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Jerry Lewis (Joseph Levitch)
Jerry Lewis
Jerry Lewis the brash slapstick comic who became a pop culture sensation in his partnership with Dean Martin and then transformed himself into an auteur filmmaker of such comedic classics as "The Nutty Professor" and "The Bellboy," has died in Las Vegas at his home. He was 91.
For most of his career, Lewis was a complicated and sometimes polarizing figure. An undeniable comedic genius, he pursued a singular vision and commanded a rare amount of creative control over his work with Paramount Pictures and other studios. His legacy also includes more than $2.5 billion raised for the Muscular Dystrophy Association through the annual Labor Day telethon that he made an end-of-summer ritual for decades until he was relieved of the hosting job in 2011.
But Lewis' brand of humor did not always wear well as times and attitudes changed. Over the last 10 years of his life, his reputation soured slightly as he was forced to apologize for making a gay slur on camera during the 2007 telethon, continued to make racist and misogynistic jokes, and didn't hesitate to share his right-wing political views.
In addition to his most famous films, Lewis also appeared in a number of notable works, such as Martin Scorsese's "The King of Comedy," but was largely offscreen from the late '60s on and was more active with his telethon and philanthropic efforts. As late as 2016, Lewis continued to perform in Las Vegas, where he first debuted his comedy routine back in 1949.
The high regard in which his comic abilities were held in France — he received the Legion of Honor award in 1983 — became a running joke in the U.S. long after Lewis' style of broad physical comedy fell out of fashion. His final film, "Max Rose," screened at France's Cannes Film Festival in 2013.
The telethon, like other aspects of Lewis' life, was beset by controversy. The comic's offstage persona was anything but humorous. He was, by his own admission, an impatient man, and over the years battled numerous illnesses and a prescription drug dependency. His parting with Martin in 1956 after 10 years as a duo was acrimonious. And the telethons were awash in claims that there was a disparity between the money pledged and the money collected.
Lewis' pairing with Martin, featuring their improvisatory backbiting and physical chicanery, was an instant hit in 1946. When producer Hal Wallis saw them performing at the Copacabana and at Slapsie Maxie's in Hollywood, he saw the potential for a new Bob Hope and Bing Crosby and signed them to a Paramount Pictures contract.
For the next 10 years, Martin and Lewis turned out one silly film after the next starting with "My Friend Irma" in 1949 and including "The Caddy," "The Stooge," "Artists and Models" and "Pardners." None of their films grossed less than $5 million, a handy sum in those days.
The premises of the films grew tired, and the more Martin and Lewis worked together, the more disparate they appeared. In 1956, after their film "Hollywood or Bust," they made their last dual appearance at the Copacabana.
By the time of their breakup, Martin had a prosperous career as a recording artist and actor. And soon Lewis, too, was a hot solo ticket.
Shortly after they broke up, Lewis filled in for an ailing Judy Garland in Las Vegas. Over the next five years Lewis developed a slicker, more sophisticated stage persona and would continue to play Vegas until 2016.
Onscreen he made a go of it in such films as "The Delicate Delinquent" and "Rock-a-Bye Baby." Lewis even had a million-selling single in the "Rock-a-Bye Your Baby" title track, which led to several albums on Decca Records.
He then extended his efforts into writing, producing and directing films, signing what was then a mammoth $10 million deal with Paramount. The first two, 1961's "The Ladies Man" and 1962's "The Errand Boy," showed him at his best. His talents also dovetailed with director Frank Tashlin's style in films such as "Cinderfella" and "The Disorderly Orderly."
"The Nutty Professor" (1963) was his biggest success ever, grossing $19 million. But by then his mugging and exaggerated body gyrations had become out of control, as had the syrupy moments in his films.
Lewis signed a nonexclusive deal with Columbia that resulted in several uninspired films such as "Three on a Couch," "The Big Mouth" and "Don't Raise the Bridge, Lower the River." Even Lewis had to admit, "Jerry Lewis is never just OK or adequate; he's either very funny or he's awful."
While Americans largely dismissed him, Lewis had developed a following at French film journals Cahiers du Cinema and Positif.
He was born Joseph Levitch in Newark, N.J. Both his parents were in show business and, at the age of 5, Lewis made his debut at a Borscht Belt hotel singing "Brother Can You Spare a Dime?"
Perhaps because his parents spent a great deal of time on the road, Lewis was demanding attention through humor by the time he was attending Irvington High School in New Jersey. By age 15 he was pantomiming operatic and popular songs and was booked into a burlesque house in Buffalo.
In 1942 he tried out his comic pantomiming at Brown's Hotel in upstate New York, where he was also working the summer as a bellboy. Comic Irving Kaye was sufficiently impressed to land Lewis some bookings and became his road manager.
Lewis met the young singer Dean Martin at New York nightclub the Glass Hatt and was first paired with him in 1946. Afters years of rupture, Martin made a surprise appearance on the Muscular Dystrophy Telethon in 1976, a reunion orchestrated by their mutual friend Frank Sinatra. The pair also reconciled after the death of Martin's son in the late 1980s. Martin died in 1995.
In the early '70s he continued to direct uninspired fare such as "Which Way to the Front?" and then tried a serious film, "The Day the Clown Cried," though he famously shelved the completed work (some footage of it finally surfaced in 2013). He attempted a live TV variety show that failed, as did an attempt at a Broadway musical, "Feeling No Pain"; it was followed by the acrimonious "Hellzapoppin," which was ditched out of town in Boston at a loss of $1.25 million.
In 1972 he lent his name to a string of 200 movie theaters for Network Cinema Corp., which led to bankruptcy proceedings in 1974. His heavy schedule also brought him to the verge of a nervous breakdown, serious ulcer problems and painkiller drug dependency. In 1982 he had double-bypass heart surgery and gave up his four pack-a-day smoking habit.
Lewis was offscreen until 1979's low-budget "Hardly Working," which he also directed; it did not reverse his fortunes. But in 1982, director Martin Scorsese harnessed the brash, cynical side of Lewis' persona for the role of a kidnapped latenight talkshow host in "The King of Comedy." Though he reportedly resented being upstaged by Robert De Niro and Sandra Bernhard, the film represented some of Lewis' finest work. Another high point was a similarly caustic appearance as a lethal underworld figure on the TV series "Wiseguy."
Most of his later film work, however, failed to impress, such as "Slapstick of Another Kind," "Cookie" and 1992's "American Dreamer."
In 1995, he appeared in Peter Chelsom's film "Funny Bones" and took over the role of the devil in a Broadway revival of "Damn Yankees," which he took on tour in the U.S.; he then appeared in a London production of the musical.
In 2003 he provided a guest voice on an episode of "The Simpsons"; in 2006 he did an episode of "Law and Order: SVU" in which he played the insane, morally befuddled but bizarrely benevolent uncle of Det. John Munch (Richard Belzer).
Lewis long sought to create a sequel to "The Nutty Professor"; eventually, Imagine Entertainment produced and Universal released the 1996 remake starring Eddie Murphy on which Lewis was credited for the screenplay to the 1963 version and as an executive producer.
Lewis also hoped to bring a musical adaptation of "The Nutty Professor" to Broadway. By summer 2012 an ailing but still enthusiastic Lewis made his stage helming debut with such a musical, with a score by Marvin Hamlisch and a book and lyrics by Rupert Holmes, in Nashville, where it played for seven weeks.
In 2013 Lewis starred in the long-gestating project "Max Rose," written and directed by Daniel Noah and also starring Claire Bloom, Kevin Pollak, Kerry Bishe and Mort Sahl. Lewis played a jazz pianist who recently became a widower.
In 2009, Lewis received the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences' Jean Hersholt Award for his charitable work. In May 2014, he added his footprints to those of other screen luminaries at the Chinese Theatre.
In 1944 Lewis married former band singer Patti Palmer, with whom he had six sons, Gary, Ronnie, Scott, Anthony, Christopher and Joseph, who died in 2009. Gary for a time had a rock career as the lead singer of Gary Lewis & the Playboys. The marriage ended in divorce.
He is survived by his second wife, SanDee Pitnick, with whom he adopted a daughter.
- March, 16, 1926
- Newark, New Jersey
- August, 20, 2017
- Las Vegas, Nevada
Cause of Death
- Heart Failure
- Cremated, ashes given to family


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Welcome to B&P the Algarve property real estate agency
Are you looking for Algarve property? Maybe an investment property in Portugal, an apartment in Lagos or Luz or villas in Portugal, well B&P Real Estate Agents has a portfolio of property for sale in Portugal that will suit you.
Our experienced Portugal property professionals appreciate the difference between buying an apartment in a condominium or a villa with swimming pool. We have a range of property for sale in Portugal and can give sound and impartial advise of the search and eventual purchase of your home from home.

subset: commoncrawl


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I briefly told you about the renovation work in my bathroom, so here is a quick glance at the work finally done! It only misses a few touches of deco to make it cozier and personal but the biggest part of the work is here.
Scandinavian inspiration
As you can see, my SO and me, spent hours on Pinterest to find our inspirations: black and white minimalism. Not very original but the rendering gives a very good feeling!
I'm thinking about drawing something to hang on the wall so we don't feel like being in a Scandinavian deco magazine!
Shower curtain Flying Tiger Japan (Tokyo)
Bird hooks brought from Seoul
Everything in the drawers !
We hide all the ugliness that could affect this place made for relaxing (thanks to the storages from Ikea): all my beauty products are compartmentalized in drawers (advantage= away from dust and hard water) and I empty my liquid soaps and ugly shampoo into sober bottles from Muji.
The Aesop soap gives the impression it's been taken from an Instagram picture, but it really smells good!
Mirror AM.PM
Sink cabinet Hemnes Ikea
Clothes basket AM.PM
Bamboo toothbrushes Men's society (already seen here)
"Resurrection aromatique" handsoap Aesop
Shaving brush & razor Plisson
Bath rug BHV
LED candles AM.PM (already seen here)
Cosy bath
Also, I finally fulfilled my fantasy of a wooden tray for bathtub! I had dreamt about it forever: what a pleasure to watch a romantico-cheesy movie (Daniel Henneyyyy !<3) while surrounded by foam! Perfect to start the week hehe!
Personnalized bathrobe Scenario (30% off)
Mug Rabito
Bathtube tray BHV
Donut Ipad holder Doiy (already seen here)
(English translation by Quiterie)


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§ 447.35 Forms prescribed.
a.(a) The appropriate ATF officer is authorized to prescribe all forms required by this part. All of the information called for in each form shall be furnished as indicated by the headings on the form and the instructions on or pertaining to the form. In addition, information called for in each form shall be furnished as required by this part. The form will be filed in accordance with the instructions for the form.
b.(b) Forms may be requested from the ATF Distribution Center, P.O. Box 5950, Springfield, Virginia 22150-5950, or by accessing the ATF Web site http://www.atf.treas.gov/.


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Work consumes a huge chunk of most people's lives. As such, a healthy and positive work environment is vital for employee mental health and business success. Luckily, more companies are now bringing mental health to the forefront.
As an employer, here are six ways to bolster your employees' mental wellbeing and satisfaction:
1. Reward employees' hard work
Recognizing your staff's achievements tells them that you value their contributions. This motivates them to work even harder to hit goals. Reward them with meaningful experiences such as a staycation or group trip, professional development, sporting event or concert tickets, parties, and offsite activities.
2. Break the stigma around mental health
Consider encouraging conversations and implementing programs that center on mental health. From senior executives to new-hires, educate everyone in your company about the issue. You can invite guest speakers, send out email communications, organize events, and offer in-services to create awareness on mental health problems, including how to spot the signs and how best to respond to these.
3. Build a trust-based relationship
Allow employees to share their mental health concerns openly and encourage them to seek help. It's important that you show them you care, that they can trust you, and that they will not be discriminated against.
4. Encourage workers to take mini breaks
Mini breaks throughout the working day result in happier and more engaged workers. Encourage your staff to get away from their screens once in a while and relax with their colleagues. Short breaks can range from lounge area chit-chats and brief walks outside to eating snacks and stretch breaks.
5. Create a culture that nurtures work-life balance
Employees are likely to feel burnout if your company does not promote work-life balance. Urge them to participate in activities outside of work, engage in self-care, take regular vacations, or take mental health days, if your company offers those. Conduct team-building activities and provide access to exercise facilities or childcare services. Also, offer flexible work options that allow employees to have more freedom over their work time.
6. Offer good health coverage
Address the health needs of your entire workforce by expanding insurance benefits to include mental health and wellness. Mental health benefits can include therapy, counseling, or an Employee Assistance Program, which addresses a range of employee problems.
The benefits of promoting mental health in the workplace cannot be stressed enough. Studies have shown that it reduces the rate of absenteeism and turnover, increases productivity, and boosts employee morale, all of which leads to company gains. Therefore, making your employees' mental wellbeing a top priority can mean the difference between them loving their job and them looking for ways to move on.


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If you do not know what to look for when buying Buy Sony TV South Africa, it is not easy to make the right decision. There is a too big risk of choosing Buy Sony TV South Africa and being disappointed when you receive the product. This guide will help you.
Source: https://saifkhatri.com/buy-sony-tv-south-africa
The post Top 10 Best Buy Sony TV South Africa Comparison appeared first on Saif Ahmed Khatri's Blog.


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At Fully Promoted, we're committed to outstanding service and providing your business with the apparel and promotional items you need to showcase your brand with pride.
We have large range of samples and styles for you to try on and experienced staff to help you make the best selections.
Please fill out the Enquiry form below and we will respond to you as soon as possible.
Fully Promoted Cardiff
Unit 5, 41a Munibung Road
Cardiff New South Wales 2285
Fully Promoted has a great range of team and sport shirts.
See moreFabric, fit and style are all on offer with our range of classic business shirts.
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See moreFully Promoted has a great range of hard wearing trade shirts.
See moreSafety first is a feature of our hi-vis wear. Be seen when and where it counts.
See moreZip up trends for warmth and styling are both practical and ideal for branding.
See moreNothing beats Hoodies and Fleece for warmth and comfort. Great styling and a huge range of colours.
See moreShow off your branding and your conference theme with our special purpose conference bags
See moreCooler bags create the perfect big chill, making them a great gift idea.
See moreYou can never have enough data storage. USBs make the perfect giveaway or conference freebie.
See moreExperience
We have more than a decade of experience sourcing and supplying uniforms and promotional products, and we partner with the most responsive wholesale suppliers to bring you an extensive range of products to choose from delivering great features and best value for money.
Create exactly the look you want with a variety of branding options. Our experts can help you discover which techniques will best represent your brand and your budget.
Whether it's embroidery for your garments, screen printing for a run of apparel, or the latest in branding technology with direct to transfer printing, Fully Promoted has you covered.
Contact Fully Promoted today.
At Fully Promoted we supply and brand jackets, shirts, t-shirts, caps, hi-vis gear, promotional products and more. We only sell top quality apparel and promotional products and use the best branding processes, to ensure you get professional, long-lasting results.
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Join our winning team and own your future with
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Unit 2, 25 Durgadin Drive
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Through our Governance Principles, Customer Service Charter and investment in innovation, we're committed to leading our people and customers to better products and services than anywhere else.
Governance Principles
Atradius acknowledges the importance of good corporate governance. The Governance Principles that were drawn up by the Dutch Association of Insurers outline principles for Dutch insurance companies in terms of corporate governance, risk management, audit and remuneration and are applied by Atradius. Also, the Management Board undersigned the Declaration on moral and ethical conduct.
Declaration on moral and ethical conduct
Leading customer focus
At the heart of our operation is our customer focus. We are proud to lead the sector in this area. For example, we were the first to introduce Global services targeted at the unique needs of multinational organisations.
Today our customer-centric leadership can be seen in our Customer Service Charter, where we commit to the highest levels of customer service and response.
Our customer focus is also a key part of our strategy. Our strategic goals include creating sustainable revenue growth and increasing profits. Ultimately we believe that we will only be successful if our customers and stakeholders are successful too. So we aim to achieve these goals by ensuring that our customers and stakeholders receive the best possible service and support from us.
I'm very glad that Atradius involved us as a customer in the development of this tool. You often only need to understand which five or ten per cent of information you really need to focus on, and this tool helps me to do that.
Leading through innovation
Our dedication to developing the best tools to support our clients makes us world leaders in credit insurance innovation. Our commitment to innovation is a key area of our operational strategy. Our latest tool, Atradius Insights, sets a new standard within the credit insurance industry for credit management.
At Atradius, we want to go beyond credit insurance. We want to provide our customers with insight into their risk. As an online business intelligence tool, Atradius Insights allows clients to identify current and future risks and monitor portfolio performance. This includes drill down options from a main dashboard to provide in depth levels of detail, sophisticated filter options and the ability to export selected data.
Specific tools include the ability to show all credit limit decision issued during a selected timescale distributed across your customer ratings bands. It also provides you with an overview of any credit limit decisions that may be scheduled to expire or be withdrawn within the next 12 months.
Leading industry voices in our Management Board
Atradius represents much more than insurance. We build personal relationships with our customers and their buyers to better understand their businesses and provide a more detailed insight into their credit risks.
They're recognised among their peers as leading voices in the credit insurance sector, with several having worked their way through the business and understanding it in great detail from the ground up.
Goals and strategy
At the heart of our strategy is a desire to create an enduring business with sustainable revenue growth and a secure, stable increase in profits which comprehensively meets our stakeholder and customer needs, irrespective of the size or scope of their business.
The focus of our operation is on credit insurance and other affiliated credit management services, such as recoveries and collections. Within this, our goal is to expand in three main areas:
- Customers: from all three key segments - global/multinational companies, large companies and SMEs
- Markets: by continually exploring new opportunities in emerging markets, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, Asia and the Americas
- Products: by investing in and designing new products and services which target needs specific to each market segment
In addition to a customer-focus and commitment to innovation, our strategy is to strengthen our competitive position and reduce profit volatility, through maximizing cost efficiencies.


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"Swimming" signals the start of the swimming period.
Click Here to play an MP3 version of this bugle call.
Click Here to download and/or print a PDF of the music for this bugle call.
To download and save these files to your computer,
RIGHT Click on the links.
Please do NOT redistribute the files.
The Music for all of the bugle calls listed in Requirement
No. 4
of the Bugling Merit Badge
can be found on our Bugle Call Page.
Page updated on: May 08, 2022


text: The OM-CP-TC101A is a new state-of-the-art low-cost battery powered thermocouple data logger. The OM-CP-TC101A offers a 10 year battery life, 1 second reading rate, a multiple start/stop function, ultra-high speed download capability, 1,000,000 reading storage capacity, optional memory wrap, battery life indicator, optional password protection, programmable high-low alarms and more. Using the software, starting, stopping and downloading from the OM-CP-TC101A is simple and easy. Graphical, tabular and summary data is provided for analysis and data can be viewed in °C, °F, K or °R. The data can also be automatically exported to Excel® for further calculations. The OM-CP-TC101A is a major leap forward in both size and performance. Its real time clock ensures that all data is time and date stamped.Product Manuals:


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Last month, when scraggly local trio Young Adults wandered out on stage at the Middle East downstairs to open for hyped lo-fi darlings Best Coast, college indie brats were already thronging the room. Young Adults are a house-show beast by nature, all fuzzed-out bass and splintered bits of guitar that go well with fire hazards and leaking pipes, and they stood out a bit that night. There was some home-team carry-over in the crowd — a pocket of friends danced amid the more fashionably timid bystanders. But for the most part, the downstairs stage was a brave new world.
One of many for the band, really. After just a few months of playing out in Boston, they had already caught the eye of a group of erratic bloggers from the Czech Republic who wanted to start working with them. Now it's a few months later, and they're about to celebrate their first 12-inch, Black Hole, on the brand new Prague-based label AMDISCS. (The release party is this Saturday at Great Scott.) The situation has been a bit hectic, but that's kind of where they thrive. You could say Young Adults were born out of a junkpile of old bands and haywire Photoshop art — dozens of warped records and mismatched layers covering up some genuine know-how.
"We're at the point where things start to happen," says guitarist Chris Villon. He's sitting across from drummer and younger brother Kurt on a recently craigslisted and generously worn-in couch in the Allston living room of bassist Demitri Swan. "Although I'm not sure anyone even knows what that means anymore."
The band are stretching out in the room now that the house's dinner shift has abandoned the TV. (Swan's place is a glorious three-floor mess packed with housemates and framed clown art.) The living room is crammed with dysfunctional accessories — a refrigerator, a jumbo jug of laundry detergent, piles of coats. Chris sits in the corner with a bowl of ramen and goes over some of the finer details of the business with AMDISCS.
"We just talk over g-chat, basically," he says. "They pretty much communicate strictly through internet slang, broken English, and dick jokes." This past summer, the label threw a big festival in the Czech Republic with Vivian Girls, Ecstatic Sunshine, Toro y Moi, and gobs more. "When we finally got the signed contract in the mail, they had drawn a dick in the signature line beside their names."
Call it progress, anyway — for Kurt, who'd never played in a band before the Adults' first show last December, but also for Chris and Swan, who've spent years cutting their teeth on Boston crowds: Chris with shoegaze underdogs Whitetail, Swan with the breezy Magic Magic and the chaotic Paparazzi.
Young Adults' music makes interesting use of all that experience. They pummel a couple of ideas and rhythms into an overgrown din that almost changes genres depending on how loud you're listening — maybe spacy psych-rock, maybe off-the-tracks punk. Live, you've got no choice — it's monstrous. The shout-along dual vocals, funneling out of some long-lost Fugazi practice, barely make it out over the rest of the noise.
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Novak Djokovic won his third consecutive title at Wimbledon on Sunday, defeating Matteo Berrettini in four sets and putting the Serbian tennis star in an elite class of players in the sport's history. The win is Djokovic's sixth overall at the legendary British tournament.
Sunday's championship marks 20 Grand Slam titles for Djokovic, which ties the record that had, until now, been shared by Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer.
He acknowledged the two other greats following Sunday's win.
"I have to make a great tribute to Rafa and Roger, they are legends of our sport and the two most important players I ever faced in my career," Djokovic said. "They are the reason why I am where I am today. They showed me what I needed to do to get stronger, physically, tactically and mentally. Over the last 10 years it has been an incredible journey that's not stopping here."
Djokovic says Wimbledon success is particularly special
Djokovic's other grand slam titles include nine wins at the Australian Open, three at the U.S. Open and two at the French Open. But, he said, the wins at the All England Club tournament rank at the top.
"Winning Wimbledon was always the big dream of mine when I was a kid and I have to remind myself how special this is and to not take this for granted," Djokovic said following Sunday's victory. "It's a huge honor and a privilege."
Djokovic, 34, is now the only man to win the first three major tournaments in a season since Australian Rod Laver accomplished the feat in 1969.
Now, Djokovic can set his sights on sweeping the tour's four Grand Slams this season with a win at the U.S. Open in late August — again, last accomplished by a male player when Laver did it 52 years ago.
He said he will aim to be in as good of shape as possible heading into the final major.
"I could definitely [envision] that happening and I hope I will give it a shot," he said. "I'm in great form and played well and having my best form at Grand Slams is my number one priority."
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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My wife is currently writing her PhD thesis, and in a recent draft her supervisor spotted a few instances where she had repeated repeated a word by accident (as I just did with repeated). While her LaTeX editor of choice highlights spelling mistakes, it does not spot repeated words. Therefore, I offered to write a quick script to spot repeated words for her. I used Haskell because it is a great choice for quick one-off scripts.
The problem can roughly be described as "for each file, find words that repeat". My first approach with any Haskell program is to decompose the problem, and this problem naturally breaks itself into "(for each file) (find words) (that repeat)". I need a function to iterate through a list of files doing IO and calling the other functions (main), a function to split an input file into words (worder) and a function to spot repeats (dupes).
Iteration 1
To get started, I wrote simple versions of each function:
main :: IO () main = print . dupes . worder =<< readFile "thesis.tex" worder :: String -> [String] worder = words dupes :: [String] -> [String] dupes = map head . filter ((> 1) . length) . group
The main function is restricted to a single static file (namely thesis.tex), which it reads in, splits it into words, finds the duplicates, and prints that information. The function to split into words just uses the standard words function which splits on whitespace boundaries. The function dupes is the most interesting - it uses group to create lists of equal adjacent words, filter to find any group of more than 1 adjacent word, then map head to take only the first element from each group to report as the word at fault.
Iteration 2
The first iteration only prints out the words that have been duplicated. It would be much more civilised to also print the line number of the duplicated word, so my wife can quickly find the problem. The solution is to refine the type passed between worder and dupe to include the line number alongside each word. Instead of passing [String] we pass [(Int,String)].
worder :: String -> [(Int, String)] worder whole = [(i, word) | (i, line) <- zip [1..] $ lines whole, word <- words line] dupes :: [(Int,String)] -> [(Int,String)] dupes = map head . filter ((> 1) . length) . groupBy ((==) `on` snd)
For worder we first split into lines and use zip [1..] to assign line numbers, then split each line into words. The changes to dupes are fairly minor - when grouping we use groupBy and consider two words to be adjacent looking only at the word part, not the line number. We are now printing out line numbers, making the error easy to find.
Iteration 3
The type of dupes is more specific than we need, so we can generalise it. Thinking about what dupes should do, we are really getting in a list of pairs of some information, and a value to check for repetition on. Therefore, we can write:
dupes :: Eq v => [(k, v)] -> [(k, v)] dupes = map head . filter ((> 1) . length) . groupBy ((==) `on` snd)
Note that the code has not changed, merely the signature. With the new signature we can also be sure we are not inadvertently comparing on the line number, since we have no Eq context for k.
Iteration 4
Looking at some sample documents, it became clear our worder implementation is insufficient, in particular:
- It is case sensitive, while our repeated words might be at the start of a sentence, e.g. "In in this chapter"
- It keeps punctuation, while our repeated words might be followed by a comma, e.g. "as shown in this chapter chapter, we have"
- It finds non-alphabetic words, e.g. "The position is at coordinate 1 1 3."
Fixing the first problem is simple - just map toLower over the string at some point. Fixing the others requires more thought, as we still want punctuation and non-alphabetic characters to separate words, so it cannot simply be discarded. There are two approaches to the problem - one is to change the splitting procedure (which effectively involves designing a finite state machine for when to split), the other is to process the input to make it suitable for words. While the first is more likely to produce something maintainable and adaptable, the second is often quicker to implement at first. For this program, I chose the second approach.
I realised that if we convert to lowercase, then replace all non-alphabetic non-space characters with " 1 2 ", we meet all the criteria above. Punctuation separates words, as does " 1 2 ". By replacing with a sequence of two distinct words we ensure that repeated punctuation does not flag as a spurious repeated word. By choosing characters that are themselves replaced by the sequence, we ensure we do not make a repeated word with the word before/after the replacement.
worder :: String -> [(Int, String)] worder whole = [(i, word) | (i, line) <- zip [1..] $ lines $ f whole, word <- words line] where f = concatMap (\x -> if isAlpha x || isSpace x then [x] else " 1 2 ") . map toLower
We define a local function f to make the changes to the input string. To perform Char to String replacements on a string we use concatMap with the replacement described above. We could have fused the two iterations over the string, but keeping them separate makes it slightly clearer.
Iteration 5
The final part of the spec we have ignored until now is "for each file", which we can implement as:
main :: IO () main = do files <- getArgs bad <- fmap concat $ forM files $ \file -> do src <- readFile file return $ map ((,) file) $ dupes $ worder src putStr $ unlines $ if null bad then ["Success"] else [file ++ ":" ++ show line ++ ": " ++ word | (file,(line,word)) <- bad] ++ ["FAILURES (" ++ show (length bad) ++ ")"]
This function gets a list files from the command line arguments, reads each file, applies worder and dupes to find repeated words, then tacks on the filename to the errors. Once we have accumulated all errors in bad we check how many there were, if none we say Success, otherwise we list the failures.
This code is not intended to demonstrate best practice, or clever ideas, more practical use of some simple Haskell to solve a simple problem. Running this checker on my wife's thesis found three instances of repeated words, all of which have now been fixed.


text:
SHOT Show 2016: American Derringer
American Derringer
At SHOT Show 2016 held in Las Vegas, Elizabeth Saunders, American Derringer President told representatives of Ukrainian Gun Owners Association about company's new models.
One of the most interesting model is a LM4 Simmerling – a small non-automatic .45 pistol with a 4-round magazine. The company has a line of two-shot pistols in all popular calibers as well.


text:
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Slouchy Gray + A Fun Announcement.
How are your layering skills? Fall is a good time to get some practice runs in, before winter takes hold and we're all bundled up three sweaters deep. Use this transitional period to figure out how to mix pieces that keep you warm without overdosing on the bulk.
Um, there's nothing better than a nice warm bowl of creamy chicken noodle soup to chase away the frore, fall chills. I usually make this creamy soup every fall (and winter) for my family. And it always turns out delicious! This soup will seriously warm your family up this fall (and winter), and it's also perfect for those chilly days when you just cuddle up and watch TV with your family (um…who doesn't love cuddling up with their family, right?). Your family won't believe you didn't spend all day chopping, stirring, and cooking this creamy and delicious soup. You can use whatever veggies you like — but I like to use carrots, celery, and an onion mix. You can use rotisserie chicken, baked chicken breast or leftover grilled chicken from the night before. Sounds super simple, right? That's because it is.
Fall Chalkboard Sign
Don't you just love it when a project turns out even better than you anticipated? This one sure did! I'd had this picture in my mind of a chalkboard sign with a pumpkin on it for quite some time and I found the perfect plastic platter at Dollar Tree for the base.
a Friendly Public Service Announcement: This recipe is fully loaded. Fully loaded with all the decadent sorts of ingredients you would expect from an Ultimate Chocolate Brownie – if you are on a diet, anti-sugar, anti-butter, anti-chocolate, anti-eggs, and really you just like raspberries then I kindly suggest you buy some fresh raspberries and do not read any further, doing so will be harmful to your blood pressure if not your health This recipe is that good it comes with a warning – haven't done that before! It is a sometimes treat, all things in moderation, moment on the lips a lifetime on the hips yadda yadda yadda………
te he he
I grew up eating coconut right from the shell. Just as you see pictured here. Mmmm. It was kept on ice and opened when sold. The coconut water is so delicious. Double Mmmmm. And the flesh is really soft and sweet. Triple Mmmmm. Alright enough reminiscing.
That someone wasn't me. I lie to my kids all the time. I'm not just talking about the trifecta of deception: Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. I don't creatively bend the truth. I straight up lie like Pinnochio. Am I ashamed? No. Lying to my kids saves my sanity, not to mention time and money.
Let me set the scene for you. It's the middle of June, 90+F in Disney's Magic Kingdom in Orlando, Florida. The sun is beating down, we've been riding roller coasters for hours on end and our clothes have literally begun to drip with sweat. It's time to re-hydrate. What drink do we choose to freshen us up on this scorching hot day. Why, a round of Cinnmon Dolce Lattes from Starbucks, of course.
Cornucopia Snack
It's that time of year where we celebrate all that we have been blessed with! Thanksgiving is my favorite time of year! I love all things fall, football, comfort food, and my birthday and Thanksgiving has them all!
This cornucopia snack is easy to make and the perfect sweet, salty snack to enjoy this Thanksgiving season!
Texas Turtle Sheet Cake
Paper DIY Christmas Ornaments
I found this adorable musical note paper at Michael's and knew right away that I wanted to make some Christmas ornaments out of it.
I looked for a template to use and found this tiny box template at Craftsy in the free downloads.
I didn't print the template out on my musical note paper, instead I edit it to plain white and just print out a copy I could use as a stencil.
A Vision to Remember All Things Handmade Blog
I have this thing, weird as it may be, about being able to easily see ALL of my fabric.
Its a little difficult at times, especially with all different sizes of fabric.
This is the solution that I use for my fabric that is close to a yard to 2 or 3 yards.
Creamy Lamb Stew
Upstate Ramblings
Whenever I wanted to sew something bigger than a hat or a ball, there's that additional cumbersome work that needs to be done BEFORE any cutting and actual sewing can happen: tracing the large pattern from the template onto the fabric. Oh, I hated that! I wanted to sew, not to trace and draw and then observe how much I missed the desired pattern line...
Until I found out about this easy solution to do it:
How to Make Your Own Baking Powder
Raia's Recipes
Baking powder. It's the white fluffy stuff that makes your pancakes and biscuits rise, and it can be found in the kitchen of most baking moms across the country. But do you know what's in it? Let's take a look at the ingredients in one of the major brands of baking powder found in most grocery stores:
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text:
–by T.I. Meyer, Head of Strategic Planning & Communication
I was at a seminar recently, and they posed the following question: Suppose you are 2 metres away from a solid wooden fence with a small hole cut out in it. As you watch the hole, you see the head of a dog go by, and then you see the tail of a dog go by. You see this happen, say, three times in a row. What do you conclude?
The conclusions are less interesting, I think, than, the space of all possible conclusions. Intuitively, as human beings, we would think there is a RELATIONSHIP between the head and the tail of a dog. What are the possible types of relationships?
- Causation. We might think that the head of a dog CAUSES the tail of a dog. This is perhaps the most powerful and most natural pattern of our human brain. We are always looking for cause and effect. But, depending on how much quantum mechanics you shoot into your veins, is causation really real or is it just a human construct? Consider how sure you are, as an individual, about all the causes and effects in your life and your surroundings. Are you sure about cause and effect?
- Coincidence. It could be that the two events (sighting of dog head and sighting of dog tail) simply were because of random chance. If we watched longer, we might see something else. How often do we mistake coincidence with cause and effect?
- Correlation. It could be that the head of a dog is correlated with the tail of a dog, in the sense that they "arise together" on a common but not causal basis. Correlation is a powerful concept in statistics, where it suggests that two events happen often together but not because one necessarily causes the other.
- Parts of a Whole. This is the "true" answer for the dog sighting; a dog head and a dog tail are parts of a whole that we see through the fence. Thus, there is no real cause and no correlation and no coincidence; we are simply observing two instances of some common underlying connection – that a living dog's body has both a head and a tail.
In physics, we rely on this set of approaches. We worry about whether we have established causality, correlation, coincidence, or parts of a whole. When we measure a frequently occurring set of "particle debris" after a collision of two particles, we wonder if the collision "caused" the debris or if the debris actually reflects "part of a whole." We apply rigorous statistical cross-checks and tests to assure ourselves that we have "watched long enough" to be confident (in a quantitative fashion) about our interpretation.
It is in this same realm that we often run into the confusion of pseudo-science that tries to pin everything on cause and effect or something else entirely. Pseudo-science almost always boils down to someone claiming cause and effect, where what they might be really be observing is simply an unexamined or unexplained relationship between two events or two occurrences. Part of the job of science is to provide a systematic methodology to tease out what these relationships are. In fact, science is aimed at mastering these observed relationships so that we can make "predictions."
But why do humans love cause and effect so much? It certainly seems "easy to understand."
I propose a somewhat silly response, perhaps based on Dawkins or Gould or Pinker. Cause & effect is the most precautionary approach for human beings wandering in the wild trying to survive predators, hunger, and other hazards. For instance, if you see the paw prints of a roaming tiger, the best survival strategy is to assume that a tiger caused those prints and you should get going in the other direction. A scientist might want to stop and consider whether the prints were fresh, whether they fit the characteristics of the tiger you saw yesterday, and so forth. But a human brain focused on survival is optimized for making quick calculations using the cause & effect principle to save its own skin.
So, take a look around you and your world. In how many ways and in how many places do you see that we rely on cause & effect as an explanation because it is convenient?
Moreover, what other categories of relationship do you see? And what experiments would you conduct to help separate out these types of relationships?


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This is the season of night noises, chirps, buzzes, little cries. The air is telling you, "Things are going on out here," and if you like you can step out onto the porch and do what the writer Rachel Carson did back in 1956: She played a hunting game. The rules were simple: You stand outdoors, near the house. You go quiet. When you hear something interesting, you either: a) take a flashlight and go hunt for it; or b) you don't go anywhere. You just imagine it.
The best find Rachel Carson ever made, she never found.
She was standing at the edge of her garden and noticed, somewhere in the chorus of nighttime crickets, birds and scurrying somethings, a very precise note, clear, like a 'ting!' It repeated.
Faint ... Barely-To-Be-Heard ...
"It is exactly the sound that should come," she wrote, "from a bell held in the hand of the tiniest elf, inexpressibly clear and silvery, so faint, so barely-to-be-heard that you hold your breath as you bend closer to the green glades from which the fairy chirping comes."
She dubbed it a "Fairy Bell Ringer."
But what was it, really?
A Teeny Elf With A Bell?
Rachel Carson was a scientist, a biologist. She'd already written a couple of best-sellers about life in the oceans, and a few years later she would write her classic, Silent Spring, about chemical pesticides and the ominous quiet that settles in after a place has been exposed to DDT. She knew how to look for little creatures, but this one, she decided after weeks trying, was too small, too shy. "I never found him," she wrote. "I'm not sure I want to." She kind of liked the idea that this one could tease her, draw her in, and never show itself.
Fairies With Mating Songs
She knew, of course, that it wasn't calling to her. No insect sings mating songs to a hairy, overwhelmingly humongous bipedal mammal (not even mosquitoes). We humans live in our world, insects in theirs. Rachel Carson knew that.
What's more, crickets don't sing joyously. They sing to survive. They are wired to do it. When Rachel heard them, "they were hard at work at the business of holding a place for their kind on this planet," says the author John Himmelman, in his book Cricket Radio. "I've no doubt she knew those crickets were not calling for her pleasure."
Yet she was deeply pleasured. She heard them go "ting, ting, ting," and the sound filled her with a crazy joy. The fact that the crickets were totally unaware of her, couldn't imagine her — that didn't matter. This wasn't about them; it was about her. She was describing her own delight. Sometimes, locked off from other creatures, that's the best we can do.
What Do Elves With Bells Sound Like?
Naturally some of her readers wanted to hear what she heard. "Tiny elves ringing bells" is such a gripping metaphor. For 50 years, both amateurs and scientists have searched the Northeast looking for candidates, and they've landed on two possibilities. Rachel was, they think, listening to either a Say's Trig (Anaxipha exigua) or a Tinkling Ground Cricket (Allonemobius tinnulus).
If you like, you can hear what a tinkling cricket sounds like right here.
I listened, and it sounds nice, but it's not as cool as a teeny fairy hitting a bell. Sometimes our language betrays us. Everybody, scientists included, want to talk to the world and have it talk back. We want to connect with the other creatures. We want the world to feel magical. But even when it isn't, we — scientists included — sometimes make it so.
Rachel Carson imagined elves with bells. Richard Alexander, a bug scientist who wrote the first great summary of insect sounds in 1960, imagined (or maybe almost had) a duet with a katydid. As described in David Rothenberg's new book, Bug Music, he was at home one day, banging on his typewriter, writing a manuscript about insects, when a real insect, a katydid from the yard, snuck into his studio. Katydids typically won't sing unless it's dark, but this one managed to find an unlit hiding place and heard Alexander going bangity-bang, bangity-bang, bangity-bang on the typewriter.
Bangity-Bang, Bang
The sounds apparently mimicked the basic bangity-bang, bang, bang, katydid, katydidn't rhythms that trigger a mating song. So when Alexander paused after a triple beat, the insect banged out its own triple rhythm, returning the call. Richard Alexander knew instantly what was going on, so he did another triple and got a triple back. Then he quickened his pace, bangity, bangity, bangity-bang; and the katydid bangity, bangity, bangitied him back — at the higher speed! Then Richard slowed. So did the insect. Katydids only sing when there's a pause in the communal song, when they have room to sing. Just to be sure, Richard Alexander banged nonstop on his typewriter, and the bug went silent.
That cinched it. For just a few minutes, a great scholar of bugdom had become a bug. He was singing with another katydid. That was Alexander's "elf with a bell" moment. Boundaries were broken. The lonely world had cracked just a little and there was joy in the house. We live and we die alone, of course, but every so often we imagine, or believe, or pretend to believe, that we can share.
Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.


text:
avidemux is a very good free converter and basic editor(cut, join, filters). It supports most video input formats like avi, mov, wmv, asf, mkv, mp4, flv, vob, mpg and can convert to many video formats like avi xvid, avi-dv, mpg, mp4 h264, flv. This is a very basic guide to get you started with avidemux.
Required tools
Required tools
avidemux (Or download the latest beta from http://www.razorbyte.com.au/avidemux/ but may be a bit buggy)
Open and Join
Open your video file. You can also join files by choose File->Append(Note that video clip must have same width, height, framerate or else wont it work). If you are opening a DVD then choose the VTS_01_1.vob(the main video might be under a different number so you migh try different VTS_XX_01.vob) and all vobs will automatically be imported. Select Yes if you want index images.
If you want to cut then drag the bar at the bottom and click on A to set the start and B to the end. You can also delete parts like for example commercials, set the A and B and press delete on your keyboard.
Auto format
If you want to convert to VCD, SVCD, DVD, PSP, IpoD or FLV then choose Auto in the menu and select the format and avidemux will automatically change all settings for you.
Custom format
If you want to convert to an another format then choose the video and audio codec under video and audio. Like H264, Xvid, DV, MJPEG, Huffyuv. If you just want to cut or join video then change to Copy under video and Audio.
Custom output file size
If you want to convert to a custom file size then click on Tools->Calculator, choose AVI, set the file size, set the audio bitrate(128-192kbit/s is good for most stuff) and avidemux will automatically set the video bitrate so the output file size size will be correct.
You can also add video filters like Resize, Black borders, Color adjustments, Sharpness, Subtitles(srt,ass/ssa,sub), Deinterlacing. Just click on Filter under Video to add the filters you want to use.
Select the output container Format like AVI, MPEG, MP4, MKV, FLV. If you are making DV, XviD, Huffyuv video use AVI. If H264 video use MP4 or MKV. If MPG(VCD,DVD) use MPEG-PS(A+V).
Preview Output
Select Output at the top middle to preview the video, like for example look so the resolution/size and black borders look correct.
Last save the file, avidemux wont automatically add the extension like .avi so name your file with the extension like video.avi , video.mpg, video.mp4, etc.
It can only output AVI-DV with PAL settings(720x576 25fps).
Try StreamFab Downloader and download from Netflix, Amazon, Youtube! Or Try DVDFab and copy Blu-rays! or rip iTunes movies!
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Originally Posted by moiz
Filters sidebar button =>Subtitles tab -
It can only output AVI-DV with PAL settings(720x576 25fps).
what does it mean?when u say u can select the output format as av1,mpeg,dvd etc, then u say it can only output to av1.... i am not able to get to it. does it mean that this soft can output av1 files only???
i tried to convert a av1 file.it's video is 536kbps,352*176,25fps,av1 audio is 32 kbps,mp3,
the output format was selected as dvd and i wanted to change the audio to ac3 done. then i klicked save as x.mpg. the conversion started but says it says it need 75 minutes to convert.
the same file in convertxtodvd took only 20 minutes to convert to mpeg-2 file. somebody told that av1demux is so fast. so i wanted to test it by converting an av1 file to mpeg-2.
did i go wrong in making some selection?thnks -
in the screenshot-calculator-custom-u have selected av1. there ,, are we eexpected to show the format of the target file or the source file?
Originally Posted by sumeshkri
And when I say it can only output to avi-dv with pal settings I mean that it can output to avi with dv codec with PAL-settings but not with NTSC-settings, everything else should work fine so if you are not making DV then ignore that. And convertxtodvd is probably faster but it depends what encoding settings you are using, if you want fast encoding use 1-pass encoding. -
thanks for the explanation baldrick. but i must say, even though i have selected one pass it took me 72 mnts (in place of 19 in convertxtodvd.)
Nice guide Baldrick, I tried this tool for an .mp4 to .avi conversion and it worked nicely.
Seek, And You Shall Find. -
Originally Posted by schematic2
.mpg -
i tried to convert one av1xvid file. in the customize option i selected 1900 mb. i opted 192 ac3 as audio. but wheni check the one pass contstant encoding the settings i made in the customize output seems to have gone.in the said example i tried one 698 mb xvid file to convert as dvdmpeg. i opted 1900 mb as the output file size in customise output option. and also opted for 192 ac3 as audio.then i checked onepass constant encoding.it took two hours 20 mmnts to convert . in the end i got mpg of file size 1.64 GB. the audio was 128 kbps only.. where i did mistake? i want to do one pass encoding with the option of customising the output file size (as dvd mpeg.) can i do this with av1demux?
Hi there,I've just downloaded this avidemux and can't convert any format into vcd format using auto and it keep showing the send error and the program shutdown .I kinda need that format pretty much,so can anyone please tell me how should I do to get NTSC or PAL vcd format ,PLEASE.....
Thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! -
Followed your tutorial, tried to add borders in order to change the definition of an MKV file from 544p to 720p, and also shrink the file using the calculator, but nothing happened - ended up with the same resolution, and same file size.
Since i'm something of a noob, any idea why this happened?
Any help would be much appreciated
Thanks in advance
And best wishes. -
Arrrr..... thanks about the software but I have got another big major problem.I try to cut my dvd 9 vob file into many part and want exact same output video file as it before .Beside I'm using the another video converter to convert the chopped file instead of using form avidemux .My video converter can read that vob dvd9 file before chopped up but after chopping i put the chop file and it said the video doesn't have audio stream and out put won't have audio stream.I can't believe it, can any one help me out
"Video converter said the chop up file has no audio stream and video player show no video but audio" WHAT THE HE@# IS GOING ON CAN ANYONE HELP ME OUT I'M GETTING STUCK IN HERE WITH THIS SOFTWARE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Didn't you say you didn't use AviDemux? So who cares about your problem since it's off topic and you gave no information at all about why you chopped up the VOBs, what you used to chop up the VOBs, what you were trying to use to do the conversion, and what you wanted to convert it to.
Beside I'm using the another video converter to convert the chopped file instead of using form avidemux . -
Arrrrrr......Forget about what I said.I've figured it out by myself .Looks like I missed the format part to change to "mpeg ps(A+V)" to give the same output.No wonder why the output is so mess up,lol. SORRY FOR BOTHER YOU GUYES REALLY.
Thanks for the tutorial, it helped me getting started ! I didn't know that I had to type the extention myself, therefore my output could not be opened with any program.
Thanks for the Howto this is just what I needed to get up and running with AviDemux on my Ubuntu 8.10 box.
With DeVeDe and AviDemux I am off to a flying start.
If I just want to take the contents of a DVD (lots of VOBS) and turn it in to one file as quickly as possible I have found that AviDemux works a treat:
I open the first large VOB and the rest are appended automatically, as per your guide, then I save to avi in a couple of minutes.
VIDEO: Copy
AUDIO: Copy
Can anyone confirm that this is the easiest way?
It looks as if this can be done on the command line... which could be useful for automating things... any one got an idea of the command I would need for the above?
I am going to to look into this myself but hey why reinvent the wheel -
Somethings a' foul... There is some seriously out of sync audio within the app... and a saved video file that's sans even a whiff of sound.
I load up mpg and go a ways into the video and the audio is several seconds behind the video. And worse yet, if I save a clip, it has no sound.
? -
most of the rmvb ,and wmv files it converts to dvd with
the audio is delayed.
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text:
Based in Germany
Since receiving his first LEGO® set at age five, hardly a day has gone by without Rene Hoffmeister building with LEGO bricks at least for a few minutes. He has built LEGO models for companies like Deutsche Telekom, Merlin Entertainment, Bosch, Deutsche Bahn, and HCI Capital, and even more models are in the works.
In 1999, Rene founded the largest German-speaking LEGO fan website in the world. Today, the portal receives thousands of visitors each day, and is a great starting point for those interested in the hobby of LEGO building.
In 2002, he started 1000steine-land in his native Berlin. The event, which over the past 5 years has been attended by more than 10,000 LEGO fans, is an annual exhibition of models by European LEGO builders.
This year, some of Rene's models are to be displayed in Russia and China as part of a traveling exhibition. His models have also been displayed in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Poland, Greece and the Netherlands.
Website: www.brick-fabrik.de
Email: email@example.com


text:
Home >
News & Policies >
May 2003
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
May 8, 2003
Statement by the President on Judicial Nominees
Miguel Estrada and Priscilla Owen have been waiting two years for an up-or-down vote in the Senate. Both of these nominees are of the highest integrity and character with tremendous legal experience. Both have been unanimously rated "Well Qualified" by the American Bar Association. Each has the support of a majority of Senators, yet votes on their nominations are being blocked by a minority of Senators who are engaged in simultaneous filibusters. These partisan obstructionist tactics are unprecedented, unacceptable, and inconsistent with the Senate's Constitutional responsibility.
Because of the Senate's failure to hold timely votes, the number of judicial vacancies has become unacceptably high. When the Federal Courts are understaffed, they cannot act in a timely manner to resolve disputes that affect the lives and liberties of Americans.
Mr. Estrada and Justice Owen represent the mainstream of American law and American values, possess extraordinary experience and integrity, and have strong bipartisan support from those who know them best. They will be outstanding circuit judges once they receive a vote and are confirmed.
In recent days, many Senators of both parties have rightly spoken out about the broken confirmation process and reiterated the need for the Senate to ensure timely consideration of judicial nominees. I appreciate their call for the Senate to fulfill its Constitutional responsibility and hold up-or-down votes on all judicial nominees within a reasonable time after nomination.


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Abstract: We examined whether neuromuscular reflexes were altered with anterior loads applied to the tibiofemoral joint. A ligament testing device was modified by attaching a reflex hammer to a steel mounted frame to illicit a patellar tendon tap, while anterior directed loads displaced the tibia on the femur. Five trials were acquired while anterior-directed loads (20, 50, 100 N; counterbalanced) were applied to the posterior tibia between 20 N pre (20 NPre) and post (20 NPost baseline conditions on two different days. Surface electromyography (sEMG) recorded mean quadriceps (Q) and hamstring (H) reflex time (RTime = ms) and reflex amplitude (RAmp = %MVIC). A load cell on the anterior tibia measured the timing (KETime = ms) and amplitude (KEAmp = N) of the knee extension force, and was used to calculate electromechanical delay (EMD = ms) and peak knee extension moment (KEMom = Nm/kg). Data from 19 recreationally active subjects revealed good to excellent response consistency between test days and between baseline conditions for RTime, RAmp, KETime and KEAmp. With anterior tibial loading, RTime was faster at 50 N vs. 20 NPost, and RAmp was greater at 20 NPre vs. 20 NPost (Q and H) and at 50 N vs. 100 N (Q only). KEMom was greater at 20 NPre and 50 N vs. 20 NPost, and EMD was shorter at 50 N vs. 20 N, 20 NPre and 20 NPost. These results suggest that knee extensor reflex responses are enhanced with low (50 N) but not moderate (100 N) anterior loading of the knee.
Low levels of anterior tibial loading enhance knee extensor reflex response characteristicsPDF (Portable Document Format)348 KBCreated on 1/1/2005Views: 3342
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A great deal of players believes that possibly experienced players can rake in boatloads of cash when they are in betting clubs. Halfway this is valid as one reason why club are flourishing is a direct result of its guarantee of cash for players who are adequate to win. Be that as it may incompletely, this is likewise false as players are not by any means the only ones who get the opportunity to win cash in betting. The betting clubs do as well. This implies players are not just going up against one another. They are likewise contending with the betting club for the success. In the event that you consider yourself to be the sort of individual who needs more karma when betting and could not swing roulette chances to your kindness, at that point playing in conventional and internet club would be something that you ought to stay away from.
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Smiling Snowman winter 2013
Use this file to stitch an 8" round snowman mug mat, hot pad or trivet. Great for holiday gift-giving!
(See our photo tutorial)
When checkout is complete, you'll receive a download link by email. Follow the instructions to download a .zip file containing all of the file formats in the drop down menu, above.
You are purchasing embroidery files, only. There is no instruction on how to do machine embroidery or how to create projects using these embroidery files. You must have a knowledge of how to use your embroidery machine and how to download the files and load them on your machine or into your embroidery software.
All designs ©Patrick Lose. All Rights Reserved


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Earning customers' loyalty: Isn't that for companies in consumer markets? Many business-to-business (B2B) executives figure that their customers act rationally and base decisions mostly on price—loyalty doesn't enter into the equation.
Increasingly, however, B2B executives in industries ranging from industrial goods to financial services to healthcare find loyalty to be a powerful lever for them. It can both accelerate growth and create sustainable competitive advantage. But earning loyalty in B2B markets poses unique challenges, often involving complicated channel structures, concentrated buyer communities or large accounts with many people influencing the relationship. Defining who the customers really are and how to best engage them requires tailored solutions and a higher level of sophistication.
For example, when Tata Steel Wire Division (TSWD) in India needs to understand how farmers are using its barbed-wire fences so that it can develop targeted new products, it has to work through its distributors and retail network. For any supplier to a large corporation, simply mapping who in the organization decides on, influences and uses the product can be a Herculean task.
In B2B markets, even those long regarded as commodities, deriving strategic advantage from loyal customer relationships requires true differentiation. Often that means not just great products at competitive prices, but also dependable delivery, tailored services and a high level of responsiveness and collaboration. The value in most B2B markets has shifted. Among manufacturers, for instance, profit pools have moved downstream to ancillary services, lifetime contracts or provision by the hour—all of which depend on addressing customer needs such as reliability or reduced risk. B2B companies thus need to go beyond mere satisfaction to earn customers' enthusiasm and loyalty so that they can improve the business's economics.
As Lanham Napier, CEO of cloud hosting firm Rackspace put it, "Greatness is achieved when customers say we're great."
Can a B2B customer really promote or advocate for your business? Yes, but not just by saying favorable things or recommending the firm to others. Loyalty and advocacy also can be expressed as the customer's willingness to discuss how you can better serve his or her needs and add more value—critical to boosting revenues and profitability.
To that end, many B2B companies have adopted a comprehensive approach called the Net Promoter SystemSM. This system gives companies the foundation for determining which investments will yield the highest return. At the same time, it shapes behaviors, mindsets and decision making at all levels in order to form a more responsive, customer-centered organization.
Net Promoter® companies use regular customer feedback to understand what they are doing right and wrong. They loop the feedback quickly to frontline employees, their managers and senior executives. That allows employees to discover the root causes of both problems and areas of distinction, which then enables them to take targeted actions. Over time, the accumulation of improvements serves to build a powerful competitive differentiation.
Generating revenues from existing loyal customers can be done much more efficiently than acquiring new customers. Customer loyalty thus has a big upside on several fronts that combine to accelerate organic growth:
- In our work with B2B companies, we've found that customers who are "promoters" have an average lifetime value ranging between 3 and 12 times that of "detractors," depending on segment and industry. (We define promoters as respondents who give their company a Net Promoter ScoreSM, or NPS®, of 9– 10, while detractors give a score of zero to 6.) Promoters stay longer with the company, buy more products, usually cost less to serve and are more likely to refer the supplier to colleagues and friends.
- NPS correlates closely with sales growth, expanded share of wallet, sales force productivity, greater market share, greater employee engagement and higher profitability, according to Bain research and client work.
As a result, B2B loyalty leaders tend to grow four to eight percentage points above their market's annual growth (see Figure 1).
It might sound obvious that better economics flow from delighting customers. Yet this logic has only recently permeated the day-to-day operations of many B2B companies that have a legacy of focusing largely on product or technical innovation. And it's getting tougher to maintain customer relationships: In a recent survey by Bain & Company of 290 executives in B2B industries throughout 11 countries, 68% of respondents said customers are less loyal than they used to be.
Some B2B companies have reversed this trend through intensive, CEO-led efforts to earn customers' loyalty. While each organization has unique characteristics, they also share several common principles.
Identify what really delights and annoys customers
A delighted customer? Some B2B executives might think that's impossible. But in fact, loyalty leaders often find that they can, in fact, earn enthusiastic advocacy for their service or for the company overall.
That's because most B2B customers evaluate providers on a combination of several criteria: Do they create economic and strategic value for our business? Do they simplify our daily operations (and my own work life)? Can I trust them? Do I like working with them? An easy, trustworthy partnership in B2B markets can evoke personal feelings every bit as strong as with consumer products and brands.
Most B2B companies have various offerings that target quite different customer segments—say, equipment for a multinational agribusiness versus a version designed for local bakeries. To understand the needs and behaviors of target segments, and how well the firm meets the needs of each segment, it's important to push past the simple averages of NPS, share of wallet or profitability.
Regular feedback from customers provides the raw material for uncovering the root causes behind customers' attitudes toward the firm. Engaging customers in ongoing dialogue allows employees to learn exactly which elements of the business most appeal to or annoy customers. Through these dialogues, companies often realize that they have been over-serving assumed needs and under-serving real needs.
The feedback comes from contacting customers after key episodes like a new contract negotiation or a service event, ideally prefaced by just three questions to ensure high participation: Would you recommend? Why? Would you be willing to comment on a few specific areas?
An NPS set-up should be highly tailored to the dynamics of the particular industry. B2B settings often involve several customer constituencies including gatekeepers, business leaders and operational users. Each group has different needs and requires different types of interactions from providers. The design around when, how and with whom to engage will depend on the provider's channel structure (intermediaries or not), the structure of decision making in the account (external influencers or not), and relevant episodes or moments of truth for the customer (see Figures 2 and 3).
In construction, jet engines or automotive supply, for instance, loyalty depends largely on relationships and project results. Dürr, the German supplier of paint and assembly shops, may have only about 40 accounts, but each is a huge automotive manufacturer with hundreds of decision makers and influencers. Also, most departments within Dürr have interactions with many individuals at these customer organizations. As a result, mapping Dürr employees with customer contacts is relatively complex, and the NPS process requires thoughtful choices about whom to ask for feedback and how to communicate back when acting on customers' comments.
When a company sells to distributors or other intermediaries, getting feedback from retailers and end users, not just the intermediaries, will be quite valuable as well (see Figure 4). For TSWD, the insights gleaned from such conversations formed the basis for a new product that is shaping up to be one of its most profitable.
TSWD has long sold steel wires to distributors in India, but the company tended to view end users as a homogeneous group. It did not possess detailed information on how different types of farmers and growers used the wire and what features were most valuable to them.
As the market grew more competitive, TSWD decided to improve its overall value proposition and introduce new products, but it needed a much better understanding of the action downstream.
Working closely with its distributors, TSWD spoke with 1,100 end users and more than 200 retailers, contractors and other influencers— conversations that revealed significant openings to target certain segments with premium products. One segment of farmers, for instance, prized durability because if the wire broke, entire rows of grapes would fall and rot. Another segment valued ease of installation, so that they could install the fencing in one section of the farm for a crop's growing season, then dismantle it and reinstall it elsewhere for a new crop.
Use insights to inform where to place bets
Once customers raise issues that need to be addressed, a company can close the loop by fixing those issues and contacting detractors to update them personally on progress. Typical issues include excessive handoffs, long cycle time or rework of a job. It's equally important to learn about and replicate those areas where the company exceeds customer expectations, including its strengths relative to competitors'.
Insights gleaned from the feedback will help a firm align investments with its customers' priorities, size the potential benefits and chart the best course to get there.
Consider the experience of the US-based accounting and financial software firm Intuit. Tax accounting software has hundreds of features that can sometimes be complicated, even for accountants. So when Intuit started to regularly solicit feedback from new accountant customers, it learned that many didn't realize the products' full capabilities and weren't aware of Intuit's webinars and other instructional channels.
Based on such insights, Intuit's ProTax Group formed a New Client Services team to bring on board new customers, walk them through key product functionality and make learning a new system as easy as possible. As a result, accountants who participate in the program are 49% more likely to renew, leading to nearly 50% more second-year customer revenue.
Today, Intuit's ProTax Group solicits feedback from roughly 100,000 accountants right after a few key touchpoints. Keeping the customer's perspective front and center has allowed Intuit to steadily strengthen advocacy among its business customers and improve the company's financials.
Returning to the experience of TSWD, feedback from farmers and retailers led the company to design a new wire product that is thicker and has a more advanced protective coating for durability. Sub-branded as "Farming Gold," the wire comes with a 15-year warranty, approval by an external testing lab and a price 25% higher than the existing product. Early results show Farming Gold to be one of the most profitable wire products in TSWD's portfolio, so the company is working on sub-brands for the security-conscious and do-it-yourself customer segments.
UCB, a Belgium-based global specialty pharmaceuticals company, has employed NPS to better understand the needs of healthcare professionals and patients. In Europe, regular feedback from physicians has also allowed UCB sales representatives, medical science liaisons and executives to become more responsive by providing more and better educational materials and product information for physicians.
Similarly, a major luggage manufacturer used customer feedback to learn that most of its retailer customers wanted sales representatives to visit more often during the year, so that they could learn about the latest products. The firm invested in more sales visits, especially to high-potential stores, and worked to keep its line in display windows for a longer period of time. These actions generated 5% sales growth—and profitable growth.
Philips, the Dutch conglomerate, even uses NPS feedback to evaluate acquisitions, "to make sure it doesn't buy an empty box," said CMO Geert Van Kuyck.
Build a repeatable model for improvements
After the first insights and resulting actions materialize, the challenge is to make the process repeatable, through adjustments to key account management, by holding regular cross-functional sessions and other mechanisms.
First, however, senior management has to paint a simple, compelling and differentiating vision of what the customer's experience should be. That comes from exploring the questions: What does the company stand for? Why are we different? How does this vision translate to each episode in the customer's experience? The answers will have implications for channels, products and how work gets done on the front lines.
One critical aspect of the vision involves articulating a simple definition of success—a single universal customer currency such as NPS that's relevant for everyone in the company no matter which geography, function or line of business. At DHL, the global logistics firm based in Germany, top management uses NPS to track the firm's competitive position by business, country and customer segment. At the same time, a DHL Global Forwarding service employee in the Netherlands uses the NPS currency to assess and learn what she could do better to help a customer handle an exception around a specific container shipment issue and, more generally, to create promoters.
With that vision in place, it usually takes the active collaboration of several functions to identify what critical changes are needed, such as pricing optimization, defect elimination or new governance over decision making. A company must then equip its teams with the right tools and embed the capabilities in existing operating rhythms and decisions.
Intuit's ProTax Group has developed a structural equation model that considers the key product or service attributes influencing loyalty, examines each initiative in place or planned for a given department, then predicts the likely impact on NPS with an accuracy of two percentage points. "It's one thing to make customer issues visible, but a tougher thing to prioritize all the possible puts and takes in the end- to-end customer experience," said Tim Rollins, customer experience leader for the ProTax Group. "The predictive model proves very useful for that assessment."
Committed, visible leadership is the other essential ingredient. Senior executives including the CEO need to be intimately involved in regular interactions with customers in order for a customer-centered culture to take root and thrive.
UCB maintains a customer-centered culture by ensuring that decisions requiring more extensive change escalate to regular meetings of senior executives. In Europe, more than 700 physicians engage in detailed feedback calls with UCB senior management, right up to the CEO. This is a tangible way for UCB to bring the corporate vision of "global biopharmaceutical leader transforming the lives of people living with severe diseases" to life.
Intuit also involves leadership at several levels in regular talks with customers. Frontline supervisors do feedback surveys of accountants at specific touchpoints, while directors and vice presidents handle the longer, annual relationship conversations. "Having the customer voice in senior executives' minds is invaluable during strategic or business improvement planning," said Rollins.
Indeed, using regular customer feedback dates back to Intuit's early days, when founder Scott Cook was known for lingering at a local big-box retail store and approaching people who bought early versions of Intuit's personal finance software. With their permission, he actually followed them home to watch them install and use the product.
Give employees the tools and leeway to unleash their discretionary effort and deliver a superior experience for customers
As B2B companies battle to earn loyalty and expand their share of wallet, their most effective weapon consists of highly engaged employees who go the extra distance to deliver. Engaged employees provide better experiences for customers, approach the job with energy—which enhances productivity—and come up with creative product, process and service improvements.
Because NPS feedback goes to employees at such high velocity—often close to real time—they can understand how their own actions affect the customer's experience of the company and its products (see Figure 5).
"There is a real hunger for new customer feedback so that employees can raise the bar," said Simon Lyons, global director of marketing for Aggreko, the UK-based supplier of generators and temperature-control devices.
A customer-centered mindset often entails changing processes to give employees more autonomy within a framework (see Figure 6). The call center for small business customers, for example, might shift from using a rigid script and protocols to flexibility in dealing with flagship customers. Performance metrics might have to change accordingly, from cost-driven metrics such as average handle time to handle time plus first-call resolution. This does not mean "anything goes." The most effective companies give employees decision rights and accountabilities for daily operational decisions that can add or destroy a lot of value—but within an explicit decision framework that has clear guidelines for behavior.
Net Promoter companies also find that bringing the voice of the customer into decision-making forces different departments— Manufacturing, R&D, Sales and so on—to intensify their collaborations. When Tata Steel launched its Farming Gold product, it chose to do so in the factory, with hundreds of workers attending as the head of the wire division led a prayer ceremony.
The same logic applies to a company's channel partners and other intermediaries who serve as the face of the supplier to the customer and thus can enhance or degrade its reputation. E.ON, a multinational power and gas company based in Germany, learned this lesson in one of its country operations, which relies on third-party agencies to acquire new small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) customers. There, NPS feedback from newly signed customers showed significant gaps between the rebates, tariffs and features that SMEs thought they would receive, and what E.ON actually provided. This disconnect prompted a stream of calls from confused business owners.
In response, E.ON invested in agent support tools and training events for its agencies to convey more accurate information about the company's products and overall value proposition. It established quality targets as part of the agencies' compensation, in order to motivate the desired behaviors and reward the best agencies. Early results suggest the value of working with the channel to set customer expectations, as E.ON's new SME customers in this country have recently been brought on board with greater clarity and fewer complaints.
A simple proposition—think like a customer— can transform performance in even the most complex B2B markets and lead to sustainable competitive advantage. But becoming customer-centered requires substantial changes in ways of working, behaviors and mindsets: from an exclusive focus on product to a wider view that includes customers; from a single department's key performance indicators to an entire organization looking at one reliable metric; from rigid protocols to teams empowered to help customers. As more companies have discovered, an obsession with customer loyalty pays off with superior growth on the top and bottom lines.
David Michels is a Zurich-based partner in Bain & Company's Customer Strategy & Marketing practice. Andreas Dullweber heads the firm's Customer Strategy & Marketing practice in Europe and the Middle East and is based in Munich.


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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – A Dubai court has sentenced three British tourists to four years in prison on drug charges in a case that drew international scrutiny over claims of abuses in custody.
The allegations of torture brought a statement of concern from British Prime Minister David Cameron, but Dubai authorities have denied any wrongdoing.
The trio, identified as Suneet Jeerh, Grant Cameron and Karl Williams, were arrested last July with what police said was the synthetic drug known as Spice. The men deny the charges. They claimed they faced abuse by police, including electric shocks and beatings.
Monday's conviction and sentence can be appealed within 15 days. The court also ordered the men deported after they complete their sentences.


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Over a year ago we packed up our lives in Manhattan. We spent the following 10 months traveling through 10 countries. We slept in 32 different places. A few months ago we moved to Atlanta. Throughout all of this, we always felt as if we were home.
Before we left on our journey, we had a somewhat conventional definition of home. To us home was about a physical address, around which revolved certain routines and familiarity. There was the local coffee shop and dry-cleaner, Sunday dinners with friends, spontaneous drop-ins from family and weekend runs along the East River. During our trip, home became fluid. Many times we found ourselves in strange places. Other times, we were surrounded by family or busy making new friends. The more time passed, the more our family realized that home is a feeling, not a place. Home was where we could appreciate each other. Whether in Thailand or Namibia, the kids always found serenity in a goodnight routine. Whether busting out dance moves in India or playing dress up with kitchen towels in Atlanta, the kids had ways to express and be themselves.
Everywhere from Cape Town to Istanbul we managed to generate familiar smells from our kitchens. The more we drifted away from our Manhattan home, the more we realized that home was a feeling that traveled with us, and that we controlled being home regardless of our physical surroundings.
Since we were traveling light, we only allowed ourselves to pick up two things from each country. The first was coins, so that the kids now have a full set of coins from every country (who knows when the Euro may be a collector's item). The other was Christmas ornaments. This weekend, we hung our ornaments for the first time, and we remembered stories from each of our past homes. The kids recalled going to school every morning in India, hunting for lions in Namibia, and having fresh juices for breakfast in Rio. Ava remembered her fourth birthday in Greece and Kayan wanted to smell wine again in Cape Town. We found ourselves feeling homesick.
On a recent business flight back to Atlanta, my plane flew over a very familiar Manhattan. As we landed in Atlanta, the swirl of lights on the highways formed a confusing doodle. With over 100 roads named Peachtree, I'm convinced we'll never find our way around. In many ways, Atlanta has been as foreign as any country we have called home on our trip. Understanding the Southern drawl and slowing down to match the politeness has been a cultural adjustment.
The house, the two cars and the multiple bathrooms are a long way from our Manhattan comforts. However, because Ava and Kayan still race to the front door to welcome us, because we still snuggle together at bedtime and make a gigantic mess at breakfast, because we still express ourselves in all our silliness, because we are doing what we love to do – evolve an adapt to everything around us, because of all these things we are still home.
This post was triggered by a question posed to a group of traveling families – How has travel changed your definition of home? Click through the links at the bottom to read about what others families have to say.
Bohemian Travelers – Home is Every Where
Flashpacker Family – My Heart Doesn't Lie at Home
Living Outside of the Box – Where Is Home?
Life Changing Year – I Never Thought We'd Be Home For Christmas!
Grow In Grace Life – Home… Where Ever We Are, There We Are
Witness Humanity – Things I will miss about New York (or a Guide to the Awesomeness that is NYC)
Discover Share Inspire – How to Always Be Home For the Holidays… No Matter Where in the World You Are
The Barefoot Nomad – Where's Home for a Barefoot Nomad?
Simon Says – Where are you from?
Gypseekers – Are We Home Yet?: Re-entering Society After a Round the World Adventure
Expat Experiment – Traveling Home