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Ever heard of Pantry Jealousy?
Sugar and flour in those containers! And a whole lot more!!!
special bread crumbs that I make in bulk for allergic kid, brown sugar that I buy in bags, beans, rice.....the possibilities are endless! I think you just created some pantry jealousy here.
Cereal, cereal and cereal. I'm so tired of the different size boxes all over the pantry closet. I definitely have pantry-envy. I've been trying to be more organized, but using all OXO containers would make the closet look so glamorous. If I have to be in the kitchen (and I do), I want my closets and cabinets to be glamaorous. Thanks for a really great idea.
Definately sugar and flour first! They come in bags, and are not usually finished in one setting. (unless you're baking in bulk :))
all my baking ingredients! i love to bake and some ingredients' containers can fit measuring cups and spoons in which drives me crazy!
Definitely various flours and sugars.
Oh I have such pantry jealousy now. I want a sophisticated pantry like you so I dont have to empty the first layer of items to get to the back. Where'd you get those handled flour containers? I have got to OXO my pantry- starting with the brown sugar that always dries out and then the cereals whose boxes my kids destroy. Then I'll put some in the craft cabinet for beads
Sugar and flour will be the first items to go in my OXO containers.
I'll store my steel cut oatmeal that I buy in bulk
These would become strictly Baking supply containers I could buy so many sprinkles to put in these !!!!!! Even the big ones lol
Actually, the first thing I will store in my new containers will be sugar--because it's currently still in the bag (and the bag is already opened!)
I'm envious of your pantry--not just because it's so neat, but because it is full!
Thanks for the giveaway.
My whole pantry needs these! What would I do? I'd store many kinds of pasta, whole wheat and all-purpose flour, and sugars and...
You said it right, Pantry envy... the first thing.. Sugar (only because anything new is inaugurated with something sweet!)
I would put flour and sugar, those are the most dangerous items of making a mess.
I would put in cereal! I have so many open boxes of cereal in my pantry and most of them don't stay closed.
My baking goods would be easier to move around the cabinet in these containers--the different kinds of flour and sugar. Your pantry is beautiful! Good Shabbos!
The first thing I would put into a container would be cereal.We eat a ton of cereal and there are so many boxes of different cereals taking up all of the space in our pantry.
I homeschool and cooking is a huge activity. i believe I definitely will start with my different fliers: spelt, wheat, white. Then my sugars: Brown, white.... I wish my closet looked like yours!!
I never should have seen these photos!!!! I am more than jealous!! I thought my pantry was organized, but after seeing your new organized pantry using OXO containers, I'm definitely redoing my pantry ASAP. Love this blog. Keep these great ideas coming!
definitely sugar, and/or salt. We live in a very damp house, and these are the two things I'm always trying to protect the most (I already have great containers for flour).
umm umm flour? umm umm rice? umm cereal? sugar? cookies?
eeek! too many choices!!! pantry envy overload!
only solution? win the set!
Sugar, would be the first thing I would use with the 4.0 containers. Love, Love these containers! I am already visualizing how great my pantry will look with the new set (which I will win-of course) of OXO containers. I like the sizing of them and the square shape which makes it so easy to organize the shelves. Ideas are running through my head.....
Pasta and home made noodles
I use several kinds of rices, so they'd be first - I hate partial bags and boxes that spill all over the place.
I love them!!! It's insane! I never thought I could have so much pantry jealousy! Way to go!
first thing would be for flour sugar, spagetti, cookies beans etc. and the list goes on. i have pantry jealousy just from looking how organized this is.
I just bought myself these containers and I love them! Wouldn't mind winning some more! The first thing I would put if I do win is sugar. I don't have one for sugar yet.
I definitely need these! Never thought that using containers would be so much easier! The first thing I would use it for is pasta. Since I live in Florida, the containers would help keep the bugs away!! It just makes everything look so much neater and easier to find!!
I really want to win these containers. My pantry is long overdue for a makeover! I would place my beans in the first container.
Sugar!!!! Hope I win! I am despeerate for a "pantry makeover!" and this is the perfect key!
Concidering that me, my husband,and my two kids currently live with my parents our pantry is always overflowing and gets cluttered two secconds after it gets organized,I would have to say cereal. My son loves cereal, and my dad lives on cereal... okay not literaly. lol We always have boxes everywhere and becasue we can never find them or know what we have we are always buying more, or double buying. We have even resorted to stacking the above the oven... its not working out. These containers would seriously simplify our life!
The kids stuff, cookies and goldfish will go first
Sugar,flour,baking soda,cocoa and powdered milk.
Flour! I am in need of 4 containers just like this!! Most of the lids on mine are snaping apart! (Yikes!!) But I got lots of different types of Flour and they need a new home! Thanks for the opportunity to win!!
I did not think that a few plastic containers would make me so jealous!!
The pantry looks gorgeous - so beautifully organized, neat and clean. I cant wait to reorganize my food cabinet with these containers and then I might not have to reorganize it every week like I do now!
I would use it for everything! Pasta, Rice, Croutons, beans, barley, flour, sugar, confection sugar, flour, corn flour....etc etc
I would love to win? but just incase - Where can you buy these?
You can get them in Bed Bath and Beyond
I have pantry envy now! Your pantry is beautiful!
I would organize everything! Pasta, flour, sugar, beans - everything would go in those amazing containers! I really do need to revamp my pantry...mine is embarassing!
Oooh, I've caught the pantry jealousy bug. I would put my husband's homemade granola in there... now he uses three different containers, all different sizes, to store it after he makes it.
These would be great for storing rice--they would definitely keep the little critters out!
You can get them in Bed Bath and Beyond.
Oh my I am sooo jealous...my pantry needs this system so bably. We are on such a tight budget this system will help both me and my husband when creating a shopping list. We'll be able to see what is needed and not duplicate shopping items. All of my baking supplies will be the first to get organized. Love to win a set! Thanks
Oh, I'd definitely be putting my pancake mixes in them. I hate that they are just loose in the boxes or bags. And of course sugars and dried beans.
i'd use it to store the different types of beans and rice and also to show them to my circle of friends!
I definitely have pantry envy. I have been looking for square containers like that for years. Where can you get them from in Australia. I would use it for the pasta first. More importantly than that though, the pantry shelving looks fantastic. we have a very big pantry unfortunately very unfunctional as it is very deep and wide with few shelves. Where can I get some plans to make an interior like that for us.
Your pantry looks soooooo neat! It's amazing how a few containers can do such a nice job! I would definitely begin by storing flour and sugar in OXO containers, and finish with my many baking ingredients - sprinkles, sugar crystals, cinnamon.....
WOW!!! That's all I can say... and I thought my pantry looked pretty good!! I'd put everything in them-cereals, snacks, beans, rice, sugar, flour... You get the picture- a pantry makeover!!
I want this set !! Yes, Yes, Yes for me , me , me!
The question asked what would I put in my Containers first Sugar Candy or Beans..... Heck that's a no brainier All of the Above and then some !!
All of my Gal pals love when Momma Lucy comes to Visit . I organize their pantry's.
I am in desperate need of new containers to replace the Ice Cream buckets I use now. Properly labeled of course .... Please Bless me with these PLEASE!!!
((((((Buddy Love & God Bless))))))
Can you please tell me who did your pantry makeover? It looks fabulous.
love your pantry makeover! I will definetly get one for my flour and beans, hate when the spill all over my floor!
Love it! I already have containers for my flour & sugar - but those open packages of pasta? I'm dreaming about how neat they'll look! And of course a little one, for my pet peeve, half used bags of chocolate chips!
I'm green with envy!!!!
This is how i have always dreamt my pantry will look like.......didnt happen yet...i wld def first do all my baking stuff....next wld be beans,rice& pasta i love the way it looks!!!
LOVE THE NEAT LOOK!!! I am forever re-organizing my pantry and cabinets- but this is something else. I'm afraid I am fully consumed now by 'pantry jealousy' I would fill those things rapidly ma'am. Starting with choc. chips I think. :)
That pantry looks gorgeous!
My sugar and flour are in containers already. But I can definitely use some for pasta, beans, rice...
I'd put cookies in first, because our ceramic cookie jar lid recently broke! Then the rest of my snacks.
I have major pantry jealousy!!!!! Every time I look at pictures online or in Real Simple of pantry organization, I get extremely jealous!!! I started transferring cereals & flour etc. to glass jars because the building gets mice (I know, gross), but every time I pass by the $99.99 set of Oxo pop top containers in Bed Bath & Beyond, I want to cry because I want them SO badly! They would be a huge asset to my kitchen & pantry alike!
(I pressed enter too quickly)-In other words, to answer the question, I would use them the most for rice & dry goods like chips- which never stay fresh with chip clips!
First thing in the containers would be cereal-love having cereal in clear containers! In the smaller ones I would put candies!
Would love this set to bring LONG LASTING order to my pantry!
The first thing I would put in the containers would be beans, rice, pasta, and other dry goods!!
Oh how I would love a clean and organised pantry like that!!! I have all my baking ingredients in a carousel and the sugar bags always seem to catch on the metal - so sugar would be my first choice followed surprisingly enough by red lentils and pearl barley which also come in fiddly non resealable bags!!
Oh. My. Gosh. I envy this pantry...big time! I LOVE when things look organized and beautiful! Ah! I love OXO products and have always wanted these! The other day we found some moths (ewwww) so winning these would not only be beautiful but soooo helpful!
Those look really nifty! The first thing I would put in a container would be pasta.
I would definitely use them first for flour, sugar, beans and barley. After that, the sky's the limit!
1. I love your website.
2. I bought about 8 of these containers about six months ago and really overall love them. I have two complaints a. they take up extra room -- although that does give room for your fingers to grab them. 2. I've had one that wouldn't seal -- BBB exchanged it for me no problem.
I would LOVE to continue to organize my cabinets with these great containers!!
(Mine are used for flour, white whole wheat flour, sugar, cereals, home-made cookies etc.)
Flour, sugar, brown sugar and a lot more!! Love it!!!
Oh my!!!!! How I would die to have a pantry like this....I could put my nuts, cereal, flour, sugar, spices, dried beans, dried fruits, cookies, teas, coffee, etc......"""dreaming"""
I already have a few of these, but I'd use new ones for flour, sugar, pasta, split peas, granola bars, and anything that makes a mess in our pantry!
Sugar, flour, chocolate chips, brown sugar, nuts...can you tell i like to bake? lol
I would use these OXO containers for EVERYTHING in my pantry. I would start with cereals, flour and sugar!
I would use these OXO containers for EVERYTHING in my pantry. I would start with cereals, flour and sugar!
THANKS FOR THIS GREAT IDEA>>>Honestly, I love my confectioners' sugar container. It's a large spice container that has little holes on top. It makes it easier to sprinkle the sugar right over your dish
I would start with cereal! I really like having cereal in a container but haven't found any good ones yet.
I would definitely start with my coffee center because I use it all day every day.
Wow, after reading what you wrote & then scrolling through everyone else comments...wow!
Talk about a mastermind, literally!! You are one sensible lady ka'h...between your book that my friend raves about & fabulous recipes, ideas for the cupboards...
I've got 3 teenagers ka'h & a little baby & the first thing that gets messed about with by my big ones is the bag of sugar, & would believe if I told you that they find all 3 that I hide in the closet only out of sheer desperation, to have a nice clean bag for baking challah & cakes!!!
I'd definitely go for the sugar.
I'm totally blown away at how clean the cupboards look, forget the jealousy, you must feel so amazing for just having a clearout. KOl hakavod!
Corn chips and pretzels! they get stale when we're only halfway through the package, and it's such a waste.
oh, would so love to win these! maybe this will be the solution to my pantry clutter...
Bread and Butter!! Esp. homemade breads!!
I always want to try oxo! I'd probably put all of our various grains in first. Would be such a space saver!
I would put my cereals in these containers.
Pantry envy.... drooling. I would put flour and sugar in the containers, possibly pasta, maybe cereal
Ok, so practically I would be with everyone else who posted here do sugars, flour, rice, cholent beans, and barley. BUT, hungry post-baby me would fill them up with different kinds of candy; mike & ikes, chocolate, carmel popcorn, gushers, toffee, ....did I say chocolate yet????
first thing vanilla sugar :) just kidding...
I would deffintly start from things that are bought in papers and plastic wreappers ssuch as salt, sugar, flour, rice, popcorn. only then I would use it for things that i buy in good containers such as cookies. i hate having in my pentry open bags.
I love these things. I would store anything, even if I don't need them on hand ever just because I like the way they look!
My raisins!! They are hard to keep fresh once opened.
I would store many food items but the first would be the craisins I buy on a regular basis because they tend to get dry and hard if not sealed good..
I had a 1kg bag of jelly belly flops and put them in a see through jar so that the children could see what they were taking without spilling them out on the floor to choose the best....
But my next thing would be sugar decanted from a 5kg bag...
I would start with my sugar, cornstarch, and beans...
I would start with flour and sugar then steel cut oatmeal. Cant wait, This is the same pantry I have!
I would start with flour and all my mixes, and keep going and going. Thanks!
Oh I have definite pantry jealousy now! I would start with pasta and cereal.
Lentils, barley and couscous! I currently have them in ziplock bags and they slide all over the place on my shelves.
I am so jealous! You pantry is amazing and i want one just like it. Oh where do I begin, Sugar, beans, rice, quinoa, the list goes on....
boxes of pasta!! I have open boxes of pasta in ziplock bags.
Pasta is the first thing I would put in these, next would be cereal, then baking ingredients.
With the heading "Ever heard of Pantry Jealousy?" Now I see it and feel it the same time. What a perfect way to describe it! First things in it would be Cereal, then sugar, and so on...
Can I say everything? Soup mix, baking powder, baking soda, cocoa powder, cous cous, shredded coconut, lentils, rice...!
Rice. Its currently in bags, but they flop all over the place and can't seem to find their own space on the shelves.
flour, I have one container (not oxo, but a similar brand) with regular flour, so I would make one for whole wheat, or spelt or cornflour...
I live in a basement and have no pantry (just a deep cabinet), but have been dreaming for my "future" pantry with pop tops, that my mother has brought to my attention. These days I've been thinking...perhaps just start with a little. Just for rice, beans and pasta. Cereals and other stuff can wait, but the stuff I cook with I need most accessible (and I agree with you Leah, I'm not giving up my sugar and flour "handled" containers!).
(For those of you looking to buy them, I've come across them in Kohl's, and even TJMaxx...)
Thanks for the inspiration (or is it the jealousy ;)) that's giving me the push do start somewhere, little steps...
Flour and sugar. I THOUGHT I already had good airtight containers for those and then I found bugs in my flour. EW. Still looking for something better.
I would use the container for my cereals, rice...all those items that come in boxes which i really don't like! These containers probably keep things staying fresh for longer..
I would probably use it to organize my cereals.
So many choices :-) Different flours because I bake a lot, then sugar, and homemade cookie and cake mix in a jar, rice, and, also, definitely homemade spice mixes.... wishful thinking, a second set for Peasch.
(Your pantry is fabulous!!!)
Cookies & loose tea I get in Machaneh Yehudah in Israel!
I would give my entire pantry a face lift starting with rice, pasta, and beans
raw nuts and seeds
and flours - garbanzo, soy, wheat, oat, etc!! I have so many
PB2 - peanut butter powder
My bread machine flour. I buy it in bulk because I use so much of it and than it takes up a whole shelf!
I use containers everywhere. Pantry (everything from soup to nuts, Bathroom (soaps,cotton balls, swabs, small toilletries) wardrobe (costume jewelery, snoods,pins, hair clips, makeup)
art studio. Slowly replacing all my round ones with square or rectangular ones that stack so much neater! Great for organizing kids toys and nicknacks. LOVE your blog!!!!
I would first put cereal in them. Right now I either have boxes or bags that I got from BJ's on top of my fridge and it looks horrible. Then I would put my baking stuff in them. And because my baking stuff is now neat, I would have room to put the cereal in the pantry!
I would put almost everything in those!! look super practical!! thanx!
would start with my rice and beans, than move on to teas and splenda....who knows what would be next would have to see what I have in stock at the time.
The only thing I have in containers are my sugar and flour, but I definitely could use fresh ones and whole slew of new ones to match them... The beans would definitely go in next! Pass me a case of those OXOs please!
Oh my goodness my kids would be shocked and delighted if I organized my pantry. I love to cook, but I am a BIG SLOB!!! The first thing that I would put in to those beautiful OXY containers is Pine Nuts. They are my daughter's favorite and this way she could easily find them. Right now they sit in white bags inside zip locks. Yes I need an organizer desperately!!!!
beans and barley, i never use a whole bag and they always spill!!!
first, all the gluten free flours that i have spilling over in various bags... then, i would move on to nuts then seeds... oh, i cant wait!
I am fortunate to have a large pantry closet. However, it's a MESS! I would love to get organized.
As others stated, definitely flour, sugar. However, I have three different bags of flour opened: regular all purpose, whole wheat, and high-gluten. I would love to have three containers instead of opened bags. Also, beans, barley, splenda, pasta, and of course cereal.
If you buy in bulk like I do (Costco size bags), there are always open bags with clips or stored in Ziplocks that just make it hard to find.
The possibilities are almost endless.
EVERYTHING in my pantry, starting with the mixed nuts!
It would have to be chocolate chips. Followed by brown sugar.
MY boys love to cook, and this would be great to separate the spelt, wheat and white flours!
While I'm ordinarily quite organized, two areas of my life can only be described as complete chaos: my purse and my pantry. In the former it's lipstick, mango-flavored gum from Israel, bits of paper and coins. In the latter it's everything: rice, beans, barley, cereal, nuts, chocolate - all very unhappily jumbled into a former utility closet.
If I were to win these fabbo containers, first I would sing with joy, which would mortify my children but give me a lot of pleasure. Then I would give my pantry a thorough cleaning and carefully find a home for every food product. I think my first choice for new placement would be spaghetti, because it's always spilling out of plastic bags and paper wrappers, making for a lovely crunch when you step on it but otherwise is a pain in the neck.
flours and sugars to keep them fresh
The kids snacks for school and then all the baking supplies - my daughter loves to bake for her friends at school. She is the birthday baking queen!
the first thing I would put in is my sugar, then my pasts, then my beans, then my flour. I am ever so careful about cereal bugs, that I have everything in margarine containers, then plastic bags. I would so appreciate OXO Pop Containers.
definitly pasta then beans
I love it so glad u did it.
I would definitely redo my pantry but candy (the real stuff mike and nikes, laffy taffy etc.) will have to get containers first then on to baking (sugar, flour).
Not so lucky to have a pantry as I have a small NYC kitchen. The OXO set will so help me organize my shelves (where I can barely find anything!)
Beautiful! Lucky you! Agree with you on the spaghetti-it is always falling out and down. So it will be pasta first,then beans,then sugars and flours. Now can it be lucky me?
sugar, beans, spices, flour, rice...and everything nice! It's a great collection...great sizes...
Flour, sugar, cereal, pasta everything will go into the containers.
Probably flour and sugar. Thanks!
omg!!!a neat organized pantry...my dream!!!!!!!! my friends mother's pantry is like that and i was always sooooo envious!!!!!!! i wish mine would be able to look like that with all those awesome containers!!!!!! i would put the flour and sugar in first probably, but my next thing would be a container full of colorful jelly bellies and gum balls!!! yuuuum!!! i wanna CREATE some "pantry jealousy"!!!
I will use it for noodles for when I don't use the entire package among a million other things. My mother is the original pantry makeover artist. She used the popular 'burp' containers of the 'party' fame.
whole wheat! gotta store that stuff!
I am the type of person who is all or nothing, when it comes to organising: I would need to makeover the whole thing at once. A couple of containers would simply not do!!!
Therefore, with my one container: I would buy the biggest one possible, and put it at the front of the shelf at my husband's eye-level and put a BIG NOTE IN IT which says:
Wow I wish my cabinets looked so neat. I would defintely put in pretzels first!! They're always spilling all over!
Pastas!!! The endless bags and boxes drive me nuts... I wish they would all just stack up nicely and neatly in my cabinet, allowing me to use my minimal cabinet space to the fullest...
first thing i would use it for is....my baby's formula powder. the box it comes with is hard to open and close while holding my 2 week old in my hands.....
next-I'de orgenize all my little snacks---hate those bags that have 3 sugar less candies left in them and make everything look messy :)
after that--i would buy some more--and keep on emptying the bags into boxes :) yey.....
Baking ingredients. My 15 year old daughter loves to bake and I'd love easy storage for sugar, flour, cocoa, et cetera. It would make it easier for her.
suger and flour
Grains! Orzo, farfel, alphabet noodles, etc... All those items that roam around a shelf in my pantry in open bags! And chocolate chips - I always have a half-empty bag floating around for pancakes, pick-me ups, and bribing kiddies :-)
candies, taffies, pretzels, chips...
Orzo, Farfel, and rice! LOOKS GREAT!
Rice, cereals, sugar, flour, brown sugar, and anything else I can get my hands on. :)
rice, pasta, beans, brown sugar, cookies, rice cakes and loads more!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm a pasta freak, but only use 3/4 of a box at a time, so I have too many 1/4 boxes wasting space until I'm ready to use it. Also, I keep wasting time checking to see if this box was opened yet, and then move on to the next...having it all together, will save me about 35 seconds, and a lot of mental anguish, which any mother knows, is A LOT.
Also, besides for food, it's great for craft items, and my massive costume jewelry collection, oh and all my extra pens lying around, and the ribbons for wrapping presents...
being a big costco shopper these containers are a MUST!! I would use them or my bulk purchases that are all messy in bags-oats, craisins, nuts, pasta, sugar....omg drooling;)
Definitely lentils. Or brown sugar which I have the hardest time keeping from staying moist.
I would put all my different pastas, rice and lentils in the containers and put them on my open kitchen shelf to appreciate all the different colors!
I would love to stick bread, bagels, rice, and misc. baking supplies in something clear and clean! Thanks!
FLOUR Perfect for Challah making and not touching container
CEREAL, COFFEE, PASTA & GRAINS! I recently got married and became an instant mom. I am so mad at myself that I ignored my mom's love for this product and didn't register for them! I bought one with a credit at Bed Bath & Beyond and have been figuring out how to get more!
I would definitely start with coffee and rice. I already have other containers for flour/sugar- I love them!
I have been designing my Pantry over and over again, I finally thought I got it and now I see this!!!!!
It is absolutely Gorgeous!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
grains!!! I buy in bulk and I'm sick of seeing old mayonnaise containers and the like holding my quinoa, barley, popcorn, etc.
Pantry basics- flour, sugar, pasta, rice, beans, etc.
What a dream - a total redo in the kitchen cupboards with these fantastic conatainers from OXO- would be a great motivation to get the rest of the house in order. I would begin with the basic staples of flour and sugar, beans, rice, all the cereals of course, candies, pretzels and on and on. Spring cleaning here we come...
I would use for pasta,brown sugar, cracker/cookies. This really looks amazing.
I have a few of these containers and i use them for flour, sugar, beans, pasta, cookies and i love them but i could always use more!
myself....maybe it will preserve me longer!!!
Flour and sugar (since the containers I've had since I was a newlywed 14 years ago are breaking), cereal, beans, pasta, chocolate chips, nuts, the list can go on and on!
These looking amazing! Thanks for the excellent review!!
splenda and splenda blend.... and then, we'll see from there... probably different rices, and then other baking ingredients i buy in bulk.... i've been using anything from the osem mini-mandel containers, to the 1 gallon size arizona iced tea jugs, as storage. it would be great to have the beginning of a sensible and coordinated pantry.
It would be a wonderful treat to win the XOX set...I would share it with my married daughter...
I already keep my sugar and bread flour in my XOX Pop Top Containers, but I'd love to move other items, like my brown sugar and pasta, but also things like snack items my kids can eat - neater and nicer than continuing to use ziploc bags.
Since I'm vegan my cabinets are FULL of jars & mismatched items. I will certainly put my gluten, whole wheat flour, soy milk powder, nutritional yeast & more into whatever I can! I love XOXO products & have several pieces already. Thanks for a great product with real planning in the process of making it!
It would be wonderful to win these. I have been decluttering and organizing my entire house and next week I will start working on my kitchen. I would be a step ahead if I had these. Thank you for the chance to win a set.
I would keep my cereals, beans and my dried fruits in them.
I love those OXO containers. I use one to store candy and it stays fresh for a long time.
Definitely brown sugar!!!!! Because that gets hard real fast if not airtight. Also beans and barley and nuts as well as macaroni. These containers look awesome!! Hope I win! :)
OMGGG!!!! I am always on a quest to keep my nerdy one shelf pantry organized but it is HARD!!! I wouls use the containers for beans, rice, seeds, all those annoying nuts containers that fly all over.. I would love to win this!!
pasta and rice!
I use these containers to store fresh coffee beans. They're brilliant.
Id love to win this. My cabinets would look great!
The first thing that comes to mind is matzoh meal (My family loves my homemade matzoh ball soup.) I would love to make my kitchen more organized by winning this set.
I would love to WIN so that I can put my kids snacks in the pantry in an organized fashion so that when they take their snacks for school the pantry will look as organized as the way I left it. It's nice to dream .......
Suave and spice and everything nice! That's what I would put in!
I know I am colouring outside the lines....BUT! For the first time in my 66 years of life, I have FINALLY purchased a home and have my VERY OWN PANTRY!!! Built to my specific, hard-to-get-along-with-the-guys-at-HomeDepot, set up to make me keep Kosher even when I don't want to, requirements! It is not as fancy as the pantry in the photos, but it is MINE! Not rented, not cleaning up someone else's messes..worth the wait! What would I put in the container? HONEY! As my life can't get any sweeter!!!
haha! My granddaughter just asked why I was colouring outside the lines...it is because I have NO pantry jealousy! With all the tattered boxes, bags, and jars (as I have not yet purchased new things for the new pantry) I just have PANTRY HEAVEN!!!
I would very much to have flour, rice, barley, quinoa, assorted pasta, and other whole grains as well as cereal stored in these containers. My pantry would look like it belonged in a magazine with these attractive & functional containers.
I would put everything in my pantry in containers. Sooo nice to be organized like that! Pick me!!!
I would further organize our size challenged kitchen. There are almost no cabinets or shelves to use. We have extra space in the garage. Above the washer and dryer there's room for these beautiful containers. With them, I will be able to see all the ingredients without being forced to rifle through everything all mashed together.
Would definitely be nice for cereal! No more opened containers which makes it stale.
Beautiful cupboards! Wow! I am currently using jars of any sort so they dont fit well in my cupboards for me to always tell what they are so easily.I would love these also.What a inspiration to us all!
I would start out with the flours and brown sugar, then the pastas. I could really use them, especially since we have had moth problems.
My matzo meal and lentils
pantry jealousy all right! major jealousy! here in israel we dont have room for pantries like that but its a dream to build one one day. i'd put anything in those containers.....cereal for start!
I think I'd probably put all the candy and snacks in them and then put a padlock around them :) Hmmm.... Pretty much everything in my pantry could use containers, but Id likely start with Pastas and Rices, I hate the boxes and bags everywhere.
I could use it for lots of stuff! I would use it first probably for Pasta and for all the candy floating around!
The secret to a well organized kitchen is matching, stackcontainers. Oh, I'd love to Pop it, Fill it, Stack it, & store it...with a design in mind to Retrieve it. I have seeds & Craisins & nuts & cereal...I have dried foods, popcorn, even pencils and Via. Worst thing yet are my deep, deep cupboards. My hubby is making a pull out shelf on which your OXO containers would fit like a dream come true. Thanks for the great opportunity.
I've got goose-bumps just thinking about it!
after 20 years i need to replace my flour and sugar etc., containers and these would be so helpful!


text: Long, long ago (1968-69) I was a very successful competitive wrestler in High School. Wrestling (catch-as-catch-can) and Western Boxing have served me well over the years that followed through my military career, far more than my black belt in Aikijujutsu did. So I have a personal biased for anyth..read more >>

subset: commoncrawl


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The Soundtrack to Characterization
One of the oddest things about my blog is that I rarely utilize it for what it was originally intended- namely, sharing my writing. Since I'm nearly finished with REAPERS TWO, I decided I would share some of the writing techniques I used in the conception of that novella, and hopefully get new ideas from other writers about their character-building habits and techniques.
Today I thought I'd share a specific technique I use for conceiving characters: I assign them a song.
On the surface this may seem counter-intuitive since music is capable of conveying emotion without words, but I find that the perfect song will reveal emotions or behaviors in the characters I create long before I construct a single sentence. The right song can encapsulate a single moment or an entire lifetime of a person's emotional experience (recent birthday boy ElGuapo knows what I'm talking about). With that in mind, I'll describe two different ways I use music to build characters.
The first way I do this is to create a generic version of a character in my head, and then find a song that suits him/her after the rough draft is written. I find this works best for when I really want to "flesh out" a character by layering dimension over the bare bones of the initial conception. One of the characters that benefited most from this technique was the character of Raphael in THE GODS OF ASPHALT. Because his character was the most like me, I found that he was the hardest to flesh out. You'd think he'd be the easiest since I ought to know him so well, right? He wasn't. I suppose that is because it is always easiest to hide our truest selves from ourselves. Well that, and the fact that I had never planned for him to resemble me in the first place. By the time I did my first run-though edit it was painfully obvious that I had captured myself in print.
I struggled for what seemed like forever to find something, anything, about myself in Raphael that I could use to turn him from an angry, closed-off parent into a character with true dimension. Finally I discovered that what made his character and myself alike was our inner struggle with our ethnicity. Being raised as an American in a household filled with Old-World ideals made it hard for me to know who I really was and where my loyalties lay. I was constantly conflicted and to this day struggle for a sense of equilibrium. Without realizing it I had passed that same internal struggle onto Raphael.
Once his (our) internal conflict had been revealed, I searched for music that would tell the story of a compelling character- one who grew from a disgruntled Midwestern teen into a man struggling to find peace as a proud Spanish father. Rodrigo y Gabriela's cover of the Metallica classic ORION instantly became that song for me.
From that moment on, every time I wrote Raphael I would listen to that song. The music brought him to life for me; from the timbre of his voice to picturing the way he walked. ORION became the soundtrack to every scene Raphael was in and helped me navigate his character through the story.
Rodrigo y Gabriela – ORION
This next example illustrates the same technique, although switched-up a bit. That example is the character of Lucifer in THE REAPERS WITH ISSUES Series.
Unlike the example above where I conceived of a character before assigning him/her a song, with REAPERS I was faced with the challenge of re-characterizing established characters. The one that gave me the most trouble was Lucifer. The difficulty lie in the fact that Lucifer is more than established; he is downright iconic. There isn't a culture on the planet that doesn't have a vision of evil-incarnate, so how was I to reinvent him?
I knew that within the context of the story I would have to humanize him to some degree, so I decided to portray my version of Lucifer not as purely evil, but simply as…a dick. I also knew that to "flesh" him out would not be to layer dimension onto him, but to reveal him; to strip away his skin and discover what makes him tick.
I failed epically.
Every version of Lucifer that sprung to mind was a stereotypical construct from the deepest, most generic part of my brain. I had nearly lost all hope when I came up with a solution: I'd do it all backwards and let Lucifer pick his own music. Sounds crazy, right? Well it worked. I turned on my music, closed my eyes and listened to every song I could think of that wasn't evil, dark or brooding until Lucifer revealed his song. That song, believe it or not, was CLINT EASTWOOD by the Gorillaz.
Why that song? I have no idea (I let Lucifer pick, remember?). But I will tell you that things became instantly clearer for me whenever I listened to it. I easily pictured the way he walked [slightly slouching] to the way he spoke [slightly spoiled] and imagined a dozen tiny little habits [folding origami] the instant that song became a part of his character. But as great as that song was, it wasn't exactly right. I needed a version of that near-perfect song to do more than just bring Lucifer to life. I needed Lucifer to be reborn.
Words + Music = Art
I enlisted the help of a musician to remix CLINT EASTWOOD into something that sounded slightly more sinister, slightly more spoiled, and slightly more modern. Below is that song: Lucifer's Remix conceived of by production musician extraordinaire, DJ Casper. Believe me when I tell you that to my mind, this song IS Lucifer.
DJ Casper – LUCIFER'S REMIX
I imagine the idea of using music to inspire or create words on a page may seem unconventional or downright bizarre, but to me it is the most natural thing in the world. I chalk it up to spending too much time on the road as a kid with nothing by my father's music and my imagination to keep me company. I firmly blame my inability to finish GOA2 on the fact that I can't figure out what kind of music River listens to. Like Lucifer, I've decided to let River choose. I am praying he's not into Rap.


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Alphabet J
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Yes dearest friends, we are still here. It's been very busy around the Valca homestead this past week....
Let's see...first announcement: Lavie has a brand new laptop. Last week I posted that we were planning on going out and looking at them. Well, we came back home with a laptop in tow. (I bet a lot of you saw that coming didn't you?) It is a Compaq Presairo V2575US model. Those who care can look up the link and check out the detailed specs, but to summarize: 1GB memory, 100GB HDD, 14" widescreen display, wireless, DVD/CD burner (with LightScribe), and oh yeah, it has a Turion64 processor. Geez, this thing is faster and more tricked out than my desktop. It came loaded with XP Home edition so we aren't pressing the 64bit processor yet. I think I will wait until Vista rolls out to upgrade it since (for now) Lavie won't be using any programs that can really take advantage of it. Here is a review of a similar model that is pretty close to our experience with it. Set up was much faster that the Dell. Almost no 3rd party ware and that was quickly removed with the Add/Remove list. Nothing sneaky found in the autoruns/startup groups.
I've had a really frustrating week at work last week. I've got a bunch of users who sit inside another location's network as part of the contract we maintain. They are our pc's but we get to use their network. It hasn't been a problem for years until two weeks ago when they upgraded a (yet undisclosed) component of their network. I suspect it was a switch or router. Anyway suddenly one of the programs they use (which uses IPX protocol) no longer connects up in a reliable manner. The office network team swears they have everything back to normal but it clearly isn't. My specialty is desktop support and security, not really networking. But I have been learning all about IPX protocol trying to troubleshoot the issue. See, if it was our network, we'd have it tested and inspected in about an hour, but this place is much different. IP works great and fast, just the IPX protocol is having issues. I can run ipx-ping and get good enough response times, but Win2K doesn't automatically pick up that there is an IPX protocol available. I have to go into the property settings and come back out (no changes necessary) for it to pick up the IPX network. Then I can do a ipxroute ripout (network) command and then run the ipxroute config to see that it found it correctly. It's this way across all the machines and even after doing a full system reload (just to test) the problem remains...so it is clearly an issue on the network side...kinda like the ipx network isn't broadcasting it's availability, but will acknowledge if it is requested. So since the location's network team swears nothing is wrong on their side, I'm working on a batch file to run at startup to clear the IPX settings on the board, then rescan and load the IPX network, so our app will work. It's very frustrating to have a site that was working perfectly fine go down due to a hardware upgrade. Oh well. I'm (kinda) having fun learning some of these arcane ipx command line tools....
Over at RetroThing, I found a link to the Casio VL-Tone. My brother and I had one of these things growing up. It was really fun to play with. I bet we tortured our poor parents to death. I really like the drum-beat that you could speed up the tempo with until it was almost unintelligiblly fast. Ah memories.
We missed a recent episode of LOST so I got searching for an episode summary guide (yes I could get it via iTunes but it's bound to rerun again soon). I found several fun things:
Episodes of Lost (season 2) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Episodes of Lost (season 1) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Download your own DHARMA countdown timer
Konfabulator Widget version
It's late. I have ton's more cool linkage I collected this past week, but my brain is tired, I still have five more loads of laundry to shuffle through the system, and I think I want to turn my brain off and watch "Lost in Translation" before going to bed.
I promise to share the linkage sometime mid-week-ish.
See you in the skies,


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The Grammy's were held last night in Los Angeles and as always I found the red carpet to be a little predictable – metallics, shimmering fabrics, tight, tight and a very tight, and the odd quirky look to showcase the musician on the red carpet.
One star I can generally depend on to wow me has to be Katy Perry, do you remember when she wore that gorgeous sky blue Elie Saab gown in 2012, well last night she was a vision in tulle wearing a stunning Valentino Couture gown that might look a little familiar, yep it is one that I featured on my Couture Bride post last week.
Other that the fact it was fresh off the runway, I love that it seemed to have been made for the Grammy Awards with the embroidered musical notes on the tulle skirt. It is fun, elegant and romantic all at the same time and it really does look like a work of art. Apparently this beautiful gown took 1,600 hours to do all the embroidery – the craftsmanship is sublime.
Not content with just one look from Valentino's spring couture collection, Katy also looked incredible in a shorter red tulle with a feathered serpent to the after party. As much as I love the red carpet gown, and I do, I think this flirty number is my favourite – I love the rich colour of the dress and the snake motif. Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous!!!
Another great look I just had to share was Madonna wearing a wide-leg Ralph Lauren tuxedo with a black felt gaucho hat, a sparkly fingerless glove, and a grill, yep if you saw her interview on E! she showed off her mouth jewellery.
If I can forget about the grill, as I hate them, I love, love, love this mannish look from Madonna. I am a huge fan of girlies in suits and this one will be remembered I am sure. Also no-one else works the red carpet like Madonna!!!


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Praise for Breath, Eyes, Memory
Oprah Book Club Selection
"Vibrant, magic . . . Danticat's elegant, intricate tale wraps readers into the haunting life of a young Haitian girl."
—The Boston Globe
"Danticat's calm clarity of vision takes on the resonance of folk art . . . Extraordinarily successful."
—The New York Times Book Review
"A novel that rewards the reader again and again with small but exquisite and unforgettable epiphanies."
—Washington Post Book World
"Written in prose as clear as a bell, magical as a butterfly, and resonant as drum talk . . . An impressive debut."
—Julia Alvarez, author of In the Time of the Butterflies
"Reading Edwidge Danticat's first novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory, for the first time in 2015 is a remarkable experience . . . It is clear in retrospect that this is a novel whose literary resonance has been profound, one that opened many doors for others—without it, would we have The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao?"
—Barnes and Noble Review
"Danticat has created a stirring tale of life in two worlds: the spirit-rich land of her ancestry, whose painful themes work their way through lives across generational lines, and her adopted country, the United States, where a young immigrant girl must negotiate cold, often hostile terrain, even as she spars with painful demons of her past."
"A distinctive new voice with a sensitive insight into Haitian culture distinguishes this graceful debut novel . . . In simple, lyrical prose enriched by an elegiac tone and piquant observations, [Danticat] makes Sophie's confusion and guilt, her difficult assimilation into American culture and her eventual emotional liberation palpably clear."
—Publishers Weekly


text: About Deck and Concrete Cleaner Easily prep your deck for resurfacing with Rust-Oleum® Restore® Deck & Concrete Cleaner. This concentrated solution is biodegradable and non-toxic—ideal for cleaning all kinds of exterior surfaces. It's also great for maintaining any Restore-coated surface. The smart alternative to bleach and ammonia cleaners Removes dirt, grease, etc. Must be used before applying Restore Deck & Concrete, Extreme Concrete or Vertical products


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First I'd like to say a big thank you to everyone who has sent me their comments and congratulations following my shodan success. I really appreciate the support and advice many of you have given me regarding my preparations for black belt testing and I have taken on board many of the things that you have said to me. My success is also your success.
I think my feet are now descending back to the ground ready to start the next leg of the journey! Sensei told me I was now a white belt again – a beginner. It's true; I am (along with my co-graders) the most junior of the black belt students. It's a place I'm happy to be as I have much to learn.
However, the countdown to shodan has now ended and so must this blog. This will be my last post here but I will continue to post regularly on my other blog 'My Journey to Black Belt', which may now need a slight alteration to the title! I'd like to thank you all for following me on this blog and invite you all to join me as I continue to chronicle my journey. I will be transferring my blog list from here to my other blog so that I can continue to follow you.
Thank you again for all your comments and advice and I hope I will still hear from you on 'My Journey to Black Belt'......


text: This image shows the Assignment tab of the Configure Assignment dialog. The Reviewers field and Error Assignees field display below. Both fields have an Add icon to the right. Below this is the Payload Displays For Parallel Participants list, which includes selections for Use server settings, All task participants share the same payload (better performance and less storage space), and Each parallel participant has a local copy of the payload.


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#Home Bans
# home-bans - Tuesday 21 February, 2012
More houses now imposing a home smoking ban
New research has also shown that the national smoking ban has had a "rapid effect" on smoking-related heart disease.Share Tweet11
Your sayView more polls
Poll: Are you opposed to co-living developments in Ireland?
RESIDENTS IN DUBLIN have written to An Bord Pleanála in a bid to stop a co-living development popping up in their North Inner City neighbourhood.
Co-living projects – where residents have their own unit of residence with bed and bathroom but share communal cooking and living areas – have been a controversial concept in Ireland with some describing them as modern tenements and a poor response to the housing crisis.
Developers, however, insist co-living units will make up a small proportion of the housing market, will appeal to younger working professionals, and were never designed in response to the housing crisis.
So today we're asking: Are you opposed to co-living developments in Ireland?
Poll Results:
Opinion: Government must break down the bureaucratic walls faced by teachers returning to Ireland
One experience teacher who returned from Australia said she battled the Teaching Council to be allowed transfer her qualifications to Ireland, but eventually gave up.
Money Diaries: A team leader in Galway on €37K working from home who is also a single mother
This week, our reader, who lives with her daughter in Galway and has an underlying health condition, details her spending and saving during the Covid-19 period.
Opinion: The food service industry must handle Covid-19 hygiene risks with plastic-free packaging
Tommy McLoughlin of Butterfly Cup outlines why the fight to get rid of plastic must continue in the midst of the Covid-19 changes.
Opinion: 'Travellers have to hide their identity just to get a foot in the door'
Pavee Point's Caoimhe McCabe outlines the level of workplace discrimination against Travellers and how to combat the problem.
Dublin WeatherChange location
- Tuesday Mostly cloudy and breezy with a shower Max: 23 °C Min: 16 °C
- Wednesday Occasional rain; breezy in the morning Max: 21 °C Min: 13 °C
- Thursday Nice with clouds and sun Max: 21 °C Min: 15 °C
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Opinion: Government must break down the bureaucratic walls faced by teachers returning to Ireland
Anonymous Substitute Teacher
Money Diaries: A team leader in Galway on €37K working from home who is also a single mother
TheJournal.ie reader


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FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Merck KGaA's Cilengitide, an experimental drug to treat an aggressive type of brain tumor, has failed a large-scale clinical trial, dealing a blow to the German drugmaker's efforts to replenish its pipeline of medicines.
Merck said on Monday patients in a Phase III trial did not live significantly longer when treated with Cilengitide plus chemoradiotherapy.
Dr. Annalisa Jenkins, Head of Global Drug Development and Medical for the Merck Serono division, said the trial results were "disappointing, especially for people who are fighting this devastating and difficult to treat cancer".
For Merck, Germany's oldest drugmaker, the latest findings come after its experimental cancer vaccine Stimuvax failed in a Phase III trial last December.
In 2011, Merck's Cladribin, a treatment for multiple sclerosis, also failed.
Last month, Chief Executive Stefan Oschmann said in magazine interview that Merck needed a new drug every two years, with the focus on cancer, immune-deficiencies, multiple sclerosis and fertility.
At 0925 GMT, Merck shares were down 0.6 percent at 105 euros.
At the Phase III trial of Cilengitide, the patients had newly diagnosed Glioblastoma - a very aggressive brain tumor - and methylated MGMT gene promoter status.
Cilengitide is the first in a new class of investigational targeted anticancer therapies - so called integrin inhibitors - to have reached Phase III clinical development.
(Reporting by Marilyn Gerlach; Editing by Mark Potter)


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Public Key Cryptography
Posted by Manish Panchmatia on Sunday, December 10, 2017 Labels: security
PKI (Public Key Infrastructure)
- CA (Certificate Authority) binds public key with identity. = TTP Trusted Third Party. E.g. Symantec, Comodo, GoDaddy, digicert, GlobalSign
- OSCP Responder
- RA (Registration Authority) = subordinate CA in Microsoft PKI.
- VA (Validation Authority)
- Central Directory to store index keys
- Certificate Management System
- Certificate Policy
2. Web of Trust. E.g. PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) and GnuPG
3. Simple Public Key Infrastructure (SPKI). Authorization loop : verifier = issuers
Open Source implementation of CA
- OpenSSL is the simplest CA and tool to build PKI enabled apps. C. Part of all major Linux distributions,
- EJBCA is a full featured, Enterprise grade, CA implementation. Java.
- OpenCA is a full featured CA implementation
- XCA is a graphical interface, and database.
- (Discontinued) TinyCA was a graphical interface for OpenSSL.
- XiPKI CA and OCSP responder. With SHA3 support, OSGi-based Java.
- IoT_pki is a simple PKI. Python cryptography library
- DogTag
- gnoMint
- EasyRSA, OpenVPN's command line CA utilities using OpenSSL.
- r509
- Boulder is an automated server that uses the Automated Certificate Management Environment (ACME) protocol.
- Windows Server : Active Directory Certificate Services.
- CAcert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAcert
- Let's Encrypt. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let%27s_Encrypt
- OpenSSL : https://www.feistyduck.com/books/openssl-cookbook/
- genrsa
- ssh-keygen
Public Key Cryptography Standards : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PKCS
Cryptographic Message Syntax : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptographic_Message_Syntax and RFC 2315, RFC 2360, RFC 3369
1. Introduction to cryptography and network security
2. Cryptography theory and practice
3. Field Arithmetic
4. Problems in the Theory of Modular Forms


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This curriculum is part of Project NIA's "Exploring the Roots of Violence" initiative, and includes over 30 poems that address gender-based violence as well as tips and suggestions for individuals who are interested in facilitating poetry circles with girls and young women. To receive a free PDF copy of the guide, please complete this FORM.
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Mariame Kaba with contributions by Caitlin Ostrow-Seidler
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WoW is buzzing with folk talking about the two revamped instances, Zul'Garub and Zul'Aman.
"Too recycled!"
"Too long!"
"Too hard!"
And, of course, the occasional show off: "Too easy!"
Lissanna did a good post on the topic, rounding up some thoughts and getting some substantial discussion going.
I've done ZG. I haven't gotten around to ZA yet.
I loved ZG. It was awesome. I know the recycled material offends purists who are too good for "lazy content", but not me. I really enjoy the theme of Cataclysm, where I can go back to all those places near and dear to (or strongly despised by) my heart and see what they look like a couple of years after my services.
ZG was no exception. I didn't have time to read up on the story, but I was very interested to know that more evil trolls invoking spirits have moved in since I cleared the place in hopes of achievements and tiger mounts.
I'm told ZA is a copy-paste of the original, which is a little disappointing (dudes…dudes! I killed you people years ago! What are you doing back here?), but at the same time, ZA was a brilliant instance. I loved the complexity and creativity of the fights. Especially the fire egg boss that took me so long to figure out and that made me so proud when I finally understood. I'm sort of glad I'll get to re-experience those fights.
Now let's look at the complaints surrounding the instances:
Too Long
It took my group a little over 2 hours to complete ZG, and we had a patient, kick-ass tank in heroics gear talking us through. We had a group simultaneously do ZA, without an experienced guide, and it took them barely a few minutes more than us.
Contrarily to what Lissanna says, ZG has very little trash. Much less than the other Cataclysm 5 mans. I also don't recall doing much in terms of CC. The instance has a feel of a modern raid, with just enough trash to avoid falling back into the Trial of the Crusader trap.
What took up our 2 hours, were the wipes as we struggled to grasp the novel mechanics of the fights. Without wiping, I think we could have easily gotten through the instance in 45 minutes, which is pretty much the same time as the other Cataclysm heroics.
I can't speak for ZA.
How do these line up with the other heroics from Cataclysm? Well. I remember pugging them during the week of their release. Once the hardcore, now-Sinestra killers were finished with them (I loved those runs!), Cataclysm heroics took well over 3 hours to pug with an average group. As the instances became better known, the players got better geared and the fights themselves were nerfed, the average pug run was shortened to about 45 minutes, with Deadmines still taking the better part of an hour.
Too Hard
I recall a tweet saying: "Don't bring your alt to the new 5 mans!".
I'd like to make a correction: "Don't bring your alt to the new 5 mans yet!"
The fights are actually perfect for gearing alts…once you know them on your main. These fights aren't gear checks. They're all mechanics. Do the right thing at the right time and they're a breeze. Trust me. Our DK soloed the better part of the first ZG fight.
But prepare to die a lot learning the fights. The mechanics are more complex (and interesting) than "pick up adds and don't stand in the fire". Think Stonecore, but less shitty.
Once you've mastered being at the right place at the right time, though? This is the perfect place to gear your alt.
5 mans should be accessible to anyone!
While I don't necessarily agree with this statement (I think regulars should be accessible to anyone, heroics should involve a minimal effort), I'd like to point out that my guild had two teams complete the instances Thursday night. And we are your casual, chilling, social raiding guild. At 6/12, with anywhere from 0 to 2 raids a week, we're not Sinestra killers.
And we did ZG and ZA. We wiped, we ran back, we adjusted our tactics, but at no point did we feel like we were banging our heads against a wall.
Which is actually better than Stonecore and Grim Batol the week those instances were released.
Could an average Pug do the instance? Probably not. Not yet. The instances take too much communication and, as social bloggers everywhere constantly moan, communication is difficult in PuGs. But once people run the instances with their guilds a few time and learn the fights, I think ZG and ZA will totally be puggable, and will be comparable to the other Cataclysm heroics in length.
Conclusion: I'd sort of like a raid-style 5 man
I like fights that make me think. I like having a really small team to think with. So I like hard 5 mans.
I thoroughly enjoyed running ZG with the fantastic people in my Thursday group (I was even very tempted to ask our DK out on a date. He was HAWT.). It felt like a raid, except there were only 5 of us and the fights took slightly less wipes than a raid to learn.
The whole time I was thinking, what if there was an epic 5 man designed like a raid? One instance you don't do often, that you save for an afternoon where you have 5 hours to yourself. A huge instances with twists and turns, Original Stratholme or Blackrock Depths style. A fight were you really need to think before engaging the bosses.
And really, sure, I think 5 man heroics should be accessible to anyone. Anyone with a brain, instead of only a face for rolling.


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Who would you like to see host Saturday Night Live? Yackov Smirnoff? The Hoff? How about Charo? SNL is giving you the chance to make a suggestion.
In the past, internet users rallied to get Betty White a spot hosting the late-night sketch show, now they want to know who else you think should have top honors.
SNL wrote on its website:
U.S. & World
Hey everybody! We've been noticing that a lot of our followers on Facebook and Twitter have been suggesting performers who they think would make great hosts and musical guests for our show. And some of the suggestions have been so amazing that we here in the Web world want to keep better track of what you're saying so that we can pass it along to our producers. So once a month, we'll chose a day and open the floor to your suggestions on Facebook and Twitter. If you're on Facebook, you can simply leave a comment on our "Suggestion" post, and if you're on Twitter, tweet us your suggestion on the designated day with the hashtag #SNLHost or #SNLMusic. And please, stick to the designated days. It will make your suggestions so much easier to track and keep our feeds open on "non-suggestion" days to other interactions with all you wonderful people. Thanks! Can't wait to hear from you all!
So head on over to Twitter and Facebook to let Lorne Michaels know how badly you want George Takei to be a host.


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Anyone can tell you if a trailer "looks good" or not. But Drew Magary, who spent over a decade working in advertising, is here to tell you whether or not a trailer WORKS. This week's trailer? "The Bourne Legacy".
Now here's a movie with a great deal at stake. After Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass decided to not do a fourth Jason Bourne film, the folks at Universal (our corporate cousins) decided to keep the franchise going anyway. But instead of trying to find a new Jason Bourne, they wisely sidestepped that little landmine and hired Jeremy Renner (who is awesome) to headline the franchise as a new character. So this is a "Bourne" movie, only without Jason Bourne. Got that? Confusing, I know. Just know that there will be lots of kicking and punching and shaky camerawork.
As for that camerawork, the man replacing Greengrass will be Tony Gilroy, who directed "Duplicity" and "Michael Clayton" and was the screenwriter for the previous two "Bourne" movies. This gets a little juicy, because Damon was quoted in GQ last month saying that Gilroy's original script for "The Bourne Ultimatum" was a horrible "career-ender." It takes a lot to get someone as famously composed as Damon to light you up in the press, so this will be Gilroy's stab at salvaging his reputation. Will this newfangled "Bourne"--featuring a new guy going through the same hyper-realistic international intrigue--keep America's attention? Let's watch the brand spanking new trailer and answer a few questions.
Does the trailer let us know what the movie's about? Well, that's just the thing. When the title of your movie is "The Bourne Legacy," you can pretty much already deduce the plot: a rogue agent who was trained to be a super badass goes out and exacts revenge on the shady government folks who would use him to conduct evildoing. There's enough in this trailer to give you the gist: Renner plays a man named Kenneth who is welcomed to "the program" by Albert Finney, who is clearly filling the Brian Cox role of "evil old dude." Then you have people explaining that Jason Bourne was merely the first in a long line of superagents and that Renner is also one of them. In fact, stats show he has even GREATER capacity for OWNAGE than Bourne, which I think is overselling it a bit. But there you have it.
Does Renner beat up people real good? Awwwww yeah. You see glimpses of him taking out some poor guards (guards always end up dead), and a shot of him hauling through the snow in order to do a little bit of snipin'.
Whoa, was that a fire extinguisher gun? It was! Hopefully, it'll be like the fire extinguisher gun in "Salt," only not stupid.
Is Renner covered in blood to let you know how badass he is? You bet! He's got more blood on him than
. You see him committing to the program and then being injected with all kinds of superawesome government powerups. He may very well be an X-Man.
Did Edward Norton probably demand to write all his own dialogue? You know he did.
What's with all the sliding bars? I dunno. Some fancypants graphics guy probably thought it would be cool to only see Renner through virtual venetian blinds. Lucky for him, Renner is cool enough to make it work.
Does this trailer work? YES. Very much yes. There are enough cues here - from the ominous music, to Joan Allen's return, to people saying the name "Treadstone" in hushed voices, to Renner taking out hapless bad guys - to let you know that Universal plans on picking up right where the franchise left off. Who knows? Maybe they'll even improve it. All they'd have to do is get rid of the Moby song at the end.


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Fuel consumption and CO2 emission values shown are calculated using the combined driving cycle (applicable legislation).
The new Camry Hybrid has it all. It combines all the advantages of a sophisticated sedan with all the benefits of a Toyota Hybrid.
The self-assured look of the new Camry Hybrid takes the refined elegance of a high-quality sedan and adds a dynamic edge. Its sleek, modern profile is enhanced by new 17" and 18" alloy wheels, while the front view reveals a broad, confident front grille and stylish LED lights.
The welcoming cabin of the new Camry Hybrid combines superior craftsmanship with all the space and practicality you need. Uninterrupted lines create a sense of space around the driver and front passenger, while an intelligently designed cockpit provides an ideal driving position.
The All-new Camry Hybrid is a winning combination. It takes the sophisticated elegance of a quality saloon and adds all the benefits of a Toyota Hybrid. The result is an exceptionally rewarding driving experience that takes Hybrid to a new level. Aidan Timmons, Product Manager of Toyota Ireland, reveals what you can expect from the Toyota Camry. Watch now...
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Levene, Dublin "I'm driving my three children to school every morning, knowing I'm making a difference to their future. And I only have to fill the car every 5 or 6 weeks. Hybrid is definitely the way to go."
Ross, Tipperary "To switch from Diesel to Hybrid was an easy decision. The cost savings of the fuel, the insurance and the car tax – for someone with a young family, that makes a huge difference - it's the price of a holiday."
Toyota announces Irish Dream Car Art Contest Finalists 9 Irish finalists go forward to compete in the global competition. Here are the wonderful winners from Ireland of our Toyota Dream Car Art Contest 2019. See the imaginative entries and get inspired for the future!
World Premiere of the Legendary Supra The world premiere of the new Toyota GR Supra at the 2019 North American International Auto Show


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California spent $412 million fighting wildfires last fiscal year – a record. Just two weeks into the new budget year, the state has already burned through a third of that total.
Firefighting costs far surpass their budget allotment, even as the state's $15 billion overall deficit has officials in Sacramento breaking out the hatchets. One major budget cut proposed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R), slashing Medicaid dental coverage for adults, roughly equals the cost overruns incurred last year from wildfire fighting.
The red ink has focused Sacramento on firefighting costs as never before. A consensus is emerging that if California is to continue to protect fire-prone homes, owners must pay more fees and local officials must pay more heed to fire danger.
"Everybody is now realizing we are going to spend a lot of money, ... and we might have to pass tax increases to pay," says Bill Stewart, a forestry specialist at the University of California, Berkeley. "We're not paying for [fire protection] out of the petty cash drawer anymore."
Technically, federal, state, and local governments divide roughly into thirds the lands in California over which they have wildfire responsibility. In reality, the feds often do more. The US has offered, for instance, to pay 75 percent of the $214 million state and local governments have spent on firefighting since the siege of lightning-strike fires on June 20.
Moreover, the state routinely deploys its assets outside its jurisdiction to help local fire districts – something no other state in the West does, says Dr. Stewart. That backstop encourages some fire districts to be woefully underfunded, thereby shifting costs from direct beneficiaries to residents of the state as a whole, he says.
Leaders in Sacramento are moving toward pushing some costs back to the local level. The governor proposed adding a surcharge onto all homeowners' insurance; the surcharge would be higher for those living in fire, flood, or earthquake zones. A budget conference committee adopted a version of the plan this week.
Stewart says it's a step in the right direction, though the risk assessment is so crude that it would encompass most California property owners. Better, he says, was a failed plan to target fees just on homeowners in state fire jurisdictions.
Such a targeted fee, argues Lt. Gov. John Garamendi (D), couldn't have raised enough money fast enough. He also backs applying the surcharge to flood and quake zones because the equipment purchased from the revenues could be used in those types of emergencies, too.
He and Stewart agree on the merits of other pending bills. One proposes a $50 annual fee on each structure within state fire jurisdiction, to fund fire-prevention efforts. Another would prevent construction of new subdivisions unless they meet fire code restrictions, such as having more than one exit, and unless local authorities can supply adequate fire protection.
"This is 'show me the fire protection,' " says Bill Allayaud, chief of staff for Assemblyman Dave Jones. "Don't approve X number of lots unless the local fire agency can fight fires there, or contract with the state. There must be the manpower, resources, engines, and water to do it."


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Plastic and rubber binoculars with a 4 x 30 magnification, includes a cleaning cloth and nylon pouch with belt loop.
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I recently paid a visit to the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Gardens, London to see Swiss curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, a long-time friend with whom I have a mutual connection: we both worked closely with the late James Lee Byars, the conceptual artist who, in 1971, implemented "The World Question Center" as a work of conceptual art.
The walls of Obrist's office were covered with single pages of size A4 paper on which artists, writers, scientists had responded to his question: "What Is Your Formula?" Among the pieces were formulas by quantum physicist David Deutsch, artist and musician Brian Eno, architect Rem Koolhaas, and fractal mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot.
Within minutes we had hatched an Edge-Serpentine collaboration for a "World Question Center" project, to debut on Edge during the annual Serpentine Gallery Experiment Marathon, the weekend of October 13-14. The plan was to further the reach of Obrist's question by asking for responses from the science-mindedEdge community, thus complementing the rich array of formulas already assembled by the Serpentine from distinguished artists such as Marina Abramovic, Matthew Barney, Louise Bourgeois, Gilbert & George, and Rosemarie Trockel.
Edge Live in London
The Serpentine Gallery Experiment Marathon
10:00 am to 1:30 pm, Sunday 14 October
In addition to the online publication of "Formulae for the 21st Century," Edgewas invited to program four hours of the twenty-four hour Serpentine Gallery Experiment Marathon. The event, which took place October 14th, was held in The Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2007, commissioned by Serpentine Director Julia Peyton-Jones and designed by Olafur Eliasson and Kjetil Thorson.
Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2007
© 2007 Olafur Eliasson and Kjetil Thorsen
The session session featured live presentations of "table-top" experiments from zoologist Seirian Sumner (A Cooperative Foraging Experiment — Lessons From Ants), archeologist Timothy Taylor (The Tradescant's Art Experiment), physiologist Simon Baron-Cohen (Do Women Have Better Empathy Than Men), biologist Amrand Leroi (The Songs of Songs), geneticist Steve Jones (Some Like It Hot), physicist Neil Turok (What Banged? and The Morning Line), biologist Lewis Wolpert (How Our Limbs Are Patterned Like The French Flag), and playwright Marcy Kahan in conversation with psychologist Steven Pinker.


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Brush and Floss
The three main steps in fighting gum disease are brushing, flossing, and seeing your dentist regularly. Brush at least twice a day and floss at least once a day. Ask your dentist or hygienist to show you the correct way to brush and floss. Here are some tips.
Brushing. A toothbrush can only clean one or two teeth at a time. Allow about 3 minutes of brushing to clean all your teeth well. Use a brush with soft bristles and rounded ends. Soft bristles are less likely to hurt your gums. Angle the brush against the gum line, where teeth and gums meet. Move the brush back and forth with short strokes. Use a gentle, scrubbing motion. Brush the outside surfaces of the teeth. Do the same for the backs of the teeth and chewing surfaces. Brush the rough surface of your tongue to remove germs and freshen your breath. Remember to brush your gums too. Get a new toothbrush when the bristles are worn or bent, about every 3-4 months.
Flossing. Few people really enjoy flossing. But if you don't floss, you're only doing half the job of cleaning your teeth and gums. Flossing cleans away plaque and bits of food from between your teeth and below the gum line. It gets places your brush can't reach. Floss once a day. Break off 18 inches of floss and wind most of it around one of your middle fingers. Wind the rest around the same finger of the other hand. Hold the floss tightly between your thumbs and index fingers. Leave about an inch between them.
Use a gentle sawing motion to get the floss between your teeth. Never snap the floss into the gums. When you get the floss to the gum line, curve it into a C-shape against one tooth. Scrape up and down on the sides of each tooth to remove plaque. As floss gets worn and dirty, move to a clean section and continue. Don't forget the backsides of your rear teeth.
When you're done brushing and flossing, rinse your mouth with water. If you have arthritis in your hands, trouble moving your fingers, or if you have bridgework in your mouth, a floss holder might help. Ask your dentist about tools to make flossing easier for you.
- When you schedule your visit to the dentist, plan to:
- Tell your dentist you have diabetes. Also, share any problems with infections or trouble keeping your blood sugar levels under control.
- Eat before you go to see your dentist. The best time for dental work is when your blood sugar level is in a normal range and your diabetes medication action is low. If you take insulin, a morning visit after a normal breakfast is best.
- Take your usual medicines before your dentist visit, unless your dentist or doctor tells you to change your dose for dental surgery. Your dentist should consult with your doctor to decide about adjustments in your diabetes medicines, or to decide if an antibiotic is needed before surgery to prevent infection.
- Stick to your normal meal plan after dental work. If you can't chew well, plan how to get the calories you need. You may need to use your sick-day meal plan that uses more soft or liquid foods.
- Wait to have dental surgery until your blood sugar is in better shape, if your diabetes is in poor control. If your dental needs are urgent, (pain or swelling), talk to your dentist and doctor about having dental treatment in a hospital or special setting where you can be checked on during and after surgery.
- Tell your dentist you have diabetes. Also, share any problems with infections or trouble keeping your blood sugar levels under control.


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Dispatch From Dubai
Silicon Valley's collective vision of the Internet was on trial recently at a United Nations treaty conference held in the Persian Gulf. Did the Valley's thought leaders, business innovators and serial entrepreneurs appreciate the degree to which their shared assumptions about the Internet — its dynamism, openness, adaptability and ferocious commercial power — were under methodical assault by countries like Iran, Russia, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia?
The American delegation tasked with defending the Internet's flat, decentralized and globally unregulated structure was composed of a vast swath of government agencies ranging from the State and Defense departments to the FCC and White House National Economic Council. The delegation also encompassed a powerful tier of commercial representatives from preponderant technology companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Cisco. In the months before the conference, the U.S. team was assiduously briefed on an array of hugely controversial proposals to regulate Internet content, impose tariffs on Internet traffic, and usurp management of the Internet's technical protocols and address system. But no member of the delegation, not even the most seasoned veterans of such global negotiations, could confidently predict how the acutely contentious conference agenda would ultimately generate an acceptable international agreement.
"Consensus! Consensus! Consensus!" This was how an emphatic Hamadoun Toure, secretary-general of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), promised to navigate world governments through the two weeks of talks, the first in history to debate the prospect of international Internet regulation. Delivering his opening remarks to more than 150 national delegations, Toure, an electrical engineer from Mali educated at the Moscow Technical University of Communications and Informatics in Russia, sought to assuage the palpable anxiety among many countries that the future control and governance of the Internet were at risk.
In the weeks before the conference, Toure had provided repeated assurances to the U.S. and other governments that the treaty under discussion in Dubai would hew carefully to established principles for the management of international telecommunications that have been in force for decades. The last time member states had debated the scope of the ITU charter was in the decidedly pre-Internet era of 1988. As the body convened 24 years later to modernize its rules and mission, the ITU's culture of consensus, Toure seemed to be arguing, was the ultimate safeguard that a United Nations agency primarily dedicated to managing a largely anachronistic international telephony regime and radio spectrum would not aspire to exercise regulatory oversight of the Internet.
Toure's promise of consensus came on the first day of the conference, during a plenary meeting held on Dec. 3, when all of the ITU member states patiently listened to a series of opening statements delivered to an attentive assembly convened in Dubai's mammoth international trade center. It was a hopeful moment with thousands in attendance, many wearing the traditional national dress of the Arab world, Africa and South Asia. Within 10 days, however, the conference was on the brink of collapse.
The tipping point came after iterated sessions of grinding, tedious parliamentary skirmishing and maneuvering. With two days before a treaty was to be signed, and scant progress on the most consequential issues, the conference delegations were called into late-night negotiations. It was then, at about 1:10 am on Dec. 13, when Toure jolted a sleepy proceeding awake with a surprise intervention.
The hushed quiet of the plenary meeting that evening was the same it had been each day before. Hundreds of delegates sat at long rows of tables in a massive space the size of an airplane hangar. Strapped into headsets that transmitted the now deeply familiar voices of the U.N. translators interpreting Arabic, Chinese, French, Spanish, Japanese and English, the delegates listened in respectful silence, with the only noise emanating from the floor being the tap-tap-tap of countless laptop computers transmitting live color commentary and email exchanges about the historic debate. Walking through the cavernous meeting room for the plenary sessions, studiously quiet except for an occasional muffled cough, one would have assumed that a gigantic standardized test was being administered, a global LSAT or GRE exam.
Into this environment of perfunctory calm swooped Toure, prompting conference delegates to consider a resolution calling on the ITU and its member states to play an enlarged role in "international Internet governance and for ensuring the stability, security and continuity of the existing Internet and its future development and of the future Internet." It was precisely the sort of provision, recycled from a prior U.N. conference, that Toure had promised would not divide his gathering, the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT).
One of the senior American negotiators, Dick Baird, a career State Department official with an elegant mastery of the ITU's arcane procedural and political machinations, jumped in swiftly. Always the diplomat, Baird cloaked his skepticism with courtesy. "We are concerned about this resolution because it begins to be — it is a resolution about the Internet."
The conference chairman, Mohamed Nasser Al-Ghanim of the host United Arab Emirates, responded incredulously. "I'm so surprised to hear this, while yesterday I thought we have reached a consensus," he said. This premise — that a secret deal had been brokered to expand the U.N.'s authority over the Internet — would engender continued bitterness and confusion long after the conference. The notion that the U.S. and its allies in the Americas, Europe and Asia had agreed to empower the ITU to have even a whisper of authority over Internet governance was baffling. Rejecting that effort was the most consistently articulated priority of the U.S. team and its top allies. Chairman Ghanim nonetheless sought to force the issue by preempting debate. "I think I'm going to stop this discussion at this point," he casually pronounced, "because we are not moving forward."
Yet the discussion continued. Toure took the microphone. "It's not a crime to talk about the Internet inside the ITU," he insisted. Toure launched a rambling defense of his resolution, his emotion rising and his argument splintering into incoherent fragments. "There is nothing wrong with this. Please, we are trying to build bridges so we work together so the consumers benefit better. Please, everybody, help us to continue to build that bridge." Toure added: "The future is broadband, and the future is Internet, and the future is Internet, and the future is broadband Internet." He was now pleading with the delegates for their support. "Trust me," he implored.
In the next few minutes, the conference imploded. A series of countries endorsed Toure's resolution, with South Africa, Cuba, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia taking the floor. The chairman called for a show of hands to measure support for the resolution. "I want the feel of the room," he offered innocuously. According to the ITU's procedures, the chairman had the prerogative to seek a simple show of hands — little placards, really — to assess the weight of opinion on a given issue or provision. And he also could interpret that expression opinion, known as the "temperature of the room," according to his own discretion, which is precisely what Chairman Al-Ghanim did. "You can lower your plate now," he stated coolly from the dais. "The majority is with having the resolution in."
Mass confusion erupted from the plenary floor. The delegate from Spain spoke on behalf of the dozens of member states deeply confounded by the procedural sleight of hand that apparently had just legitimized a role for the U.N. in the governance of the Internet. "I would like you to clarify whether the temperature you were taking was simply a taking of the temperature," he asked, borrowing from the arcane conference nomenclature.
"No it was not a vote, and I was clear about it," Al-Ghanim replied. Although it was not voted on, the resolution was nonetheless adopted at the discretion of the chairman, its language to be incorporated into the final treaty text. "We have reached the end of the time," said the chairman. "Thank you, and have a good night." According to the official transcript of the proceeding the plenary session then concluded, at precisely 1:31 a.m.
The conference's fate was now sealed. It would likely end in angry discord because the red line of Internet governance had been crossed. Before the formal debate was concluded other Internet provisions were crammed into the treaty, dangerous precedents recently enumerated in a news analysis for the Financial Times. At the insistence of Russia, China and several Arab states, the new treaty includes a provision mandating coordination on cybersecurity, defined euphemistically in the treaty as "network" security. The treaty calls on the U.N. International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and its member states to accede to vague commitments that experts fear may evolve into an effort by state governments to engage in the global surveillance of Internet traffic.
Encouraged by African states and supported by countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, the treaty creates a requirement that member states seek to defend against Internet spam, which is imprecisely defined as "unsolicited bulk electronic communications." Critics of the provision noted that spam is easily managed by commercially prevalent software programs, and warned that the expansive definition it applied could be appropriated as a tool to censor content on the Internet ranging from political speech to Web advertising. Yet that vague definition was more than satisfactory for some of the member states. "Spam is spam!" the delegate from Iran complained. "I don't need a definition!"
Finally, the scope of the treaty and the entities to which it could be applied was never clarified. Under the treaty's fuzzy language, its jurisdiction could potentially be applied to Internet service providers, private networks, and even government networks.
When the full panoply of provisions relating to Internet governance was clearly defined, the U.S. signaled its refusal to sign the treaty. The U.K. and Canada quickly followed. Eventually, all of Europe refused to sign the treaty, along with Japan, Costa Rica, Australia, New Zealand, and Latvia. In total, 55 countries rejected the agreement.
Silicon Valley should take note of the international debate in Dubai. The collapse of the global dialogue about the future of the Internet foreshadows a conflict that will almost certainly accelerate in coming years. The Internet's prevailing governance paradigm revolving around the private sector, technical cooperation, innovation and multi-stakeholder management will be increasingly challenged by world governments. Why? The Internet is simply too consequential a strategic and geopolitical resource for many global powers to not seek to control it. In that sense, Dubai was only the first battle in an emerging global contest to shape the future of the Internet.
The author is a managing director at Silver Lake, and served as a member of the American delegation to the World Conference on International Telecommunications in Dubai. He writes in his individual capacity, and the views expressed here are his own.