/CTO, etc. We serve both as an outsourced IT department, administering & maintaining their technology infrastructure, but also provide CIO/CTO level services helping continually insure the organization's technology plan is in line with their overal short & long term strategic goals.
- I would like to see two variations of submissions - one for a white / transparent background, and one against a colored background
- Item 1...
Find out how a design contest works or learn more about our logo design services.


text:
Current Tsunami and Earthquake Information
- West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning CenterAlaska Earthquake Information CenterUSGS Tsunami Research
Contact Us:Geophysical Institute
903 Koyukuk Drive
Fairbanks AK 99775
Email Contact
The Alaska Tsunami Education Program blends Alaska Native knowledge and science instruction. Hands-on, standard-aligned classroom lessons, interactive multimedia, and mapping projects for grades K through 12 give students an opportunity to learn the science of tsunamis in a culturally relevant context. The program was funded by the U.S. Department of Education.


text:
Dong was awarded three projects totalling nearly 1.5GW in the first round with its consortium partner, EDF Energies Nouvelles (EDF EN).
A Dong spokesman said: "We are focused on developing the three projects we are involved in on the French west coast. Investment decisions for new projects in France is not in our current plans, and we thereby don't plan on placing a bid for the Round 2 projects."
EDF EN has said that it does intend to participate in the second round. Two projects of up to 500MW each are being tendered at Le Tréport, in the Channel, and near the islands of Yeu and Noirmoutier in the Atlantic.
Dong has taken the decision despite February's announcement that it is aiming to install 6.5GW of offshore capacity in north-west Europe by 2020, with an intermediate target of 3.5GW by end-2016.
Other companies expected to bid in the second French tender include Iberdrola, Eole-RES, WPD Offshore, Nass&Wind Offshore, GDF-Suez, Neoen and EDP Renewables.
Previously, the EDF consortium, which included Dong, pulled out of Tréport when it was part of the first tender. At the time, it said it wanted to concentrate on the other three projects.
The Tréport project has faced opposition from the local population. Among the fiercest critics are local fishermen who fear the project's effect on fishing grounds. In the end, the government declared the proposed price too high and withdrew the zone.


text: It's a great time to be a beer lover in the Granite State. With so many fantastic breweries, brewpubs and restaurants, it can be hard to know where to begin. The following advertisers are all excellent choices for starting your beer journey. Please note: the breweries and beer pubs below are listed in alpha order.


text:
Black Dynamite [Movie Trailer]
Black Dynamite: a gun-toting, nunchuck-wielding, ladies man and soul brother. When "The Man" murders his brother, pumps heroin into local orphanages, and floods the ghetto with adulterated malt liquor, Black Dynamite is the one hero willing to fight all the way from the blood-soaked city streets to the hallowed halls of the Honky House.
Please click the "Report" button below if the video on this page is not working properly.
Comments will only be displayed by verified emails. No Spamming or Racism.


text:
Gishdog necesitaba un nuevo diseño de logotipo y lanzó un concurso de diseño en 99designs.
Un ganador ha sido elegido entre 308 diseños de 94 diseñadores freelance.
Figaro Interactive (and possibly Figaro Media)
Figaro Interactive started as a web agency focused on Rich Web Applications. Over the past 5 years we have built up a considerable client base that spans the gamut from large corporations to small/medium sized businesses. Initially, our primary focus was eCommerce but we quickly branched out to video streaming and custom application development.
Because of the rapidly narrowing gap between web services and video services, we are currently expanding our business to become a one stop shop for video and film production along with all of the marketing, social app development and digital distribution that we've built our reputation on.
In 2010 we intend to launch 3 televisions show, one radio show and a host of other one-off live events for various clients. We also have several projects that are web-video and mobile-video based in the works.
We're a small, young group of professionals that have quite a bit of experience for our age.
Our goal in 2010 is to rebrand Figaro Interactive in such a way that existing customers will become aware of our success and growth (along with our new services offerings) and we will have more success reaching out to new customers because our brand will be more representative of the quality of our services.
The services that we currently offer or will be adding in 2010 include: Web Design/Development, Mobile Design/Development, DVD and Blu-ray authoring, Video Streaming, Television Production (pilots, series), Broadcast Design (show identities, set design, graphics packages), Corporate Video Production, Radio Production, 3D/2D animation, architectural modeling/animation, print design and video and film post production services (editing, compositing, rotoscoping).
Our company will have similar sections on our new website to amspictures.com, studios121.com or crmstudios.com
The current logo was thrown together quickly when we initially launched the company. It is not representative of what our company is about or our design ability... We just seem to never have time to actually design something worthwhile for ourselves.
The logo needs to be versatile (business cards, printed ads, video friendly, billboard friendly). We also require the layered vector artwork (so that we can animate it for a video open for example - the intention is not to modify the design, but to use the layers where appropriate).
The logo needs to have an icon that can stand alone (may or may not incorporate an F like the current logo does - as long as the icon stands by itself) along with the name Figaro Interactive or Figaro Media.
No preference on a two line text logo vs a single line, or where the logo falls in the design as long as the composition is versatile.
Strong bold colors are preferred - something fairly technical. The logo must work in black and white/grey scale.
Descubre cómo funciona un concurso de diseño u obtén más información sobre nuestros servicios de diseño de logo.


text:
What do you get when you take a haunted house, add a dash of racist "curse from deepest Africa", a handful of horror tropes that get paid lip service but never actually make the screen, then mix in a bunch of barely-pubescent teens, and totally neglect to include any character trait that might ever make any of the characters sympathetic? Well, except for that last bit you might end up with Scooby Doo or Johnny Quest, but with that last prerequisite, you evidently end up with House of Fears.
CA7746 has done the subtitles (and in color), and he's even dipped back into the archives to do a few others. Here's Laser Mission (and in color), and Night of the Demon.
@pzmyers: @MockTM is there a countdown for this thing? 8pm Central time, right?
2013-01-17 01:59:20
@CA7746: @MockTM Just about… now
2013-01-17 02:00:01
@drskyskull: @MockTM @pzmyers Yup!
2013-01-17 02:00:01
@drskyskull: @MockTM … and… go!
2013-01-17 02:00:28
@CA7746: @MockTM Dendrophobia. Today on This Old -Haunted- House.
2013-01-17 02:00:45
@pzmyers: @MockTM I'm going, I'm going.
2013-01-17 02:01:06
@laencleardale: @MockTM Wait…what if I started too early? I might spoil part of the plot for others??!!
2013-01-17 02:01:09
@lousycanuck: @MockTM "Previously, on House of Fears…"
2013-01-17 02:01:12
@CyberLizard: @MockTM Worst. Sex. Scene. Ever.
2013-01-17 02:01:16
@drskyskull: @MockTM Wood grain is SCARY!
2013-01-17 02:01:55
@lousycanuck: @MockTM Music by some guy applying a drill repeatedly to a piano.
2013-01-17 02:01:58
@CyberLizard: @MockTM I didn't know Justin Bateman did music!
2013-01-17 02:02:04
@pzmyers: @MockTM This movie is about plywood or something?
2013-01-17 02:02:14
@lousycanuck: @MockTM Today on How It's Made. Lumber!
2013-01-17 02:02:35
@pzmyers: @MockTM I'm already dreading the big splinter scene.
2013-01-17 02:02:42
@lousycanuck: @MockTM "Uh, I don't see Al Capone's treasure in here, Geraldo…"
2013-01-17 02:02:57
@drskyskull: @MockTM "Do you see anything?" said Canarvon. "Yes… crappy things."
2013-01-17 02:03:06
@ImprobableJoe: @MockTM Did I miss it?
2013-01-17 02:03:40
@drskyskull: @MockTM I'm watching this movie on a 2.5" tall screen on my laptop. I think I've got a better experience than the rest of you.
2013-01-17 02:03:51
@pzmyers: @MockTM I'm watching it on a big screen TV. Yes, you do.
2013-01-17 02:04:12
@lousycanuck: @MockTM Are they seriously desaturating and sepia-toning everything to make this Deepest Africa?
2013-01-17 02:04:27
@laencleardale: @MockTM Is white appropriate for illegal artifact trade meetings?
2013-01-17 02:04:52
@drskyskull: @MockTM So… is this movie just a scarier version of the Brady Bunch Hawaii episode?
2013-01-17 02:04:54
@pzmyers: @MockTM Who spilled the chocolate syrup?
2013-01-17 02:04:57
@pzmyers: @MockTM Wait…Africa. Do they bleed chocolate, too?
2013-01-17 02:05:17
@drskyskull: @MockTM Aren't movies supposed to introduce us to the characters before killing them? #protip
2013-01-17 02:05:28
@lousycanuck: @MockTM "Handle with care" is just suggestion. Just chuck it in the back of the truck like whatever.
2013-01-17 02:05:38
@pzmyers: @MockTM THose were black characters. You don't need to know them before you kill them.
2013-01-17 02:05:53
@laencleardale: @MockTM Excuse me while I let my attack dog run loose through the area…
2013-01-17 02:06:20
@Rowsdower30: @MockTM SNAUSAGES!
2013-01-17 02:06:27
@lousycanuck: @MockTM @pzmyers @drskyskull Remember, horror tropes are in full effect in this one.
2013-01-17 02:06:40
@lousycanuck: @MockTM That is one angry looking fertility statue.
2013-01-17 02:07:24
@Rowsdower30: @MockTM it's Paris Hilton's body double!
2013-01-17 02:07:37
@pzmyers: @MockTM Who's there? THE DOG, stupid.
2013-01-17 02:08:00
@drskyskull: @MockTM "Filmed on location… wherever we could."
2013-01-17 02:08:10
@CyberLizard: @MockTM Bitch alert!
2013-01-17 02:08:19
@lousycanuck: @MockTM "My insurance doesn't cover hormones. We have a no-natural-disasters clause."
2013-01-17 02:08:45
@pzmyers: @MockTM Brunette is snide. She's gonna die for that.
2013-01-17 02:08:51
@CyberLizard: @MockTM Bitch stereotype alert, I mean
2013-01-17 02:08:52
@drskyskull: @MockTM "My insurance doesn't cover hormones." Now it does… thanks to… OBAMACARE!!!
2013-01-17 02:09:01
@Rowsdower30: @MockTM "my insurance doesn't cover whores- I mean hormones"
2013-01-17 02:09:19
@ImprobableJoe: @MockTM But I did save 15% on my insurance by switching
2013-01-17 02:10:23
@drskyskull: @MockTM These girls do have it rough… I'm pretty sure they got their dad directly from the 70s.
2013-01-17 02:10:41
@CyberLizard: @MockTM Call ME when this movie is over
2013-01-17 02:10:44
@Rowsdower30: @MockTM His Farrah Fawcett hair is MINE
2013-01-17 02:11:31
@laencleardale: @MockTM No one pours bottle beer into a red cup…the point of cups is for kegs, this movie is so unrealistic…
2013-01-17 02:11:32
@lousycanuck: @MockTM That's some happening music they've got going there. It's like Mambo Number Five mashed up with some random dance crap.
2013-01-17 02:11:34
@pzmyers: @MockTM Oh, man, brunette is so gonna die.
2013-01-17 02:11:39
@drskyskull: @MockTM Are we going to have to listen to 1.5 hours of high school girls and jock guys? HOLY SHIT, THIS *IS* A HORROR MOVIE.
2013-01-17 02:11:42
@lousycanuck: @MockTM Barely-of-age girl in slow motion slow pan up — she's dead.
2013-01-17 02:12:22
@laencleardale: @MockTM Clear beer from a brown bottle???
2013-01-17 02:12:29
@pzmyers: @MockTM these girls are all underage. I feel dirty watching them gyrate.
2013-01-17 02:12:32
@ImprobableJoe: @MockTM Was that a 13 year old dancing? Creepy
2013-01-17 02:13:12
@Rowsdower30: @MockTM WOULD YOU PEOPLE HURRY UP AND DIE
2013-01-17 02:13:32
@drskyskull: @MockTM "Hey — Sam! Wanna come die horribly with us? You're gonna have a good time, I promise."
2013-01-17 02:13:42
@pzmyers: @MockTM The blonde girl is not drinking, not acting slutty, and is abused by her sister. She's going to live, isn;t she?
2013-01-17 02:13:53
@lousycanuck: @MockTM @drskyskull This movie is about your worst fears coming to life, see. High school is pretty much exactly that for me too.
2013-01-17 02:14:26
@ImprobableJoe: @MockTM Hush @pzmyers she's going to live because she's not drinking AND she has a boy's name
2013-01-17 02:15:03
@drskyskull: @MockTM Was I that annoying and personality-devoid at that age? I want to build a time machine and go punch myself, just in case.
2013-01-17 02:15:10
@lousycanuck: @MockTM "I have keys. And also this door isn't latched anyway since I just bumped it and it swung half a foot."
2013-01-17 02:15:20
@Rowsdower30: @MockTM "It took me so long to get that down" – that's what she said
2013-01-17 02:15:31
@lousycanuck: @MockTM Entitled douchebag in the peace shirt dies first.
2013-01-17 02:16:02
@lousycanuck: @MockTM Whoa sweet! They have a Van de Graff generator, AND a Tardis!!
2013-01-17 02:17:16
@ImprobableJoe: @MockTM They forgot the 10th fear: being stuck in a crappy movie… forever!
2013-01-17 02:17:22
@laencleardale: @lousycanuck @MockTM Are you joking…horror movie, minority or slutty girl first…
2013-01-17 02:17:22
@Rowsdower30: @MockTM that Keep Out sign must've paid a pretty penny to get so much screen time
2013-01-17 02:17:23
@drskyskull: @MockTM So they left the party with the dancing & booze to go to an abandoned warehouse? They need to die, just for the principle of it.
2013-01-17 02:17:35
@CyberLizard: @MockTM "There's a lot of expensive stuff in here. Don't touch anything." That's what she said
2013-01-17 02:17:38
@drskyskull: @MockTM "Don't touch it — TABOO!" #BradyBunchHawaii
2013-01-17 02:18:06
@pzmyers: @MockTM What is the market for a fancy elaborate haunted house in a fixed location, anyway?
2013-01-17 02:18:36
@lousycanuck: @MockTM Okay, Token Black Guy, would you stop manhandling the evil idol please?
2013-01-17 02:18:42
@drskyskull: @MockTM "Let's scare some girls." "Okay — I'll tell her about our likelihood of getting into college!"
2013-01-17 02:19:19
@ImprobableJoe: @MockTM Peace shirt guy has a job? I thought "hipster douche" was full-time?
2013-01-17 02:19:22
@pzmyers: @MockTM "Let's go scare some girls." IT'S THE INTERNET! I get enough of this every day.
2013-01-17 02:19:48
@lousycanuck: @MockTM Dude, she's wearing all sorts of makeup. So are you.
2013-01-17 02:20:11
@drskyskull: @MockTM "What's your big fear?" "Getting a hairstyle that would be popular after 1978."
2013-01-17 02:20:32
@pzmyers: @MockTM The makeup fear? I suspect evil clown foreshadowing.
2013-01-17 02:21:13
@lousycanuck: @MockTM AAAAH IT'S A JACK IN THE BOX
2013-01-17 02:21:15
@laencleardale: @MockTm I have had a long term fear of corners…
2013-01-17 02:21:18
@CA7746: @MockTM Aaah! Books!
2013-01-17 02:21:41
@lousycanuck: @MockTM Oh hell on wheels, it's Vigo the Carpathian!
2013-01-17 02:22:25
@drskyskull: @MockTM @CA7746 A TEENAGER'S WORST FEAR!!!
2013-01-17 02:22:26
@lousycanuck: @MockTM "Leave him, he's a hermaphrodite!" And you… you can definitely die first, asshole.
2013-01-17 02:22:52
@pzmyers: @MockTM Please kill hipster douche soon. Please.
2013-01-17 02:23:07
@drskyskull: @MockTM @lousycanuck My greatest fear is that this will be "Ghostbusters II".
2013-01-17 02:23:28
@CyberLizard: @MockTM I get the feeling that hipster douche and Sam will be the final survivors.
2013-01-17 02:23:36
@lousycanuck: @MockTM Ohhh, don't touch the sides! *bzz* Butterfingers!! It's Horror Operation!
2013-01-17 02:24:17
@Rowsdower30: @MockTM thank Hades she won't be chawing that damn gum anymore
2013-01-17 02:24:37
@lousycanuck: @MockTM Oh don't even try to make us like the characters, just get with the murdering.
2013-01-17 02:24:53
@pzmyers: @MockTM that was a fear? I hope the next 8 are a little more entertaining.
2013-01-17 02:25:10
@Rowsdower30: @MockTM There's numbers involved- please let someone's head end up in a box…
2013-01-17 02:25:55
@lousycanuck: @MockTM Broseph? This guy cannot die soon enough.
2013-01-17 02:26:06
@drskyskull: @MockTM Next 3 fears: getting Slushied in the cafeteria, not making the cheerleading squad, and totally being grounded on prom.
2013-01-17 02:26:19
@Rowsdower30: @MockTM This is a HORROR movie…. right?
2013-01-17 02:27:13
@lousycanuck: @MockTM "Are you my mummy– OH MY NARDS"
2013-01-17 02:27:54
@drskyskull: @MockTM "This is a house of lame." Yes. Yes, it is.
2013-01-17 02:28:04
@pzmyers: @MockTM Flashlight. Next, he's going to hold it under his chin and scare EVERYONE. Yay!
2013-01-17 02:28:50
@lousycanuck: @MockTM Kinda defeating the fear of the dark with that Mag-Lite there, "broseph."
2013-01-17 02:29:28
@pzmyers: @MockTM He seems relatively unperturbed after getting kicked in the nads.
2013-01-17 02:30:01
@drskyskull: @MockTM If I wanted to have a night of boring high school experiences, movie, I would reminisce over my yearbook!
2013-01-17 02:30:25
@CyberLizard: @MockTM @lousycanuck That's it. You have to change your twitter handle to @broseph
2013-01-17 02:30:50
@Rowsdower30: @MockTM If someone doesn't die soon, I'm invoking the Lemon Law
2013-01-17 02:31:02
@pzmyers: @MockTM I'd like to see something scarier than a jack-in-the-box.
2013-01-17 02:31:33
@laencleardale: @MockTM Let's just get this night over with…yes…please….yes…
2013-01-17 02:31:50
@drskyskull: @MockTM OMG A ROLLING EMPTY PAINT CAN #WorstFearNumberFour
2013-01-17 02:31:59
@CA7746: @MockTM Neat binding on that book.
2013-01-17 02:32:07
@pzmyers: @MockTM We're a half hour in. Nothing has happened yet.
2013-01-17 02:32:46
@lousycanuck: @MockTM Oh good, Broseph is the weakest link. Murdered by a mannequin.
2013-01-17 02:33:12
@Rowsdower30: @MockTM This is about as scary as Cloud Atlas
2013-01-17 02:33:31
@drskyskull: @MockTM "Well, that shouldn't happen." "Well, it did." That's what he and she said!
2013-01-17 02:33:49
@lousycanuck: @CyberLizard @MockTM I might, if it wasn't taken. @broseph
2013-01-17 02:34:17
@lousycanuck: @MockTM "Look, I know you just got your arm half hacked off, but I gots blue balls here."
2013-01-17 02:34:45
@drskyskull: @MockTM @pzmyers *Ahem* They're developing char-a-cter! *said in snooty voice*
2013-01-17 02:34:45
@pzmyers: @MockTM @LousyCanuck scores with an accurate prediction of the first fatality. I'm gonna guess…black guy is next.
2013-01-17 02:35:30
@drskyskull: @MockTM Killed by a mannequin? Is this movie a prequel to the modern Doctor Who series?
2013-01-17 02:35:44
@laencleardale: @MockTM Dude…you're 5′ nothing and screamed at a Jack in the Box…you are sooooo no saving her.
2013-01-17 02:35:46
@pzmyers: @MockTM If it's not a joke, and he's really dead, then she won't be pissed.
2013-01-17 02:36:47
@drskyskull: @MockTM "Hey, everybody — what's the number for 911?"
2013-01-17 02:36:57
@Rowsdower30: @MockTM he ate too many Starburst
2013-01-17 02:37:00
@lousycanuck: @MockTM "No, there is no other way!" "There's always another way! Start by digging straight up or straight down!" "No you fool!!!"
2013-01-17 02:37:05
@drskyskull: @MockTM "Try rubbing it against your chest and then put it down your pants."
2013-01-17 02:37:38
@pzmyers: @MockTM Modern horror movies are required to have a scene when the cell phones are shown not to work. Here it is.
2013-01-17 02:37:53
@lousycanuck: @MockTM "Hey where's Candice?" "We have to go back for her!" "But there's someone back there!" "Yeah, no shit! CANDICE!"
2013-01-17 02:38:39
@drskyskull: @MockTM @pzmyers It would be more realistic if the phone worked, but the contact list was erased & they couldn't remember anyone's number.
2013-01-17 02:39:10
@lousycanuck: @MockTM Oh that's right, fall for the same mummy trap twice lady. Natural selection.
2013-01-17 02:39:28
@lousycanuck: @MockTM "Indy!" "Short Round!!"
2013-01-17 02:40:01
@drskyskull: @MockTM "House of Fears"? More like "House of Minor Annoyances"! AmIright, folks? Eh? Eh?
2013-01-17 02:40:37
@lousycanuck: @MockTM Killed by land sharks. Wotta way to go.
2013-01-17 02:41:10
@laencleardale: @MockTm Is that wheat? Cause I've always been terrified of being buried alive in wheat…oh it's barley, nevermind.
2013-01-17 02:42:01
@pzmyers: @MockTM at the rate that sand is flowing, she ought to be OK for the rest of the movie.
2013-01-17 02:42:08
@Rowsdower30: @MockTM ROUSs!!
2013-01-17 02:42:37
@lousycanuck: @MockTM Hey, why's this horror movie trope always gotta pick 'em off one at a time?
2013-01-17 02:42:51
@pzmyers: @MockTM They just wanna give her a hug.
2013-01-17 02:42:58
@lousycanuck: @MockTM "God dammit, get out of the way, you don't know how to work a damn key. Let me mansplain… man."
2013-01-17 02:43:23
@CyberLizard: @MockTM I once spent a summer working as a hand grabbing people from the sand. It's not as glamorous as you'd think.
2013-01-17 02:43:28
@Rowsdower30: @MockTM Move the injured girl around as much as possible, there ya go
2013-01-17 02:43:35
@drskyskull: @MockTM @lousycanuck We should make a horror movie where everybody gets crushed under a boulder in the first 10 minutes.
2013-01-17 02:43:35
@laencleardale: @MockTm I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure it's not ok.
2013-01-17 02:43:42
@lousycanuck: @MockTM "Oh no! Windows 98! MY WORST FEAR EVER!!!"
2013-01-17 02:44:14
@pzmyers: @MockTM Why is she telling her to stop? SHe's only been out for a minute.
2013-01-17 02:44:33
@CyberLizard: @MockTM Ermergerd! Teers!
2013-01-17 02:44:38
@drskyskull: @MockTM "Push it in farther, and turn it!" *George Takei voice* Oh, myyyyy…
2013-01-17 02:44:53
@CA7746: @MockTM Oh gods, it's a password guessing scene…
2013-01-17 02:45:30
@CyberLizard: @MockTM Fire marshal is a little lax in that town if there's only one door.
2013-01-17 02:45:31
@lousycanuck: @MockTM Remember, together, forever, and never a-paaaart
2013-01-17 02:45:45
@drskyskull: @MockTM @pzmyers There was barely any blood flowing to her brain *before* the suffocation… #trueofentirecast
2013-01-17 02:45:47
@pzmyers: @MockTM "Swordfish".
2013-01-17 02:46:46
@pzmyers: @mocktm "Password".
2013-01-17 02:46:56
@lousycanuck: @MockTM Black guy gots a gun, so surely the evil spirits will chase him down and kill him on sight while on the phone with 911.
2013-01-17 02:47:36
@Rowsdower30: @MockTM something we can use as weapons.. You mean BESIDES the GUN
2013-01-17 02:47:39
@CyberLizard: @MockTM @pzmyers All passwords must contain both upper and lower case letters and at least one special character.
2013-01-17 02:47:39
@pzmyers: @MockTM Oh, yeah. Radial saw as a weapon. Maybe something will happen.
2013-01-17 02:48:28
@laencleardale: @MockTM We have to take care of the girls…you mean the ones you didn't already leave behind?
2013-01-17 02:48:36
@drskyskull: @MockTM @lousycanuck … and the NRA just came out in favor of new gun restrictions, for some reason.
2013-01-17 02:48:37
@Rowsdower30: @MockTM @CyberLizard @pzmyers This movie has "special" characters, alright
2013-01-17 02:48:44
@lousycanuck: @MockTM Right. The Insane Asylum is totally where I'D put an emergency exit.
2013-01-17 02:48:44
@pzmyers: @MockTM Wait, she gave it up for a flashlight?
2013-01-17 02:48:46
@lousycanuck: @MockTM "What's he saying?" "I think he's saying 'call my agent.'"
2013-01-17 02:49:53
@drskyskull: @MockTM Lord Voldemort! Fear Number 5: being sued by J.K. Rowling.
2013-01-17 02:49:55
@laencleardale: @MockTM Seriously…could this movie be any more fake?? A man using a map???
2013-01-17 02:49:56
@pzmyers: @MockTM OOOH. Plywood coffin, boring dummy. I'm scared. Cheap props are always terrifying.
2013-01-17 02:50:31
@LalSox: @mocktm wait, what!? Since when is mocktm on Wednesdays?
2013-01-17 02:50:55
@lousycanuck: @MockTM "Are you Hamadi? Listen to me. Our douchebag friend really wanted to get a message to you a while ago… but he kinda died."
2013-01-17 02:51:01
@lousycanuck: @LalSox @mocktm We switched two weeks ago. Sorry. Should hopefully be Wednesdays going forward.
2013-01-17 02:51:27
@lousycanuck: @MockTM "What statue?" "The only statue you manhandled, dumbass."
2013-01-17 02:51:50
@CA7746: @MockTM "You move and I'll shoot!" … "We don't want to hurt you."
2013-01-17 02:52:06
@CyberLizard: @MockTM Awww, I hate seeing Snoop dog cry 🙁
2013-01-17 02:52:20
@lousycanuck: @MockTM Nobody suggested their greatest fear was a fifty-foot Stay-Puft. I AM DISAPOINT.
2013-01-17 02:52:55
@CA7746: @MockTM "The statue can RE-incarnate your fears."
2013-01-17 02:52:56
@pzmyers: @MockTM Why is the black guy wandering off by himself? Hasn't he ever seen any horror movies?
2013-01-17 02:53:26
@lousycanuck: @MockTM Gun Kid's greatest fear is being killed by a ricochet.
2013-01-17 02:53:49
@drskyskull: @MockTM I'm sorry — if this statue brought out their greatest fears, they'd all have really bad acne.
2013-01-17 02:53:57
@pzmyers: @MockTM Yeah, drugs cause wounds and bleeding.
2013-01-17 02:53:57
@laencleardale: @MockTM Sure blame it on the black guy…
2013-01-17 02:54:04
@lousycanuck: @MockTM Sam's greatest fear is one Dr. Crane.
2013-01-17 02:54:18
@drskyskull: @MockTM @pzmyers Reefer Madness!!!
2013-01-17 02:54:37
@CyberLizard: @MockTM "Being suffocated." "That's what she said."
2013-01-17 02:54:39
@CA7746: @MockTM If I only had a BRAINSSS…
2013-01-17 02:55:41
@Rowsdower30: @MockTM What is your fear?
2013-01-17 02:55:46
@pzmyers: @MockTM That's realy tough cord.
2013-01-17 02:55:54
@Rowsdower30: @MockTM SNAUSAGES!!!
2013-01-17 02:56:33
@CyberLizard: @MockTM Puppy!!!
2013-01-17 02:56:39
@lousycanuck: @MockTM Oh, and none of you are melee class. Not even Barbed Wire Bat guy.
2013-01-17 02:56:53
@CA7746: @MockTM Her fear is tractors.
2013-01-17 02:57:25
@drskyskull: @MockTM "I'm afraid of not being afraid… suck on THAT, evil statue!!!"
2013-01-17 02:57:26
@laencleardale: @MockTM How do you stick barb wire to a metal bat?
2013-01-17 02:57:30
@lousycanuck: @MockTM Now whose fear is being annoyed to death by beeping?
2013-01-17 02:57:45
@Rowsdower30: @MockTM "I'm not gonna let anything happen to you" = "You're DEFINITELY gonna die"
2013-01-17 02:57:51
@pzmyers: @MockTM Her fear is WISCONSIN. I can sympathize.
2013-01-17 02:57:59
@CyberLizard: @MockTM Back story? Really? Is that entirely necessary?
2013-01-17 02:58:18
@drskyskull: @MockTM Voldemort is so sick of all these elaborate plots… he thought, "What if I just kill people with a hammer instead?"
2013-01-17 02:59:01
@lousycanuck: @MockTM Carter was the closest thing to a fighter class they had. OH WELL.
2013-01-17 02:59:04
@pzmyers: @MockTM OK, who had the fear of bald guys wiht hammers?
2013-01-17 02:59:22
@CyberLizard: @MockTM Bull from Night Court finally snaps
2013-01-17 02:59:24
@drskyskull: @MockTM @pzmyers I still personally have nightmares of the stench of cheap beer wafting through the air from the breweries in the morning.
2013-01-17 02:59:46
@lousycanuck: @MockTM Why won't they ever just break the fun house mirrors like in Enter The Dragon?
2013-01-17 03:00:59
@drskyskull: @MockTM "Your fear is being electrocuted by a scarecrow? Ok, that's weird, but we can work with that."
2013-01-17 03:01:35
@lousycanuck: @MockTM Hey, my fear is an hour of heavy panting with absolutely no release. Think this movie can deliver?
2013-01-17 03:02:35
@pzmyers: @MockTM The black guy is still alive. I'm calling a penalty — clear violation of standard tropes.
2013-01-17 03:02:56
@lovergj4: @MockTM http://t.co/Cmpxl9ep
2013-01-17 03:03:08
@CA7746: @MockTM They've repeatedly expressed the fear that they'd ALL die. So…
2013-01-17 03:03:20
@laencleardale: @MockTM Devon we need you, you wasted all those bullets in the door and didn't reload after forgetting your girlfriend when she tripped…
2013-01-17 03:03:25
@lousycanuck: @MockTM C'mere, Lurch just wants a hug.
2013-01-17 03:03:26
@drskyskull: @MockTM "Fear of clowns walking around you in circles? Also weird, but I'll see what I can do."
2013-01-17 03:03:58
@pzmyers: @MockTM Clowns coming up, I hope. Evil, scary, imaginiative clowns.
2013-01-17 03:04:01
@pzmyers: @MockTM That's asking too much, isn't it?
2013-01-17 03:04:13
@CyberLizard: @MockTM My fear of columns has manifested itself.
2013-01-17 03:04:33
@lousycanuck: @MockTM Oh, right, this is where we previously established the existence of lumber at the beginning of the movie.
2013-01-17 03:04:36
@pzmyers: @MockTM YOu know, if I was there, I'd be most scared of the trigger happy freak with the gun.
2013-01-17 03:05:01
@lousycanuck: @MockTM Has anyone else counted Gun Kid's shots?
2013-01-17 03:05:31
@drskyskull: @MockTM Iiiiiit's HAMMERTIME!!! #OhOhOhOhOhOhOh
2013-01-17 03:05:33
@CA7746: @MockTM @lousycanuck He's been reloading pretty well.
2013-01-17 03:06:04
@CyberLizard: @MockTM The big guy does remind me of The Gentlemen. Slightly creepy. Does that count as horror?
2013-01-17 03:06:07
@drskyskull: @MockTM @lousycanuck I'm pretty sure he's violated some sort of assault weapons ban.
2013-01-17 03:06:23
@pzmyers: @MockTM Yeah, so they should just scream. That's how you kill The Gentlemen.
2013-01-17 03:07:00
@lousycanuck: @MockTM Samantha takes a level in badass.
2013-01-17 03:07:05
@CyberLizard: @MockTM This whole locked-in-coffin thing wouldnt be so bad if this damn light wasn't in my eye!
2013-01-17 03:07:43
@lousycanuck: @MockTM An epic fight scene they couldn't be bothered to put on film, it's just so epic.
2013-01-17 03:08:01
@pzmyers: @MockTM That radial saw will be handy for slicing open a plywood box. But a bit anticlimactic.
2013-01-17 03:08:46
@pzmyers: @MockTM Now, finally , they figure out what a saw might be good for.
2013-01-17 03:09:29
@lousycanuck: @MockTM Now what could a man of straw's weakness possibly be? Let's see… we've tried guns, and electricity… Blunt instruments?
2013-01-17 03:10:14
@pzmyers: @MockTM That was it? Enter, evil clown. Lights out. And…SCENE! Cut! We're done here.
2013-01-17 03:10:26
@CA7746: @MockTM I dreamt I was in this terrible movie…
2013-01-17 03:10:44
@drskyskull: @MockTM @lousycanuck Water! Gotta be water.
2013-01-17 03:11:02
@CyberLizard: @MockTM I call foul! We didn't even get to see the dismembering!
2013-01-17 03:11:21
@lousycanuck: @MockTM @drskyskull Churches! Gravy!!
2013-01-17 03:11:27
@pzmyers: @MockTM ANd now….big fight scene, radial saw against evil bald guy and….darkness! Sound effects! Done!
2013-01-17 03:12:04
@lousycanuck: @MockTM "To reach the grail we have to make a leap of faith. Leap… of faith…"
2013-01-17 03:12:33
@drskyskull: @MockTM @lousycanuck Gilbert & Sullivan showtunes! Books whose titles begin with the letter "S"!
2013-01-17 03:12:38
@laencleardale: @MockTM Evil can find you anywhere in the building…just not if it's in the same room…
2013-01-17 03:13:09
@lousycanuck: @MockTM "Don't look down! Don't look back! Don't put your foot where there isn't solid material! Pushy, pushy!"
2013-01-17 03:13:36
@drskyskull: @MockTM *insert obligatory "give the man a hand!" joke for scarecrow here*
2013-01-17 03:14:00
@CyberLizard: @MockTM How much did Ryobi pay for this product placement?
2013-01-17 03:14:11
@lousycanuck: @MockTM Destroying the evil statue didn't just, you know, make the evil spirits even more pissed off? Okay, sure.
2013-01-17 03:15:20
@drskyskull: @MockTM REAL brave, Sam! "I'll lead the way — you stay back there with the killer scarecrow!"
2013-01-17 03:15:52
@lousycanuck: @MockTM "See, Sam? I told you you'd have fun! And we even got rid of some of our more annoying friends."
2013-01-17 03:15:53
@CA7746: @MockTM Sam! Sam! Sam! Maybe if I say it again…
2013-01-17 03:16:32
@CyberLizard: @MockTM "I didn't hack bald guy to pieces just so you could wus out over a little bridge! Move your ass!"
2013-01-17 03:16:49
@drskyskull: @MockTM "So… what the F was that all about?"
2013-01-17 03:18:20
@CA7746: @MockTM *sigh* Still not over. There's an extra scene after the credits.
2013-01-17 03:18:28
@laencleardale: @MockTM What's the German word for a bad movie that isn't even bad enough to warrant cult status?
2013-01-17 03:18:29
@pzmyers: @MockTM Man, that was easy. Just drop the statue and supernatural horror is defeated.
2013-01-17 03:18:34
@pzmyers: @MockTM Goddamn you. Damn you right to hell. RT @CA7746: *sigh* Still not over. There's an extra scene after the credits.
2013-01-17 03:19:06
@drskyskull: @MockTM Moral of the story? If you dump your girlfriend in the middle of a haunted house, you'll get electrocuted by a scarecrow. The End.
2013-01-17 03:19:41
@laencleardale: @pzmyers @MockTM @CA7746 My deepest fears are realized!!!!!
2013-01-17 03:19:43
@pzmyers: @MockTM Where did this thing originally air? On Lifetime, or the Oxygen network?
2013-01-17 03:19:58
@CyberLizard: @MockTM Sisterly bonding. How sweet. Don't worry about how seeing all your friends die I front of you will scar you for life.
2013-01-17 03:20:16
@pzmyers: @MockTM "Two sisters learn the meaning of family…and life."
2013-01-17 03:20:30
@laencleardale: @MockTM Why are there so many stand ins???
2013-01-17 03:20:47
@lousycanuck: @MockTM This title music could be the only redeeming quality of the entire film. Except for the bullshit scary face.
2013-01-17 03:20:57
@lousycanuck: @MockTM Seariously, the guy on the title card was "Sir Not Appearing In This Film".
2013-01-17 03:21:21
@CyberLizard: @MockTM The really sad thing is that now this piece of crap is in my netflix database and they'll try to show me crap like it.
2013-01-17 03:21:53
@lousycanuck: @MockTM @CyberLizard Rate it low. Then go trolling for one-star movies like I do. 😀
2013-01-17 03:22:22
@laencleardale: @CyberLizard @MockTM My second worst fear realized!!!!
2013-01-17 03:22:39
@drskyskull: @MockTM I just realized I wanna write a horror movie that's set on an HGTV "House Hunters" episode that's gone horribly wrong.
2013-01-17 03:22:39
@CyberLizard: @MockTM @lousycanuck I just did and netflix responded: Sorry, we don't have any suggestions, based on this rating. Winning!
2013-01-17 03:23:05
@lousycanuck: @MockTM Lesson for the movie: balance your party members and re-roll anyone who ends up with a 3 in Charisma like Broseph.
2013-01-17 03:23:13
@pzmyers: @MockTM The final scene after the credits is going to redeem the rest of the crap, right? RIGHT?
2013-01-17 03:23:18
@CA7746: @MockTM It's all indoors, but filmed in Utah nonetheless.
2013-01-17 03:23:20
@drskyskull: @MockTM Anyone else? Moral of the story?
2013-01-17 03:24:30
@drskyskull: @MockTM The final title card of the film looked like "House of Feats".
2013-01-17 03:24:49
@laencleardale: @drskyskull @MockTM Be nice to your stepsister or all your friends will die.
2013-01-17 03:25:12
@pzmyers: @MockTM Oh, it's a *little* film. No wonder there wasn't much to it.
2013-01-17 03:25:16
@CyberLizard: @MockTM Moral, chicks rule boys drool? Or get electrocuted, strangled or slashed open?
2013-01-17 03:26:02
@CA7746: @MockTM Scarecrows are formidable when nobody has fire.
2013-01-17 03:26:45
@pzmyers: @MockTM The moral of the story: I'm outta whiskey, need to get more tomorrow.
2013-01-17 03:26:46
@lousycanuck: @MockTM Morals: it's perfectly okay to lie about spiders being in the movie. We didn't have the budget for them anyway.
2013-01-17 03:27:31
@CA7746: @MockTM They did say the haunted house had some bugs.
2013-01-17 03:27:58
@CyberLizard: @lousycanuck @MockTM To be fair, there were spider WEBS, which implies the existence of spiders.
2013-01-17 03:28:06
@pzmyers: @MockTM didn't they also say there were NINE fears, when all we got was a couple of boring "meh"s?
2013-01-17 03:28:47
@lousycanuck: @MockTM The only genuine scare I got was the first jack in the box. Seriously.
2013-01-17 03:29:14


text:
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Resolution independence for icons
It was solved for fonts. Grid-fitting (aka. "font hinting") is a crucial step on the way to produce legible output at small sizes for any font. Hinting can be manual (e.g TrueType has a stack-based language for it, each glyph in the font contains its own little hint program and as a result of running that program control points for the outlines can be adjusted in any way the creator of the hints desired) or automatic (as used by FreeType). An interesting medium is described in "Example-Based Hinting of TrueType Fonts" paper, in which a method of reusing hints from one font for another are described. All in all it's a very common problem for fonts.
The iSlayer blog that Jakub mentioned makes it very clear we need it fast. His example showing how much worse his logo looks in the vector form than the as bitmap looks almost precisely like the "example of hinting" image that can be found on Wikipedia:
(The upper sample in each case is unhinted)
When talking about fonts we're just dealing with a subset of our exact problem.
In Qt, Gunnar just implemented support for non-scaling stroke, which is great. Now we need to figure out a way of doing automatic hinting for vector shapes and we'll be set.
I've always been all for manual adjustment of icons on a pixel-by-pixel basis, simply because they looked a lot better, but during the last few days I've became convinced that we can, in fact, create resolution independent icons. Or let me rephrase, not "resolution independent icons" but "icons that preserve their good looks across resolutions". We have the former, we need the latter.
I'm taking a week off and that's exactly what I'll work now.
I think manual hinting is too cumbersome and we'd need a new container format for icons to make it really work. A way of specifying a whole icon theme along hints for each icon to make them look good across different resolutions wouldn't necessarily be a bad idea. In fact that would be great, it's the problem of developing the way of storing and producing those hints that would be quite challenging. XML format (with some namespace of course) that can be embedded right in the SVG's would probably work fairly well but I'm afraid wouldn't be enough. Then there's also a question of how would we get artists to create those hints.
No, I think auto-hinting makes a lot more sense here. The research FreeType people did in that area is outstanding.
All in all, I think I can make it work =)
Oh, and if you have a SVG icon that you hand-adjusted to produce a better looking bitmap, I'd appreciate a lot if you could send me both examples via email to <my first name>@kde.org address so that I have some testcases to work with :)
16 comments:
The funny thing is, I find freetype autohinted fonts completely unreadable, and I much prefer the unhinted version of the font you show -- despite being something of a font and typography maven.
(Who designed his first fount when he as fifteen)
- November 22, 2006 at 3:31 PM
- Zack said...
@Boudewijn: Do you really? The unhinted version is insanly blurry.
- November 22, 2006 at 3:41 PM
- Velmont / Odin said...
Boudewijn: I think you should right-click the image and press «view image» to view it in it's full goodness. It's just the blog that really and truly fucks it up. It's using linear resizing - which makes the ugly picture. I didn't know what you talked about before I saw the pic on the site. Normally I only read these posts with an RSS-reader. (that doesn't ruin pictures) :-)
zack: Really, really great! I'm looking forward to this. But what do you mean by hand-tweaked? You mean «made a small raster - then fixed it up in Gimp»? I guess you could find a fair bit on the tango-site.
- November 22, 2006 at 3:53 PM
I also prefer the unhinted (top) version of the posted font. I even clicked the image for full size and everything. The bottom font is way too thin, and barely readable.
- November 22, 2006 at 5:46 PM
I agree with you Zack, the bottom font is much clearer.
- November 22, 2006 at 6:26 PM
- Zack said...
@Velmont / Odin: yeah, that's exactly what I meant :)
@anonymous who says that he/she prefers the unhinted version: this is how that font should look. The fact that you seem to like blurry fonts, doesn't mean that the best way of achieving that is by distorting the original. You have the option of making the font bold, or even changing the font if you don't like it :) Creating artificial distortions is never the right way. So let me say one thing: hinting is never a taste matter, it's a way of making sure the rendering looks like it was supposed to. If you don't like it, then you most likely don't like the original so it doesn't matter.
- November 22, 2006 at 6:35 PM
- Daniel "Suslik" D. said...
I bumped into similar line of thoughts while tweaking the BasKet icon before 0.6 release.
2 things that I found lacking for good SVG scaling in that case were:
- non-scaling strokes (for outlines)
- and ability to tag and auto turn off layers at lower rez.
The last one is perhaps more usefull than hinting. It seems the original SVG of BasKet was designed to look good at around 32 - 48 pixels. Details (blink, extra shade, more transparency) were added for 64 and up. - All manual labor for people rendering it.
Hinting will not allow increasing, decreasing level of detail.
If I could tag layers like "rez>64px" and have renderer pick it up automatically => profit.
- November 22, 2006 at 7:22 PM
- Daniel "Suslik" D. said...
I bumped into similar line of thoughts while tweaking the BasKet icon before 0.6 release.
2 things that I found lacking for good SVG scaling in that case were:
- non-scaling strokes (for outlines)
- and ability to tag and auto turn off layers at lower rez.
The last one is perhaps more usefull than hinting. It seems the original SVG of BasKet was designed to look good at around 32 - 48 pixels. Details (blink, extra shade, more transparency) were added for 64 and up. - All manual labor for people rendering it.
Hinting will not allow increasing, decreasing level of detail.
If I could tag layers like "rez>64px" and have renderer pick it up automatically => profit.
- November 22, 2006 at 7:22 PM
I don't get it... Isn't this Smooth PixmapTransform? using a bilinear or bicubic interpolation? Would this be implemented as a IntelligentPixmapTransform render hint?
Still I am eager to see what you trolls can do!
- November 22, 2006 at 8:32 PM
Yes... I really mean I prefer the unhinted version. Perhaps it's just that my eyes need more contrast or something: turning the hinting off is the first thing I do.
Another reason I may prefer the unhinted version is that I've got a high-res screen on my laptop-- 130 dpi. Hinting is more valuable on low-res screens, like the 19" 1280x1024 panel I've got on my desktop. But there, everything is too grainy to look good anyway.
- November 22, 2006 at 9:39 PM
Velmont: I did read the blog in Akregator, but I already knew the difference between the four hinting styles KDE has.
- November 22, 2006 at 9:41 PM
- Zack said...
@Boudewijn: I'm not sure if you read my blog carefully but you're confusing two different technologies. Subpixel hinting, which you're referring to is very different from grid-fitting. What grind-fitting does is nicely shown here:
and what subpixel hinting does is described here:
The fact that you tend to turn of the latter is most likely a testiment to the fact that we're not doing it in the best way (e.g. gamma adjustments are done on static gamma value that most likely doesn't match the one of your output device). Grid-fitting (aka. font-hinting) is really a property of the font in this case - if you don't like hinted font it means that you really don't like that font and should just switch to a different one - the font author envisioned it looking like this. Auto-hinting, to do what the author intented, is like i mentioned a hard problem, one that i think is very solvable.
- November 23, 2006 at 12:08 AM
That would be a real breakthrough! I don't think that any icon systems out there are rendering low resolution icons hinting for good their looks.
It's promising and will be the final solution for artists hand-breaking-their-balls adjusting pixel-by-pixel something that must be readjusted when the master svg changes.. thanks
- November 23, 2006 at 9:51 AM
"The fact that you seem to like blurry fonts, doesn't mean that the best way of achieving that is by distorting the original."
[snippidy snip]
"So let me say one thing: hinting is never a taste matter, it's a way of making sure the rendering looks like it was supposed to."
What? Are you saying that unhinted anti-aliased fonts are distorted versions of what the fonts actually should look like?
It is actually reversed. Hinting generally screws up kerning and the actual look of the font (especially with serif fonts). I guess the easiest way to proof this to print out a font and compare it to the hinted and unhinted version of the font on the display. I think it's pretty clear after comparing that the hinting visibly alters the look of the font.
Also every explanation, guide or introduction of "Hinting" pretty much makes it clear that hinting only exists to make fonts more readable (hence alter) on low res displays and/or low font-sizes. _That_ is the reason to hint a font.
- http://www.microsoft.com/typography/TrueTypeHintingWhy.mspx
"Scaling an unmodified outline's control point co-ordinates to the small sizes of a computer screen can result in severe quality control problems. At low resolutions, with few pixels available to describe the character shapes, features such as stem weights, crossbar widths and serif details can become irregular, inconsistent or even missed completely"
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinting
"At small sizes or without antialiasing, hinting is critical for producing a legible image."
- "Grid-fitting (aka. "font hinting") is a crucial step on the way to produce legible output at small sizes for any font."
OSX's "standard" font smoothing also looks like it's not using hinting at all (so it looks pretty much the same as unhinted antialiased fonts rendered by freetype). I put up this http://www.krof.chatvisual.com/kib/fonts/ (quite) a while ago to show what OSX does to make fonts more readable on colored/dark backgrounds when using the other settings beside standard.
So what now? I have no idea ;)
We would have to look into ways how to antialias differently maybe and check out how OSX does handle fonts rendering. But please don't use weird hinting to get a sharper looking font. People are more and more moving to (even I am and I'm piss poor.. and still on a 17" crt) or are already using high resolution displays and fonts should become less of a problem then. The MS Truetype site is 10 years old now and hinting might not as relevant now as it was when people used 640x and 800x resolutions.
People should just stop using small font sizes. Too small = hard to read. Doesn't matter if it's blurry or not.
...but hey. This is actually about icons, right?
Never mind then ;) ...but still: Hinting = bad :P
- November 25, 2006 at 9:29 PM
- Gustavo Sverzut Barbieri said...
Hey Zack, any updates on this?
- January 7, 2007 at 3:46 AM
Consider the available mathematical tools.
Modern Font Hinting is about setting horizontal and vertical (rather than arbitrary vector direction) spans that distort differently to the spans next to them, so as to preserve transition points between spans as transition points between pixels.
Put in simpler english, The edges of the centre stem and serifs of the character "I" are quantized to the boundaries between pixels, at the expense of the true dimensions of fairly featureless areas, like whitespace, or the exact area enclosed by the "I".
In a nutshell, that's the only way to preserve the high-frequency components of the image. The Edges.
Look carefully at how an "e" deforms, especially vertically, as you change the font size from 10 to 3 pixels. "E" in most fonts has five major vertical segments, corresponding to the top, bottom, and middle stroke of the "E" and the two zone of whitespace that separate them. As it gets smaller, the serifs dissapear. At six pixels high it makes a choice about which area (top or bottom) to add the extra line of whitespace too. Five pixels high naturally works well. Four pixles high is, of course, the real test of how your font system works. All the same issues apply to "M"s in the horizontal.
This has led to a rather westernized approach for font hinting which often treats the X and Y co-ordinates as totally independant systems. This does make sense when the output is naturally a screen grid, but curved or mostly diagonal lines are often neglected. Many asian glyphs have slightly non-vertical angles and nearby dots that get rendered very badly. Semicolons and slashes suffer this effect too.
And the larger and more complicated the glpyh, the harder the problem to find two independants mappings (for X and Y) which works everywhere. This implies something like the 'morphing' algorithm would be useful, if you can break the image into triangles and then try to quantize the triangles to edges. Of course, this is practically a form of ray-tracing, but modern computers are pretty good at this, especially if you throw a nice and modern spatial partitioning scheme under the whole thing.
Jeremy Lee
- February 27, 2007 at 10:23 AM


text:
-- Alice Corbin Henderson, Associate Editor of Poetry magazine, May 1916 issue
It's almost viral, and always with us, like bird flu... or hope springing eternal, or rumor: everywhere you turn you run into complaints about "confessional poets." In fact, if you want to sneer at someone's work, just call it confessional!
Who are, or were, the supposedly confessional poets? There's no excuse, in our Wiki-age, for not knowing that the term "confessional" was coined by M. L. Rosenthal in a review of Lowell's Life Studies ("Poetry as Confession," The Nation, September 19, 1959; reprinted in The Modern Poets: A Critical Introduction). Like a sneeze, the impact was immediate and reasonably widespread; in no time, the term was used to make the likes of John Berryman, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Theodore Roethke, Anne Sexton, and W. D. Snodgrass look bad, different from each other as these writers are, and notwithstanding that Rosenthal himself regretted the term, calling it "both helpful and too limited." When Berryman was asked, "You, along with Lowell, Sylvia Plath, and several others, have been called a confessional poet. How do you react to that label?" he replied: "With rage and contempt. Next question!" For his part, Lowell responded that he had succeeded so well in creating a literary character in his poems named "Robert Lowell" that readers carelessly assumed that the two were identical.
It's way past time for a discussion about supposed "confessionalism" - about the way the term gets tossed around in order to pigeonhole people. Because if you believe that words are material objects that can and ought to be freed from the burden of meaning and/or should subvert hegemony, then calling a poem or poet confessional is intended to be a jeer, a de facto deathblow... What's more (and apparently worse): the implication is that the writer is - here comes another label! - bourgeois; after all, it takes money and leisure to confess or be (if it's the same thing) autobiographical. At the same time, those who wish not to abandon meaning and feeling, but are simply sick of artless gut-spilling, of weeping in broken lines, also spurn the "confessional." You know: discipline is good for you, and like cleanliness will bring you closer to rectitude and virtue, etc. All man's miseries, Pascal concluded, derive from not being able to sit quietly in a room alone.
So, shhh!
Even now, the complaint continues, with Sharon Olds's recent success winning prizes in the UK, viz - this from The Independent:
It's quite hard today to imagine a culture where anything "confessional" was in any way new. It's everywhere: in newspapers, on blogs, on Twitter, on websites, on radio, on TV. You really can't get away from it. You might want to, but you can't. In books, in interviews, in columns, and in journalism, the word that leaps out, again, and again, and again, and again, is "I". [...] "Beauty is truth," said Keats in "Ode on a Grecian Urn", and he didn't mean things that were literally true. Truth is what you find not in spilled feelings on a page, or in tearful confessions on Oprah Winfrey's sofa. Truth is what you find in art.
There's a disconnect in the above, as if a good so-called "confessional poem" can't be a good poem, or art. Or both. Or, yes, maybe even truth, whatever that may be.
In the end, this persistent silliness reminds me of the Monty Python skit about the Spanish Inquisition - nobody expects... the confessional poem!!!
Maybe people who put down the "confessional" don't have anything to confess themselves; Lowell, interestingly, did. Hopkins, the most innovative language poet writing in English, was relatively innocent - but you can take his poetry to the confessional. The great sinner T.S. Eliot famously praised Baudelaire by noting that most of us aren't man enough to be damned. I know I'm not!
In any case, I'll confess this: I wish the label would go away - it's not good for anything.
"I suppose we make it worse by shouting a lot, do we? Confess! Confess! Confess! Confess!"


text:
A member of The Avengers feels left out! Hawkeye (played by Jeremy Renner) is not thrilled that he spent most of his screen time in The Avengers as a mindless, bow-wielding goon for Loki. The actor told the LA Times that he spent 90% of the movie as a character he didn't sign on to play. When asked if he preferred playing Evil Hawkeye or Good Hawkeye, Renner responded:
I prefer the good, because if we go to the evil part, or hypnotized or whatever the heck you want to call it, it's kind of a vacancy. Not even a bad guy, because there's not really a consciousness to him. The interesting part was being guilty about the bad things I did do when I was hypnotized. I think he's already an interesting enough character. To really kind of take away who that character is and just have him be this sort of robot, essentially, and have him be this minion for evil that Loki uses. Again, I could just focus on the task. I was limited, you know what I mean? I was a terminator in a way. So yeah, fun stunts. But is there any sort of emotional content or thought process? No. That doesn't exist in that time [that he's hypnotized]. It happens to be for most of the movie.
The Times followed up by asking if Renner was disappointed by his experience. The actor retorted, "You know, there are a lot of people in that movie. And a lot of important characters. And my character, I felt like if I can help serve story, then I did my job."
We would argue some of the best character-meat just waiting to be sliced open is his relationship with Black Widow (a bond that was one of director Joss Whedon's big time soft spots in the movie). Fingers crossed it's fleshed out in the sequel.
[Via CinemaBlend]