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How Long Does it Take to Earn a Bachelor's Degree in Criminal Justice?
If you've found this article it's likely because you're wondering "How long does it take to earn a bachelor's degree in criminal justice?" Well, like most bachelor's degrees, earning your diploma in criminal justice will most likely take about four years.
You typically need about 12 credits per semester to stay on track to graduate in that timeline, but you may be able to complete it faster by taking more than 16 credits each semester. Most colleges will have a degree path with required and recommended courses that help you figure out how long it will take you to graduate.
Most colleges have some basic requirements in order to apply – a high school diploma, GED or equivalent, and usually require SAT or ACT scores as well. Some programs may have additional requirements, but typically if you can meet the requirements for the college, you can get into the criminal justice program. Be sure to check out the office of the registrar to find out the specific requirements for the criminal justice program that you want to attend.
Other factors that can determine how long it takes to get your bachelor's degree in criminal justice are the program and type of school that you choose. Some criminal justice programs require more credits than others. The number of credit hours varies depending on the type of school, and if you choose a traditional onsite campus or attend an online one.
How Long Does it Take to Earn an Online Criminal Justice Bachelor Degree?
An alternative educational path that many people choose is to enroll in an online bachelor's degree in criminal justice program. Typically an online bachelor's degree takes about 2-4 years, depending on the specific school. One great advantage of an online degree is that you can go at your own pace – if you are highly motivated, it's very likely that you can complete your online degree much faster than it would take to complete a degree program at a traditional campus. Like onsite campuses, online colleges will also have a degree path with the required courses that will help you figure out the time commitment.
Online courses have grown in popularity over the past years due to their flexible nature. While in-person programs and traditional classrooms are well suited for people in need of highly structured learning environments, online and non-traditional classrooms are a better fit for highly motivated and organized people. Instead of being confined to a desk and stuck in a room for hours on end, online classes offer students the chance to learn from anywhere and reduce the difficulties of rearranging work schedules and trying to fit classes into their busy lives.
How to Get a Criminal Justice Degree
To get a criminal justice degree you have to fulfill the specific requirements of the college that you attend. Most colleges will have a core of general education courses that all students, regardless of major, have to complete. The reason for this is to give students a well-rounded education and help them become critical thinkers and become effective communicators. In addition to the general education courses, you must also pass the specific courses in your criminal justice major to get your diploma.
The types of classes that you take for a criminal justice degree will vary depending on the area you focus on, but you will most likely be studying the criminal justice system in the U.S. and learning how the courts work. You will probably also take classes in related topics like ethics and psychology. No matter the program you choose, the university has carefully selected courses and topics that will give insight into a wide range of criminal justice topics, like corrections, forensic science, or criminal law.
Bachelor's degree programs will typically take about 120-160 credit hours to earn your degree, and only 44-60 of those will be general education courses. The rest of those hours are filled with the criminal justice topics that interest you. You will get to choose some of the classes that make up your CJ credits and can focus on a particular area, like filling some of the credits with computer programming classes if you're interested in cybercrimes. Don't be intimidated by the number of hours it takes – the time will fly by when you're studying a topic that you are passionate about!
Criminal Justice Careers with a Bachelor's Degree
Earning a bachelor's in criminal justice opens the door to a wide choice of careers. You will have to choose an area to focus on, like corrections, forensics, law enforcement, or another related field. Once you have found the area that interests you, the next step is to choose a specific career path. For example, your degree could lead you to become any of these listed careers:
- All you need to become a K9 officer is a bachelor's degree and a few years of experience as a police officer – another job that only requires a bachelor's, although sometimes a high school diploma does suffice. You can also become an animal cruelty investigator with a bachelor's
- To become a criminal profiler, some entry-level positions only require a bachelor's degree.
- Many criminologists hold a master's degree, but some employees join the field with only a bachelor's degree.
There are many other types of criminal justice jobs you can pursue, like becoming a document examiner to help courts determine if evidence is valid or not. With such a wide range of careers, the salary ranges vary as well, but are typically in the range of $50,000-100,000 a year depending on your specialization. As you can see, a criminal justice degree is a versatile and sound investment in your future because there are so many types of jobs that utilize the knowledge that you gain.


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An insight in our world
Even though the autumn is close, the warm sunny days call for one more party! In other words, perfect conditions to bond, interact and have fun in our well-known style: a berg COMPUTERS branded teambuilding!
Last weekend, we gathered again after the summer break, to party one more time before the autumn takes over!
The fun was on top of our agenda, as we wanted to enjoy it all: sports competitions, dancing, singing, team-games, hiking, swimming and many more – all in three words: berg COMPUTERS teambuilding!
After a ferocious football match, supported by our lovely cheer-leaders, the team-activities challenged our imagination and boosted the atmosphere with smiles and joy. Next, to enjoy even more the nature, we went for a bike tour, hiking and swimming. It goes without saying that we all sang and danced the night away and shared summer stories at the campfire.
All in all, another successful teambuilding left us a mark of joyful memories and a boost of energy for a fresh, full of vitality autumn start.
Enjoy the pictures and find out more here on how to become a part of our team!

subset: commoncrawl


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Price: $11.95
Quantity: 1 available
Book Condition: NEAR FINE/Very Good
"As new except for slight softening of spine ends. DJ is intact but has light age soil and light wear to spine ends. A veteran returning from WWII... his Estonian wife, who fought with the Norwegian Resistance...plunge into the world of New York and big business."
Title: The Durable Fire
Categories: literature,
Edition: (BCE)
Publisher: "Cambridge, MA", ©1957
Binding: Hardbound
Book Condition: NEAR FINE/Very Good
lb: 2.10 lb
Seller ID: 04H002
Keywords: FICTION / General "NOT KEPT AT STORE- if you would like to pick this up, please order the day before you want to pick it up. Use the ""pick up in store"" option for shipping at checkout.",


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Ray Fisher is one of many who are in full support of how Henry Cavill's Superman has been treated in the new DC film universe and Justice League. Before the idea of a shared universe was realized, Cavill was tasked with helping relaunch Superman. Following Bryan Singer's Superman Returns and Christopher Nolan's grounded take on Batman, Zack Snyder worked to bring Superman into the modern age. In doing so, Superman has been the mainstay of the new universe, but a character who continues to be hidden in the marketing for Justice League.
Even with him being a character audiences have seen the most of in Warner Bros.' young universe, he's been seen as a figure of controversy. Supporters of the continuing arc praise Snyder and DC for taking a different approach with the Man of Steel, one that will hopefully culminate with him becoming the "true" version of Superman in Justice League. The doubters meanwhile point to a misuse of DC's hopeful hero.
Ray Fisher is poised to get a true introduction as Cyborg in Justice League and told Geek Magazine that he is a big fan of the way Superman has been treated in this new universe. He is approaching this not only from an actor's perspective to explain how his character views Superman, but also offers up his personal opinion on Superman's role.
He's hope. If we're going with the timeline of everything, Victor would have still been human at the time that Superman was very much a figure of controversy on this planet. I have to say, I'm a BvS supporter and I love the work that was done on Superman. One of the big themes for me watching BvS is you look at Lex Luthor and Bruce Wayne: they're a perfect study as to what's going on in the world around us. Think about Superman. He's basically a penniless, orphaned immigrant who simply just wants to do good and nobody will let him. And then you have two of the most powerful and intelligent men on the planet who have had their places in the world basically upended. They're basically told, 'you were at the top of the food chain, but here's this person who could literally do more than you ever could and doesn't want a single thing. They don't want to take advantage of anybody, they're not after money, they're not after anything except to do the right thing. That would make people very nervous
Fisher obviously has a very close connection to DC and Warner Bros., so he would never criticize the way they are running things, but this doesn't appear to be the usual PR-approved sentiments. He may be part of this DC world now, but Fisher is also clearly a fan of the properties and brings a unique perspective to the Superman conversation. The themes he mentions from Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice are noticeable, and his immigrant comparison translates well to Superman telling the story immigrants in America.
Similar arguments to Superman's portrayal have been expressed before, and with BvS and Man of Steel continuing to gain more fans, it may ultimately depend on how Justice League handles the character's resurrection to determine how successful (if at all) this arc was. If Superman returns and becomes the hero many believe him to be, then people may look back on his two previous appearances with greater appreciation after seeing what it all has been building to.
NEXT: Here's When the New Justice League Trailer Arrives
Source: Geek Magazine
- Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) release date: Jun 05, 2020
- Cyborg (2020) release date: Apr 03, 2020
- Aquaman (2018) release date: Dec 21, 2018
- Green Lantern Corps. (2020) release date: Jul 24, 2020
- Justice League (2017) release date: Nov 17, 2017
- Shazam! (2019) release date: Apr 05, 2019


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Description from Amazon USA :
The most widely played reeds in the world, with a superiority proven over the years, these reeds suit all styles of music.
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Reeds pour SAXOPHONE
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text: Brewer Hegeman Conference Center by Dr. Moneen Jones, Director, Missouri Pollinator Conservancy ProgramOctober 1, 2018 Leave a comment Loading Map.... Brewer Hegeman Conference Center201 Donaghey Avenue - ConwayEvents 35.078883 -92.4551113 Address 201 Donaghey Avenue Conway AR 72035 United States Upcoming Events No events in this location Written by Dr. Moneen Jones, Director, Missouri Pollinator Conservancy Program Currently, I manage two non-profits, the Missouri Pollinator Conservancy Program and the Midwest Master Beekeeper Program. Most recently, I was the Research Entomologist at the University of Missouri's Delta Research Center located in Portageville, MO, when I started the Missouri Master Beekeeper Program. All content for the new program remains the same.


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I'm not sure if it's the summer heat or what but I'm feeling so sluggish and lazy lately. Consequently, my writing has slowed down majorly (notice the lack of a Friday review), and no it's not because I've started the process of revamping the format of the blog (that's realistically not going to happen until after September when our Airstream biz busy season ends). Also right now, my mom is visiting from Hawaii so I've been busy taking her around everyday (she refuses to drive in Cali with all these aggressive drivers, lol). And to top it all off, we're sleeping in the new house with a new bed and my quality of sleep has severely deteriorated (the new bed is too soft and the new bedroom is super light in the morning which is majorly affecting my night owl lifestyle). Sorry to start off this post with just whining and complaining. This is probably better suited for a personal journal vent instead of my ethical style blog, but hey not all moments are rainbows and sunshine right?
Ok thanks for letting me vent, lol. Anyway we need new sheets for our new bed since we decided to upgrade to a king size. I was thinking of reordering from Brooklinen again (reviewed here), despite a hassle-filled return process on my last order. It's just so hard to get high quality percale cotton sheets for a decent price and I think Brooklinen provides the best value. If I feel like splurging I might go with these Coyuchi organic percale sheets, but we'll see since spending over $225 on sheets is pretty ridiculous.
In other news, did you see Everlane's sneak peak of their fall shoe line-up? I am majorly digging both the pointed mules and blunt toe slingback (though they're so much like my V-sling backs that I don't know if I can justify the purchase). But I'm really loving that granny toe sling back look.
In other news, I've officially finished 3 weeks of No Buy July and I've got another week and a half to go. So far I have not purchased a single item for the closet (yes, I am buying stuff for the new house but I seriously need the furniture and housewares. The great thing about living in a trailer is that we didn't have to furnish it--though the styling of it all leaves a lot to be desired. But now we are starting from pretty much scratch). I wonder if it's the no buy july thing or what, but this month just seems to be crawling. There's a handful of things I want to buy when the month is over but luckily I've had minimal interest in the Nordstrom sale. I just don't think anything I buy there would be something that I would wear over and over again. I did click over to the site once (out of habit, without thinking) but quickly clicked away. I dunno but the more I see other bloggers and instagrammers touting the Nordstrom sale, I get more and more turned off by it. I mean are you really buying closet staples or just because there's a sale?


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Meredith + Jake | Wedding Day | Middle Georgia Wedding Photographer
Meredith and Jake's wedding day could not have been any more perfect! Every detail put into this day made it super special, but the fact that it was an "at home" wedding, means extra hard work was given for their special day! Loved spending time with these two, their bridal party, and families! Happy marriage you two!
Catherine Cansler


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Are you interested in one these projects, we welcome you to send your motivation letter and resume to firstname.lastname@example.com or to the person whose name is under the description.


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GUARANTEE: As with all my artifacts, this piece is guaranteed to be original, as described.
WWII Portsmouth Navy Yard Made USS Trout SS-202 Submarine Ashtray.
SOLD!!! No Longer Available!
Product Description
ARTIFACT: This is a World War II Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Made USS Trout SS-202 ashtray. The USS Trout was a high-scoring submarine, credited with sinking 12 ships. The vessel, however, was lost during her 11th war patrol. The tray has indentations to hold 4 cigarettes at a time.
VINTAGE: Circa WWII
SIZE: Approximately 5-3/8" in diameter 1/2" height
MATERIALS / CONSTRUCTION: Steel
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ITEM NOTES: This is from a Submarine Collectibles collection which we will be listing more of over the next few months. VAEX17 LAFEX03/17
CONDITION: 8+ (Excellent): Moderate wear, has definitely been used.


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Law, Lawyers and Courts Quotes
There are many pleasant fictions of the law in constant operation, but there is not one so pleasant or practically humorous as that which supposes every man to be of equal value in its impartial eye, and the benefits of all laws to be equally attainable by all men, without the smallest reference to the furniture of their pockets. ~ Nicholas Nickleby - Share this Quote
If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers. ~ The Old Curiosity Shop - Share this Quote
In mind, she was of a strong and vigorous turn, having from her earliest youth devoted herself with uncommon ardour to the study of law; not wasting her speculations upon its eagle flights, which are rare, but tracing it attentively through all the slippery and eel-like crawlings in which it commonly pursues its way. ~ The Old Curiosity Shop - Share this Quote
These sequestered nooks are the public offices of the legal profession, where writs are issued, judgments signed, declarations filed, and numerous other ingenious machines put in motion for the torture and torment of His Majesty's liege subjects, and the comfort and emolument of the practitioners of the law. ~ The Pickwick Papers - Share this Quote
"What lawsuits grow out of the graves of rich men, every day; sowing perjury, hatred, and lies among near kindred, where there should be nothing but love!" ~ Martin Chuzzlewit - Share this Quote
Lawyers hold that there are two kinds of particularly bad witnesses--a reluctant witness, and a too-willing witness. ~ The Pickwick Papers - Share this Quote
Jarndyce and Jarndyce drones on. This scarecrow of a suit has, in course of time, become so complicated that no man alive knows what it means. The parties to it understand it least, but it has been observed that no two Chancery lawyers can talk about it for five minutes without coming to a total disagreement as to all the premises. Innumerable children have been born into the cause; innumerable young people have married into it; innumerable old people have died out of it. Scores of persons have deliriously found themselves made parties in Jarndyce and Jarndyce without knowing how or why; whole families have inherited legendary hatreds with the suit. The little plaintiff or defendant who was promised a new rocking-horse when Jarndyce and Jarndyce should be settled has grown up, possessed himself of a real horse, and trotted away into the other world. Fair wards of court have faded into mothers and grandmothers; a long procession of Chancellors has come in and gone out; the legion of bills in the suit have been transformed into mere bills of mortality; there are not three Jarndyces left upon the earth perhaps since old Tom Jarndyce in despair blew his brains out at a coffee-house in Chancery Lane; but Jarndyce and Jarndyce still drags its dreary length before the court, perennially hopeless. ~ Bleak House - Share this Quote
"If the law supposes that,' said Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands, "the law is a ass--a idiot. If that's the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is, that his eye may be opened by experience--by experience." ~ Oliver Twist - Share this Quote
So, Mr. Chadband--of whom the persecutors say that it is no wonder he should go on for any length of time uttering such abominable nonsense, but that the wonder rather is that he should ever leave off, having once the audacity to begin--retires into private life until he invests a little capital of supper in the oil-trade. ~ Bleak House - Share this Quote
"And when it come to character, warn't it Compeyson as had been to the school, and warn't it his schoolfellows as was in this position and in that, and warn't it him as had been know'd by witnesses in such clubs and societies, and nowt to his disadvantage? And warn't it me as had been tried afore, and as had been know'd up hill and down dale in Bridewells and Lock-Ups? And when it come to speech-making, warn't it Compeyson as could speak to 'em wi' his face dropping every now and then into his white pocket-handkercher - ah! and wi' verses in his speech, too - and warn't it me as could only say, 'Gentlemen, this man at my side is a most precious rascal'? And when the verdict come, warn't it Compeyson as was recommended to mercy on account of good character and bad company, and giving up all the information he could agen me, and warn't it me as got never a word but Guilty?" ~ Great Expectations - Share this Quote
19 Law, Lawyers and Courts quotes found! Use the links below to see them all.
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I came to New York to study art history but the creative vibe of the top floor loft at 98 Bowery would awaken my latent artistic ambitions. At first I tried painting, but when Mike Malloy exposed me to a new form of Conceptual Art rooted in exploring human psychology, I became an instant convert.Read More
The "Lives" exhibition organized by Jeffrey Deitch opened in November 1975 at the Fine Arts Building in New York. It marked the start of a brief period when the building was the center of an energetic art scene that helped rejuvenate the deserted neighborhood just south of Soho--the now fashionable Tribeca.Read More
The introductory catalogue essay by Jeffrey Deitch for "Lives," a 1975 exhibition at the Fine Arts Building in New York.Read More
Artist pages from the 1975 exhibition catalogue "Lives" organized by Jeffrey Deitch. "Artists who deal with people's lives (including their own) as the subject and/or the medium of their work."Read More
From the moment I was exposed to Mike Malloy's brand of conceptual art, focusing on human psychology and incorporating the actions of people, I knew my own creative direction. My art was interactive and used photography and text. It took less than six months from my first attempts at making conceptual art, to my first one-person show in fall 1973 at OK Harris Gallery in Soho.Read More
Early Works Conceptual Art by Marc H. Miller. "Write a Word" (1972) and other blackboard pieces. Word response pieces: "Men by Women" (1972); "Women by Men" (1972); "Modern Art" (1972). "What's Your Greatest Fear" (1972). "Choose a Flower or Gun" (1972) and other prop pieces. "T-shirt" (1972); "Nixon Mask" (1972); "Nose and Glasses" (1972); "Rubber Lips."Read More
A sampling from an extended series of drawings of penises and vaginas done by men and women from 1973 - 1975. A video showing college students making penises and vaginas out of clay and talking about their creations, 1974. A conceptual art project by Marc H. Miller.Read More
A portrait in pictures and words of Bettie Ringma, 1975.Read More


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Emily and Ian's Wayzata Engagement Photos
When I met Emily and Ian last October, they didn't have a wedding date yet.
Usually when I meet engaged couples they have a venue and a date in mind, so it's really fun for me to work with couples that don't have the place set. Emily, Ian and I were able to talk about their ideal wedding day and I could help out with some suggestions for my favorite venues.
When they chose the beautiful Campus Club for their September wedding I couldn't have been more excited!
On to the engagement session.
For their engagement portraits, Emily and Ian wanted to capture two different vibes and two different locations.
For the first portraits, Emily and Ian brought me along on a mini-date to charming downtown Wayzata. I love the wardrobe choices the couple made for this part of the session, Emily's dress is pretty and elegant without distracting from her. Their outfits don't match too much but compliment the overall feeling.
When I talk to couples about engagement session outfits people often think they have to dress like their having their picture taken. Like they must wear solid colors or coordinated outfits.
My advice is to dress like you're going on a date with your partner. You'll pick something that you feel really good wearing, it'll be fancy (but not over the top for you) and wearing something you'd pick for any occasion makes the photos feel natural.
I love these cute photos of Emily and Ian sharing some macarons from Bellecour on their Wayzata date!
As the sun started to set, we drove to a park near Medicine Lake to capture the pretty fall colors. This park is near Emily and Ian's home, where they go walking and running everyday, so that instantly brought a different, comfortable feeling to the photos.
I was so happy we could follow the light for these portraits; the photos in Wayzata have the bright, open late-afternoon light of a Minnesota fall. In the park, we were able to capture the golden sunset light and saturated colors of sunset and then, staying just a few moments after the sun truly sets, the very early dusk light softens and mellows out. The sky develops these lovely blues and greys and the vibe gets really romantic and atmospheric. These might be my favorite photos of the session.
Emily and Ian's Engagement Session Art
Emily and Ian knew they wanted to create some art with the photos from their engagement session so I stopped my their house to chat about options. They know that where they live now won't be their forever home, so they wanted art that could move with them and adapt to new spaces. We designed a gallery wall with four photos, with space to add a larger wedding photo to the grouping after their September marriage. The four photos we chose were all from the second half of their engagement session. While the poses and composition are all dynamic and different, because the setting and wardrobe are the same, the gallery looks intentional.
Emily and Ian, I loved tagging along on this little mini date with you! Thank you for welcoming me into your home so we could create beautiful art together and introducing me to the lovely light at Medicine Lake. I can't wait to celebrate with you in September!


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At Common Ground Northeast, the House Church context is the primary expression of our church. We live in a day and culture where the word church rarely lives up to the New Testament expression. When people hear "church" they often think of a place or an event. The church of the Scriptures is a committed group of people seeking to glorify Jesus and live out His instructions in Matthew 28:18-20, to be and make disciples. Though participating in a corporate worship gathering is both biblical and beneficial, our ability to BE the church on Sunday is limited.
House churches are intended to be a "family on mission" usually comprised of 10-20 people who meet during the week in homes throughout the city. They're intended to bring people together of diverse ages, ethnicities and backgrounds to join as a community for the purpose of spurring one another on to live out our 3 Pillars of Engagement: Devotion, Community, and Mission.
In this community, we worship God, learn from the Scriptures through Bible studies, lean into the guiding of the Holy Spirit, discover and use our spiritual gifts, and serve one another and the world around us. We believe that having a consistent community for encouragement, discovery, prayer and laughter is an essential aspect of our spiritual journeys. It's no coincidence that the early church met both corporately and house to house (Acts 5:42).
Want to join a House Church?
We have a launch process to help set the culture of our House Churches and to care for them along the way: ROOTED, REINFORCED, and RELEASED (infographic below). This process takes place seasonally three times a year (calendars listed below) and helps to form the group into a "family on mission."
We hope to guide our House Churches to become active agents of reconciliation, communities who resemble the movement of the Early Church, and to be a priesthood of all believers engaging our gifts for the Kingdom of Heaven. If you would like to join our next House Church Launch, click the button to the left.
If you can't commit to a house church now...
We understand that work, family obligations, and other issues can make it challenging to commit to an evening house church, especially on weeknights. If you're unable to join a house church, we still want you to be a part of our community! We frequently host events and Bible/book studies in our Men's Ministry and Women's Ministry groups, as well as missional communities and other discipleship opportunities. To see if there are any options upcoming and to learn more about them, check out our Events page. We also recommend that you attend our Common Ground Q+A meeting (second Sunday of every month, immediately after the service) - details will be provided during our service.
Email firstname.lastname@example.com if you need the password!


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Thursday, April 3, 2008
What have we been up to?
I haven't posted since Feb. I can't believe that. I guess I've been a little busy. Busy with nothing in particular but life in general, but busy. Easter Sunday came early this year. We had a great day at church. I didn't buy "easter dresses" for the girls this year, I just pulled out some dresses from last Spring that still fit and dressed them up with a sweater and pretty shoes. But, being the slacker I am, I have no pictures. The only pics I have of Easter are these with the girls decorating eggs in their pj's and 1 really horrible pic (i think) of the girls on easter morning with their baskets. Anna Belle is wearing her Christmas pj's and Elizabeth actually had a fever the night before, so she looks a little rough. So, enjoy my easter pics! Ha, ha.
1 comment:
- Chris Pruett said...
hey guys this message is for winfield. this is chris pruett brents friend from the other end of the state. i was just going to get up with you and say hey man! i got a blog up and going here on blogspot. its chrispruett.blogspot.com so you can check it out if you want man. hope all is well! take care
- April 9, 2008 at 7:31 PM
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Is scaring potential customers a good tactic? LG must think so. They've earned more than 13 million views for this video. What do you think? H/T to Albert Maruggi of the Marketing Edge podcast. Found at YouTube from LGBlogUK.
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I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a huge Halloween person. I haven't worn a costume in about three years, despite the fact that every year I come up with elaborate costume ideas in my head, dream about the opportunity to wear them and then never actually make them happen. I always come up with three tiers of costumes, ranging from the most involved to the quick and easy. For those wondering, here are the costumes I planned out this year:
- Beyonce at Coachella
- Lana from Archer
- Arthur the Anteater
And yet, Halloween is just a few days away and I'm no closer to getting any of these costumes together than I was last year. But, one thing I have managed to make in time for Halloween are these Vegan White Chocolate Gingerbread Truffles, which are about as close as I'll get to celebrating Halloween this year as any.
But I kinda like it that way. These gingerbread truffles are to die for, they're super rich and decadent and made even richer and decadent-er by the luscious white chocolate coating that surrounds each of them, the extra drizzle of milk chocolate on top and the generous sprinkles of crushed gingerbread crumbs. Yum! The perfect treat to whip up for your Halloween parties as an easy, sweet finger food.
Homemade truffles in general are one of the easiest party-friendly sweets to make because the basic formula needs only three ingredients: crushed cookies, cream cheese, and chocolate coating. Of course, I ended up using Trader Joe's Vegan Cream Cheese for this recipe and no one could even tell! their vegan cream cheese is the best substitute that I've tasted thus far – I give it a five star rating. Also, Trader Joe's gingersnaps cookies are THE BEST gingersnaps on the planet. Trust me on this!
Even though I don't always celebrate Halloween to the fullest, I'll never be one to say no to a Halloween-inspired dessert during this time of year, or any time really!
- 20 ounces gingersnaps
- 16 ounces Trader Joe's cream cheese, softened
- ½ teaspoon ground ginger
- ½ teaspoon ground cloves
- ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 3 cups vegan white chocolate chips - most white chocolate on the market is accidentally vegan as they typically don't include milk (just double check the label)
- 1/4 cup vegan milk chocolate
- In a food processor, pulse the gingerbread cookies with the ground ginger, cloves, and cinnamon until the cookies are finely crushed.
- Pour the crumbs into a medium-sized bowl, reserving about 1/2 cup of the crumbs for sprinkling later.
- Add the softened cream cheese and mix with a wooden spoon until completely incorporated.
- Use the smallest ice-cream scoop you can find, or just your bare hands, roll out tiny gingerbread balls and place on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Once you've rolled all of the balls, place the baking sheet in the refrigerator for 60 minutes.
- Melt the vegan white chocolate by microwaving for about 2 minutes, stirring every 20 seconds so it doesn't burn. Melt the vegan milk chocolate as well in a separate small bowl.
- Insert a toothpick into each of the gingerbread balls. Use the toothpick to dunk the cookie ball into the white chocolate, submerging it completely.
- Place the chocolate covered ball back onto the parchment paper, leaving the toothpick inserted. Repeat with the next ball (this gives the first ball just enough time to set).
- Remove the toothpick from the first ball, and immediately sprinkle with the gingerbread crumbs you had set aside earlier. Try to hide the hole left behind from the toothpick with sprinkled cookie crumble. Use a folk to drizzle some of the melted vegan milk chocolate on top.
- Once you have dipped, sprinkled, and drizzled each ball, return the baking tray to the refrigerator for another hour to ensure the chocolate is entirely set.
Adapted From: Pretty Practical Pantry


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Dates, Eats, and Cozy Redwood National Park Lodging for Two in California's Coastal town of Eureka
When February comes around, there is always this sense of love and life, and you can find just that when you stay at our Redwood National Park lodging this season. We've got plenty of options just for two, and there are endless opportunities for adventure (and even date nights) that you'll love spoiling one another while on vacation.
Whether it's a sweet cafe in town or a hike through the rugged territory, you'll be surprised by all that you can do around California's Northern Coast. Learn more about a few places you can enjoy a date, where to dine on the best food in town, and where you can rest your tired feet at the end of the day when you appreciate our dates, eats, and cozy Redwood National Park Lodging in Eureka.
Date Ideas around Eureka
Eureka a sweet and unforgettable coastal town right in the heart of Northern California's Humboldt County and you'll just love experiencing the fantastic activities and attractions that visitors can try. When planning a getaway for two in Eureka, you're going to be with one another the whole time and while quiet, alone time is much needed and deserved, at night, get out on the town with your loved one.
Whether you dance the night away or you just want to cherish each others company under dim lighting and delicious beverages, you'll want to check out Five Eleven which serves up some seriously tasty crafted cocktails as you lounge in style.
During the daytime with the marvelous Redwood National Park nearby, you'll want to embrace a fantastic hike through the woods to the Fern Canyon or see the Avenue of the Giants. After spending the day away from the shore, make sure you experience the ocean and all its glory with some time on the beach or at an overlook. Plus, keep your eyes open for whales swimming south to the warmer waters surrounding Mexico.
If you're an art lover, Eureka is the place to be! You almost can't walk down a street in downtown without spotting an art gallery, museum, or studio. Peruse the galleries, and fine art collections then make your masterpiece at Parasol Arts or Lavender Rose Paint Nights.
Best Restaurants for Two
Dining for two can be comfortable, just stop by a local cafe in the morning and dine on some delicious breakfast fare. At night, you'll want to dine at one of the best places to eat dinner in Eureka. Perfect for a party of two, Restaurant 301 is located in a quaint Inn, Hotel Carter, and offers seasonal menus that feature items from farm-to-table. Dinner here is sure to surprise your loved one's palette with the melody of flavors and tastes.
Heat up your night with a trip to Brick and Fire Bistro, one of Eureka's unique pizza locations. Utilizing a brick over for than just dough and sauce, you'll want to taste the brick fries and the wood-oven roasted oysters!
If your loved one in need some creamy pasta? You'll want to try Gabriel's which is a bi-level eatery located right on 216 E St in Eureka. Trust us, this Italian restaurant's menu is delectable, and you'll be able to amp up the romance with a glass of vino and some calming, live music.
Cozy Rentals In Eureka
Finding the ultimate Redwood National Park lodging for two, come easy when you work with Redwood Coast Vacation Rentals. We have plenty of options in Eureka from modern lofts, to cottages, and even Victorian homes, so whatever you are in the mood for, we've got it!
Many of our rentals are historical renovations like our The view at Snug Alley, situated in the heart of Old Town. This spectacular 2 bedrooms offers Marina views, newly designed kitchen and common areas, and pretty much all new everything. The mix of old and new bring to life the history and current nature of the Northern Coast of California. Plus, you'll love how cozy the California King bed is when it's just you two curled up next to one another. This city location is great for those who don't mind traffic and all the incredible noise that a city brings.
If you do not quite want to be immersed within the city limits, check out our Bay Landing rental. This contemporary getaway is right on Humboldt Bay. Featuring modern amenities, updated bathrooms, and cozy beds, you'll just cherish the time spent together in this apartment or anywhere you choose to go during your vacation.
We've spoken about the modern and contemporary side of Eureka and there is plenty of that to go around, but if you're looking for a little more charm and character, The Pink Lady is an elegant choice. With stunning views of the Eureka Harbor, you'll be able to savor the ornate architecture of the building while finding information on the fascinating history of its original owner.
No matter the season or time of year, you and your sweetheart will love visiting Northern California. With our wide selection of Redwood National Park lodging, you're sure to embrace the month of love and the rest of the eleven months with your best friend by your side. Travel throughout the charming town of Eureka and experience a coastal city that offers anything and everything your heart desires.
Book your trip with Redwood Coast Vacation Rentals, and we're sure to find the best Redwood National Park lodging for two!


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Meditation, great for overall wellbeing, many athletes are also using it for racing and training performance. "I began to see it was what I needed to go deeper and to bring more balance to my life."Read More
Wade Lewis x Dr Cotton for a limited edition run of t shirts featuring Niki.Read More
"Niki is a wonderful instructor. Her impressive bicycle sportsmanship regularly wows the kids and encourages them to improve."Read More
Thank you to all of Niki's fans, old and new, that have checked in, with the site recently passing the 2.5 million mark. Wow!Read More
"She rips and lives life to the fullest."Read More
"The world-class athletes on these pages have our attention, they know what it takes to succeed physically - and they want you to keep up with them."Read More
Niki was involved with the "In Good Company" clinic held at The Object Gallery in Sydney, Australia. It was run to promote and foster young talent in Urban Design.Read More
If multitasking is anyone's middle name, it belongs to biker-chick Niki Gudex. "I am so passionate about mountain biking and cycling. Bikes are a great vehicle for change."Read More
The Slovakian interview with Niki for Biker magazine.Read More
Creative, street-savvy designers have the opportunity to elevate the humble bike rack into a glorious work of urban art.Read More
"Never happier than when off the beaten track, graphic designer, model, artist and champion mountain biker Niki 'Dingo' Gudex gives an insight into what it's like."Read More
"Niki edged out beauties such as Danica Patrick and Ana Ivanovic to finish numero uno in a genetically blessed top ten."Read More
"Mountain biker Niki Gudex talks with Sport & Style."Read More
Niki talks about her career and nutrition in the body and health section for Cleo magazine.Read More
Appearing on Thursday Night Live, Niki put her self on the line for Australia's new 24 hour digital sports channel One HD.Read More
Exploring the MTB world through female eyes. Niki writes it up for her regular section "The GudeX Files".Read More
Niki stars as a bicycle riding fairy in an advertising campaign that has been entered for an award at the prestigious Cannes Advertising Festival in France.Read More
"Niki has represented Australia in the World Championships on several occasions; she's even found the time to become a bit of a role model for those just getting into the sport."Read More
From the Hungarian cycling magazine Velo comes this colourful profile piece on Niki.
Read More
Germany's MountainBike magazine is led on a journey by Niki through one of America's secret singletrail paradises in Sun Valley, Idaho.Read More


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TOKYO (CBS.MW) -- Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has won a mandate for "structural reform with no sacred cows." The ruling Liberal Democratic Party, by echoing his reformist slogans and exploiting his strong personal popularity, strode to an overwhelming victory in Sunday's election for the upper house of Japan's Parliament -- a result that was unthinkable just four months ago.
In a nod to his resuscitation of the LDP leadership's approval ratings from woeful single digits in spring, party bigwigs have all but assured that Koizumi will face no opposition in the LDP presidential election that they decided to advance by a month to August 10.
Koizumi will never again have it so good from his own party, home to the prickliest opponents of reform. Koizumi's popularity with the Japanese public will never be as high either, as lower-than-expected voter turnout has already hinted. Now he'll have to show Japan and expectant investors around the world exactly what he meant by his vague campaign catchphrase, "No pain, no gain."
This is the political backdrop to daunting economic policy challenges. Just about everything is falling in Japan: consumer spending, industrial production, exports, and prices of all kinds of goods, services and assets. And apart from bankruptcies and unemployment, which exacerbate deflation, a scarier indicator that keeps rising is the crippling amount of bad loans in the Japanese banking system.
Before recalcitrant LDP legislators openly resist the prime minister's broad reform agenda of cuts in government spending, a banking cleanup and deregulation, Koizumi must take advantage of his mandate immediately to set specific priorities.
Unfortunately, the first post-election policy controversy to settle centers not on structural reforms but on Koizumi's intention to visit Yasukuni Shrine, whose sacred grounds bear memorial to Japan's war dead -- including convicted war criminals. South Korea and China, already outraged by a Japanese government-approved history textbook that they and others say whitewashes Japan's military past, strongly oppose the visit. Koizumi's foreign minister and the New Komeito Party, an LDP coalition partner, are also against it.
Koizumi should cancel his planned Aug. 15 pilgrimage at once. If he's insensitive to the diplomatic blunder, he should at least understand: It's the economy, stupid, and the Yasukuni brouhaha is crowding out precious opportunities to hog headlines and TV time for his reform ideas. But even in canceling, there's a cost. Flip-flopping on policy this time will anger LDP conservatives; if it becomes a pattern, it'll erode his public appeal quickly.
A budget battle is about to brew. It will test Koizumi's commitment to reining in fiscal spending "remedies" that have bloated Japan's government debt to 134 percent of GDP without providing lasting stimulus to the economy.
Fiscal fudge
With Japan almost certainly in recession again, the LDP old guard will find it hard to break its addiction to pork-barrel projects. Koizumi has said he's opposed to further large-scale supplementary budgets, and he has pledged to cap government borrowing next year by issuing no more than 30 trillion yen ($240 billion) in bonds.
What would be an acceptable fiscal fudge in the eyes of the market? Koizumi probably will come around to a small supplementary budget this autumn of 2-3 trillion yen (about a third the size of the whoppers of the 1990s). Expanding the safety net for unemployed workers while eliminating wasteful spending on bridges and dams is the way forward.
This might prevent the economy from falling off a cliff and leaves next year's spending cap intact. But the market's focus will intensify on the debate leading up to the fiscal 2002 budget proposal in December and how the banking cleanup will be financed.
Koizumi can't afford to delay deciding when, how and how much funds would be available for recapitalizing lenders. Deflation is increasing the burden on ailing corporate borrowers, some of which should have had their credit lines cut long ago anyway. And the way Japanese banks categorize good, risky and bad loans remains inadequate and unreliable for dealing with writing off non-performing assets within two to three years, as Koizumi has promised.
The power of money
At least until convincing bank reform is proposed, the stubborn Bank of Japan looks set to continue to rebuff calls that it ease monetary policy aggressively, such as by buying bonds directly from the government and setting inflation targets. The BOJ, like Koizumi, doesn't believe in painless economic recovery. But its determination to keep the pressure on corporate borrowers to restructure, by not reflating the economy and easing their debt burdens, has done more harm than good for the economy as a whole.
That said, the market's confidence in Koizumi's ability to deliver real reform will largely hinge on how he tackles the decade-old banking mess.
Finally, deregulation can tie in with banking reform and monetary easing. Privatizing Japan's public housing and loan corporation, which offers mortgages at below-market rates, can open the door wider to profitable opportunities for banks in the mortgage market while stimulating competition.
Deregulating or eliminating scores of other public-corporation monopolies would also lead to lower prices for such things as electricity, Internet access and postal services, so that consumers would have more money for other expenditures. But in pursuing these reforms, Koizumi will confront vested interests and LDP legislators that have long protected them.
He must conserve and manipulate his popularity to pick these fights well. Despite his victories so far, the market is in no mood to cut the charismatic Koizumi much slack.


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Dla Studentów
- The KESE workshop (EN only)
- Mindstorms (archive)
Lukasz Habrzyk email@example.com
The World Wide Web is the largest single information resource humanity has ever produced. Unfortunately, despite its dependence on computers to operate at all, most of the information is only understandable by humans and not by computers. While computers can use the syntax of HTML documents to display them to you in a browser, Web computers can't understand the content—the semantics.
The Semantic Web is Tim Berners-Lee's vision of the future of the Web. Although the dream is not yet realized, enough building blocks are now in place to enable you to take advantage of several Semantic Web technologies on your Web site, including RDF, OWL and SPARQL. The goal of the Semantic Web is to expose the vast information resource of the Web as data that computers can automatically interpret.
The Web was originally all about documents. The simple act of clicking on a link in your Web browser triggers your browser to ask a Web server to send you a document, which it then displays to you. The document might be your calendar for the next seven days, or it might be an e-mail from a friend. The Web browser doesn't really care; it just follows its internal rules for displaying the page. It's up to you to understand the information on the page.
Structuring data adds value to that data. With consistent structure, it can be used in more ways. You can see the demand for structured data today in the proliferation of APIs that have sprung up around Web sites as a part of the Web 2.0 trend—an API is structured data, and structured data from a variety of sources is what powers mashups. The idea behind mashups is that data is pulled from various sources on the Web and, when combined and displayed in a unified manner, this combination of elements adds value over and above the source information alone.
The individual APIs that everyone is busy building are to solve the exact same problem that the Semantic Web is intended to address: Expose the content of the Web as data and then combine disparate data sources in different ways to build new value. Rather than build and maintain your own API, you can build your Web site to take full advantage of the Semantic Web infrastructure which is already in place. If your Web site is your API, you can reduce the overall development and maintenance. Similarly, rather than build custom solutions for every Web site you want to pull data from, you can implement one solution based on Semantic Web technologies and have it work interchangeably across many Web sites—including Web sites you weren't even aware of before you began development.
Semantic Web technologies can be considered in terms of layers, each layer resting on and extending the functionality of the layers beneath it. Although the Semantic Web is often talked about as if it were a separate entity, it is an extension and enhancement of the existing Web rather than a replacement of it.
The Semantic Web technology stack
As shown in Figure 1, the base layer of the Semantic Web is HTTP and URIs. These are commonly considered 'Web' rather than 'Semantic Web', but every proposed Semantic Web technology rests upon these Web fundamentals. URIs are the nouns of the semantic Web. HTTP are the verbs: GET, PUT and POST as well as a number of thoroughly tested solutions in the fields of authentication and encryption.
The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is the workhorse of the Semantic Web. It is a grammar for encoding relationships. An RDF triple has three components: a subject, a predicate (or verb), and object. Each can be expressed as a resource on the Web, that is a URI. This is far less ambiguous than encoding data in random XML documents. Compare the different ways of expressing a simple relationship in XML with the RDF triple.
Ambiguous relationships in XML
<author> <uri>page</uri> <name>Rob</name> </author> <person name="Rob"> <work>page</work> </person> <document href="http://www.example.org/test/page" author="Rob" />
Expressing relationships in RDF (RDF Triple)
<page> <author> <Rob> .
The relationship expressed in all the examples in XML is 'Rob is the author of page'—a fairly simple statement—yet expressed in several ways in XML. It would be very difficult to build software that can derive that relationship from all the possible ways to express it in XML. But an RDF expresses that relationship in only one way, so it becomes feasible to build generic parsers.
In the early days of the Semantic Web, it was hoped that content producers would make all their content available in RDF and soon make a plethora of data available. Unfortunately, perhaps because the main XML expression of RDF looked unnecessarily complex, uptake was slow. More succinct RDF representations, like Notation3 (N3) and Terse RDF Triple Language (Turtle) are now available but have been unable to overcome the inertia. (For more on N3 and Turtle, see Resources.) A solution to the problem was inspired by the Microformats approach. With Microformats, semantic value is added to existing HTML content by using consistent patterns of standard HTML elements and attributes. Microformats exist for narrow but common items of data such as contact information and calendar items. The W3C equivalent is RDFa, RDF data embedded in XHTML. The implementation is slightly more complex than Microformats but it is far more generic—anything which you can express in RDF, you can add to XHTML documents using RDFa. Through this technique the Semantic Web can be bootstrapped by existing Web content.
Of course, the RDF embedded in XHTML documents as RDFa is no good for all the Semantic Web tools, which require RDF as input. There needs to be an automatic method to recognize the presence of RDFa content and extract the RDF out of it. The W3C solution for this is Gleaning Resource Descriptions from Dialects of Languages (GRDDL). The idea is that you run an existing XHTML document through an XSL transform to generate RDF. You can then link the GRDDL transform either through direct inclusion of references or indirectly through profile and namespace documents.
While unambiguously expressed semantics with RDF are good, even if everyone did that, it is of little use if you have no idea how the RDF from different sites is related. The RDF triple shown above expressed an author relationship in the predicate, and while the meaning might seem obvious to you, computers still need some help. If you expressed an author relationship in an RDF file on your site, could the computer assume they were the same thing? What if you instead had a writer relationship in your RDF triple? What you need is a way to express a common vocabulary, to be able to say that my author and your author are the same thing, or that 'author' and 'writer' are analogous. On the Semantic Web this problem is solved by ontologies, and the W3C standard for expressing ontologies is the Web Ontology Language (OWL).
Once you have some sources of data in RDF, and you have ontologies to let you determine the relationships between them, you need a way to get useful information out of them. The Simple Protocol and RDF Query Language (or SPARQL, pronounced 'sparkle') is an SQL-like syntax for expressing queries against RDF data, and the queries themselves look and act like RDF data. The fundamental paradigm for SPARQL is pattern matching and it is designed to work across the Web on data combined from disparate sources and to be flexible. For example, matches can be described as optional, which makes it much better than SQL at querying ragged data. Ragged data has an unpredictable and unreliable structure, which is what you might expect to find if your data is combined from various sources on the Web rather than from a single well-contained SQL database.
Here is what we consider semantic annotations:
The information about what entities appear in a text and where they do. Actually, the references from the text to a semantic repository, containing further knowledge.
'Annotation' has two meanings in contemporary English (according to WordNet, similar in Merriam-Webster):
In linguistics (and particularly in computational linguistics) an annotation is considered a formal note added to a specific part of the text. There are a number of alternatives regarding the organization, structuring, and preservation of annotations. For instance, all the markup languages (HTML, SGML, XML, etc.) can be considered as schemata for embedded annotation. Contrary there are models suggesting that the annotations should be kept detached (non-embedded) from the content, i.e.
We refer to semantic annotation at the same time as (i) a sort of meta-data and (ii) the process of generation of such meta-data.
While there could be an argument with respect to the name (it could well be "Entity annotation") its nature is quite unambiguous: the named entities in the text are recognized and identified. The result is formally recorded and associated with the place in the text where the entity has been mentioned. The identity of the entity is "verbalized" via URIs which means that those can be easily linked to their descriptions within a semantic repository, as demonstrated below.
Although redundant, in accordance with the good NE recongnition tradition in the IE community, the types of the entities are also explicitly indicated via URIs to the respective (most specific) classes in the ontology.
Named entities (NE) are considered: people, organizations, locations, and others referred by name. Apples and bicycles are not considered NE, because those are not typically referred by name.
Within a wider interpretation, NE can be considered also some scalar values (numbers, amounts of money, dates) and addresses.
Couple of principle comments:
Words can also be formally marked up. One of the typical approaches is to annotate the respective word with some sort of a designator of the word sense used in the specific case. For instance, a designator could be "link-v2", meaning that the second meaning (according to some register) of the word "link" is taken as a verb (it could well serve as a noun).
There are number of tough issues relared to the word meanings:
RDFa is a specification for attributes to express structured data in any markup language.
The following block of HTML shows a review of a video game.

Blast 'Em Up Review

by Bob Smith

March 20, 2009

This is a great game. I enjoyed it from the opening battle to the final showdown with the evil aliens.

4.5 out of 5 stars

Rendered HTML in browser:
Blast 'Em Up Review
by Bob Smith
March 20, 2009
This is a great game. I enjoyed it from the opening battle to the final showdown with the evil aliens.
4.5 out of 5 stars
To understand how to use RDFa, think about two concepts: entities (for example, a review) and properties of those entities (for example, the author of the review, the date of the review, the review itself, and the rating).
This is the HTML with RDFa markup:

Blast 'Em UpReview

by Bob Smith

March 20, 2009

This is a great game. I enjoyed it from the opening battle to the final showdown with the evil aliens.

4.5 out of 5 stars

This example contains three important properties:
These three properties can be used in any HTML tags that open and close (div and span are two common choices). To mark up content using RDFa:
Relationships between entities in RDFa
In the example below, we describe two entities: a review and a person.

Blast 'Em Up Review

by Bob Smith, Senior Editor at ACME Reviews

This is a great game. I enjoyed it from the opening battle to the final showdown with the evil aliens.

4.5 out of 5 stars

Rendered HTML in browser:
Blast 'Em Up Review
by Bob Smith, Senior Editor at ACME Reviews
This is a great game. I enjoyed it from the opening battle to the final showdown with the evil aliens.
4.5 out of 5 stars
In this example, the relationship between the two entities is that the person is the reviewer who created the review. The review and person entities each have their own set of properties. The properties of the person are their name (Bob Smith), job title (Senior Editor), and company (ACME Reviews). The properties of the review are the reviewer (an entity), the review itself, and the rating (4.5).
To convey the relationship between the review and the person, we use the rel property. Here is how this example looks with RDFa markup:

Blast 'Em Up Review

by   Bob Smith, Senior Editor at ACME Reviews

This is a great game. I enjoyed it from the opening battle to the final showdown with the evil aliens.

4.5 out of 5 stars

The following two lines define the relationship between the two entities:

by
Here, by using rel instead of property, we define a relationship between the review and the person, namely that the writer of the review (the "reviewer") is an entity (Person), with its own properties such as name, title, and org. "rel" without "typeof"
The final concept to understand in order to mark up your content with RDFa is that rel can exist without an explicitly labeled typeof. In these cases, the entity is implicitly defined. HTML Rendered HTML in browser

Bob Smith

Senior editor at ACME Reviews

200 Main St

Desertville, AZ 12345

Rendered HTML in browser:
Bob Smith
Senior editor at ACME Reviews
200 Main St
Desertville, AZ 12345
Here is the HTML with RDFa markup:

Bob Smith

Senior Editor at ACME Reviews

200 Main St

Desertville

AZ

12345

In this example there are two implicitly defined entities: the person's photo and their address. Since the address property always relates to an entity of type address, there is no need to explicitly include a line with typeof="v:Address". Similarly, a photo always relates to a URL pointing to an image, so there is no need to explicitly define a typeof property.
Designed for humans first and machines second, microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards. Instead of throwing away what works today, microformats intend to solve simpler problems first by adapting to current behaviors and usage patterns (e.g. XHTML, blogging).
Microformats are:
Microformats are not:
The microformats principles
This document describes how a subset of RDF can be embedded into XHTML or HTML by using common idioms and attributes. No new elements or attributes have been invented and the usages of the HTML attributes are within normal bounds. This scheme is designed to work with CSS and other HTML support technologies.
Note: hereafter the term HTML will be used to include both XHTML and HTML except where otherwise stated.
The subset of RDF that is used in this embedding scheme is called HTML Embeddable RDF. It allows some very important parts of the RDF model to be embedded but does not attempt to extend this to the full RDF model. This is very deliberate. Other attempts at embedding RDF in HTML have required the introduction of new syntax to express all the various RDF concepts.
The relationship is: all HTML Embeddable RDF is valid RDF, not all RDF is Embeddable RDF.
Embedded RDF Extractor This service extracts Embedded RDF from HTML using this XSLT stylesheet. http://research.talis.com/2005/erdf/extract
A more complex part of the Semantic Web is to design an ontology that matches up to your data. Arriving at the right ontology is usually a critical element of successful implementation of Semantic Web projects. Fortunately, many ontologies already exist.
Some ontologies in use on the Web today
|Dublin Core
|This metadata element standard for cross-domain information resource description provides a simple and standardised set of conventions for describing things online in ways that make them easier to find.
|Semantically-Interlinked Online Communities Project is an ontology that expresses the information contained both explicitly and implicitly in Internet discussion methods, such as blogs or forums mailing lists.
|The Friend of a Friend ontology describes individuals, their activities and their relations to other people and objects. FOAF allows the description of social networks in a distributed fashion.
|Description Of A Project is an ontology to describe open-source projects
|This ontology expresses a Resume or Curriculum Vitae (CV), including information such as work and academic experience or skills.
In addition, many ontologies are domain specific in fields such as technology, environmental science, chemistry and linguistics. These will apply to fewer Web sites than those listed above, however. A lot of your data is likely to fit into at least one of the areas covered by the listed ontologies, in which case you can incorporate them in your planning.
Whether you fully embrace the Semantic Web in your Web site infrastructure, or just want to make your existing content more useful, there are probably several opportunities to add structure to existing content on your Web site. This is the domain of Microformats, RDFa and GRDDL. Below are listed more common information types that you can easily mark up as structured data.
Opportunities for structured markup and automatic transformation
|Information type
|Structured Markup
|People and Organizations
|hCard, RDF vCard
|Calendars and Events
|hCalendar, RDF Calendar
|Opinions, Ratings and Reviews
|VoteLinks, hReview
|Social Networks
|Tags, Keywords, Categories
|Lists and Outlines
Adding the structured markup to your page is fairly simple. Below is shown a fragment of HTML containing contact information without, and then with, the additional markup required for the RDF vCard, respectively.
Unstructured contact information

 Rob Crowther. Web hacker at  Example.org . You can contact me  via e-mail  or on my work phone at 0123 456789.

Below you can see the contact information with additional markup required for the RDF vCard.
Contact Information using vCard

 Rob Crowther. Web hacker at  Example.org . You can contact me  via e-mail  or on my  work phone at 0123 456789 .

As you can see span elements added to delimit the semantically significant bits of text, and attributes that indicate what they mean. You added the namespace "contact" linked to the RDF VCard vocabulary. Next, you indicated that this element is about the resource represented by the URI http://example.org/staff/robertc. Then, you added metadata using the rel attribute for link relationships and the property attribute on non-links. The only slightly complex part is the telephone because you need to specify a type as well as the number. To achieve this, you nest the type and value elements inside the tel element. Adding this structure allows users to add the contact details to their address book with a single click of the mouse.
Other automatic processing is possible with the other structured forms; for example, Technorati makes use of the rel-tag microformat to categorize its vast aggregation of blog posts. A rel-tag is shown below, and as you can see, it is simply a link that makes use of the rel attribute. The significant part is the last bit of the URI, after the final /. This is the tag (using the normal URI encoding conventions where a space is represented by the plus sign).
rel-tag for Technorati for the tag 'semantic web'
 Semantic Web
Browser Plugins
Web-based Services
In-browser RDFa Tools
Content Management Plugins
HTML+RDFa Editors
Exporting Content as RDFa
Wandora is a general purpose knowledge extraction, management, and publishing application based on Topic Maps and Java. More precisely Wandora is an open source desktop application to build and manage topic maps. Wandora has graphical user interface, layered presentation of knowledge, several data storage options, rich data extraction, import and export capabilities, and open plug-in architecture. Wandora's license is GNU GPL.
Wandora suits well for knowledge mashups. Wandora is capable to extract and convert various open data feeds to Topic Maps format (see image below). Beyond Topic Maps conversion this feature allows Wandora user to aggregate multidimensional knowledge bases where information from Flickr meets Geonames and Delicious, for example. Read more at documentation.
This site, WandoraWiki, is a home of Wandora software application and provides you an access point to the Wandora application and it's documentation. To contribute Topic Maps, Wandora Team has also converted several well known ontologies to Topic Maps format. These converted ontologies; WordNet, OpenCyc, Gene Ontology, Gellish, and Finnish General Upper Ontology (YSO) are available for download here in WandoraWiki.
SemanticProxy.com is part of the Calais Initiative from Thomson Reuters.
In the future the entire web will be one giant tightly interconnected information asset. Beyond just publishing information for humans, every site will expose its content in a way that's readable by machines. Those machines will mix, match, filter and aggregate information to greatly improve things for us humans. We're not there yet - but that's the vision of the Semantic Web.
SemanticProxy.com is a little taste of what that future might look like. What SemanticProxy does is simple: it translates the content of any URL on the web to its semantic representation in RDF, HTML or Microformats. If you're an RDF crawler hungry for a little semantic content, just point yourself at SemanticProxy.com and we'll fill you up.
Right now SemanticProxy.com is optimized for performance on 30 of the world's largest English-language news sites. In coming releases we'll continue to refine and extend its capabilities to additional areas. While you'll find it works best with news, feel free to experiment with other sites like Wikipedia or … whatever. The results can be very encouraging.
SemanticProxy isn't intended to be a great place for humans to visit. However, little semantic machines love to come by and spend a few high-quality milliseconds.
Delivering Semantic Web Services - Directly to Your Desktop
Gnosis is a browser extension for Firefox and Internet Explorer that automatically analyzes content as you browse and provides a variety of tools to explore the people, places, companies, and other items that you're reading about. In this latest release, Gnosis capability has been extended to include the following:
After installing Gnosis, simply navigate to the news site that you are interested in - one of the news sites listed below would be a good place to start. Right-click and select ClearForest Gnosis or click on the Gnosis button in the toolbar. After 1-2 seconds your page has been processed and you're ready to explore!
There are a number of RDFa implementations.
Author: Ivan Herman
Author: Nathan Yergler
Author: Elias Torres
Author: Benjamin Nowack (semsol)
http://arc.semsol.org/download * RDFa Monkey Author: Ruben Thys http://www.avthasselt.sohosted.com/rdfamonkey/
Author: Fabien Gandonhttp:ns.inria.fr/grddl/rdfa/ JavaScript * RDFa Bookmarklets Author: Ben Adida http://www.w3.org/2006/07/SWD/RDFa/impl/js/ Ruby * RDFa on Rails Author: Cédric Mesnage http://rdfa.rubyforge.org/ * ruby-rdfa Author: Benjamin Lyu http://code.google.com/p/ruby-rdfa/ C/C# * librdfa Author: Manu Spornyhttp:rdfa.digitalbazaar.com/librdfa/


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A timeless story celebrating friendship and imagination, written by Sophie Dahl, an exciting new voice in children's literature and illustrated by Lauren O'Hara.
A beautiful cloth-bound, illustrated edition of the riverside adventures of Mole, Ratty, Badger and Mr. Toad.
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Life in Sydney
I hate how long it's been since I've updated my blog, but you guys, an international move is no joke. As I write this I've been in Sydney for two months now and we've moved house twice in that time. The first month of being here was rough. We were in a house that didn't work well for us with a painfully long and expensive commute into the city. My host family made the decision to find a home closer to downtown so a few weeks in we found ourselves moving again! It's been an adjustment in many ways I wouldn't have expected. I've heard lots of people say that after moving somewhere the reality of that change sets in within a few months, I think this time for me it was immediate. After arriving into Sydney late on a Monday night, I woke up the next day in a foreign home, in a foreign country, with a phone that didn't work without wifi (which we didn't have yet), no car (and if I did have one I wasn't familiar with how to drive it yet). Never in my life have I felt so helpless! It quickly set in for me that I wasn't in Chicago anymore and life as I knew it was over for the time-being.
Since then, I've found little creature comforts within the city; pockets of the CBD that I recurrently find myself in to feel at ease, one of them being the 6th floor of the Myer department store surrounded by books. Another is the shops around the QVB and Pitt St. No matter which area of downtown I'm checking out, I always seem to find myself back there. It is also where I met up with a friend for lunch a few days ago. We went to The Grounds of The City, pictured above, and its beauty only furthered my desire to go to their famous restaurant, The Grounds of Alexandria. It felt so good to get out of my usual nanny attire and back into good pair of denim and my new top from SheIn. I'm still sticking with high-waisted jeans only and love the pair I'm wearing in the pics from Anthropologie, but I've also found a good selection of high-waisted jeans here and here. I've noticed that my shopping strategy tends to change anytime I move somewhere new and with each phase of my life, right now I primarily want to spend my money on travel while I'm in this country and on this side of the world. So, lately the shopping goal is versatile and inexpensive. I'm sure you'll pick up on this in my upcoming instagram posts, but I'm just laying it out here for you so you know what to expect to see links to.
I also plan on posting on some of my day trips into the city. I want to share areas of Sydney that I get to explore and write about what I like about them as a keepsake for me and resource for you! Bondi is up first! I hope you'll enjoy this :)
Soak up that summer weather back home for me! We've got steady 60's here and I'm missing midwest summertime so so much 🖤


text:
ATLANTA -- Consumer credit reporting agency Equifax announced a "cybersecurity incident" that could impact more than 140 million Americans -- nearly half the population of the United States.
Equifax said the information accessed includes names, credit card numbers, Social Security numbers, birthdates, addresses and, in some instances, driver's license numbers.
RELEATED: See if your personal information might have been accessed
"Criminals exploited a U.S. website application vulnerability to gain access to certain files," the company said in a statement issued Thursday.
The company discovered the breach on July 29 and unauthorized access started in mid-May.
"From an information perspective, companies like Equifax will have enough information to be able to [assume identities] quite easily," said Mike Weber, vice president, labs, of Westminster-based Coalfire.
The company has engaged with a separate cybersecurity firm to conduct a forensic review of the intrusion and law enforcement officials are currently investigating.
The company will offer free identity theft protection and credit file monitoring to all U.S. consumers.
RELATED: How to get free identity theft protection and credit monitoring from Equifax
Equifax also identified unauthorized access to limited personal information for certain U.K. and Canadian residents, according to the statement.
Equifax is considered one of the three largest American credit agencies.
"If you've ever done anything financial in your entire life, [Equifax] will have your data," said Denver-based OWL Cybersecurity vice president Andrew Lewman.AlertMe


text:
Are You There Molly Ringwald? Or Looking For Life Answers In Film Fiction
I was in the eighth grade, I had never been kissed, and the end of middle school was rapidly approaching. To say I was hellbent on having my first kiss before I turned 15 and entered high school is an understatement. However, I didn't want to settle for an ordinary type of first kiss, like one of those awkward tales of tangled braces and sweaty armpits. I knew I wanted to have a first kiss just like the one depicted in my favorite movie, Pretty in Pink. There was absolutely no way my life was going to be complete without a dramatic kiss in the rain, with my dream clean shaven boy who looked just like Andrew McCarthy's Blaine. The simplicity of a first kiss did not exist in my mind because first kisses weren't ordinary in my favorite movies directed by John Hughes and starred the fabulously fresh-faced redhead I wish I could be, Molly Ringwald.
I told my best friend we absolutely had to watch The Blue Lagoon at our next sleepover. For some reason, I believed I would find all of the answers to my questions regarding femininity and sex in The Blue Lagoon, and Brooke Shields would teach me how to be feminine. After all, watching a film starring Brooke Shields had to help me - I had determined a long time ago my similar thick eyebrows were going to be my weapons of choice to catapult me to my destiny of serenading a beautiful boy with my favorite song at the moment, "Bubbly" by Colbie Caillat.
My decision to choose The Blue Lagoon to help me discover a trace of budding sexuality was very similar to my nearly nonexistent relationship with so-called traditional femininity. I had gained a reputation in middle school for being the girl who did not shave her legs before age 11 and was only interested in all things considered "vintage." From the age of thirteen, my go-to wardrobe choice was strictly limited to black t-shirts featuring band logos and blue jeans featuring sharpie scrawled song lyrics on the legs. My hair was oily and stringy: my blunt bangs were placed firmly in my eyes. If you were to ask a boy his opinion of me at the time, the only "F" words he would use would be "friend" or "freak." My longtime crush who looked just like Corey Matthews from Boy Meets World would tell our mutual friends he "really wanted to like me, but I was too ugly."
The rejection from my first crush was earth shattering! In the aftermath, I turned to my trusted 80's movies for comfort but found it harder to relate to them for the first time. I looked for answers in Molly Ringwald films because they typically featured characters who were ordinary and struggled with normal teenage insecurities, but somehow, they always landed the guy at the end of the movie. I looked to controversial Brooke Shields films for answers about sex because I thought we looked alike. Seeing these characters achieve my goals and indulge in my very secret desires gave me hope I would be noticed by the opposite sex, despite my social status as "too ugly", and my reluctance to embrace any positive qualities about myself. I refused to think of myself as any 80's movie heroine, and only believed I was just like Joan Cusak's character in Sixteen Candles whose biggest enemy was the water fountain because I kept letting my brace get in the way.
My first semester of high school was marked by humongous transition. I seized the opportunity to go to an arts school where, despite being surrounded by more like-minded people than ever, I was still a long way away from developing a positive self-image, because my self-worth was still determined by the lack of a dreamy 80's movie montage in my life. I really wish my 15-year-old self had not been so stuck on the idea of a guy determining her value, but I guess if a guy was going to be the key to showing her how important she really was, present me is sure 15-year-old me picked the right one to help her do the job.
He was sprawled out in a chair in the lobby of our school when I first saw him, surrounded by a group of people. I didn't know his name, but I thought I knew his story. My friend had recently admitted to me she had a crush on this guy and told me how she was drawn to his personality. He was welcoming, and even from a distance, I could tell the people surrounding him felt like they were the only person in the room with him.
I saw my friend among the crowd of people surrounding this Mystery Guy and went over to join her. I don't think she even noticed me walk up because she was so wrapped up in this guy's orbit. In my normal awkward social state, I realized after a moment I was just staring at him- enough for him to notice me gawking. He smiled and stood up. "Can I have a hug?" he asked.
If I am being dramatic, I would probably tell you that I could divide my life into two - my life before he asked me for a hug, and my life after. I don't know what came over me, I was extraordinarily shy and wasn't really big on sharing something as intimate as a hug on our first greeting, but I wrapped myself in an awkward one-armed hug. After two very important seconds, I broke away to look him in the eye for the first time. He was studying me as if he were confused over my obvious nervousness. We just looked at each other, I don't remember anything else said. I knew for a fact, however, that my whole body had just reacted in a way I had never felt before. I was awake for the first time; I was feeling sensations from this boy I had only previously felt from Tom Petty lyrics. I was magnetically drawn to his scent; I could absolutely still pick him out in a crowded room by his smell all of these years later.
The memories are blurry from that point on but I know it didn't take long for us to become acquainted and for me to start running to the lobby after the seventh-period bell to talk to him. A month after we met, we had exchanged many more hugs and we were chatting on MySpace pretty frequently. I found it was so easy to open up to him and tell him every nuance of my life. I spent hours pouring over his MySpace pictures; he was built like a linebacker and looked just like Eddie Vedder at only fourteen years old. Looking at his face night after night inspired many a sugar-coated poem.
It took me years to figure out why I saw the world within this fourteen-year-old boy. For a long time, I chalked it up to missing the Tiger Beat phase of adolescence because I was too busy looking at Sting or something, but I now know it was because he had seen something within me I hadn't even peeked at.
My favorite past time on MySpace was my blog; I believe I was a teenage Carrie Bradshaw before I even knew who Carrie Bradshaw was. I posted poems and journal entries, and always included a link to whichever song I was into at the moment. Customizing my online presence was therapeutic for me because, like many people of my generation, I felt as if I had the freedom to express myself comfortably behind a screen. My idea of online anonymity was the feeling of not owing anyone an explanation of who I was; at the time, your online life was generally separate from your "real life."
My insecurities kept me from making any type of meaningful connection with anyone; I did not believe it was possible to appreciate my mind as a valuable component of my being. At that point, I don't think I had seen very many girls in popular culture who were portrayed as being smart or creative, and who were respected for their minds. As I talked to my new crush more and more, I had begun to show him pieces of short stories I had been working on. When he would respond with positive feedback, I began to focus less and less on my insecurities and began to focus on my positive attributions. He was the first boy to ever ask my opinion on anything. I became overwhelmingly attracted to his willingness to listen, and how he genuinely seemed to value my opinions. It would be years before I would hear terms like "mansplaining" and meet other men who were the prime definition of "mansplainers", but when I did, I always kept this guy in the cobwebs of my mind as the boy who knew to keep an open ear at an extremely young age.
He was the first person I ever fell in love with. While the times we spent together were positive and I will always look back on them fondly, he taught me my biggest lessons learned from love and loss, because when I was 15, I hadn't experienced major loss yet. He was also my first disappointment and heartbreak, and the first time I fully digested that my life was not going to turn out like my favorite John Hughes movies.
He was always someone else's boyfriend and I spent so much time wondering why he never wanted to be mine.
I'm the person you know who always needs an explanation for something. I dissect every single aspect of a situation because I want it to make sense, I want to understand why situations materialize in the way they do. My first love was the first instance where I learned you could not always have one of these explanations; he taught me that sometimes, you can't always come to a conclusion about how the universe works.
Eight years after meeting, I consider my first love to be one of my closest friends and I am grateful for his presence in my life. His presence is a reminder of my growth as a person and the understandings I have made surrounding self-love and acceptance, and how exciting it is to see a relationship flourish through preservation. I may not have gotten the exact 80's movie montage I was hoping for, but I would always rather be John Bender walking across the football field with a triumphant fist in the air, fully able to declare that I am "staying alive."
by: Taylor Hodgkins
Follow Taylor:
Website: taylormhodgkins.wordpress.com
Twitter: twitter.com/queen_elvis