text:
Hey, IT department! Sick of vendor shaftings? Why not DO IT, yourself
Enterprise IT departments have been reduced to personal shoppers at best and checkout clerks at worst. You want extra lock-in on those chips, sir? I say this because IT departments just don't make anything anymore. When was the last time you were required to actually make a new thing as part of an IT project? As the …
You actually have to have a large, competent, IT department to do it yourself. We used to do it and had loads of inhouse built applications, custom designed to our needs, that had much more functionality than others in the industry who bought in. They were getting a bit long in the tooth though and needed some investment in bringing them up to date.
Over the past 5+ years though, there has been a shift to buying things off the shelf, and a corresponding decimation of the IT departments, along with farming the remaining work out to India.
Our costs are up, and functionality is down, but it's a "Success!" by some strange definition of the word. And our remaining IT guys now no longer have any investment as they aren't working with stuff they created, to make it perfect, instead they are tweaking a few config options on something they see as inferior. If they see problems they can't fix them, they have to just raise it to the vendor and hope for the best...
It's not true everywhere - luckily for me
I'm the lone IT bod in a more-medium-than-small enterprise, and I am lucky enough to be able to build things that actually solve problems.
We've been hectoring one of our main IT suppliers to add a not-mission-critical-but-extremely-useful function into one of our systems for ages. Unfortunately they're a useless set of ballbags and they've never managed to get started on it. Bored of this delay, a few weeks ago I went on GitHub, found someone had already done exactly what was needed. The code was a bit mucky, so I contributed a little, fired it up in a VM and we're rolling it out next week.
I know that nearly finished code off GitHub isn't the same as building something from the ground up, but you do come across the thought of "how many times has this wheel been reinvented elsewhere?" and then you look on GitHub and it turns out they've got not just the wheel but another wheel and an axle between them. Hurrah for open source software and the internet for making it so easily accessible.
"Our costs are up, and functionality is down, but it's a "Success!" by some strange definition of the word"
The success part comes from the fact that the IT manager/director no longer has to take direct responsibility for any cock-ups. He can just wave the contract around a bit, point the finger at the vendor and head off to the golf course knowing he's done all he can and the board can't take him to task over it.
Heading downhill one tax dollar at a time
"Our costs are up, and functionality is down, but it's a "Success!" by some strange definition of the word."
Such a pattern gets (regretfully) labeled as a "success!" because you are thinking like an IT guy and not like a [modern] CIO / CFO / CEO...where it's all about the MONEY.
An outsourced app, an outsourced consultation, an outsourced infrastructure designer, etc. becomes a capital improvement investment - in other words, deductible. The salaries paid to in-house IT specialists are...not. So to the CFO, who reports such information to the CEO who then proclaims policy to the CIO, reminds them all that any outsourced expenditures can be depreciated as a capital investment whilst doing business and therefore makes said outsourcing "good policy!".
We're all caught in the same trap which allowed big business to export call centers, construction contracts, IT development and just about all other job skills to 'somewhere else'. Our corporate tax codes, written oh-so-lovingly whilst the lobbyists are staring right over the shoulder of our legislators, allow this. The tax code can still be 'repaired' - "fixed" - by granting a "home benefit" for all capital expenditures when the money stays within the borders of the home country as locally-fulfilled contracts, but that would cause the foreign lobbyists to say "Unfair!" and would mean any headway into the process would have to start all over again.
TL;DR: In other words, as a worker, you're screwed. Welcome to the 21st Century, here's your spot of tea.
Devolved Responsibility
By not making it yourself (which few CIO's and no CEO's understand) you can buy it from someone who buys you lunch and tells you how great you are. Added benefit: the decision maker doesn't have to let on that he doesn't actually understand IT or applications or application development or how to define business requirements and can devolve responsibility to the supplier if/when it goes wrong. Same argument for Outsourcing and Facilities Management. I know of a very large manufacturer who devolved responsibility for the recovery of their business critical 25 year old VAX system (essential to their production process) to an unproven 3rd party who would magic up failed HDDs, motherboards, processors, IO cards. "We have offloaded that responsibilty to a specialist provider and are therefore not running at risk" - Naive at best "Business-Intelligence" stoopid at worst. Meanwhile the (old) guys that had written and maintained that system were retiring / dying / leaving...
If you're a decision-maker with limited technical understanding, it is much easier to *trust* a 3rd party who can be blamed (they lied to me!!!) than be blamed for an in-house foul up (I made a bad decision!!)
As for success criteria - well thats easy - its a sucess if I say its a success, if I'm the decision-maker; who's to argue? Increased costs, lost functionality, decreased reliability can all be explained away.
Not sure where you work...
...but we have 50 devs "making" our own stuff, sometime we take a vendors products, and customise the hell out of it, or we start from the ground up. Yes we still buy a lot of the off the shelf stuff, but why invent the wheel?
The other issue, is when it's custom made, if the guy that wrote it buggers off, and there is little or know documentation, it leaves a whole load of shit behind....just look at the banks for a classic example of this.
Re: Not sure where you work...
In our large pharmaceutical company, the home-grown applications have been systematically replaced over the last 25 years by configuable standards, the residual home-grown applications will have disappeared in the next few years. When they go, the get replaced with some standard with reduced functionality, some were even sold to external IT specialists to turn them into "standards".
The driving force is the need for full, up-to-date documentation and control of changes.
The creative programmers who stayed either moved to the internet side, or became business analysts joining extracts (mostly in excel).
Re: Not sure where you work...
The other issue, is when it's custom made, if the guy that wrote it buggers off, and there is little or know documentation, it leaves a whole load of shit behind....just look at the banks for a classic example of this.
That's why you beat them about the head with the Big Book of SSADM before letting 'em near a compiler.
Okay, so you could probably pronounce it as "sadism", and probably compress the entire methodology down to "anal retentive attention to detail and documentation", but hey, if you want everything documented, you document everything. Before writing a bunch of undocumented code.
Or at least encourage them to use Doxygen and heavy use of remarks. Owt's better than nowt.
Re: Not sure where you work...
SSADM? Michael A. Jackson would be turning in his grave if he were dead.
Re: Not sure where you work...
"Or at least encourage them to use Doxygen and heavy use of remarks. Owt's better than nowt."
Of course the downside of heavy use of in code comments whether doxygen style or not, is that yes they're great for the initial version, but then along come half a dozen maintenance coders who all modify the code, but not a single one of them change the comments. So 5 years later the comments are merely of archeological interest and don't match the code at all. So which is worse - no comments at all, or comments that are eventually useless or even misleading? I don't have an answer to that.
Re: Not sure where you work...
The other issue, is when it's custom made, if the guy that wrote it buggers off, and there is little or know documentation, it leaves a whole load of shit behind....just look at the banks for a classic example of this.
That's why you beat them about the head with the Big Book of SSADM before letting 'em near a compiler.
That's why they start taking months instead of days to deliver anything, and the CIO starts looking favorably at off-the-shelf again.
Re: alf a dozen maintenance coders
Why aren't your maintenance coders required to update the comments when they change the functionality?
Re: alf a dozen maintenance coders
>Why aren't your maintenance coders required to update the comments when they change the >functionality?
I've worked in over a dozen companies in my career , and not one mandated maintenance of code comments.
Re: alf a dozen maintenance coders
I've worked in investment banks and they were all seriously winging it from minute to minute. Very poor quality code with nothing thought through and misleading comments (if there was any commenting).
I also worked at an asset management company which ensured that everything was documented, coding standards (including comments & history) were adhered to and procedures were followed for UAT and PROD releases (with sign-off & responsibility resting with a peer). They even had peer reviews of code and documentation. It was a huge shock to me after years of the cowboy approach while working at the banks, but it's made me a significantly better coder as a result.
Re: Not sure where you work...
"In our large pharmaceutical company, the home-grown applications have been systematically replaced over the last 25 years by configuable standards, the residual home-grown applications will have disappeared in the next few years. When they go, the get replaced with some standard with reduced functionality, some were even sold to external IT specialists to turn them into "standards"."
Same at the biopharm company I work at. 10 years ago there were hand built programs to do time off, expenses, data management. The company was split and my bit sold to a VC company and the majority of the IS people stayed with the old company. New software tools were no longer developed but at least the old ones were updated. The company was sold on a couple of years ago and all of the internal webpages have gone along with the perfectly functional software tools to be replaced by a fricken SAP "portal" and internet that seems to be dialup.
Re: Not sure where you work...
No comments please, appropriately named methods, variable and classes will do just nicely thank you.
Re: Not sure where you work...
That and automated test cases made by a separate team of test fiends wired to a "programmer, you are fired" light once a settable number of failures occur in the daily test run.
Re: Not sure where you work...
I think the answer to that comes down to two things - management and code review.
I've worked in shops where code didn't get to touch a repository until it was reviewed by another engineer. Each engineer had checklists of what they were to check for in a code review, and any public methods without up to date doc-strings would have been things to flag up in a code review.
Re: Not sure where you work...
SSADM? Surely you adhere to ITIL?
Re: alf a dozen maintenance coders
>Why aren't your maintenance coders required to update the comments when they change the functionality?
In my (albeit limited) experience, when working at a company with a small development team (often just me), the management tend to prefer immediate results over a properly documented and tested solution. When someone asks me to make a change I usually ask "do you want it done properly or do you want it done now?". No prizes for guessing which answer I get.
Re: Not sure where you work...
Having left (presumably a different but similarly managed) pharmaceutical company IT department a year ago, it is such a relief to not have to deal with the depressing nature of knowing how to make something work really well but being told to implement some closed-source "solution" from elsewhere.
I'm now working on the "internet side" (within the Drupal community) now and the feeling of collaboration and inspiration is fab. Looking back at what is happening where I left, I think I made one of the best decisions of my life...
Re: Steve Knox Re: Not sure where you work...
".....That's why they start taking months instead of days to deliver anything....." Lazy-arsed male bovine manure. If you code right from the word go (proper structure, syntax, etc., AND GOOD COMMENTING/DOCUMENTATION) then you will usually complete the project faster and more accurately. Only the WYSIWYG editor generation knock SSADM and similar techniques because they slept through the design modules on their CompSci degrees. Yes, managing coders is like herding cats, which is why you need experienced team leaders and project managers willing to tell them to start over if the coders try submitting anything a green graduate can't decipher from the comments and documentation. Edits, additions and re-use all are so much easier when you have whipped the cats into shape.
Re: Roland6 Re: Not sure where you work...
" SSADM? Surely you adhere to ITIL?" SSADM is how you make sure what you design is going to work - ITIL is what you use to bamboozle the board into paying for your design.
Actually, you can throw a large chunk of blame for the current COTS fad at ITIL. One of the things it allowed the board to do was understand risk, something business people really want to know about. I used to do a lot of risk assessments for companies, and I'd point out to them the biggest risk to their business operations wasn't servers failing or corruption of data, it was often that only one or two people in the company actually knew how the systems worked, and if they fell under a bus the company would be screwed. This drove a heightened increase for process and systems documentation (which we, as consultants, charged extra for) and "knowledge sharing" (guilty, we charged for helping them do that too), and produced an unfortunate side effect of "dumbing down" IT to remove the risk of relying on one or two gurus.
Re: Not sure where you work...
@Lost all faith
The classic example of the banks is not a good one - those jobs were offshored to people who do not understand/care/have responsibility for what they do. The offshored teams churn every few months so even if you did a good technical handover initially, it is diluted in a matter of months as semi-competent guys leave for better money and do minimal handover (because they are no longer trusted to touch the IT and because they no longer care anyway because they're leaving).
I don't bank with any bank that offshores its IT any more (and neither should you) because they are a ticking bomb and the Business-Geniuses that made those decisions don't even have the wit to know it...
Re: not one mandated maintenance of code comments
They were run by incompetents then.
So I'm not the only experiencing this?
I had a meeting with "the business" earlier this week. Several departments were there who had previously gone off and done their own thing but were now being hit by vendor lock-in, price rises, failure to stick to contracts... All the time we had been providing nuts and bolts IT services in house that kept chuggling along around 99% uptime.
The various business departments wanted to bring their IT needs back in house for IT to design, build and support. It was a very enjoyable meeting, means I'm going to be doing a lot more work soon but in this climate I was fist pumping all the way back to my desk.
Re: So I'm not the only experiencing this?
Just don't forget this...
"...what they didn't do was give the finance department a thing to play with whilst they got the project off the ground."
once they are finished they zip back up the mouthpiece of their latex suit and climb back into the gimp box with (insert service provider's name here) on it.
You misspelled "Oracle's".
The IT industry is like the maturing Industrial Revolution
At first everything was handmade, crafted by people who had learned their trade over many years. Gradually factories were built so that a product could be made by cheaper labour. Those factories were made possible by large bespoke machinery made specifically for that one job, but it needed people based at the factory who could maintain, fix and update the machines as required. Over time entrepreneurs started making standardised machinery to sell to the factories. This meant the factories no longer needed their own people to build and maintain the machines - they simply bought them in and paid for repairs or changes when needed. The next step in the process was for manufacturing to be pushed to other countries to reduce labour costs and this is where we find ourselves today - very few people able to build or fix machines and manufacturing was decimated.
This seems a direct parallel with the IT industry; At first a company wrote its own software using self taught people or people who deliberately wanted to get into that trade. But over time it became cheaper to buy standard tools for the job and the in-house IT departments dwindled away in favour of service management teams who managed contracts and project managers who managed system rollouts. Gradually the remaining high cost was salary and that meant that the remaining jobs flowed out to other countries who could provide it cheaper.
We are at the tail end of the IT revolution where there remains little knowledge or expertise in the larger companies, and increasingly in the smaller ones. But like manufacturing the only real option left is to specialise and own the IP even if the actual manufacturing is performed elsewhere.
Whether this is a good or bad thing is hard to say but we can learn a lot of lessons in IT from the decimation of the manufacturing industustry.
Use experience
I was the IT lead in an educational service. Once we were able to get a local authority IT person to help us choose, modify or even build for us the stuff we needed. And we could also draw upon our contact in the IT team to help us select hardware to meet our needs, which I could source myself, and they'd set it up for us.
Then all of a sudden it became corporate. We had to use software packages that didn't quite fit our needs. The corporate IT people introduced all sorts of overcomplicated, big, expensive, often incomprehensible outsourced designs that didn't quite work and, in one example, relied on an obsolete version of IE to keep working.
Meanwhile we had to order our hardware through a nominated person who never seemed to be able to help us to select stuff, (I don't think he'd even heard of TCO let alone being able to match our usage profile), only used what was available through authorised suppliers, always took 5 times as long as we could have done it, even from the same suppliers- we had to join the queue- (if he did it at all) and ended up costing more to buy than I could have got it myself ( I tested this a few times) then added his costs on top.
And stuff we needed sorting out didn't happen unless everyone else in the council had identified the same need ( which was seldom the case).
If it wasn't for the fact that we hadf really good IT guys working with us on the day to day stuff we'd have opted out ( which we could have done).
I wish our IT department would google stuff, generally I have to tell them exactly what I want by looking at their vendor's catalogue, then they charge me 10% more that that & I have to help them install & configure it. The idea of IT being able to actually help me do my job better seems frankly laughable from here...
Erm ok
Do you have an inhouse department, sounds like an outsourced reseller
I was dealing with an infrastructure team recently, using industry standard software packages.
In the aftermath I asked them 'did you google it (as you are trying to do a standard thing with the most prevalent tool that does this sort of thing)'.
The answer - we don't Google stuff, we have been doing this for years and we do things our way.
The top five developers in the IT organisation are consultants, and they are ten times faster, produce code with less bugs and far less technical debt.
The idea of moving development back in house is laughable - COTS all the way!
Don't blame the IT department. That was a management decision.
It could be as simple as a 4-point "charter"
Very elegantly written article: "Sharepoint has never been an answer to any question ever asked by a business person" :-)
The choice is too often reduced to a bipolar distinction between smooth commercial COTS and in-house development that is never documented, and has one socially dysfunctional developer as the only source of knowledge. It isn't that single-dimensional.
It seems reasonable that ALL commercial software vendors should: (1) provide source code available licenses to their customers; (2) use applicable open source software that clearly out-performs where development resources and adoption are concerned; (3) always choose an open standard over proprietary alternatives; and (4) create an API that expects the customer to add functionality (and makes it clear such derivative works belong to the customer).
Software vendors will find themselves at different levels of maturity when measured against these criteria, but that's fine.
Until IT buyers start asking for this from their suppliers, lock-in and frustration will be the norm.
Re: It could be as simple as a 4-point "charter"
With my vendors hat back on --- although I have built stuff along your suggested lines, there ain't no money in it. My problem has always been getting enough licence and support revenue in to keep a decent development team and a decent support team together. If I am a vendor with thousands (or millions!) of customers, it works, but if I am, say, a specialist supplier providing applications to local government (total market 433 or maybe less depending) then I am going to struggle.
If I am going to have to expose an API, then that will increase my support burden and cost.
Now the freetards on here will express no sympathy but consider this. There's no value to you in putting the vendor of your business critical application out of business.
But I agree there's no point in your vendor just taking the p**s either.
Horses for courses
The key word in there is 'competent' and that's the piece in short supply (no shorter supply now that 15 years ago but rarer as a proportion of the IT community). I started out working with first generation COTS packages and making them work, sometimes with a hammer. I've come to the view that modelling the business requirements and processes first is key, then slotting in reliable packages to do the 80% that's common and needs to just work and get supported and upgraded regularly leaving the remaining 20% of functional gaps to be filled by bespoke elements adding business benefit.
Lovely writing. The "possessed multi function device on the 8th floor"...
I'd especially advise not working on that one after hours; the lights will start flickering, and it won't go well for you.
10 years ago...
When I started doing this 10 years ago, it was expected that the in-house guys knew what they were doing. They build infrastructure, wrote code, did some development work.
Now though, it seems these basic skills of building say, a web server, or a mysql database, or a webpage with a bit of java on it to do something simple has disappeared from IT teams.
Everything is spoon fed to them by vendors. The IT teams go out into the market place, get bombarded with information about the particular task they want to achieve, and are then forced to choose one, based on no knowledge at all, just the scales of cost the individual vendors are pushing at them.
You wonder why places buy the cheapest, or the most functional (but not necessarily the most functioning) bit of software? You wonder why businesses are so confused they seem to buy the nearest bit of crap to what they want without thinking about the environment they need?
There is very little skill left in the IT sector now. If you're wondering where its gone, look at the smallest, sweat filled cupboard with no air-con or adequate ventilation at any vendors office. Thats the place where our best developers and system architects are. Stuck in pre-sales designing overly complex systems for generic solutions for people who don't understand what they are buying, or buying into.
Re: 10 years ago...
Absolutely, you only have to look at the prices of the IT contracts signed by Government departments to see it. Want a new Intranet page? Thats £100,000 please. The problem is that people see these contracts as safe when in reality they can be just as, if not far more risky. It really annoys me when an Organisation like the NHS outsources absolutely everything, its not like they are too small to support a permanent Software team. At least where I work if I find a bug in one of the tools I am using I can either A: Fix said bug (although I admit as we grow I do this much less) or B: Walk over to the software team who will then be able to see the exact issue and resolve it quickly. Also as I have direct vision / control over the systems (in the main anyway) and don't have stuff hidden from me because it is not part of my contract I can generally fix or work around problems quickly. Much better than raising a "severity 1" case with Company A who will blame Company B until Company C hears and realises one of their services has crashed so restarting a service takes 8 hours instead of 10 minutes.
Smart kids in the UK are making better career decisions too
In the 90's kids in the UK who were good with computers were steered into IT jobs, today their equivalents view IT as just another skill set to help them in their chosen careers.
I don't think that it was so true in the USA, though my experience was limited to New York. There I met plenty of users with a very poor opinion of their IT dept's because they viewed them as second best.
Re: Smart kids in the UK are making better career decisions too
The careers teacher in the 90s sold me a pig in a poke.
I ran SimCity on their 386s, suddenly I was some sort of whizzkid.
Ended up with a BSc Comp Sci, was sold some sort of golden path, ended up in App. Support fixing other people's messes.
If I had to do it all over again - I wouldn't.
Re: Smart kids in the UK are making better career decisions too
Yeah, most are actually avoiding a career in IT - now that's a smart move!
Re: Smart kids in the UK are making better career decisions too
Same here.
As I get more experience I get less pay and more trouble.
Yet the whole world would literally collapse tomorrow without IT.
What's wrong with this picture?
Re: Smart kids in the UK are making better career decisions too
That is a great point - I should have made that in the article! :-)
It's actually what many businesses do when they switch to Linux
Such switches usually aren't "out with the Windows box, in with the Linux one", but also switches from foreign IT products to self made ones.
One of the problems with doing things that way is that you need people who look at a problem and see the core of it. There's plenty of software developers who, when given a simple task will add layer upon layer of complexity.
There seems to be a correlation between such skills and people who prefer something unixoid as their operating system. One of the basics of the Unix philosophy is, in fact, the "Rule of Optimization" which states that you should build a prototype first.
In fact you typical unixoid environment comes with lots of useful tools for prototyping. Everything you can do on a tabulator can be done trivially with standard console tools in the time it takes to install even the simplest SQL server. It probably will be slow and buggy, but it's a prototype.
Yes DIY basically explains the mess most IT departments are in and it's usually driven by the IT managers masturbating over the latest product to come out of Redmond. Why the fsck are these managers always going on about change management and adapting when they are the last bastards that want to change anything?
Thankfully, there are some good guys about that are willing to take the plunge and change the way they do things in the name of progress and lower TCO.
Missing the competative advantage
Putting togther a decent IT dev team is not cheap or easy to maintain, so it should be used for competative avantage.
If your service or product is sold using the same software as all your competitors, where's the market differenitation. Why buy yours or stay with your company when you get the same vanilla online sales and service.
Companies that use their IT to build unquie customer service get to keep customers and poach their competitors, i've seen multi-million pound deals signed purely because our company could offer an BI service to our corporate clients that the other players didn't have.
Re: Missing the competative advantage
Actually it doesn't need to be expensive. Treat your IT dev team the right way. Give them decent amounts of money (actually give them what those bad IT guys get), but give them freedom.
Free them from clerical work. Get them an assistant who takes care about company bureaucracy. Give them a small "experimental" budget on which they can try out new technologies.
Then also identify the normal staff members who can program. Include them in technical decisions about your IT. Maybe they can act as a sort of interpreter between the needs of the department and the capabilities of IT.
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En español | The romantic comedy No Eres Tú, Soy Yo (It's Not You, It's Me, in Spanish with English subtitles) was one of the highest-grossing Mexican films of all time. This April, Pantelion Films — a new Hollywood studio billing itself as the first dedicated to offering top-quality commercial releases for Hispanics — hopes the 2010 film also captures the hearts of U.S. Hispanics, who represent more than a quarter of all frequent moviegoers in this country. … Back to Article
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New edition provides new sections and easier mobile access.
At a time of increased public interest in the issue of demolition worksite safety, the National Demolition Association (NDA), Doylestown, Pa., has released the newest edition of its Demolition Safety Manual.
NDA Executive Director Mike Taylor says, "Our Demolition Safety Manual is used by professionals around the world and is the cornerstone of the NDA's extensive demolition safety program. We work closely with OSHA, which helps fund the manual's development, to correlate the recommended practices it contains with OSHA Construction Standard 29 CFR 1926 and numerous accepted environmental regulations."
The latest revision of the manual enables demolition contracting firms and any other organization involved in the demolition process to manage their own company-specific safety program and promote a culture of safety within their organization. The new content has been studied and recommended by the NDA Safety Committee and other industry safety leaders.
The manual includes updated information on the safe handling of various hazardous materials found on some demolition sites, as well as valuable information on topics such as quick coupler safety and the safe use of high-reach long boom arms. In addition, the manual is more easily searchable from desktop computers and mobile devices.
The manual will soon be available in a searchable format online at NDA's website. The Demolition Safety Manual – offered free to NDA members – can also be purchased online at the NDA Store for $100 for nonmembers.
The manual joins the newly harmonized Hazard Communication Program and the Demolition Safety Talks program, a job site tool box safety meeting resource, as the foundation of any company's demolition safety management program. The Demolition Safety Manual, as well as the Hazard Communications Program and the newly revised Demolition Safety Talks program, can be purchased at NDA's Store.
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EPA awards small business grant to OCC building products producer Friday, October 03, 2014 09:17:35 AM
5811 Canal Road
Valley View, OH 44125 USA


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Ertl F-14, F-15, F-16 diecast, RARE, WoW !!!
Ertl F-14, F-15, F-16 diecast, RARE, WoW !!!
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Sold Date: 05/05/2007
Channel: Online Auction
Source: eBay
Category: Militaria & Weapons
This is very rare and hard to find Ertl's diecast Eagle Squadron fighter planes, in excellent. F-14 Tomcat in the VF-1 Wolfpack marking, F-15 in the EG 33rd TFW marking from Desert Storm, and F-16 with 174 TFW marking, "the Boys from Syracuse". The planes come as is, no weapons or anything else. All in excellent condition, F-16 has slight paint loss on the leading edge of the tail. Don't miss this chance. Please ask questions before bidding, all sales final. Payment in 10 days end of auction. Payment by M.O, check (held until clear) or Paypal. Buyer pays shipping, USPS Priority Mail for US buyer. Thanks for looking.
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(Fuente: liquidconfidence)
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(Fuente: fuckyeahnikes)
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Happy iPhone Week! With pick-up just days away, we're parading our very best iPhone 5c and 5s compatible gear.
The Pocket Spotlight lets you add light to your photo, anywhere you need it.
Move your light source around your subject to change the look dramatically. Move it closer or farther away to adjust the intensity.


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These black rings make us look tired, if not ill. They are often very obvious and can be difficult to cover up. Though traditionally hard to get rid of, their treatment may be a lot easier than you think.
There are many causes of dark circles. Most commonly in the Middle East it's excessive pigmentation, which is hereditary and affects upper and lower eyelids. In this case sun protection, with sun glasses and sun block, is essential. Bleaching creams are not very effective because they are poorly tolerated by the thin and sensitive skin of the eyelids. Combination lasers provide the best tool for removing pigmentation, selectively destroying and removing the unwanted pigment.
In other cases, the appearance of dark circles is due to loss of or insufficient soft tissue under the lower eyelid, leading to a 'tear trough', which looks darker due to shadowing. This is usually treated with fillers, which should be meticulously selected and injected in order to get a natural and smooth result.
Lastly, some people have a combination of thin skin, and lack of subcutaneous fat, which makes the dark underlying muscle visible. Poor sleep and poor circulation worsen the appearance of dark circles under their eyes. Lasers and other treatments that enhance circulation can help those patients.
Treatment starts from $350.


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Hunter Nathan & Hattie Lou Kamrath - May 15, 2013
To Nate and Katie (Moody) Kamrath of Rising City on Tuesday, April 16, 2013, in Lincoln, twins—a son, Hunter Nathan, weighing six pounds, 14 ounces, and was 20 and one-fourth inches in length; a daughter, Hattie Lou, weighing six pounds, nine ounces, and was 19 and three-fourth inches in length. They were welcomed home by sisters, Makenna Ann and Emma Claire.
Grandparents are Ken and Laurie Moody of Gothenburg and Gaylan and Nancy Kamrath of Rising City.
Great-grandparents include Harold and Bonnie Bacon of Lyons and Betty Nosal of Columbus.
Latest Headlines
- New paint job
- City sales tax to fund $1.4 million of RDA project
- Swedes grind out 40-21 win over Valentine
- Food Backpack Program added to list of agencies that get United Fund support
- Swedes scramble to split triangular
- Gothenburg tax levy ranks fifth in county
- Brady village budget passes; trustees may make change in lift station involved in lagoon project
- Brady runs over Broncos in blowout


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2014 strong-side defensive end Da'Shawn Hand made the trip to Ann Arbor on March 14th to unofficially visit the Michigan Wolverines this weekend.
He has offers from thirty-eight teams. The teams to have offered at him include: Michigan, Virginia Tech, Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, Arizona State, Arkansas, Auburn, Baylor, Boise State, Boston College, Duke, Florida State, Georgia, Georgia Tech, Illinois, LSU, Maryland, Miami (FL), Michigan State, North Carolina, North Carolina State, Nebraska, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Penn State, Pittsburgh, Rutgers, South Florida, Stanford, Syracuse, Tennessee, USC, Vanderbilt, Clemson, Virginia, and West Virginia.
On February 4th, Hand named theVirginia Tech Hokies, the South Carolina Gamecocks, the Michigan Wolverines, the Florida Gators, and the Alabama Crimson Tide to his newest Top 5.
Also, he has not received offers, but is receiving interest from the Oregon Ducks.
Hand is a 6'5″, 247 pound strong-side defensive end from Woodbridge, Virginia. He is currently a junior at Woodbridge High School.
The Woodbridge Vikings made it to the VHSL (6) State Playoffs. However, they lost to the Battlefield Bobcats, 0-17, in the first round.
As a junior in 2012, Hand recorded 78 tackles, 40 tackles-for-loss, sixteen sacks, and three forced fumbles.
He was named first-team All-American by 247Sports on February 10th.
The five-star recruit is currently ranked 1st in the state of Virginia, 1st among strong-side defensive ends, and 1st nationally among 2014 high school recruits by 247Sports.
Make sure to follow me on Twitter @RickyWidmer.


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Opener registers a hat-trick of hundreds
Hat-tricks, huge chases and hitting the sign
Australia's bowling attack and their special bond
Pat Howard on why cricket is a good option
Live streaming has ended for the 2013/14 season. Login to your Cricket Australia account to manage your password.
Never miss a ball with our free online radio.
Australia take on Pakistan for one T20I, three ODIs and two Test matches in the UAE.
The Commonwealth Bank Southern Stars will take on Pakistan in four T20s and four ODIs to begin the international season in Australia.
Australia take on South Africa this summer in the KFC T20 INTL Series with matches in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney.
Mitchell Johnson holds the record for the most wickets (37) in an Ashes series by a left-arm quick.
Brad Haddin has scored the most runs by an Australian wicketkeeper in a Test series.
Meg Lanning holds the record for the fastest 50 and century by an Australian female, scoring 50 runs off 23 balls and 100 off 45.
There's no better way to spend a day than with new friends learning how to play cricket. Join up today!
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Be in to win with all of Cricket Australia's current competitions
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Come join the Australian fans as they show their support away from home.
http://www.cricket.com.au/Global Items/news/2013/9/13/ben-cutting-must-be-in-the-mix-for-australian-ashes-series
Injuries of his own have cruelled Cutting's Test cricket hopes in the past.
Cutting enjoyed a dominant 2009/10 Shield season, returning with 46 victims at an average of 24. He was rewarded the following year, being named in the Australian squad for the opening Test against New Zealand.
But the selectors opted for Mitchell Starc, and a long-term injury put Cutting on the back burner.
Perhaps the summer will finally provide a change of fortune for the 26-year-old.
Starc, Ryan Harris, James Pattinson, Pat Cummins and Jackson Bird are all in doubt for the Ashes opener at the Gabba.
Peter Siddle will be wrapped in cotton wool and spearhead the attack. Mitchell Johnson's name is also being circulated again, and he will also need a strong Sheffield Shield showing to prove his worth.
Cutting is no Ryan Harris, but his height and speed will surprise the English top order.
Cutting has also proven himself as one of the most damaging hitters on the domestic scene.
He treated Nathan Lyon with distain en route to belting 109 from 78 balls against South Australia at the Gabba last year.
The frailty of Australia's top order of late has shown the increasing value of quick runs from the lower order.
Cutting's dress rehearsal could occur just a week from the opening Test. The Bulls will play NSW at the Gabba – a perfect opportunity to prove his baggy green credentials.
There is no bowler in domestic cricket more deserving of an Ashes debut than Ben Cutting.
If he can perform, and stay on the park, for the opening rounds of the Sheffield Shield season then he will certainly be in the mix for the Gabba on November 21.
First Posted 13 September, 2013 12:00PM AEST
No description available


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Get 4 FREE Issues of PEOPLE
From Jennifer Garner & Seraphina to Tom Cruise & Suri, see all the sweet ways these all-star families say "be mine"
Credit: Splash News Online
Updated: Tuesday Feb 07, 2012 | 06:00 AM EST
By: Kiran Hefa
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Here you go! Keys provides a helping hand for her 15-month-old son during a Hawaiian family vacation in January. "He's a rock star champion flyer," she's gushed. "He rolls with it. His temperament is super cool."
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Backbone in the wild, lessons learned using backbone.js
This week I finished up a major redesign of Edorati which helps people discover articles with their friends. The reason I ended up going with a client-side MVC framework, Backbonejs, is because a huge piece of the existing web app was long javascript files with tons of jquery event handling. In short, it was a mess and difficult to build on top of. Although I didn't set out to use backbone for everything, I ended up doing just that because it made modular development of client side code that much better. It made it feel like javascript was as real as the python/django that powers it.
Getting Your Head Around Client-Side MVC
Coming from a world of server-side templating, models, and views with Django, I had to start thinking of how that translates to backbone. Your backend will mostly be an API that serves data based on the requested URL and your business logic. Using backbone, my django project only serves one template for the whole app. Everything else is handled by backbone. That should give you an idea of how much heavy lifting backbone is able to do. I ended up stripping 70% of the view code I had written in django.
Oversimplified Explanation of Backbone
Here is my grossly oversimplified mental model of what backbone is.
Backbone organizes your front-end javascript code into an MVC style framework. There are 5 primary components to backbone:
- Models: serialized data that describes an instance (similar to a django model without the database instructions)
- Collections: a list of models (kind of like a queryset)
- Views: a handler for a section of your app (similar to a django view, but typically more granular)
- Router: routes a url to the appropriate view using a hashbang or pushState
- Templates: Sticks you data into html. Not a part of backbone, but you will almost certainly use them. I personally use handlebars, but you can use whatever you want.
Backbone Patterns No One Tells You About
Going through the tutorials and reading other people's code I've picked up on some basic patterns that are used by convention. Some of them were not immediately obvious when I started learning. Others I learned the hard way.
- Granular Views - Consider a page that has a list of articles. With django you might create a view that grabs a queryset and outputs a template with a for loop to produce the list. You might then use jquery to handle events like the user editing that instance. With backbone you would set it up like this: A list view creates a collection of articles, for each model in the collection create an article view. Notice that there are two new pieces in there. The collection which is tied to a url which will call your api then automatically create a list of models from the received data and a view for an individual article. It was not obvious to me why in the world you would want a view for an individual article which might be 5 lines of code. The reason is for event handling. You're basically setting the scope of events that apply to that code. This will help you avoid large, complicated views that try to handle all sorts of things for individual items. In the long run this leads to better separation of the different parts of your app and makes it much more manageable. Seems like more work up front, but it makes it easier in the end.
- Zombies - I wish the documentation was more up front about this. Any non-trivial app typically creates and changes many views within a single session. YOU HAVE TO CLEAN THAT SHIT UP. If you don't, your beautiful modular code will exhibit bizarre behavior as soon as you create a new view without first removing the old one. Events are delegated to elements. Even though you may have cleared the html, you have not removed the delegated events. Before you instantiate a new view that replaces another one, remove it and unbind all events from it. (this.remove() this.unbind()). It's really hard to debug this, but the symptoms are usually things like the wrong ID being used, wrong model is changing etc. Zombies. For more info read this.
- Requirejs - Non trivial apps will need to be separated into multiple files. The tutorials out there fail in explaining this. You will almost certainly be needing requirejs. Learn require well. Took me an embarrassing amount of time for me to get this.
- One view per file - Related to the requirejs tip above, you only put 1 view in per file. Coming from django I just thought I would put a whole bunch of views in one file, but that's not how it's done with backbone using require. One view, model, collection, per file. Why? Because using require you need to return a class and it can't handle you returning multiple classes.
- Initializing an app - Using require, it's not obvious how you "boot" the whole app. Create a view that will represent your app and create an initialize function to do what you need to start it up. In your main.js (used by require) create an instance of your app and voila, it will initialize. Typically you would initialize the router and any views that must be there no matter what. For Edorati that means the sidebar and router.
- Router is your friend - Let your router handle the switching of views. Don't try to stick the router logic into your views. Need to send people to a profile detail page? Create a route for it and use that url in the template. Don't create an event handler in your view so that when someone clicks on it it creates a new view. Just use the router for what it does, route things. Doing this also means you'll have re-usable links that can be used outside of the session. i.e. link that directly takes you to a user's profile.
I'm sure I'll think of more, but that's it for now. Most of that list will not make sense until you dive into backbone creating your app. Tweet me if you have any questions @alexkehayias.
Write a script for non-trivial things you do more than once
I just wasted four hours migrating data semi-manually to a new server for a huge update to Edorati only to find that I made a mistake and all my work was rendered useless. What's the problem here? The server? The data? No. Shit happens. Mistakes happen.
The moral of the story is if you have to do something more than once that involves a non trivial procedure just write a damn script.
Unfortunately, we have a bias against doing any additional work if we perceive to only need to do something a few times in an ideal scenario. The problem is that reality and ideal scenarios don't usually co-exist. I should have been able to brush it off, mutter some choice swear words, and just re-run my script on a new server, but instead, I've been sitting hear bitching and complaining that the world as I know it is a soul-less, horrible, Bieber-filled place.
I ended up having to write the script anyway. It took me 20 minutes. It will still take a good 30 minutes for the script to run, but my involvement would go from 4 hours to about 5 minutes.
I'm going to go lay down on some train tracks for being so dumb.
6% Better than Twitter
The past two weeks I've been doing lots of pitching and am reminded just how important the question "what makes you unique?" is so important. If you're answer is not a narrative about how you're 10 times better than anything else the world has to solve a problem you will lose.
Incremental Improvements vs 10x Game Changers
When I was in DC last week I had a chance to see Dan Yates from opower present. He talked about the power of incremental improvements and how in the macro world they can represent a huge opportunity. For opower that means reducing power consumption for it's clients (power companies) by 6%. Very different than a clean tech startup that is trying to replace power plants with solar/wind/whatever. That small change, in aggregate, is a huge improvement and they are able to capture some of the value they are creating (profit).
Then there are consumer web startups where an incremental improvement of 6% over anything is laughable. Imagine someone pitched their startup to you as "I've built a product that's 6% better than Twitter." You just can't get excited about an incremental improvement when the web is this crowded. In one of Peter Thiel's class note essays (go read all of them), Peter talks about dominating markets and becoming the last mover. Competition leads to incremental improvements. Domination comes from 10x game changers.
Don't Compete, Dominate
There are plenty examples of incremental improvements leading to big impacts (Edison's light bulb is an incremental improvement over what existed), but in the crowded world of web startups I feel that incremental won't cut it. If you want to dominate you need to be a 10x improvement. Obviously if you're not solving the right problem you can be 10x improvement on something no one cares about, so keep that in mind too. The point is to dominate not compete.
Lean Startups and Domination
I'm beginning to see how lean startup tactics are indoctrinating us towards incremental improvements. Maybe you have a big idea and vision of how you will change the world. You dissolve that into a testable series of assumptions and set off to prove it. As you go along and test, speak with people, and iterate you increment. You hone in on the actual problem and optimize different parts of your funnel. However, it's too easy to fall in love with the tests, data, and incremental improvements. Sometimes the best edit is a rewrite (I think PG said that). Sometimes your pivot is just an incremental improvement. We need to think less about optimization and more about domination. You improved your signup conversion rate by 5%? Cool, but you still only have 100 users because no one cares, you're not can't miss, not novel, not 10x, just noise.
Where do we go from here
Maybe it's time we start thinking about intelligent design rather than evolution (not in the education/political sense). If we start thinking about domination from day 1, how does that change our approach to product and distribution? There's the danger of solving the wrong problem, but there's also the problem of not solving the problem hard enough. I already know how to optimize, but I don't know how to dominate. I'm going to work on that.
Advice for submitting Open Graph apps to Facebook
I recently had to submit an app with two Open Graph actions to Facebook for their blessing. It's a clunky process where you need to have it fully working on externally available server (in my case a dev server), post the action to your account successfully, then tell them how to test it so that it meets their guidelines. Turn around time was about 2 days.
And then they rejected an action
I recently did a deeper integration with Facebook for Edorati to bring some social reader functionality so you can follow what your friends are reading more easily. One of the actions was approved right away, but the "read" action was rejected. OMG wut? It's so far within their guidelines I could puke and it would still be kosher.
After thinking it through, I decided that my integration was flawless (I'm not actually as cocky as my writing presumes) and within guidelines. I resubmitted the same thing, no code changes, nothing. All I did was update my instructions for them to test it to specifically hit every point in their guidelines and it was approved.
Avoid wasting time with the approval process by being very specific about your test case when submitting your app. Clearly hit on points such as global settings to turn the action on or off, per item control of the action (in my case, that's a button for sharing an article on the article detail page), why it's relevant to other people, and make your test case super easy to follow. Oh, it also helps if your code actually works ;-)
Here's the Edorati submission (sanitized):
Log in to DEV_URL with username: USERNAME, password: PASSWORD. Go to ARTICLE_PAGE and click the "mark as read" button. This will perform the "read" Facebook open graph action. Clicking the button again will delete the post. Go to SETTINGS_PAGE to toggle the "read" action globally on or off. The read action is performed when a user reads an article which is a strong indicator that this is a relevant article that other people will want to read in their network. There is global control for this action as well as per article with the Mark as Read/Unread button on the article detail page.
How to make an interactive bookmarklet part 3
In the last two parts of this series we learned about the framework for building bookmarklets and how to use javascript with django templates for optimal maintainability. Now let's look at how to make interactions work without needing any external javascript libraries.
Why not include Jquery
Binding Events to Handlers
So you want to be fancy and make the bookmarklet change when the user clicks on something? Tough shit. Just kidding. The problem with event handling is that making it work cross-browser is tough. Jquery helps make writing js more cross-browser compatible and that's a huge part of it's overall value.
Here's how we can add event handlers that will work across all browsers without Jquery. I can't find where I originally found this from, but when I do I'll add an attribution link.
var bindEvent = function(elem, evt, cb) { //see if the addEventListener function exists on the element if ( elem.addEventListener ) { elem.addEventListener(evt,cb,false); //if addEventListener is not present, see if this is an IE browser } else if ( elem.attachEvent ) { //prefix the event type with "on" elem.attachEvent('on' + evt, function(){ //use call to simulate addEventListener cb.call(event.srcElement,event); }); } };
Now we have a simple way to make interactions happen within the bookmarklet itself. For example:
// Remove the bookmarklet from the document assuming b is body and c is the bookmarklet var cancelDialog = function(e){ b.removeChild(c); }; bindEvent(cancelButton,"click", function(e){ cancelDialog(this); });
All that without including the whole jquery library! That will keep your bookmarklet lightweight and fast.
Submitting a Form
Using our event binding snippet above we can create a simple handler for submitting a form free from cross-domain errors. Those of you familiar with jsonp will see that this is very similar, but done manually and in a simpler way.
// Assuming we have the following in the script var d=document, s=d.createElement("scr"+"ipt"); b.appendChild(s); // Bind a submit event to a button click var submitArticle = function(e){ // get the values of any form data you need // URI encode the variables as GET parameters s.src = "http://www.urltoyourservice.com?var1=" + encodeURIComponent(variable1) + "&var2=" + encodeURIComponent(variable2); }; bindEvent(submitButton,"click", function(e){ submitArticle(this); });
This will make a GET request to your your server with the parameters of your form. We can now process that request and return a response just like we did to initialize the bookmarklet in the first place. All we need to do is respond back with javascript. You can do this numerous times. All your doing is manipulating the bookmarklet that is already a part of the document. Make sure that you clean up after yourself (see my earlier example of binding a cancel button to removing the bookmarklet from the document).
There you have it. An interactive bookmarklet that's fast, maintainable, and lightweight. You can make changes to it at any time since the initialization happens server-side with familiar templates. You can make cross-domain requests without any errors. You can even bind events and handle them all without needing Jquery.
How to make an interactive bookmarklet part 2
Let's talk about how to generate a bookmarklet using server-side templating and pure javascript (no libraries!). In part 1 we discussed the basic framework for making a bookmarklet and performing requests directly from the client's page. Now we'll see how to set up the foundation for a bookmarklet UI and make it look good.
Building a Bookmarklet Template in Django
Let's create a file called bookmarklet.js. In it we are going to add a self executing piece of javascript and leverage django templates to fill in the information we need. In here we are going to build the response using nothing but javascript and send it back to the user who requested the bookmarklet (remember all they did was request it to be initialized, see part 1 for more info). With django templates we can do some pretty handy things so that you don't need to manually write out the template as a string in javascript. For example:
javascript:(function(){ var d=document, {% comment %}Create the elements we need {% endcomment %} c=d.createElement("div"), b=d.body, l=d.location; {% comment %} server_scheme_and_netlog is my own tag which returns the base url of the website{% endcomment %} c.id="bookmarkletArticleAlertBox"; {% comment %}This is where django templates get's awesome{% endcomment %} {% comment %}Make sure the html rendered has no breaks{% endcomment %} c.innerHTML = '{% spaceless %}{% include "bookmarklet_body.html" %}{% endspaceless %}'; {% comment %}Add the elements to the dom{% endcomment %} b.appendChild(t); b.appendChild(c); ....snip....
What we did was construct a div that will hold our bookmarklet UI and using django templates (the {%include … %} part) we can template the html easily, inheriting the context of this view. Please make sure to add the "spaceless" tags here because the innerHTML will fail if there are line breaks and I'll be damned if I have to add linebreaks to my template. Also be extremely picky with your quotes as that can also lead to disaster.
Now in our "bookmarklet_body.html" we can create our UI just as if it were any other django template (almost). For example:
{% load static %} {% load url_tags %} {% comment %}NOTE Make sure you ONLY use double quotes!{% endcomment %}

Hey Chief, almost ready!

 Select Picture:

  «»

<input id="bookmarkletImageCheckbox" type="checkbox" style="margin-right: 5px;" /> No Picture

 Editor's Note:
 <textarea id="bookmarkletTextArea" placeholder="Add your commentary on the article here. (optional)"></textarea>
 <input id="bookmarkletSubmit" type="submit" value="Publish Article" /> Cancel

Notice how all the elements are contained within elements with IDs. This is extremely important so you can clean up after yourself and not pollute the dom. You will also need to do this so that subsequent interactions can find your bookmarklet and update the contents. BTW this is exactly what is used in Edorati.
Make sure that you have a view set up so that you know it is from your bookmarklet and can respond with your javascript template. When the user initializes the bookmarklet (see part 1 for reference) they will be requesting a url that you control. All you need to do is map that url to a view function and do the following:
variables = {'some_var': 'blah blah'} resp = render_to_string('bookmarklet.js', variables) return HttpResponse(resp, mimetype="text/javascript")
This will make sure we are responding with javascript and not html. The javascript will be executed as soon as it is received by the user. It's actually very fast and should feel close to instantaneous.
Making it Look Pretty
Plain unstyled html would be a terrible idea for a bookmarklet. Keep in mind that you are injecting onto another page where their stylesheet is unknown. That means we need to style and reset the css for the bookmarklet or it will not look consistent across sites. Here's how:
// in bookmarklet.js t=d.createElement("link"), t.rel="stylesheet"; t.media="screen, projections"; t.type="text/css"; t.href="{% server_scheme_and_netloc %}{% get_static_prefix %}stylesheets/bookmarklet.css";
Whoa, dynamically loading css just for our bookmarklet! Nothing fancy going on here, just using plain ol' css to beautify our bookmarklet. Just make sure that you do not inadvertently style the rest of the elements on the page with your stylesheet. As mentioned before, add an ID for all major elements and when it comes to css, use the ID selector to style the element instead of the element selector or class. If you have to use classes just obfuscate the name so there is little possibility of you impacting the page i.e bookmarklet-textarea-field vs. textarea.
Next Week
Next week we'll go over how to make the bookmarklet come alive with interaction through event binding and requests using about 15 lines of pure javascript and no libraries.
Adding a UUID Field to an Existing Django Model
It's not immediately obvious how to add a UUID field to an existing Django model. Let's say you have a database with some data in it about certain accounts, but you realize you need a way of obfuscating the pk of a model instance. UUID is a perfect candidate and a pretty popular implementation for Django comes from dcramer called django-uuidfield. Everything is fine and dandy until you try to add that field to an existing model that already has data, then try to auto migrate it using south.
How to add a UUID field to an existing model
The problem here is that we need to add a UUID value to all existing records, not just new ones. Peaking through the source code you will see what uuid method they are using and what the data should look like.
- Add the UUID field to your model with blank=True, null=True, max_length=32, auto=True in models.py.
- Run the schemamigration command with south and then open up the resulting migration file.
- Edit your migration file with the following:
# You'll need to import the following import uuid # At the end of the forwards() function add the following def forwards(self, orm): ... for a in MyModel.objects.all(): a.uuid = u'' + str(uuid.uuid1().hex) a.save()
That will loop through all the existing instances of that model in your database and add a uuid to it as part of the migration. Make sure you test it first!
How to make an interactive bookmarklet part 1
Here's how to put together a non-trivial interactive bookmarklet. For some reason there are not too many resources on the subject, but it has become a much more popular way of user's interacting with a service without having to be on the site. Pinterest, Evernote, etc. all rely heavily on the ease of use of bookmarklets.
For Edorati, I needed to create a simple, fast way for user's to publish an article to their online newspaper whenever they came across something they liked. It also had to look nice and allow them to select a picture thumbnail and add an editor's note. Oh yeah it also needs to be upgradeable from the server side so that the user doesn't have to reinstall it every time you want to add something new.
Why is it so hard?
Bookmarklets are especially hard for a couple reasons:
- You don't own the page the bookmarklet will deploy on
- Cross-domain requests
- Maintaining some level of security
- Everything needs to be manipulated through javascript
- Avoid using full js libraries like jquery
What's the plan?
I ended up building a simple framework for bookmarklets and that uses django to process the request, handle errors, and provide responses. The bookmarklet is actually just a small piece of javascript code that gets executed as soon as it is clicked. It will tell my server that it's ready to be initialized for a particular user. Then the server will make a response with ONLY javascript that is contained in a self executing function which will manipulate the target page the user is on. From there any interactions are a matter of building a request on the client side or returning a javascript response from the server-side. Sound simple? Not really…
How do I make cross-browser requests, do I use Jquery?
No Jquery! We're going to avoid all libraries and roll our own. Adding big libraries will make your bookmarklet slow and you probably only need a couple of things from it. All we need in this case is a small workaround to make cross-browser requests right from the user's page. This is the pattern:
javascript:(function(){ var d=document, // Create a script element s=d.createElement("scr"+"ipt"), // Set the src to an endpoint on your server s.src = "http://www.urltoyourapi.com/?param1=something¶m2=somethingelse"; })()
Now your server can respond with javascript to fill in that script element that was just created on the user's page. By adding some GET parameters to the end of the URL you also have a way of communicating information about the user or the page. For example you may want to construct the url in a way that it passes the users obfuscated ID number so you can save information to that user's account. This is all a bookmarklet is.
Making it future proof
To prevent your users from having to install the bookmarklet every time you want to make a change, you should not include any presentation or interactive logic in the bookmarklet. For Edorati, all I need to know from the bookmarklet is who is the user. All the bookmarklet needs to do is essentially tell the server that it wants to be initialized. Everything else should happen on the server side. That way you can make any changes you want to the look or the functionality without ever having to change the user's bookmarklet that they installed.
Next post will discuss constructing templated javascript on the server side to make a bookmarklet interactive, clean, and safe…
Add fields to a Django serializer
Here's a quick and dirty way to add fields to a serializer. I wanted to add in the absolute url to the json data that was being sent back during an ajax request. I wouldn't recommend it for large querysets since you are essentially adding a json load and another dump, but for a single model instance I think it's ok. The alternative would be to use a library like wadofstuff-django-serializer, but I really want to avoid a dependency for just a single purpose.
import simplejson as json from django.core import serialize
# Somewhere in your view # Note that I'm only serializing a single instance hence the tup resp = serializers.serialize("json", (article,))
# Add absolute url to resp_obj = json.loads(resp) resp_obj[0]['fields']['get_absolute_url'] = article.get_absolute_url() r = json.dumps(resp_obj) # Then respond back as usual with your updated json object


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"Marcia DeCoster is one of the smartest, most elegant designers in the bead world today. Not only does she create sumptuous jewelry designs, her projects are deceivingly straightforward and fun to make." — Jean Campbell
"A great book with wonderful projects—these are the pieces that people will want to make to enrich both their right angle weave techniques and their jewelry boxes." — Carol Wilcox Wells
"Marcia DeCoster launches contemporary seed beadweaving into sophisticated high fashion. . . . Follow her well-written instructions for these gorgeous projects, and your work will become the haute couture of beaded jewelry." — Margie Deeb
"Marcia DeCoster's Beaded Opulence delivers all that the title promises and more—beautiful, interesting jewelry projects, clear instructions, and true inspiration for beaders." — Diane Fitzgerald
"Twenty-four beautiful bead projects from Marcia DeCoster, one of the very best beading artists and teachers out there, make this book a standout essential. It's the second title in the Beadweaving Master Class series — the first was the wonderful Diane Fitzgerald's Shaped Beadwork: Dimensional Jewelry with Peyote Stitch — and Marcia maintains the series' true excellence for serious beaders. The instructions and illustrations are clear, and the stunning photography reveals the lovely elegance of these spectacular jewelry pieces. This book and its designs will astonish and please you." — Best Selling Books
I can't wait to get started on some of these projects!
Twenty-four beautiful bead projects from Marcia DeCoster, one of the very best beading artists and teachers out there, make this book a standout essential.
The book's photography is stunning and her clear written instructions, illustrations and supply lists are easy to follow.
If you can follow a chart, and with practice (lots of practice) you can learn right angle weave from a master. Read morePublished 2 months ago by heidi pollard
all the projects are beautiful in this book. But i must say this book is for the advanced beader. But i will keep trying.Published 8 months ago by Barbara Williams
An outstanding book with beautiful projects and easy to follow instructions. I would recommend to all bead weavers. Also, take a class from her if you get the chance.Published 9 months ago by Lesa B. Lewis
Love this book jewelry making is my passion, this is a great book. Can't wait to get started on a new peace of jewelryPublished 15 months ago by donna kimball
This book has truly opulent beading projects. It is a book every beader should have in their collection. Get this book.Published 16 months ago by Jodie A Myers
Very workable but lovely ideas, stunning photographs... All i need now is the wardrobe to go with ir andenough time to make it all!Published 16 months ago by B. M. Hamersma
While I loved this book, and will keep it, I felt it had some flaws. I will cite one example, there is a scalloped necklace with a triangle beaded bezel pendant on it. Read morePublished 19 months ago by DL
I didn't really like this book. I have used some of the techniques but none of the actual projects which I just don't like. Read morePublished 21 months ago by Georgia


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CHOKING HAZARD -- Small parts. Not for children under 3 yrs.
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Very fun and educational as well. Kids had a blast playing the game.Published 6 days ago by Mary A Ryan
Ordered for my ten yr old grandson and he loves it! Perfect gross kid game while not being horribly inappropriate.Published 23 days ago by Christylyn
My daughter is 8 and is really tricky to buy for. She absolutely loves this game but her only complaint and reason she won't play it all of the time is because it takes too long... Read morePublished 27 days ago by lirpaleigh
My husband and I gave this to my 9 year old for his birthday and the whole family loves this game. It is easy to play with challenging questions, yet the little ones (5 and 3) can... Read morePublished 1 month ago by Nichole Reiff
The execution was great. Unfortunately, it wasn't as fun as I expected. I didn't read all of the questions, but it really felt like the questions didn't naturally lead to the exact... Read morePublished 2 months ago by Jeremy McNeal
The best game I order multiple times for my son's friend's birthdays. A group of 12 year olds were laughing and giggling their heads off playing this game and kept running in the... Read morePublished 2 months ago by User522


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Wed Feb 5, 2014 5:09 pm
Latest Player Updatesclose
D'Anthony Smith IR
Wed Oct 2, 2013 5:32 pm Lions waived DT D'Anthony Smith.
Fantasy Source Spin: Smith was claimed off waivers from the Seahawks last week. He didn't appear in last week's win over the Bears and is now back on the open market.
Wed Sep 25, 2013 5:34 pm Lions claimed DT D'Anthony Smith off waivers from the Seahawks.
Fantasy Source Spin: Fellow DT Justin Bannan was released in a corresponding move. A third-round pick of the Jaguars in 2010, Smith, 25, made five tackles in two games with Seattle. He'll provide depth behind starters Ndamukong Suh and Nick Fairley.
Source: Adam Caplan on Twitter
Tue Sep 24, 2013 5:17 pm Seahawks waived DT D'Anthony Smith.
Fantasy Source Spin: It's a bit of a surprise after Smith signed a "one-year extension" earlier this month, though his deal didn't include any new guaranteed money. Acquired from the Browns at final cuts, Smith was active for two of the Seahawks' first three games, making five tackles. It's possible he'll get plucked off waivers.
Tue Sep 10, 2013 5:51 pm Seahawks signed DT D'Anthony Smith to a one-year contract extension through 2014.
Fantasy Source Spin: In the final season of his four-year, $2.64 million rookie deal, Smith will make a non-guaranteed $570,000 in 2014. It's the league minimum. Smith wasn't active for Sunday's opener.
Source: Brian McIntyre on Twitter
Sat Aug 31, 2013 6:51 pm Seahawks acquired DT D'Anthony Smith from the Jaguars in exchange for undisclosed future draft-pick considerations.
Fantasy Source Spin: The Jags did well to get anything for Smith, who wasn't drafted by their current regime and has done nothing in the league besides get injured since being a top-75 pick in the 2010 draft. A theoretical gap-shooter at 6-foot-2 and 298, Smith will compete for playing time at three-technique tackle in Seattle.
Source: Tom Pelissero on Twitter
Sat May 18, 2013 1:28 pm Jaguars DT D'Anthony Smith is on the roster bubble.
Fantasy Source Spin: Deservedly so. Smith, the former third-round reach by since-fired GM Gene Smith, has missed all but eight games in his three-year career, and he's amassed just ten tackles. The Jaguars added Roy Miller, Sen'Derrick Marks, Kyle Love, and Brandon Deaderick to their defensive tackle rotation this offseason.
Source: jaguars.com
Wed Nov 28, 2012 5:16 pm Jaguars placed DT D'Anthony Smith on injured reserve with a neck injury, ending his season.
Fantasy Source Spin: The move clears a spot for new DE Jason Babin. Smith sustained the injury along with a concussion in Wednesday's practice. The 2010 third-round pick saw minimal action this season, playing 101 snaps and recording ten total tackles (six solo). Smith has landed on injured reserve in each of his three seasons in the NFL.
Source: Mark Long on Twitter
Sat Apr 7, 2012 12:46 pm Jaguars DT D'Anthony Smith (toe) says he's 100 percent.
Fantasy Source Spin: A 2010 third-round pick, Smith missed all of 2011 with a torn ligament in his toe after missing his entire rookie season with a torn Achilles' tendon. Smith is still only 23, but will be on the roster bubble until he proves he's healthy.
Source: jaguars.com
Sat Sep 3, 2011 11:02 pm Jaguars placed DT D'Anthony Smith (foot) on injured reserve, ending his season.
Fantasy Source Spin: A third-round pick last year, Smith spent his rookie season on injured reserve after tearing his Achilles' tendon early in training camp. It's not surprising that he's incurred more foot problems after such a serious surgery.
Fri Mar 11, 2011 9:00 pm Jaguars DT D'Anthony Smith has resumed working in a sand pit just over six months removed from Achilles' tendon surgery.
Fantasy Source Spin: He is now able to plant and explode off the surgically repaired foot. "I did it, and it felt good," said Smith. "It was a big jump for me." The 74th overall pick in last year's draft, Smith was brought in to work in a wave rotation behind Tyson Alualu and Terrance Knighton. Assuming Smith gets back his off-the-snap burst, he'll be the Jaguars' third tackle in 2011.
Source: jaguars.com
Fri Feb 11, 2011 4:00 pm Jaguars coach Jack Del Rio says DT D'Anthony Smith is in "phenomenal shape" after tearing his Achilles' tendon last August.
Fantasy Source Spin: "We were really excited about him. I think getting him this year is like adding another draft pick," said Del Rio. Smith was a three-technique prospect and third-round pick in last April's draft. He'll try to work his way into the rotation behind Tyson Alualu and Terrance Knighton in 2011.
Source: jaguars.com
Tue Aug 31, 2010 11:33 am Jaguars placed DT D'Anthony Smith (Achilles) on injured reserve, ending his season.
Fantasy Source Spin: The third-round pick was expected to play a key role in the Jags revamped defensive front, but he tore his Achilles' early in camp. Surprising undrafted rookie Ko Quaye could end up taking his rotation spot.
Sun Aug 8, 2010 2:25 pm Vito Stellino of the Florida Times Union confirms that rookie DT D'Anthony Smith is out for the year after Achilles' surgery.
Fantasy Source Spin: This news confirms that the Achilles' was ruptured, after initial reports only had Smith "out indefinitely." The Jags will look to undrafted rookie Ko Quaye, Attiyah Ellison, and end/tackle Jeremy Mincey to pick up the slack inside.
Source: Tania Ganguli on Twitter


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Until last week, Michael Thomas was just another anonymous practice squad player in the NFL, spending his second season toiling for the San Francisco 49ers' not-ready-for-prime-time group.
But with the Miami Dolphins needing bodies for their injury-riddled secondary, Thomas got a call and an opportunity to wear an NFL uniform in a game for the first time.
He made it pay off.
The former Stanford safety made the biggest play of the Dolphins' 24-20 win over the New England Patriots on Sunday.
In the final minute with the Patriots driving, Thomas broke up Tom Brady's end-zone pass to Danny Amendola and then picked off Brady's fourth-down pass in the end zone to secure the important win for Miami.
The Dolphins improved to 8-6 with the victory and, at least temporarily, took possession of the sixth playoff seed in the AFC. The Baltimore Ravens can reclaim it with a win over the Detroit Lions tonight.
Thomas, normally a safety, was pressed into service at cornerback after Brett Grimes had to leave the game with a groin injury. It probably didn't help his cause that he didn't take a single defensive snap in practice last week, according to CBSSports.com, doing all his work with the special teams.
"I'm not going to lie," Thomas told MMQB.com's Peter King about being called on to play corner. "I was pretty emotional. I was going out there knowing Tom Brady was coming after me."
Quite a first weekend on the job.
Tags: Michael Thomas


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Do not despair. To be friendless is indeed to be unfortunate; but the hearts of men, when unprejudiced by any obvious self-interest, are full of brotherly love and charity. Rely, therefore, on your hopes; and if these friends are good and amiable, do not despair.~Florida, 17
i love that song!


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The company is still trying to figure out the best candidate to induct the Ultimate Warrior into the hall of fame during Wrestlemania 30 weekend, but it now appears that Triple H could be the backup plan, as the two of them do have a connection. Warrior demolished HHH during an extremely quick match at Wrestlemania 12 in Anaheim.
February 10, 2014


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Fix broken SSH Public Key Authentication | 10 comments | Create New Account
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Fix broken SSH Public Key Authentication
Actually, having a passphraseless key based authentication is not secure. Anyone who can get access (read steal) your private key can get access to all the machines you have put the public key on. The best way is to use a passphrase on your Private key and then use a Keyagent when you are logged in. For Mac OS X one of the best utilities to help with this is SSHKeychain http://www.sshkeychain.org as it integrates a key agent and leverages the OS X keychain subsystem to help store your passphrase securely.
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Style Description
Milano Style MD140
Fabric: Embroidered tulle 3D
Colors available
- Ivory / Ivory
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Milano Style MD140
Fabric: Embroidered tulle 3D
Colors available
The trunk show at Bridal Sophisticate continues this weekend! Stop by and take a look at this great selection of... http://t.co/7LAmdedJ9T14 hours ago
Attention British Columbia: Ten Fashions Bridal Boutique in Kelowna is is showing a great selection of brand new... http://t.co/8jleRDbAQN18 hours ago
Happy Halloween! Is anyone getting married today or did get married on Halloween? We would love to see your... http://t.co/rgRIwaMZOu22 hours ago


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While in Jamaica I was fortunate enough to do a small editorial piece for AARP Magazine about retired Americans volunteering for the Peace Corps. It was really interesting to learn about the Peace Corps retirement program, and the volunteer's work in teaching anti-bullying classes in schools in Kingston. Keep it up Dorothy!
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Posts tagged with EASTER AND HOLY WEEK
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The Stations of the Cross in Red HookBy The New York Times
Meat Market Has Its Loyalists, Even if They Shop Only Once a YearBy Meghan Gourley
A storefront on Second Avenue and Ninth Street stands as a reminder that in this neighborhood of barbecue joints and gelaterias, kielbasa and babka were once more common than ribs and macchiatos.
In 1970, Julian Baczynsky opened the East Village Meat Market to serve the Eastern European immigrants living in the area, offering his house-made smoked meats created from Polish and Ukrainian recipes.
The weeks before Easter are now the market's busiest time of year, as this vestige of the old community continues to draw customers, many who once lived nearby, or who worshiped at St. George Ukrainian Catholic Church. Long departed from the neighborhood, they, or their families, now travel hours to shop for holiday fare they say is difficult to find elsewhere. Read more…


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Date: Thursday, November 29, 2012The Bettendorf Library, 2950 Learning Campus Drive, will show Gunga Din starring Cary Grant at 6:30 p.m. Dr. Sandra Quinn of St. Ambrose University will introduce the film. Brownies baked using a Katharine Hepburn family recipe will be served. Mr. Grant died in Davenport on Nov. 29, 1986. Call (563) 344-4175 or email for details.
Macaroni Deluxe
(More recipes)
Visit our other local sites: Daily-Journal.com | MyWebTimes.com | PostBulletin.com
Copyright 2014 QCOnline All Rights Reserved


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Used Land Rover Reviews
Autobytel has reviews that will walk you around a car, give you a peek under the hood and get you behind the wheel with an industry expert. Browse by category or get into a specific brand to see how well a car does when put to the test.
Showing 7 of 49 reviews for this vehicle
Deep-Dive: Understanding 10 AWD Crossovers
A big reason why AWD crossovers have snagged so much market share from minivans and wagons is that they promise surefooted grip in all kinds of weather. Whether you're forced...
2015 Land Rover Range Rover Evoque Quick Spin
The little Range Rover has big shoes to fill. A member of the family of the most capable and luxurious SUVs on the planet, people look to it with high expectations. Offered in...
2015 Land Rover Discovery Sport Leads Disco RevivalAll-new Compact Premium SUV Due Early Next Year
One of the iconic names in premium off-roading is on its way back to the United States, as the 2015 Land Rover Discovery Sport...
2014 Land Rover LR2 Compact Luxury SUV Review
The 2014 Land Rover LR2 represents the most affordable way to park the luxury SUV brand's white-and-green logo in your driveway. This entry-level role typically splits...
Road Test And Review - 2014 Land Rover Range Rover Sport
The 2014 Land Rover Range Rover Sport marks the continued evolution of the luxury SUV brand, a dramatic flourish that underlines the investment in technology and design...
Autobytel 2014 Truck of the Year: Land Rover Range Rover
The Autobytel 2014 Truck of the Year award is the truck or SUV that garners the highest respect and votes from our editors and honors the overall winner out of the...
Autobytel 2014 Luxury SUV of the Year: Land Rover Range Rover
The Autobytel 2014 Luxury SUV of the Year category has a big surprise for anyone expecting a list of the usual suspects. Although it would be far-fetched to...


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Morning Mindbender – October 13
What is #1 kitchen item that people get hurt by?13 Oct 11
Local News, Multimedia, Sports - The Local Connection
Wheeler Dealer
What is #1 kitchen item that people get hurt by?13 Oct 11
73% of people say they do this while watching TV?11 Oct 11
Approximately 60 percent of Americans are this. What is it?06 Oct 11
With me, you throw away the outside, you cook the inside, you eat the outside, and you throw away the inside. What am I?04 Oct 11
Nearly half of married people lie to each other about this. What is it?29 Sep 11
Today in the U.S. there will be 2.5 billion of these. What are they?27 Sep 11
Two out of three working women say this has helped them succeed in their career. What is it?22 Sep 11
A college student gets an average of two of these every year. What is it?20 Sep 11
KNUJ AM 860 will shine the spotlight on five area Fire Departments during Fire Prevention Week.


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The name's Melody and my heart belongs to Jesus. :) In my world...
Everyone has rights and deserves to be loved. Age is just a number and respect is given when due. Women are never degraded and racism doesn't exist. You can be whoever you want to be and that's beautiful.
Maybe I'm idealistic, but I will never stop dreaming.
100 Movies in a Year


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Renee O'Connor talks diamonds, guns and lesbians
AfterEllen.com reader roxygay mentioned this in the forums: TheStream.tv recently did an interview with Renee O'Connor about her new movie Diamonds and Guns. Renee even answered some questions about her lesbian following. Because she's just that awesome!
Filmnut – Renee O'Connor
Watch This Episode on www.theStream.tv
(Click the picture to watch the interview in a new window.)


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While Miami's history with rock and roll, pure rock and roll at that, has fluctuated wildly since Hispanic immigration began in the '60s, it has still managed to thrive in the 305. As in all instances of assimilation, many first generation Latinos rebelled against their parents and adopted the sound ... More >>
Haim With Shy Girls Fillmore Miami Beach Tuesday, April 29, 2014 Better Than: The musical skills of any other teeny bopper groups. Haim (pronounced unlike late-1980s teen dreamboat Cory and more like the last four letters of Hebrew toast l'chaim or the first four letters of Spanish name Jaime) hav ... More >>
Congrats to our favorite Cubanita. Miami Beach's Latin Songwriters Hall of Fame has revealed its second annual list of inductees. And our own Gloria Estefan es la más fabulosa of the 2014 class. Set to be enshrined in the LSHOF during October's La Musa Awards ceremony, the pop queen and Miami Sou ... More >>
Exactly 150 years ago, President Abraham Lincoln delivered an address unto the American people (although it's historically accepted that Secretary of State William H. Seward wrote it) calling upon the citizens of the United States to take the last Thursday of every November as a day of reflection an ... More >>
You've been working hard, haven't you? Don't you think it's time for a vacation? Well, if you're looking for the perfect waterfront pad, and you have a month to kill and at least $30,000, not only are you a rich son of a bitch, but we've got the deal for you! Gloria Estefan, Miami's beloved music ... More >>
Nouvelle Vague Presented by the Rhythm Foundation Grand Central, Miami Friday, November 2, 2012 Better Than: Watching a punk and/or new wave band cover Bossa Nova standards. When French musicians Marc Collin and Olivier Libaux sat down and drew the blueprint for Nouvelle Vague, we bet they had a " ... More >>
To close out the year, Crossfade is picking its favorite albums by 305 artists. Check out the full list of Miami's Best Albums of 2011. Afrobeta Under the Streets (Do It Entertainment) This album was five years in the making. In 2006, Tony Smurphio and Cuci Amador joined forces as Afrobeta to ... More >>
Enter Crossfade's contest for free Chromeo tickets! With the 2004 debut release She's In Control, an original sense of humor, and supersexy songs, Canadian duo Chromeo managed to delight bored folks stranded on lonely dance floors in megaclubs all across the globe. Friends since high school, ... More >>
Read Crossfade's preview of this Saturday's party with Soul Clap at the Electric Pickle. If Bostonian power duo Soul Clap are known and revered for one thing, it's an infectious passion for old-school jams. Eli Goldstein and Charles Levine have turned '90s music appreciation into an institut ... More >>
Remember the Miami Sound Machine, what with all its comachakeyobodybaby and doing the conga? Well, the Tijuana Sound Machine is a totally different creature. Instead, it's the Grammy nominated 2008 debut of Bostich Fussible, a two-man offshoot of Mexilectric pioneers Nortec Collective. B ... More >>
Don't get us wrong, we love it when guys, especially big macho meatheads, are caught in public crooning along with Alanis Morrissette's "Ironic," Fiona Apple's "Criminal," or any other song that looks weird coming from a throat with an Adam's apple. But let's be clear. We are laughing at you, not wi ... More >>
Photo by Karla GarciaAfrobeta at Ultra 2010.Got to give it to Afrobeta. After performing at this year's Ultra Music Festival -- and nabbing a Best of Miami award for "Best Band" along the way -- the PR machine has been working nonstop to keep the forward momentum. The duo just got back from playi ... More >>
image via Miami New Times archives week of August 24 - 30, 1988 Back in 1988 the American Arts and Entertainment Academy Inc. threw what they called the "First Miami music awards." Nominees included Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine, MC Shy D, 2 Live Crew, the Gucci Crew II, Jerry Rushin ... More >>
DWNTWN Concert Series with Afrobeta and ChanaFriday, February 13, 2009Tina Hills Pavilion at Bayfront Park, MiamiBetter than: Ever.Psst...things are happening in Downtown Miami. Especially at Bayfront Park: Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays you can find free yoga; Thursdays you can find delicious or ... More >>
If there's such a thing as Miami royalty, Gloria Estefan is undoubtedly the queen. Along with husband, producer, musician and impresario, Emilio Estefan, she's literally changed the landscape of the Magic City over the years, first putting the town on the map with Miami Sound Machine's run of ... More >>
Gloria Estefan Friday, October 24, 2008 Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, Hollywood Better Than: The Santiago de Cuba Carnival Who can pack a crowd of Gringos and Latinos equally in one South Florida concert arena? If you guessed Gloria Estefan, you are right. Step to the head of the class. Est ... More >>
International turntablist DJ I-Dee's life on South Beach is low-key. No surprise: He's too young to buy a drink.
Here's a sound machine for Gloria Estefan: the cash register — Ka-ching! Ka-ching!
When it comes to good alternative fusion, funk and Latin go hand in hand
Details at Home
Fate may make MSM and JD Natasha the new voices of Latin pop, but they couldn't look or sound more different
What was once a quaint Cuban festival is now part pan-Latino flag rally; part Hispanic marketer's dream
Paquito Hechavarria misses Perez Prado
From Calle 54 to Calle Ocho
Muy Divertido! (Very Entertaining)
Carlos Oliva and Los Sobrinos del Juez
Two Latin jazz giants take new turns
Love him or hate him, Miami Sound Machine architect and Crescent Moon Records visionary Emilio Estefan is a major force in contemporary Latin music
Washington Square comes out of the dark with a live CD
Not to belabor the point, but here's a look at more local musicians who get what they play for