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Welcome to our website! As we have the ability to list over one million items on our website (our selection changes all of the time), it is not feasible for a company our size to record and playback the descriptions on every item on our website. However, if you are an American with a disability we are here to help you. Please call our disability services phone line at (609) 522-7627 during regular business hours and one of our kind and friendly personal shoppers will help you navigate through our website, help conduct advanced searches, help you choose the item you are looking for with the specifications you are seeking, read you the specifications of any item and consult with you about the products themselves. There is no charge for the help of this personal shopper for any American with a disability. Finally, your personal shopper will explain our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service, and help you place an order if you so desire.
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Also, as you might know, I have my own little knit shop, full with slow knitted goodies.
I made (and making) some awesome chunky knits right now and gently, the first orders are starting to come in. Suddenly people realize it's almost that time of year ! Christmas !!
Wish lists are made and presents need to be chosen.
You might take a look at my cute little online shop and see what I'm up too. If we are not connected yet through Instagram, hurry up and click to follow ! You won't regret and I'm a loyal 'I'll follow you back kind of person'
|my personal account on IG : Marble is the new Black

subset: commoncrawl


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UK APD & Upcoming 2015 Changes: Part 2 – Payment & Compliance Issues
This article continues from our article last week, entitled "UK APD & Upcoming 2015 Changes: Part 1 – APD Basics"
Although reporting and paying UK Air Passenger Duty (APD) have been legal obligations since April 2013, many General Aviation (GA) operators still do not do so. For this reason, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has stepped up its policing of non-payers, and penalties are being enforced for non-compliance. APD is a self-declared duty, but HMRC can track flights and contact operators or the Fixed-Base Operators (FBOs) that they use if HMRC thinks duty hasn't been paid.
The following is an overview of what you need to know:
1. Paying UK APD as an occasional operator
To qualify as an occasional user, 1) you will operate no more than 12 flights from the UK in one year, and 2) your annual liability for UK APD should be less than £5,000. Payment should be made to HMRC within seven days of departing a UK airport. Payment can be 1) made via form APD6, which can be downloaded from the HMRC website, 2) made through your ground handler (in limited circumstances), or 3) managed through your appointed APD administrator. It should be noted that with higher prices it will become more difficult to qualify as an occasional operator. Beginning April 2015, one single GA flight departing the UK, classified in the higher APD rate on Band B, with 12 passengers on board, will hit the £5,000 occasional operator annual tax liability threshold.
2. Paying UK APD as a registered user
If you operate more than 12 qualifying flights from the UK annually and/or have UK APD liability of £5,000 or more each year, you'll need to register with HMRC. Registration is done via form APD 1, which can be downloaded from the HMRC website. APD for registered operators should be paid on a monthly basis or in some cases annually. This step can be done directly to HMRC or, if you have one, through your appointed APD administrator. To qualify for the annual scheme, operators should have APD liability of no more than £500,000 per annum. It is a legal requirement, when you register on the HMRC site, to appoint a UK-based administrative or fiscal representative.
3. Administrative and fiscal representatives
Notice 550 on the HMRC site contains the full and detailed definitions for both administrative and fiscal representatives. Admin or fiscal representative are fundamentally the same, with the main difference being, if you appoint an admin rep, you will be required to lodge a security deposit with HMRC, whereas with a fiscal rep there is no requirement for this. An admin or fiscal representative will be jointly liable for any APD charges you accrue.
4. Additional methods of payment
As UK APD is a government fee and not an airport fee, payment needs to be made directly to HMRC, if you do not use an appointed APD administrator. This fee will rarely be included by an FBO in handling charges for an occasional user and never for a registered user. HMRC has approved a few UK-based companies to act as APD administrators for operators and pay these fees on their behalf. It doesn't, however, remove any liability for the aircraft operator. Be aware that many ground handlers in the UK do not want to get involved as collection of APD charges could create down-line tax liability issues for them.
5. Penalties for non-compliance
A growing number of operators who have not been paying applicable UK APD charges have been contacted by HMRC and are receiving penalties. There are also ramifications for ground handlers to consider. If HMRC determines that an operator has not paid its applicable APD charges, the ground handler may be contacted and informed that he or she (the handler) may be held liable for future APD charges owed if he or she handles the operator's aircraft again. It's unknown at this time if penalties will increase, or if there will be other ramifications for non-compliance.
6. Additional information
For additional information on UK APD, please see the resources below:
- HMRC budget overview (see section 5.8)
- Air passenger duty: recent debates & reform (UK Parliament)
- Notice HMRC 550
It's important to become familiar with UK APD rules, obligations, and payment procedures. Qualified 3rd-party providers have the ability to act as either your administrative or fiscal representative. They'll help with the paperwork and filing obligations involved with this escalating UK excise duty and its collection.
If you have any questions about this article or would like assistance with the UK APD, please contact me at email@example.com.


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Tips to help your patients cope with the side effects that make the workday difficult.
The list of side effects from cancer treatments — including surgery, radiation and chemotherapy — is seemingly endless, from nausea to embarrassing bowel problems.
But if there's a bright spot, it's this: Typically, not every side effect strikes each patient, and only a handful impact greatly a patient's ability to work. And there are solutions to reduce or banish the side effects, according to our panel of experts. The panel includes:
- Joanne Hambleton, RN, breast cancer survivor and vice president for nursing and patient services, Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia
- Andrea Barsevick, PhD, RN, AOCN, director of nursing research, Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia
- Emily Walsh, NP, nurse practitioner, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York City
Here are details about side effects you are most likely to hear about from your patients and how to help them to cope so they can work through them — and stay on the job as much as possible.
By far, fatigue is the number one complaint you're likely to hear from patients after surgery, chemo or radiation therapy. If your patient is on medication to keep up the white blood cell count, these medications can add to the fatigue.
Knowing the typical patterns of fatigue can help your patients schedule work and time off when needed. The fatigue that hits after chemo tends to be predictable. For instance, it can hit a day after the treatment, last for several days, then subside.
Fatigue after radiation tends to be cumulative — getting progressively worse as the number of treatments increases.
Remedies: Your patients may groan when they hear the suggestion, but the best remedy to decrease fatigue — or ward it off — is exercise. In a series of studies, Victoria Mock of Johns Hopkins University has found that exercise — even during cancer treatment — can help manage fatigue.
In one study, she assigned 52 women undergoing chemo or radiation for breast cancer to either exercise 90 minutes a week on three or more days or to continue their usual regimen, which was less activity. Those who exercise had much less fatigue and emotional distress and said they functioned better physically.
In another study, Mock's team found that women who stuck with a home-based, moderate-intensity walking program had less fatigue that those who didn't.
How to make your patient a believer? If she is sedentary, tell her to start out gradually, even walking 15 minutes a day.
Another remedy: Remind your patient to listen to her body and prioritize. Suggest she complete the most pressing work tasks first; that will reduce stress, which can also bring on fatigue. At work, suggest she take rest breaks when possible. Even a short break can help her regain energy.
The motto should be to pace yourself, not to cocoon and give up. Tell your patient: Do what you can, then take a break.
Getting enough sleep can help, too, recognizing this can be a challenge because some of the cancer medications can interfere with sleep. Some pre-medications given to patients before chemotherapy, for instance, can make it difficult to sleep temporarily.
Due to the anti-emetic drugs that have become common place, nausea and vomiting are not as often an issue with patients, but nausea in particular can remain a problem. If your patient has a history of motion sickness, she may be more likely to experience nausea.
Remedies: Anxiety about getting nausea can fuel it, so you might determine how worried your patient is about having it and try to allay her fears, telling her about remedies or actions to take if it occurs.
Among the do-it-yourself options: eating ginger or drinking ginger ale, listening to soothing music, doing guided imagery.
Eating five small meals throughout the day rather than three large ones can help with both nausea and fatigue. So can avoiding fried foods, very rich foods or spicy foods. Sucking on hard candy sometimes helps. Staying hydrated, drinking at least eight glasses of water a day, is also known to help.
Mouth Problems
Mouth sores and other problems such as dry mouth are most common after radiation therapy for head and neck cancers. As mouth sores get worse, the mouth can become painful.
Remedies: Suggest your patient pay closer attention to mouth care, using a gentle mouthwash. Frequent sips of water can help with dry mouth. So can chewing sugar-free gum or chewing on sugar-free hard candy.
Exercising the jaw muscle can help mouth symptoms. Suggest your patient open and close the mouth 20 times as wide as possible without causing pain. Repeat three times a day.
You may suggest mouth gels if the pain persists. Remind your patient to check in with the dentist — ideally before radiation but if there's not time, during or after treatment.
If the problems persist with dry mouth, your patient may need a prescription medicine to increase saliva.
Constipation or Diarrhea
While diarrhea is more likely to interfere with your patient's workday, both problems can hamper functioning on the job.
Constipation can be a side-effect of the anti-nausea drugs. Diarrhea can occur after radiation therapy for colon cancer, for instance. It can also accompany the use of some chemotherapy drugs
Constipation Remedies: You can suggest a stool softener or an increase in dietary fiber to relieve constipation. Drinking at least eight glasses of water a day can help, as can walking or other exercise.
Diarrhea Remedies: For diarrhea, you can suggest an over-the-counter diarrhea remedy, provided the primary care provider approves. Eating five or six small meals is better than eating three large meals. Low-fat, low-fiber foods are easier on the stomach than spicy, high-fat or high-fiber foods.
Remind your patient that diarrhea can become a serious side effect if dehydration occurs. Tell her to mention diarrhea to you each time it occurs so you can be sure it is treated promptly and properly.
Staying Positive
Keeping a positive but realistic attitude about minimizing side effects can help your patients, too. How to help them do that?
- Remind your patient to be realistic about what she can do. If a job requires extensive travel, for instance, it may be better to cut back temporarily. Trying to do too much increases stress, which can make side effects worse.
- Keep the big picture in focus. Some patients need to work despite side effects purely for economic reasons, but for many, the job is an important part of their life that provides much satisfaction. Working as much as possible, despite the side effects, may help them maintain their optimism about their cancer recovery and life in general. Being around coworkers, especially supportive ones, can help patients stay positive.
Other Resources
If your patient has other side effects, or needs more help with these side effects, you can turn for guidance to the National Cancer Institute and American Cancer Society.
Both websites include vast amounts of information on side effects from radiation therapy and chemotherapy.
The URLS:
Mock's studies are published in the journal Psycho-Oncology (online Oct. 14, 2004: vol. 14: pp.464-477) and in Cancer Practice (online Jan. 30, 2002: vol. 9, pp.119-127).


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The wind in the willows
Purnell, 1984 - Juvenile Fiction - 194 pages
The escapades of four friends, Rat, Toad, Mole and Badger, as they explore the English countryside and waterways.
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LibraryThing ReviewUser Review - booktsunami - www.librarything.com
I managed to avoid somehow or other reading the complete Wind in the Willows until I was well into adulthood. Of course, it is probably impossible to escape bits of it such as Ratty's wise words ... Read full review
LibraryThing ReviewUser Review - 1Avidfan - www.librarything.com
Inga Morre's Illustrations are add so much to these classic stories and her abridged version is a treat to read aloud. Read full review
Chapter page 1 The River Bank
The Open Road
The Wild Wood
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animal asked the Mole Badger barge barge-woman began boat breakfast cheerful clever cloop cold comfortable conceited course cried the Mole cried the Rat dark dear door engine-driver errand of mercy eyes face feel fellow field-mouse fire flung friends gipsy happy hard head heard hedge hole horse hour Kenneth Grahame knew laughing legs looked ma'am mind Mole's morning motor-car murmured never night once Otter parlour passed poor quiet Ratty replied the Rat river bank road round sculls secret passage seemed shouted side sight silent simply snow song soon sort sound stick stoats stood stop suddenly supper talk tell There's thing thought Toad Hall Toad's Toady took trouble turb turned voice waiting walked washerwoman washing Water Rat water-meadows weasels Wild Wood wind


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Monthly Archives: November 2010
Every morning I eat breakfast, but an hour later I'm already starving. Why?
By Ashley McIntosh First I want to say that this scenario is extremely common. I would say that the majority of my nutrition clients come to me with this exact issue. And I understand why – eating a breakfast of … Continue reading
How can I start to like my body?
By Ashley McIntosh I work with clients of all shapes and sizes – from extremely thin to overweight, and everything in between. And the interesting this is, when they start working with me they all have the belief: "When I … Continue reading
Why is it so difficult for me to stop eating after dinner?
By Ashley McIntosh Our days are so full of things to do. When we are running from one thing to another, it is easy to keep focused and avoid our emotions from surfacing. Night time, however, is often our down … Continue reading
Why do I start exercising only to quit 3 weeks later?
By Ashley McIntosh This question is such a common one. Here are four mistakes you may be making: 1) You choose a type of exercise that you do not like doing. So often we equate exercise with the gym. "I … Continue reading
Why can't I stay on a diet?
By Ashley McIntosh First of all it is very important to understand you are not alone. Diets are designed to fail. In fact, 90% of all dieters gain the weight back within 5 years. If this is so, why are … Continue reading


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I didn't have any mental changes just yet, and that's fine, I'm sure they'll start soon enough, but the one thing that I felt today was a little tightness in my testicles, it started around 1030am. I haven't read about this happening to others but it makes sense to me that it would happen seeing as that's where the testosterone is coming from! so has anyone else experienced that?
Be sure to drink plenty of water, keep diuretics under control and eat as much salt as you crave if you want to minimize the drowsiness and tiredness.
now here's the big one, this actually has me pretty upset. I've been losing weight since February and for the first time this week I actually GAINED some back. About 2lbs.
3 weeks in, starting my 4th today! this was a pretty decent week, I got my energy back and I've had no problem jogging, and idk how, but my last weigh in was like 215 and now i'm down to 208!! I might be starting to see some slight mental changes too, a couple days ago I got a little too excited when I saw a cute bunny and I also let out an "awww yay!" when I saw that the Halloween store was getting ready to open lolanother big thing is that yesterday I went out shopping in public for the 2nd time for women's clothes with some girlfriends of mine. Penneys is having a sale plus I had a coupon and a gift card, I saved over $200 and got some really cute stuff! I had a lot of fun, it was so exciting!As I was leaving the mall my one friend came over to talk to me for a min though. She said that this one guy I'm friends with came up to her husband (who does know about me) and asked if he knew anything about me transitioning. he played dumb, which was nice of him, but she just wanted me to know that people are starting to notice
Hi MaddieI am sure you will crying all over the place before you know it A friend of mine suggested I should invest in "Tissue's" (as in blow your nose) as I was going to be using a lot of them...and she wasn't wrong.
hehe I'm kinda looking forward to this, I'm a little bummed that it hasn't happened yet. I've always been a little emotional though, certain songs or movies usually make me tear up pretty easily!
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erica synthsblack varishape vco1
price : $315.00
the erica black varishape vco design inspiration came from polivoks vco. we were so excited about new ideas that came from the engineering process, that we ended up with something much more advanced. it has
solid tracking over 9 octaves, internal mixer to mix direct and inverted waveforms giving you broad range of waveforms. if pwm signal is applied, you get an advanced waveshaper. also, our pride and joy, a
transistor based suboscillator to fatten the sound!
erica black series are high-end modules with unique functionality. only the highest quality components are used and all inputs and outputs are protected against undesired overvoltage. when designing the black
series, we did not economise on the module width, we put design and usability first. big knobs are assigned to functions that make difference in sound. the erica black series are a range of modules that together
make an entire synthesizer.
triangle, saw, pulse and invert triangle, saw, pulse waveforms
built in waveform mixer
cv controlled waveshaper (via pwm controll)
transistor based suboscillator
pwm adjustment via potentiometer and external cv
7-octave range switch
great ttracking along 9 octaves
inputs/outputs are protected against over-voltage
diode protection on reversed power supply
frequency range: 20hz - 28khz
output signal level: up to 20vptp
cv input level: -10v - +10v
power consumption: +50ma, -45ma
module width: 18hp
module depth: 30mm
download the manual here.


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We make delicious, wholesome food.
It's no secret how we do it either – great tasting ingredients and minimal processing.
That's the Mother Earth way.
Mother Earth spreads into jam
New Zealand grows some of the world's finest fruit, so it's only natural that Mother Earth would use delicious, juicy New Zealand fruit in their first ever jam and marmalade range.
Mother Earth Website Mother Earth Facebook Made in small batches and using simple recipes for a truly homemade taste, Mother Earth's new range is packed full of high quality fruit sourced from across the country.
Mother Earth Senior Brand Manager, Lyn O'Sullivan says, "Our new line-up of flavoursome jams and marmalades aligns well with our philosophy of nature at its most delicious."
"We're excited to bring the taste of New Zealand fruit into Kiwi homes all year round!" O'Sullivan adds.
Mother Earth jams and marmalades are not only delicious on toast and fresh scones, but can be used in marinades, stir-fries, glazes, smoothies or your favourite baking recipe.
The delicious taste of New Zealand is available in seven flavours: Apricot, Raspberry, Blackberry, Strawberry and Plum, along with Grapefruit and Orange marmalade.
The new Mother Earth jam and marmalade range can be found in the spreads aisle of supermarkets nationwide with an RRP of $4.99, alongside Mother Earth honey and peanut butter.
I have 2 girls (and their Mum) who absolutely love Jam, but I'm almost embarrassed to admit that we have kind of become jam snobs. Gone are the days where we simply buy whatever is on special, although if I did, it might last longer. When looking for a nice jam you want something that is full of flavour, where you can physically see the fruit in the jam and that leaves you feeling like you've had real fruit on your piece of toast (or whatever else you're having), and not a lump of sugar.
These jams do just that.
Now I haven't tried all the flavours, but being that I can buy strawberry and raspberry and not have any arguements within the household (Ayla loves Apricot, Melanie loves Plum), I can safely say that if you enjoy jam, then you are going to LOVE these.
Other Mother Earth Goodies


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Dr. Lamos has been involved in instructional design and development for 40 years. He has been working with computer-based learning since 1972. Dr. Lamos is responsible for the production and service operations of the Cooperative Program for Operational Meteorology Education and Training (COMET). This group has been producing multimedia, computer-based learning for the National Weather Service, the Air Force Weather Agency and the Navy Meteorology and Oceanography Command since 1991. To date the COMET Program has developed over 600 hours of distance learning most of which is available from the COMET Program's MetEd (www.meted.ucar.edu) Website.
Prior to joining the COMET Program, Dr. Lamos has worked in military research and development, university R&D, aerospace, and consulting environments. He was a subsystem manager for the Air Force development of its Advanced Instructional System, Senior Instructional Designer with McDonnell-Douglas for the development of the Navy's T-45 Undergraduate Jet Pilot Training program, Systems Analyst with the Denver Research Institute, were he helped develop a Training and Performance Support System for the Air Force Electronics Systems Division, and was a project manager and consultant with the DLS Group. Dr. Lamos conceived the Professional Development Series (PDS) concept and process for the National Weather Service's National Strategic Training and Education Plan (NSTEP). The PDS is an approach for defining job performance requirements and training needs.
Dr. Parrish is Senior Project Manager, International Projects and Instructional Designer with the COMET Program, within the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. Pat holds an MA in Instructional Technology and PhD in Educational Innovation. His primary interests include instructional design, design thinking, aesthetics, and how these overlap.


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Interoperability is the sharing of information between medical devices and information systems. It is fundamental to GE's healthymagination objectives of lowering cost, increasing access and improving quality.
Interoperability is a major component of healthcare projects around the world, and GE is proud to be an active partner in those efforts.
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As a nation, New Zealand is punching well above its weight in terms of the number of electric vehicles on its roads.
Read more
Check out David Reid Homes' elegant and award winning showhomes in 14 locations throughout New Zealand.
Find a show home near you
We have an industry leading library of homes. You can choose one of our pre-designed homes, or use our house plans as inspiration for your own design and build project.
Browse our house plans
Dream, explore and discover. Our inspiration gallery is full of ideas and inspiration to help get you started on your design and build journey.
Explore the gallery
We have a nationwide network of New Zealand owned and operated franchise branches. Browse our locations and find the branch nearest you.
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For personalised location information please tell us where you are thinking of building.


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Sunday night's Grammy Awards broadcast was relatively uneventful. Sam Smith won four statues, Taylor Swift danced in her front-row seat (and didn't win anything), and Pharell Williams brought "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" to his Hans Zimmer-tweaked rendition of "Happy."
Perhaps the only truly surprising win at this year's awards was Beck's upset in the Album of the Year category. Beck's Morning Phase beat out Beyoncé's secret album, Sam Smith's In the Lonely Hour, and Pharell's Girl, despite being the lowest-selling album since 2008 to win the coveted award.
Of course, Beck's win was made all the more memorable by Kanye West's near-repeat of his infamous 2009 Taylor Swift microphone-snatching stunt, although this time, West stopped short of actually grabbing Beck's mic.
Instead, he complained to E! after the show that Beyoncé's album should have won Album of the Year. West said:
I don't even know what he said. I just know that the Grammys, if they want real artists to keep coming back, they need to stop playing with us. We ain't gonna play with them no more. 'Flawless,' Beyoncé video. And Beck needs to respect artistry and he should have given his award to Beyoncé and at this point, we tired of it because what happens is when you keep on diminishing art and not respecting the craft and smacking people in the face after they deliver monumental feats of music, you're disrespectful to inspiration.
With all the headlines the episode has been getting, the Independent reports that sales of Morning Phase are up 1,342% on Amazon.
Beck, for his part, took West's stunt good-naturedly, telling Us Weekly he wasn't bothered by it at all.
"I was just so excited he was coming up," Beck told the magazine. "He deserves to be on stage as much as anybody. How many great records has he put out in the last five years, right?"
Beck said he was as shocked as anybody that Beyoncé missed out on the award.
"I thought she was going to win. Come on, she's Beyoncé!" he said.
Side note: Kanye may want to take his own advice about "respecting artistry;" Beck plays 12 instruments, wrote every track on Morning Phase, and has been making hits since 1993. Beyoncé's new album was written by no less than 20 different songwriters.


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The mainstream market reporters are whipping themselves into a frenzy over the problems in Spain and Italy. Worries over a failed bond auction in Spain followed by a domino effect in other countries has become the main story for stocks.
In theory if Spain's 10-year auction on Thursday does not go well the ECB and IMF will be forced to come to Spain's rescue on future auctions. Since Spain has a serious need for public funding for the rest of 2012 that rescue effort would be expensive. Secondly, if Spain were to qualify for support from the ECB and IMF then Italy would also qualify. The bond vigilantes will continue to go down the list country by country and there is not enough money in the EU, ECB, IMF (troika) coffers to rescue everyone.
The problem this week is not just Spain but the implied result on the rest of the EU weaklings if Spain worsens. Spain amplified the problem this week by warning many of their banks may not be able to find enough capital to remain in business. Most of those banks own far too much sovereign debt that has to be marked to market and that makes the Spanish debt sales doubly important. Even if there are plenty of buyers if the yields spike higher and prices lower then those banks will have to mark their loans down even further. It is a vicious circle attacking several of the weaker EU countries and there is little or no hope of it being resolved without significant funding from the troika.
The problem for the energy sector is that the economic conditions in Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal, etc are rapidly imploding. With the governments in severe austerity mode anything that is not a critical government service is being cut. That puts more people out of work, which limits the amount of money that can be spent on consumption, which puts more businesses out of business, which limits the amount of taxes the government can collect, which further limits future spending and forces more cuts to social programs, etc. It is a downward spiral that has no solution other than years of pain and recession.
The end result is lower demand for oil in those countries. Fortunately none of the countries involved are big consumers of oil but that does not prevent the decline in expectations based on the general principle.
The Iran problem is also pushing prices lower. The P5+1 nuclear summit turned into only a social meet and greet and nothing was accomplished other than set a new date of May 23rd for the next meeting. The "positive" press about the "constructive" meeting deflated some of the tensions surrounding the Iran sanctions. Iran got to restate its position that nothing would ever change and the UN would have to end its sanctions before they would agree to future talks. The P5+1 countries got to brag about the constructive meeting so oil prices would ease and gasoline prices would not be such a hot topic in an election year. Everybody got what they wanted out of the first meeting except the Israelis. They immediately blasted the U.S. and the other members of the P5+1 for giving Iran a pass and allow the can to be kicked farther down the road without a resolution.
Adding to the price pressure on oil was the attack by President Obama on evil speculators manipulating prices for profit and forcing everyone to face more pain at the pump. It is immaterial that numerous commissions and agencies have investigated the speculation angle since the 2008 highs and nobody found anything remotely related to manipulation. This is an election year and the president is under fire over high fuel prices. The president wants to increase the number of employees at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) by 600% and dramatically increase the amount of margin required to trade energy futures. Democrats attached an amendment to an unrelated bill to implement Obama's recommendations. It immediately died with a vote of 261-160 with all but one republican and 25 democrats voting against it.
Despite the recommendations being DOA in Congress we can expect to hear the "I have recommended sweeping reforms to limit speculation and manipulation in the energy markets" phrase in every presidential campaign speech for the rest of the summer. In election years it is all about appearance rather than substance.
Oil inventories continued to rise with about two weeks left before the supply/demand curve switches to higher refinery utilization. Crude inventories rose +3.9 million barrels. However, gasoline -3.7 mb and distillates -2.9 MB, continue to decline as refiners deplete winter fuel blends. Once the tanks are depleted of those winter blends they will kick the refining process into high gear to flood the system with the summer blend fuels. We are about two weeks away from that switch. Obviously every refiner will have a different restart date depending on maintenance schedules and the quantity of refined supplies on hand. The EPA has specific dates for mandatory fuel conversions typically starting on May 1st.
Inventory Snapshot
In the charts below you can see the current trend (red) is following the historical trend. The oil inventories are the most extreme with inventories right at the upper edge of the five year historical range. For the last year inventories have been holding at the high end of the range and I expect the end of April numbers to continue pressing the boundaries.
Distillates are right in the middle of their five year range but they are a multiyear lows today. Demand for distillates, especially diesel and jet fuel, appears to be strong and that conflicts with the weak economy concept. Distillate inventories are down -19.4% from year ago levels.
Oil Inventory Chart
Gasoline Inventory Chart
Distillate Inventory Chart
WTI futures expire on Friday and today's decline could be impacted by the impending expiration. Inventories at Cushing are rising ahead of the anticipated opening of the Seaway pipeline to send oil from Cushing to the Gulf Coast refiners. The initial volume will be only 150,000 bpd and eventually rise in 2013 but it is the idea that counts. Traders are focused on that May start date as though the WTI/Brent spread was going to magically narrow to zero just because of that 150,000 bpd route south.
Halliburton (HAL) reported earnings for Q1 that rose +22.7% thanks to the rush to drill for oil in North America. HAL benefitted from the rush to natural gas drilling in recent years and now the rush to oil and NGLs is creating a boom in other parts of the country. HAL said oil production is a more intensive process than drilling and producing natural gas. That allows HAL to charge higher fees for its well service business. CEO Dave Lesar said the switch to oil was very positive for Halliburton profits. HAL reported earnings of 68-cents or $627 million on revenue of $6.87 billion. HAL said it took a $300 million charge to reserves because of pending litigation over the BP disaster in the Gulf. HAL performed the cementing services on the Macondo well and most commissions looking into the disaster suggested the cement did not hold and that helped to cause the disaster.
McMoran Exploration (MMR) reported earnings that beat the street by 10-cents and continued to brag about their wealth of new ultradeep discoveries in the shallow water Gulf. Multiple wells have reached their total depth with major discoveries but completion efforts are on hold until lessons learned from the Davy Jones 1 can be implemented. Shares declined 30-cents on the day. Investors were hoping for some positive news from DJ1 but the company is holding to the prior statement. The well will be perforated and put into production in Q2. All equipment is ready and onsite waiting for the removal of some failed perforating guns and implementation of the new perforating equipment.
BP and the attorneys for more than 100,000 people and businesses presented Judge Carl Barbier with the finalized settlement in the class action suit. The group asked Barbier to approve the settlement so disbursements could begin. BP will pay about $7.8 billion to resolve thousands of claims but there are thousands that could opt out of the class action settlement and try to go it alone against BP. That would be an expensive proposition. Barbier is expected to hold a "fairness hearing" on the settlement before approving it.
BP and its contractors RIG, HAL, CAM, WFT, etc still have to deal with the various government claims regarding the spill. The judge has set May 3rd as the date to discuss the plans for proceeding to trial over those claims, which will also run into the billions of dollars. All the contractors claim indemnity by BP in their contracts and the judge has ruled multiple times in the BP-RIG preliminaries hearings that BP did indemnify RIG so the outcome of the trial is probably going to rest solely on BP. I am sure BP is holding out hope that RIG will give into the risk of trial and settle before the case is actually heard.
Energy investors need to remain patient because the long term fundamentals remain firmly positive. Remember, oil prices are still in the $105-$125 range and not $65-$75. The long term trend is still up.
Our biggest risk is that high gasoline prices will push the U.S. back into a recession. We will have to watch the economic numbers closely over the next 60-days to see if the trend is changing. The drop in nonfarm payrolls and rise in weekly jobless claims may be a sign of further weakness ahead.
Jim Brown
Click here to email Jim
Peak Oil - The term Peak Oil is very over used and misunderstood. Peak oil does not mean the end of oil production.
Peak Oil, A Brief Description
Saudi Arabia - The largest oil producer on the planet is also the most secretive about their production and reserves.
Saudi Arabia, Smoke and Mirrors
China - Much is said about China's growing oil demand with consumption in China up +250% over the last four years. China, A Bear on the Prowl
Oil Production - It is very tough to get accurate numbers on global oil production since OPEC chooses not to release any data. Global Oil Production
Oil Demand - Global oil demand is a very hard number to pin down but it is safe to say that demand will exceed supply very soon. Global Oil Demand
Bakken Shale - What about the trillions of barrels in the Bakken Shale in North Dakota? Bakken Shale
Read more about Peak Oil here: Peak Oil Facts
Oil Production - It is very tough to get accurate numbers on global oil production since OPEC chooses not to release any data. Global Oil Production
Oil Demand - Global oil demand is a very hard number to pin down but it is safe to say that demand will exceed supply very soon. Global Oil Demand
Bakken Shale - What about the trillions of barrels in the Bakken Shale in North Dakota? Bakken Shale
Read more about Peak Oil here: Peak Oil Facts
Oil Demand - Global oil demand is a very hard number to pin down but it is safe to say that demand will exceed supply very soon. Global Oil Demand
Bakken Shale - What about the trillions of barrels in the Bakken Shale in North Dakota? Bakken Shale
Read more about Peak Oil here: Peak Oil Facts
Bakken Shale - What about the trillions of barrels in the Bakken Shale in North Dakota? Bakken Shale
Read more about Peak Oil here: Peak Oil Facts


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3...2...1...Blast Off! I can't believe my mom was able to capture the launch. Good timing mom.
What am I holding you ask? Just an awesome motorized Mars Rover I made in Mars Explorers. Besides making the rover, I also got to fly a simulated space mission in Chabot's Challenger Learning Center.
You know what's also great about space camp, getting photobombed by Jean-Luc Picard. Seriously, one of my fellow campers and I shared about gears with the parents on the last day of camp. Standing to my left is our instructor Zoe Ames who has a B.A. in Physics and Astronomy. Cool!
In my survivor class I picked up some mad paracord knot skills. We also went on nature hikes in the surrounding redwood forest and learned how to build survival shelters out of items found in nature.
All kidding aside, we were really pleased with our first experience at the Chabot Space & Science Camp. In the past my children have attended Camp Galileo who also runs the space camp for the Chabot center. The curriculum is different from the other camps but they still incorporate Galileo's Innovation Approach into the classes. If you're curious about what the Innovation Approach is, you can read about it here. I also noticed this camp is a little more serious in nature compared to the other Galileo camps.
To learn more about Chabot Space & Science Camp, click here.
Disclaimer: My children received one free paid week of camp as compensation for this post series. All thoughts and opinions are my own.


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A Clock and a Stool
Tape Measure Clock
Japanese Design collective, N.O.L have a thing for off beat clocks as you can see from the amount of concepts they've developed including two where they combined stools with clocks. The first concept is called the Tape Measure Clock that show the current time not only from the front but also from the side.
The Dim clock
The Dim clock indicates the time with LED behind the fabric.
Felt Clock and Stool
The Felt Clock and Stool is an unusual combination where the face of the stool can be reused as a clock.
The ho.ta.ru stool makes a better combo because you can use it as a clock and as a seat. There is LED underneath the seat fabric that shows the time.
The Split splits the two hands with one hand showing only the hour and the other, the minute.
And finally, N.O.L's sole clock that has been released commercially – The Peep which hides the entire watch face except for the current time. You can buy one from here.


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Japan PM Noda in tax reform pledge
Japan's prime minister vowed to push for tax reform to help tackle debt as he convened a new session of parliament.
Yoshihiko Noda called for the sales tax to be doubled to 10% by 2015 - a controversial move seen as very unpopular with his electorate.
His call came as the central bank downgraded its growth forecast.
The Bank of Japan said it expected the economy to shrink this financial year and kept interest rates at near 0%.
The bank said debt problems in Europe and the strong yen weighed on growth.
'Too late'
Mr Noda said Japan could no longer put off tackling its public debt and renewed calls for opposition parties to join talks on tax and social security reform.
He said he aimed to submit bills to parliament by March.
"The current system, if unchanged, will put an unbearable burden on future generations. We don't have time left to postpone reforms," Mr Noda told parliament.
"Once trust in a state is lost, it's too late. That is quite obvious if you look at the situation in European countries."
Mr Noda has made the long-debated tax reform a key part of his political agenda.
However, the Cabinet office said earlier on Tuesday that Japan would not be able to achieve the goal of balancing its budget by 2020, even if the proposed sales tax was implemented.
Japan has the largest public debt burden of any country in the world.
Meanwhile, the Bank of Japan (BOJ) cut its forecast for growth for the coming financial year to 2%, down from an October estimate of 2.2%.
"Japan's economic activity has been more or less flat, mainly due to the effects of a slowdown in overseas economies and the appreciation of the yen," the BOJ said.


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The Thing about Ping
When it comes to classic kids books, an adjective that gets thrown around a lot is "timeless." An author or illustrator who wins that particular plaudit is seen as having created characters whose actions and emotions are genuine, clearly wrought, and recognizable to the children of any era. But I actually think timelessness has less to do with any positive attribute that it is the absence of datedness.
A case in point: The Story About Ping, written by Marjorie Flack and illustrated by Kurt Wiese. At one point it was an unquestioned classic, read to millions weekly by Captain Kangaroo. Now it is forgotten, and I don't think on merits but fashion.
A modern parent picking up Ping would quickly put it down, for fear of being caught perusing racist material. The book was published in 1933, and it's a legitimate concern that something written about the Chinese in that day and age was racist. The nature of children's illustration in the 1930's leaves little chance that drawings of the era won't seem racist to the modern reader, even if the artist was the rare type who wouldn't bring greater caricature to the boatman on the Yangtze river than he would the Irish cop on the beat in Chicago. However, Wiese was exactly that sort of artist. He spent six years in China as a young man and won a Newberry Award and a Caldecott Honor for other books set in the country. Too often, the artists who break down barriers wind up looking the most dated, precisely because of what they took on.
The shame of it lies in the utter beauty of the illustrations. Wiese's line work is both daring and flawless–a hard combination to pull off–and he overcomes the production limits of his day with an intense use of the colors available to him.
The datedness, however, is not limited to the drawings. The story revolves around a duck who doesn't want to get spanked with a pole for being the last one back aboard his boat, so he runs away. He gets caught and is threatened by being turned into dinner. "I will cook him with rice at sunset tonight" has got to be the most terrifying line I've ever read in a kids book. And yet, I also love that line, and also that the duck's home is "the wise-eyed boat", for the eyes drawn on either side of its bow.
The basic elements of Ping are positively timeless: it is the story of wanting to run away to avoid punishment, the fear of being alone, the kindness of strangers, and the joy of returning home. The parts that are dated speak to changes in culture its author and illustrator were surely hoping to help effect.
Galatea, of course, cares about none of this. She loves the cute duck, all those boats, and a happy ending. Timeless indeed.
Listening to Classes, Updated
It's been fascinating to see what kind of new Madeline adventures kids come up with when I do school visits. I am realizing that the single most differentiating factor is not geographical or age but class size. The most exciting, original tales tend to come from kids in groups of fifteen to fifty kids. There's definitely a breaking point above that, where kids are either giving safe answers that they think no one will make fun of, or give joke answers–Miss Clavel gets run over by a truck!–that are meant for a laugh. Inevitably, the end result is a boring story. Except when it's not.
The kind folks at Books, Bytes and Beyond took me into a couple of large public elementary schools in north Jersey. I could only try my exercise on one group, an assembly of about 150 kids. The tale began in fairly pedestrian fashion. Madeline and the girls take a cruise ship to New York, visit the Statue of Liberty, Central Park, and the Empire State Building, where Madeline happens into a room where she finds a man holding onto the ledge of a window by his fingertips. How will Madeline get him out of this jam? As I take suggestions I'm thinking I have no idea how to solve this one and that instead of coming up with an ending it's going to be one of those Why-don't-you-go-home-and-think-about-it-on-your-own situations. The first suggestions from the kids bear out this fear: Madeline reaches out the window and pulls the man up. (But she's a small girl and he's a grown man.) She gives him a rope and pulls him up. (Again, she's the smallest, remember?) She finds an adult to help. (Boring!)
Just as I'm about to throw in the towel, a kid in the front row suggests that Madeline take some bubblegum, stick one end to the imperiled man and the other to the elevator and send it down. (Brilliant!) The kids vote to change the bubblegum to a rope, and the story is successfully concluded.
The best thing about going to book festivals is meeting other authors. At the Los Angeles Times Book Festival over the weekend I met such folks as Mo Willems, Mark Teague, Garth Nix, Sam Irvin (author of a biography of Eloise creator Kay Thompson), and Rachel DeWoskin, the decidedly non-kids author of Foreign Babes in Beijing. But the one person I set out to meet was Tao Nyeu, whose books are one of the surest signs of a well-curated kids section. Such places are recognizable in an instant; the turned-out covers let you know that the bookseller wants to promote and celebrate the art of the children's book rather than emphasize best-sellers and tired old "evergreen" classics.
A printmaker, Tao works in a style that is a kind of neo-Nabism crossed with smooth-edged psychedelia. As an artist, what most impresses me about Tao is her use of the white space of the page. You feel the creation of the art, which perfectly suits Wonder Bear, a wordless book about creating worlds out of nothing.
Wordless books are a notoriously hard sell in a read-aloud market, but they are perfect for a child Galatea's age, where a story need be for steering purposes only, and the whole point is to get lost in the pictures and the characters. Gal's favorites are the spider monkeys, who emerge as a gang out of Wonder Bear's magical top hat in a scene that inverts the plot of Caps For Sale, another gloriously trippy book that Gal dearly loves.
Wonder Bear and Spotty–which Gal now reads one after the other, back and forth–present a stark contrast between new and old, wordless and wordy, but both demonstrate that the essence of the picture book lies in images telling a tale, and that the fun of them lies in the interpretation.
Rakestraw Books and Spotty the Rabbit
A favorite bookstore, both for doing events and browsing–their non-fiction selection can't be beaten–is Mike Barnard's Rakestraw Books in northern California. I mentioned Galatea's obsession with rabbits–or rather, zabbits–and Mike asked if we'd ever read Spotty. We had not.
Spotty is cute. In fact, it gets no cuter than Spotty, a little rabbit who is born with brown spots all over him. It is a classic outcast tale–all Spotty's brothers and sisters are pure white with pink eyes, and his mother worries that he won't be accepted. At first, Spotty doesn't understand the concept "different", but when he does, he tries using spot remover on himself and, that failing, sets off alone in the world. Gal's favorite page is the one where Spotty's siblings go looking for him, searching the old-style ice-box and oven, although she thinks they're looking for pizza. One of the great things about reading to a two-year old is that you don't have to follow the text.
Gal also loves the Momma rabbit crying, but then she loves the image of anyone crying. When I ask Gal how her day has gone, her own tales–narrated in strings of adjectives, nouns, and unconjugated verbs–are rarely accurate, but the one detail she unfailingly gets correct is the moment when she or one of her playmates cry. Not that it makes her sad–crying delights her. It is an action brought on by emotions that she understands perfectly, and the understanding brings her immense joy. Or that is at least my own armchair psychologist reading of it.
Spotty is one of the more popular non-Curious George books by Margret and H. A. Rey. It has too many words, as do so many books of that era, but thankfully Gal does not as yet demand that we read every story exactly and unabridged. While the book does not have the iconic value of Curious George–nor does it deserve it–the drawings are better, or the story at least plays better to the strengths of H.A. Rey, with its enormous array of adorable bunnies.
Tour diary: When Gal met Obama
Last year, we went to the White House Easter Egg Roll to do a final bit of research for Madeline at the White House and, frankly, it was miserable. It was too hot, Galatea was too young, and there were too many people. Going this year was better in every respect. Gal is still a little young to enjoy being in big crowds–or that's just her personality–but she still went wild when she saw Elmo, Abby, and Rosita from Sesame Street all working the crowd. (She didn't want them to touch her, but still.)
It was a thrill for me because I actually got to read Madeline at the White House at the White House. Or rather, on the South Lawn, where they had set up a storytime stage. The kids loved seeing the pictures of the egg roll, and I got a kick out of being able to point to the windows in the house where the action was taking place, and the Washington Monument when it comes up at the crucial moment of the story.
The real thrill, however, was meeting the Obamas. I had no idea it was going to happen–the schedule I was given said that there was a Meet and Greet, but I assumed that was just for the other people performing, which was cool enough. I figured if we were actually meeting the president, someone would have told me. But a little after nine, we were all rounded up and led into the White House.
Andromache and Gal and I had been there the day before for a tour of the West Wing, and therein lay the problem. Andromache had been prepping her for days. "What house are we going to?" she would ask. "White," Gal would respond. "Who lives there?" "Rock Omama." Gal kept it together great on the tour, especially when she got handed three boxes of White House red, white, and blue M&Ms, something she had never had the good fortune to sample. So now, when were were getting led into the East Wing, when Andromache asked, "What house are we going to?" Gal answered, "Candy!"
We made it just up the stairs to the ballroom where we were to meet the First Family when she started bawling. Every parent knows it: Why now? For god's sakes, when you are the perfect angel for forty-seven out of every forty-eight hours, why now? "Candy! Candy!" she said. We let her down on the ground, and she made a bee line for the other side of the room, where the secret service agents were guarding the Obama's entrance. We had to keep dragging her back wailing.
Andromache managed to calm her mostly, and we got into line, somewhere behind Geena Davis and Kelly Ripa, and right in front of Chef Marcella, whose son Fausto amused and calmed Gal. The Obamas came in the room with their dog Bo, his leash trailing behind. They began to meet and take photos with each group on line, and the move up seemed to take forever. The boy band Mindless Behavior were right in front of us, and Malia and Sasha gave them big hugs and said how great they were. Then it was our turn.
The president shook Andromache's hand, then mine. Andromache said to Gal, "This is Barack Obama." Gal shook her head no, pointed out the door, and said, "Rock Omama!" He laughed and said, "Oh yeah, he's over there. I'm not Barack Obama–he's that guy on TV."
We then met the girls and Mrs. Obama, and were positioned for our photo, with Andromache next to the First Lady and me next to the president. It was shocking when he put his arm around me, and after a pause I figured I should do the same, although it was more like I put my arm around the air around his shirt. The photographer had to keep taking shots, because Gal kept crying, but she thought she finally got a good one. We'll see in a few weeks.
Listening to the Masses in Classes
When I'm talking to school groups and the kids' eyes begin to glaze over, I have them do my favorite exercise: come up with a new Madeline adventure. Over the last four days, Madeline has gone to Ireland (Ten Acre Country Day School in Wellesley, MA), China (Interlakes Elementary School in Meredith, NH), New Hampshire (Interlakes again), and back to China (Main Street School, Exeter, NH).
To go to Ireland, Madeline dressed all in green, except for her socks (they stayed white). On the Emerald Isle she met dueling leprechauns who each tried to trick her into helping them steal a pot of gold from an eagle's nest. Madeline wound up tricking them, and getting the gold for herself; with the money, she bought Miss Clavel a coffee maker. In China, she went to a restaurant where got a fortune cookie that read, "Misfortune is coming your way." Shortly thereafter, she was kidnapped by a skinny and unsuccessful sumo wrestler; Madeline became his trainer, feeding him ice cream and candy to so he would get fat. In New Hampshire, she climbed Mt. Washington and fell down a fifty-foot hole, where she met a monkey who wanted to do the cha chacha with her. Back in China, she climbed the Great Wall and fell off the other side.
The kids inevitably want Madeline to visit a new place, go to a restaurant, and get sick. They also tend to want the poor girl to get hurt in some way and go back to the hospital. She usually makes a new friend–at the Hutchison School in Memphis, TN, she dated Justin Bieber–and often she meets an enemy. There are a lot of high places and falling that goes on, and usually at least one off-the-wall moment, such as a stampede of dinosaurs at a library in Brooklyn. Plausibility means little, until the ending. For the resolution, the kids needs something that is both fun and also makes sense. The kids in Exeter couldn't agree on a satisfactory way to get Madeline back over the Great Wall to Miss Clavel and the other girls. Some of the kids' suggestions–Madeline finds a ladder, a rope, a helpful adult–were considered too mundane by their fellow classmates, and then other suggestions–she takes a boat, she climbs on the back of a dragon–didn't seem realistic enough. The kids in Meredith, on the other hand, were unanimous with how Madeline should get out of the hole in Mt. Washington–she got on the monkey's back, who clambered right up on out of the cave.
Thanks to Wellesley Booksmith, Innisfree Bookshop, and Water Street Books for arranging the visits. And, of course, the kids, for giving me ideas. Expect to see Madeline Does the Cha Cha Cha with a Monkey in bookstores soon.
The appeal of Goodnight Moon explained
An addendum to my last post: When it comes to books whose appeal I didn't understand before I had a child, #1 on the list has to be Goodnight Moon. GM completely escaped me growing up–I don't remember ever having seen it before I was an adult. I read it a few times over the years in book stores, trying to figure out why it was a classic, and failing. To me it seemed strange yet boring, an odd trick to pull off. Someone gave us the book when Galatea was born, and it was one of the first books my wife read her to sleep with. The key thing I noticed was that it worked. Gal fell asleep, usually before the book was done. So I tried it myself. Whereas other books left her wanting more, Goodnight Moon had Gal unable to fight off the sandman. At first I thought the book was boring her to sleep, but as I read it to her night after night (hey, if it works it works) I realized it was the placid strangeness of the text and pictures that had the effect of hypnotizing her to sleep. Entertaining books are a dime a dozen; soporific ones are rare gems indeed.


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St Peter & St PaulNewchurch
This large church is famous for its bent tower. The first two stages of the tower, built in 15th century, began to lean alarmingly, and were buttressed to prevent the tower collapsing. Many years later, the final stage was added in an upright position, giving the tower its characteristic bent shape. Inside is a fine Jacobean pulpit, the oldest on the Marsh. The magnificent font bears the emblems of St Peter and St Paul together with the roses of York and Lancaster and the Tudor rose, suggesting that it was made soon after the Wars of the Roses during the reign of the first Tudor king, Henry VII.
Map Location of St Peter & St Paul, Newchurch (TN29 0DP)
Church Access Arrangements
The Church is open 9.30 – 5.00 Key with Michael Barclay 01797 872376.
Useful Extras
Follow Us


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I need some help trying to figure out an issue we are having.
We have a SaaS app that is pointed to the ID server for logging in. ex
https://mycompany.box.com. We need to make this available to the public.
I am protecting the ID server with the AG server. 'LINK'
(http://tinyurl.com/pdwc6mm) If I make the id server vip a public ip,
all of our apps that are setup for ID auth are then public and we do not
want them public. So I try to protect box.com with reverse proxy and we
loose deep links. The AG vip is nat'ed so I point the app that need to
be public to the public ip and keep internal only pointed at the local
ip. So everything that is behind the reverse proxy is easy to setup.
How are other companies doing this? Is everyone creating a new cluster
just for these apps?
Thank you for your help and time.
danvarela's Profile: https://forums.netiq.com/member.php?userid=231
View this thread: https://forums.netiq.com/showthread.php?t=49143


text: The students have hit the halfway point, and we have some of the team working on advanced bricklaying projects, others trying tiling and solid plastering. It's the best way to decide which of the mortar trowel trades students are most interested in. At this point we have students we would recommend highly for work experience. If you are interested in giving one of the team a break, please call us on 0883675615, or email [email protected]


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Hide Forgot
Description of problem:
If PK has enough pending transactions, gnome-pk will happily create a tooltip
that doesn't fit onscreen.
For example, I cherry-picked maybe 30 updates from 200 or so by clicking "Update
Package" on each of them. They're added to the queue (along with tons of extra
"get update detail" and "get updates" items). Mousing over the gnome-pk icon
shows a tooltip that's taller than my screen itself.
Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
Ahh, we've fixed the cherry pick problem by making them checkboxes you can
select. How many lines do you think a "too big" tooltip is (so we can add ...
for the rest).
If we can't figure out how tall the tooltip is going the be (so we can compare
it to the screen height) I'm thinking the cap should be something like, I don't
know, 25? It's just a guess.
Also, instead of "..." it would be a good idea to put "(56 more transactions)"
or some such text.
Created attachment 299515 [details]
what about something like this?
Didn't actually compile/test it, but it looks like the right fix.
I've added this into git, many thanks.


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Open source intelligence and ethics
Evanna Hu has written a guest post on the Responsible Data Forum about Responsible Data Concerns with Open Source Intelligence. I basically agree with everything in that post, which you might think makes this post a bit superfluous but I've got to write something every day in November. Cos Dan Slee challenged me to.
Open Source Intelligence is intelligence based on publicly available information. Unless you work with open source intelligence (as I do for humanitarian purposes) I think it is hard to get your head around the detail and sophistication of data that it is often possible to derive from public sources.
I've written before of the privacy concerns that I think need to be more properly addressed by public bodies. What Evanna Hu's post highlights is how much further this debate should go in organisations.
There is the legal framework (which is really what I was talking about in that post). I was really struck by Evanna's statement
As with many responsible data concerns, legal compliance is just one part of a much bigger picture, and it often forms the lowest bar rather than the best practice we should strive for.
And the legal concerns I raised are really fairly specific and limited. An ethical framework would go much further. I'd be really interested to hear from any public bodies that have done work on this.
As a society, we need to go much further. We don't really have cultural norms for the use of publicly available data by anyone. In many circumstances it may not be state actors that we should be most concerned about. We need to encourage, as well as legal frameworks, a global set of standards that we can hold all organisations to.
But maybe we can start in the UK. Is there any organisation interested in leading?
My life (so far) in tech
I was at a meeting today at which some people were using BlackBerrys (I know, I know). They were lamenting the fact that their IT team were about to replace them with iPhones or Androids or some such. It made me think of when, about 12 years ago I delighted managers by introducing these new fangled BlackBerry devices to my then council. And that got me reminiscing about tech in general…
My life in tech so far
Born (1971): family had a phone line. Not unheard of but still not that common (Dad worked for the Post Office and they wanted to be able to call him out in the wee small hours).
Some time in the 70s. Dad got sent a computer as part of his Open University course. It was programmed in binary. I've never been so disappointed.
1981. Got a ZX81. As a kit. Dad built it into a super-duper metal box with full travel keys. Typed 10 Print "Hello" 20 Goto 10. Blew mind.
1982 – 1987 Did not get a ZX Spectrum. Played WOTEF round at Jon's on his ZX Spectrum. Played Chucky Egg round at Dave's on his BBC Model B. Played… er… something round at Richard's on his C-64. Played with Prestel at uncle's house. Could not see point.
1982 – 1987 Did not get a BBC Model B or a C-64
1982- 1985 Obsessive reader of Computer and Video Games
1985 Started reading PCW obsessively
1983 Was bought a TI-994A as they were selling them off in Asda. Crushingly disappointing.
1989 Went to Cardiff University. They had a computer classroom. 40 286s running MS DOS and Windows. Blew mind. Sent first email using Coloured Book Software.
1992 Did sandwich year with National Rivers Authority. Used Lotus 123. Finally saw the point of statistics.
1993 Became obsessed with statistics and computer modelling. Discovered Internet. Discovered usenet. Starting telling all of my friends that this Internet thing was going to change everything. Saw less of friends.
1994 – 1996 Postgrad research. ArcView on a DEC Alpha. Saw Unix for first time: fell in love. Built first website. Built more websites.
Sometime between 1998 and 2001 Got ADSL. Blew mind.
Sometime in early 2000s. Got first mobile phone. Blew mind. Installed WiFi at work. Spend weeks gazing at laptop on table connected to Internet WITH NO WIRES.
2002 Was running an information service for community groups across UK. Noticed I had largely stopped using the phone for research and switched to using the World Wide Web.
2005 Was put in charge of a local authority website. Mixed success. Brought in BlackBerrys. General delight.
2008 Got Twitter account. Couldn't quite get head around it. Later in 2008 Twitter obsessive. Thought: this social media is going to be big in emergencies.
2009 Stopped reading PCW. But only because they stopped publishing. Why? WHY?
2010 First unconference (GovCamp of Yorkshire and the Humber). BLEW MIND. Around this time first smart phone. Wow.
2011 Learned about Open Data (from Hadley Beeman). Blew Mind.
2012 Put in charge of a local authority website again. Quite pleased with results. Considered buying Mac. Bought ChromeBook Pixel. Bad decision
2016 Finally decided to embrace Mac at exactly moment Apple lost it and Microsoft became OK. Still on Twitter. Excited enough by new web browser (Vivaldi) to keep banging on about it. Slack!
In my teenage years one Christmas day I answered the door to find my Great Uncle Ken standing there. He was wearing a blue beret. I ridiculed his headgear and he purported to be shocked.
"Monty gave me this beret"
he said.
When I reported this to my dad as an example of the crazy things that Grandad's brother said, my father gently reminded me:
"He fought in the second world war. Monty probably did give him that beret."
Their oldest brother was Great Uncle Sim. I remember him too, though he was quite old and had Parkinson's which was disconcerting as a young boy. He received Maundy Money from the Queen. He was in the Sherwood Foresters in the First World War. He lied about his age. One gets the impression they weren't checking too closely in that conflict.
My grandmother (married to the grandfather mentioned above) was a bookkeeper in Hereford in 1940 when a senior officer for the home guard marched into her department store and drafted her for war work. She was locked in a tiny office in Hereford Station trying to keep track of the soldiers being evacuated from Dunkirk. They were being put on trains and moved north as quickly as possible. Across the UK people like my grandmother were trying desperately to keep track of them.
My paternal grandfather made munitions. My maternal grandfather worked in the huge ICI plant in Teeside and was in a reserved occupation (during my childhood I understood he was a painter, I now understand he did something more technical). He was also a Special Constable. My maternal grandmother was a nurse. In later life she married her childhood sweetheart. He had served on the HMS Cornwall which was sunk in 1942 in the Pacific. He and his crew mates waited over 30 hours in shark infested waters to be rescued. Over 400 men died. Not long before his death he was welcomed on the newly commissioned Cornwall where the Captain addressed him as "Sir" which he clearly found extremely moving.
These people are not history to me. They are ordinary. They are my family. I knew them well. My grandmothers only died within the past few years. The second world war was a long time ago but the fact that my grandmother could talk to me about it makes it seem more recent and immediate.
My parent's generation, my generation and the generation that followed mine have lived under an unprecedented period of peace in Europe. That is clearly an amazing, wonderful thing.
But we should never, ever, take that peace for granted. To the generation that lived through it, war was real and immediate. To those of us that knew them well it seemed like a real possibility. As our collective memory fades the risk is that we start to believe that peace is normal and natural. But peace requires effort, and vigilance and we should be profoundly grateful for the peace we continue to enjoy.
Six links for a blogpost
It's Saturday. I've been doing nice things, seeing friends and walking dogs. I don't really want to write much today but I must because I have an agreement with Dan Slee that we will blog every day in November.
What do we know about Brexit?
Not much according to the House of Commons Library.
Confused by the High Court decision on Article 50? Here's an explanation in plain English.
Compare and contrast
Army on standby in case of flooding in the winter.
CFOA responses to announcement: Army on standby for winter flooding.
The Government and digital
Ann Kempster is ace. But she's not happy.
She is not alone
The Government IT Self-Harm Playbook
Normal service will resume tomorrow
You cannot have public services unless you pay for them
Social media and the bereaved
I've just returned from an excellent workshop run by Gwent LRF. They train professionals from the police and local authorities who might work with bereaved families after a major incident together. This workshop was focusing on issues relating to the media and the bereaved. I was talking, in particular, about social media. My slides are included at the bottom.
This is a great scheme Gwent are running and I think many other areas could learn from it.
It was a reminder of how many people from across the public sector will be called upon during and following an emergency. It's becoming harder and harder to find the resource to train and exercise those people. But without training and exercising all you have are a list of names in a plan.
How we use Skype (and Slack) in the Standby Task Force
The Standby Task Force is a digital humanitarian group. Our mission is to hep to improve the understanding of the situation on the ground following significant disasters. We have hundreds of members in the network and an individual deployment can involve anywhere between 60-400 of them.
Using Skype
SBTF was launched in 2010 and from the very start it used Skype chatrooms. This wasn't, I'm fairly sure, based on a detailed review of the the available platforms. It was based on the fact that the founders used Skype. Indeed Skype is still a vital communications tool in international humanitarian work. It's flexible. It's reasonably open and works across platform.
When you signed up for the Standby Task Force you were added to the General chatroom. This was a fairly low traffic room but allowed for announcements to be made.
When the SBTF deployed we would create a new chat room just for that deployment. When volunteers signed up for a deployment they would need to be added to the chatroom. This created a degree of friction in the process: you needed to be connected to someone already in the chat room to be added in. Which meant you had to shout in the general chat, accept a connection request and then be added in. Given timezone differences this could lead to significant delays.
We also, though this wasn't transparent to everyone, had a chat room for volunteers playing a coordinator role.
The deployment chatroom was designed to encourage volunteers working on a deployment somewhere to ask for assistance "Does anyone here read French?" "I've just found this photo, what should i do with it?" "What are the priorities right now?".
It also forged a sense of team and shared mission.
The actual work was done on individual's PCs and recorded on Google Documents (it's amazing what you can achieve with Skype and Google Docs).
In big deployments a single chatroom would become unwieldy and we would then break out into smaller chatrooms focused on particular tasks.
In any deployment we have volunteers undertaking coordinator and deployment lead roles. These are team leader type roles, encouraging and supporting volunteers but also answering technical questions and (in the case of leads) liasing with other groups and agencies in on the ground.
Good things/bad things
Chatrooms can be surprisingly satisfactory ways of interacting and the record of discussions really helped get a sense of the work that had been going on.
They didn't work for anyone. In fact in my first deployment I did nothing because I was unsure of what to do and, as a Brit, was too diffident to speak (type) up and ask for help. I know I'm not alone in this. Some of this is personal, some cultural and some is familiarity and comfort with the technology.
Emoji use is massive in SBTF chats. I think this is really important. We have people from across the world many of whom are communicating in their second (or third or fifth) language. We're working under pressure in a heightened environment. The risk of misunderstanding is high. Emoji really help to emphasise the intent behind the words. It took a bit of getting used to for me but now I couldn't be without them. Indeed I work with a client on emergency exercises and we use Skype chat for exercise control. Emoji are banned in that chat room and it feels like I'm communicating under water.
Advanced uses
Early on in the evolution of SBTF we recognised the real risk of stress for our volunteers and counsellors and an "empathy team" have always deployed with us. Coordinators work hard to spot signs of stress and to encourage volunteers to take breaks. It is amazing how you can get to know someone just through their typing and notice their mood change.
I think it was in the Nepal deployment when the empathy team set up a new chatroom badged as a cafe bar. It was inspired. People would spend time in that chatroom at the end of a shift. If you came across someone who seemed to be getting down in the deployment chat you could say "Let's get a coffee (or a beer)" and start talking in the cafe chatroom. The mood would change instantly. I strongly recommend this approach to any groups working in similar circumstances.
Using Slack
We've moved to Slack. Slack is better for our purposes. It removes much of the friction that we encountered creating chatrooms and adding people (because our members can just join the channel). It also makes it easier to have chatrooms that persist between deployments (for specialist teams like GIS). We have a permanent cafe bar now. Slack works well because web are a defined team (thanks Slack for letting us use the full version for free).
We haven't cracked the problem of dropping into a deployment chat being a bit like being dropped into a huge room of people shouting at each other (with emoji) but we're working on it.
It's not the perfect solution (there is no perfect solution). For people who don't use Slack for anything else it is, in many ways, no different to the old Skype days: they have to remember their login details for Slack and then remember to check what's happening. Because we deploy infrequently many of our volunteers don't spend much time in our Slack team between deployments.
We often work with local communities affected by disasters. Typically they will use whatever platform they were already using for discussion. Facebook is very common along with WhatsApp and Telegram.
Lessons for others
I was prompted to write this because of a discussion on Twitter about using Slack for multi-agency comms in emergencies in the UK. I definitely agree that using a text chat platform is a good idea (I wrote about this yesterday). Personally I'm not totally persuaded that Slack is the right solution for that use case. Because it is not so much a permanent team as a lose network, some of whom may work together in a particular emergency. If I were in that situation, I'd look at Skype first. It's become easier to join chatrooms without being invited and you can access Skype via a web browser (which can be very helpful in a public sector IT environment).
Can we use slack for civil contingencies chat?
Phil Rumens was looking for examples of using Slack for cross-agency team chat.
Anyone using @SlackHQ or other platforms for cross agency civil emergency team chat? Perhaps @likeaword might know?
— Phil Rumens (@PhilRumens) November 8, 2016
Its sparked a nice discussion including examples of the use of WhatsApp and Microsoft Lync I'm also familiar with the use of Skype by VOST teams and Skype (and more recently Slack) by The Standby Task Force.
Why do we need anything?
First. Let's talk about the problem.
There is a beautifully simple and flexible framework across the UK for dealing with emergencies (everything from floods to terrorism to zombie-apocalypse). Essentially all the bits of the public sector are required to work together in a series of interlocking committees. It works really very well.
And for many people it means spending a lot of an emergency on a phone or glued to email.
As a comms professional in local government (not right now, but often) I have been one of those people. And as a geek I have always felt that there must be a better way.
Illustrate through analogy
Let's take a hypothetical emergency: there's a massive fire in a factory in a big city.
Clearly there will be a lot of firefighters at the scene, fighting the fire. There will also be some police officers. They'll be setting up a cordon to make sure people don't come into the factory. A crime may have been committed so the police will also want to make sure no-one walks off with crucial evidence. People may be injured so there will be paramedics and ambulances. They may have to evacuate surrounding areas in which case the local authority will be looking for places for people to stay temporarily. The Environment Agency will be there to help minimise pollution from the event. Other local authority staff might be called in to provide specialist advice on things like the structural integrity of the building.
You get the idea.
And that's just the start. There's the health service making sure people get treated and that the health of the general public is protected, what if a care home is affected, what about a school and so on…
This quickly involves a lot of people and a lot of organisations.
And from a comms point of view there's a lot to keep on top of. The public need good, fast, information on what's going on (and advice on what they should do). Journalists will have questions about what's going on. Staff within organisations will want (and probably need) to know what's going on.
And the managers of the people at the scene will be talking. They'll be trying to work out what might happen next. What if the fire spreads? What if the wind shifts? Do we have enough fire tenders? Will we have to close roads to traffic and so on. And those people also need communications input.
Coordinate those cats
The good news is that, even in these straitened times, there should be quite a lot of comms people (or at least some) able to help between all the organisations involved. The bad news is that they will be in different parts of the country, probably dealing with lots of other things as well and they will have specialist knowledge of their organisations.
So as the situation evolves different people need to be consulted, need to be brought up to speed or to hand over their thoughts to people coming on shift.
And typically this involves emailing ever changing lists of people and sitting on telephone conferences. It typically leaves out organisations that have less direct involvement (even if that organisation might have valuable insight) and makes it very easy to lose track of where the situation has got to and where the comms messages stand.
If only there were a better way.
Well there is.
The situation I've just described is exactly the one faced by digital humanitarian groups like The Standby Task Force or VOST and they use Skype and Slack. Really successfully.
Text chat systems like this have some real advantages. When you come on shift you can read up the chat and quickly get updated not just on what's happened but why some choices have been made. You can also leave links to latest documents and more structured updates in chatrooms for people to refer to. And you can talk in real time to the people who are online right then. Different chat rooms can focus on different aspects of the task to avoid overwhelming the main discussion. But people who are less involved in that area but are interested or might have things to contribute can monitor and chip in when necessary. In The Standby Task Force we can coordinate the work of hundreds of people in all timezones using Skype (or Slack) and Google Docs.
It's not for us though
So why don't we use these in civil contingencies in the UK?
Well (as the WhatsApp example shows, sometimes we do). I think there are several reasons:
- insufficient clarity on security. In fact on Twitter my instant reaction was that Slack would be unsuitable for this use because of operational security, Matt Hogan (who frankly knows an awful lot more about this sort of thing than me) thought this probably isn't a barrier. Someone must know for sure…
- operational friction. Email and phone conferences are extremely flexible and use extremely widely understood protocols. You can ask for a phone number and an email address with absolute confidence that everyone will have one. Ask for a Skype handle and you may be disappointed. And even if people use Skype, will it get through the Firewall? Exercise Watermark in 2010 highlighted that technical issues like Agency A not being able to use the WiFi in Agency B's headquarters were a significant problem. I am aware this continue to be a problem in 2016. How many agencies not being able to take part in the chatroom would it take before the whole thing falls over.
- innate conservatism. Emergency planning isn't an area that encourages risk taking. When I was trained in emergency control centre operation (a few years ago I confess) we were shown how to run a control centre on pens and paper. That's sensible because pens and paper work in power cuts and don't suffer from WiFi incompatibility. But most of the time there isn't a power cut and there are much better tools.
- the LRF problem. Planning for emergencies is tasked to a partnership at police force level called the Local Resilience Forum. Each LRF is different but it can be hard to get new ideas adopted by the partnership bodies and, even if they are, to get each partner to implement them. No-one is in charge. This leads to flexibility in emergency response and, often, inaction outside of the response phase.
Slack may not be the best solution. I mean I love it but really it is designed for teams, it is not so good, to my mind, in the more ad-hoc situation of an emerging multiagency response. Skype probably would be my favourite solution. I can see why people might use WhatsApp (and I have used it myself in an event management role) but it's a bit to mobile device -specific for me.
What do we need?
What we could do with is:
- some nice clear guidance on what you can and can't do in terms of emergency management on, let's say, Skype, Slack and WhatsApp
- some nice clear advice on how to make it work "we suggest you set up a chat room for the comms team" type stuff. There's plenty of experience out there. Maybe I'll write up how it works for us at the Standby Task Force.
- a couple of LRFs to pilot it to reassure everyone else it's a good plan
An open source Brexit?
David Allen Green has always been worth following on Twitter (if that's your sort of thing). He's been particularly interesting on the Brexit mess/process/glory (delete according to your inclination). He wrote a lengthy series of Tweets today, essentially critiquing the government's failure to introduce a Bill to give it the power to trigger Article 50 (don't argue with me, read what he said). One of these Tweets jumped out at me.
11. Brexit is so complex a task, it can only be done in an open and collaborative way.
— Law and policy (@Law_and_policy) November 7, 2016
Now that is interesting. What would an open and collaborative Brexit process look like?
The UK Government already has an Open Policy Making toolkit. Brexit clearly is going to require new trade, immigration, foreign, data protection and environmental policy (that's just off the top of my head, smarter people can probably think of many more). So at the very least the development of these new policies could be undertaken in an open and collaborative way.
The government is already committed to publishing Open Data. So the data (read evidence) upon which policy ideas are based should already be public and available to use. It would be really helpful if this could be brought together in one place. So that we can all see what the evidence is (and then argue about what it means).
Open modelling. The government is going to have to make estimates about the impact of different aspects of policy and legislative changes on the UK as a whole, on particular parts of the UK (in terms of geography and in terms of sectors of the economy) and on the rest of the EU (and probably on individual member states like the Irish Republic). Those assessments could usefully be made public (along with the models that underpin them). This would help everyone understand the trade-offs that are being made and (perhaps of more practical use) allow academics, companies and other stakeholder groups the opportunity to suggest improvements. They'd also help businesses (and communities) make sensible contingency plans.
None of this is hard or expensive to do. In fact there are loads of really useful tools to facilitate this. Why not maintain Brexit on Git?
The Government is arguing that it can't reveal its hand in the negotiations. The idea of Brexit as poker is seductive but superficial. This is a negotiation between nation states not a high stakes card game. In fact useful negotiations can be undertaken in open environments. In fact having a shared picture of the facts and the implications of decisions would be likely to lead to better, more solid and long lasting agreements.
In fact we could use this process to as the start of a new, open, relationship with the EU and the rest of the world.
And it would go a long way to improve the level of trust between communities and people within the United Kingdom.


text:
Hi folks,
I'm trying to use the remote C ++ API offered by V-REP. But when I try to compile the example bubbleRobClient.cpp I get the error message "error: use of undeclared identifier 'simx_opmode_streaming' ". It makes sense thoug, because I couldn't find a .h or .c file where all the constants (this site: http://www.coppeliarobotics.com/helpFil ... stants.htm ) are defined? Am I missing a file, that has to be included?
Edit: Solved it: Compiling was successful with following src files in my project:
All above in folder programming/remoteApi. Following in folder programming/include.
After that i needed to add #define MAX EXT_API CONNECTIONS 255 to the files extApi.c, extApiInternal.h and extApiPlatform.c. Last step was adding NON_MATLAB_PARSING to the file extApi.h.
Hope this helps somebody in the future!
Use of undeclared identifier regarding remote API constants
Typically: "How do I... ", "How can I... " questions
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text:
The Cleveland Browns' defense has taken two more major hits, blows that could knock them from playoff contention.
The Browns could be without starting linebackers Karlos Dansby and Jabaal Sheard for the remainder of the season after both sustained significant injuries Sunday during a 23-7 loss to the Houston Texans.
Dansby injured his left knee on a running play in the second quarter and Coach Mike Pettine said Monday that the 11-year veteran will be out for "upwards of a month," and it's possible he could be done for the year. Dansby, who signed as a free agent with Cleveland in March, leads the Browns (6-4) in tackles and has been a leader on and off the field.
Sheard's foot injury could be more serious and his season is likely over. Pettine did not give specifics of the injury other than to say it involves a bone in Sheard's foot.
The losses of Dansby and Sheard, who will be an unrestricted free agent, further hurts Cleveland's defense, which lost run-stopping end Phil Taylor to a season-ending knee injury last week.
Dansby has been remarkably durable during his NFL career. He has never played fewer than 14 games in stints with Arizona and Miami.
The New Orleans Saints will have to continue their chase for an NFC South title without a pair of starters: receiver Brandin Cooks and safety Rafael Bush.
Cooks had surgery on his broken right thumb and his recovery time is expected to be four to six weeks, said his agent, Jeff Sperbeck.
Bush said he has a fractured bone in his lower right leg.
San Diego Chargers Coach Mike McCoy refuted star tight end Antonio Gates' comment that quarterback Philip Rivers has a severe rib injury. Rivers was injured twice Sunday in a 13-6 victory against winless Oakland but remained in the game.
Afterward, while commenting on Rivers' toughness, Gates said: "For those who don't know, he's been dealing with a rib injury, a very severe rib injury. So he's been toughing it out these last three, four weeks."
Asked Monday about Gates' comment, McCoy said: "Philip's never missed a snap in practice and he hasn't been in treatment with James, so I would not say severe injury." McCoy was referring to trainer James Collins.
The San Francisco 49ers activated nose tackle Glenn Dorsey following his 21-day evaluation window, putting him in position to play for the first time Sunday against Washington if he's deemed ready.
Dorsey tore his left biceps Aug. 1 and required surgery. He was placed on the injured reserve/designated to return list with the hopes he would be able to come back this season.
San Francisco cleared room on the 53-man roster by placing nose tackle Ian Williams on season-ending injured reserve because of a fractured left fibula suffered at New Orleans on Nov. 9.
Linebacker NaVorro Bowman's 21-day evaluation window is set to begin Tuesday. That means he could start practicing again this week as the 49ers determine whether he will be able to play this season following a devastating left knee injury in last January's NFC championship game that required surgery.


text:
Product Description
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