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HARTSEL, Colo.—Christopher Smith knew he wanted to sink down some roots, preferably on a mountainside. He just didn't know that the process would require so much time, sweat and money.
"I pretty much had no construction experience," Smith said. "I didn't own any tools, so there was a pretty big learning curve."
Countless hours of physical toil and a steep cerebral climb went into building his tiny house, which casts a small shadow in South Park, Colo. Smith takes heart in knowing that the journey to build the 133-square-foot home, as well as to craft a film about tiny homes, fills him with a satisfaction that can't be measured.
Venturing into the unknown was of no serious concern to Smith, who credits much of that fearlessness to the education he received at the University of Colorado. He earned an undergraduate degree in philosophy at CU-Boulder and in 2011 completed a Master of Public Administration degree through an accelerated, one-year program at CU Denver's School of Public Affairs.
"School and graduate school, in particular, helped me to have the drive, this wherewithal and confidence, to just go out and do things … take on big projects," said Smith, 31. "I have a recognition that I can sort of make things happen."
Constantly moving during his childhood—his father was in the Army, based mostly on the East Coast—served to instill in Smith a dream of one day planting roots in a place that fed his soul.
"I just decided it didn't make sense to wait," said Smith, who began building the tiny house while finishing his graduate program. "I thought, 'If this is a dream of mine that will happen someday,' I might as well just go ahead and do it."
A graphic designer and programmer on the side, he bought five acres on the east side of the South Park valley. Before enrolling at CU-Boulder, Smith studied filmmaking in Australia and spent time traveling in Africa and New Zealand. He developed an interest in documentary filmmaking and wanting to make a difference through visual storytelling. While at CU-Boulder, he participated in the INVST Community Leadership Program, which combines community service with leadership courses.
"My background is very much in wanting to have some sort of positive impact on the planet," Smith said. He wanted to work on a film project around the time he bought the land and began planning the tiny house.
His girlfriend, Merete Mueller, suggested that he combine the two projects. Her background is in project management and writing, so "our skills kind of all worked together," Smith said.
He did most of the construction himself. There were many do-overs, and incessant trips to Home Depot. The construction of the 7-by-19-foot home took more than 1,000 hours—from May 2011 to April 2012, built at a friend's mother's farmland outside of Boulder—and cost about $25,000.
For financial and philosophical reasons Smith chose not to build the home into a foundation and with a water well. He wanted to be off the grid, in the spirit of philosopher-naturalist Henry David Thoreau.
"For me, building a tiny house in the wilderness was Thoreauian," he said. "It was a return to distilling life and the home down to its simplest form. To get at the essence of what it is to be human, really. And thinking about where your water and energy consumption comes from was part of that experience."
He built the home out of beetle-kill wood and reclaimed materials. It has a bathroom (composting toilet) and kitchen below a loft that can sleep two people. In the front of the home is a living room with a multi-use table, a sofa (room for four adults) and a large window that offers a sweeping view of the valley. A portable solar generator provides electricity and a propane stove delivers heat.
Now Smith is finishing a film —"Tiny: A Story About Living Small"—and would like to enter it into some film festivals, including the Denver Film Festival.
"We used my process of building a small house and downsizing and questioning what is a home to me as an opportunity to talk about this growing tiny house movement," he said.
Meanwhile, the average U.S. home size has doubled from 1970 to 2007, Smith said. A question asked in the film is whether consuming more and more space in a home—the quintessential American dream—actually enhances a person's life.
"It's a fine line to walk between turning people off with the questions and acknowledging that this isn't a sustainable culture, really, of the house arms race that we're in," he said.
For Smith, the process of building his home and situating it—albeit on a trailer—on his land proved to be a real-world lesson in what he was learning about in public administration. He learned, for example, why he needs to have a driveway, even though the tiny house doesn't have a foundation (emergency vehicle access), and prove he had a septic system (health code).
"Having done the MPA allows me to understand where those rules are coming from," he said. "Whereas I think a lot of people would see them as annoying governmental interferences in their lives."
Also, the degree gives him an edge as a documentary filmmaker, Smith said. "I kind of wanted to have those credentials so those things I say in my filmmaking can't be easily dismissed. At least show that I have done my due diligence in something before I set out to, say, criticize something. So I see the degree as being perfectly in line with what I'm doing."
And on a hillside in central Colorado, Smith sees a home that is perfectly suited to fulfilling a lifetime dream. Just outside of Hartsel, a big piece of Smith's heart sits.
At 9,000 feet.
In a trailer hitch.
"I never really had a place that I could call home in the traditional sense," he said. "So part of wanting to buy land in the mountain was saying this is a place I can come back to for the rest of my life. Even though it's not where I'm spending most of my time it's meant to be more of a home."
He's proven that tiny, especially when you've designed and built it, certainly can be more.
For more information about Smith's and Mueller's tiny house project, see:
Chris Casey is internal media specialist at CU-Denver. This is reprinted with permission.


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I am experiencing numbness in my foot and ankle following surgery for sciatic nerve decompression, hamstring repair and hip labral repair and revision. All this repair has impacted my entire leg, which I never had a problem with. I was recently told my Achilles might be the problem and might require lengthening.
I'm challenged to find two docs who agree on a diagnosis and next steps to get me back walking more than 1/4 mile w/o a need for crutches and w/o pain, numbness, swelling and discoloration.
Any recommendations for a foot/ankle orthoped. in NY?
In my experience Achilles Tendon lengthening surgery on the long term is not a good option. As you are doing get second and third opinion on whether this elective surgery is a good option. If you have not already done so, explore a Ankle Foot Orthosis. A smart PT can help you figure out if there are non surgical options. Go to Find a PT. An friend of mine who is an Orthopedic Surgeon say "going to a Orthopedic Surgeon is like a chicken going to Colonel Sanders.
Damien Howell PT, DPT, OCS
AGREED on all fronts. Ive been to and left six PTs since I had these two surgeries. All haven't understood the procedures I had and several were completely unprofessional. I wont elaborate, but use your imagination. I did recently find a quality and knowledgable PT who I am happy with. I have an AFO brace for the 'foot drop;' problem is it is causing havoc on my knee and hip, and Im now told it might not actually be a tru foot drop. I was also told that the brace is freezing up my ankle so the muscles there wont have a chance to start working. (Ive been on crutches 8 months this year.)
I think surgeons feel pressured to view multiple surgeries as more efficient (as if these were car repairs), but it removes experimental controls and makes troubleshooting complications much more difficult. I hope a nerve has not been inadvertently cut, but assuming you are neurologically sound, muscles respond to surgical trauma in neighboring tissue even when not incised and systemic anesthesia has been administered. All calf muscles, particularly Tib. A. and antagonists, should be trigger-pointed to ensure the foot drop is not due to unresponsive muscle tissue or common neuromuscular dysfunction. There may also be residual inflammation near the deep fibular nerve or contributing branches such as the peroneal.
Even if nerves are cut or traumatized, all is not necessarily lost. Some research into post-sciatic injury reinnervation prognosis to follow up on...
Regarding the achilles I agree with Damien. Have the surgeons considered tonus of the Gastroc and/or Soleus instead of the achilles they tension? I would put my money on evaluating and regulating tonus in these muscles before messing with the achilles. The dosiflexors are always at a disadvantage in such a scenario and can fatigue to the level you describe..
Message was edited by: James Johnson LMT
The first time I got out of bed post-op in the hospital, I had no dorsiflexion. I did, however, have alodynia in my foot, calf and ankle, and numbness from hip to foot. I've been working my foot/ankle a lot in PT from the get-go and no change in six months to the 'foot drop.' My EMG this week shows some mild improvement in terms of axonal regeneration, which is good, but the pain remains the same...it's just awful and is really ruining me. I'm pushing myself to get stronger being ever so mindful not to irriatte the nerve w/ hammstring rehab work. My hip is still a major pain in the a-s and continues to grind when I climb stairs, and snap when I sit. I can get it to only 90 degrees flexion so far w/o pain.
I will ask my OS when I next see him about your nsight about the achilles, which I so very much appreciate!!!
I hope their follow-up procedures are good enough to rule out surgical complications. Certainly, the consistent demand from the PT is key to regeneration, though painful. Please stick it out; Rome wasn't built in a day.
I'm going to hazard an optimistic guess that the Sciatic surgery was such that it gets worse before it gets better. At least we have the first part down. You'll have developed one helluva pain threshold when all this blows over!
Best of luck.. Your body is going to require time to completely heal, no matter what.. but don't give up hope. Resignation is the first step to failure. At the same time, find a way to distract yourself from the pain. Take the time to browse this site on the subject by Dr. Jonathan Kuttner, which explores the mind-body and muscular connections to pain.
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subset: commoncrawl


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Pearls In Parachutes
So far, this is as far a I got. I haven't felt like writing more, it's kindof a continued long part story thing. ahah
I heard the names the kids in the back of the classroom called me as I walked out of the room as the bell rang. Traitor. A worthless ****. Stupid. A waste of space. I still don't understand why I'm called the first two. I've never done anything to these kids before. But they've decided that simply being born is enough reason to dislike me. That, and I won't join their plan to react the Hunger Games.
It's strictly forbidden to do, which makes it all the more appealing to them. I suppose they only want me in it because of my parents. I mean, how great would it be to have the daughter of two of the victors play in your Games with you? Perfect, apparently. Especially the two most famous of the victors. But personally? I think it's sick to want to reenact those, especially when I can still hear my mom screaming in the middle of the night from nightmares, or see my dad digging his nails into his arm, trying to retain himself, to not change because of the Games. Seeing what happened to them because of the Games is horrible, so I won't play their Games.
I'm named after my aunt, who was killed in the rebellion by a bomb, though she only went by Prim. I go by Rose. My dad wanted me to go by Prim, but my mom didn't want to. I guess it brought up bad memories. I don't know much of the specifics of the rebellion, we aren't taught them in school, and my parents won't tell me or Finnick, my younger brother. However, I do know that my aunt, Prim, was supposed to be the girl tribute in the Hunger Games along with my father. But my mom stepped up and took her place. That's not in the school books, but my dad told me, as long as I promised not to tell my mom.
Finnick was named after one of the victors of the Hunger Games as well. He won his Games 9 years before my parents did, and he allied with them in the Victor's Quell. Once the rebellion started, he fought along with my mom and dad, along with some other rebels, to eventually capture and kill President Snow, the President that led the pre-rebellion Panem. But Finnick was killed in the process, protecting my mom from mutts. His wife, Annie, was pregnant when he died, and she would have gone crazier than she already was if it weren't for the baby. She named him Darien, and he's almost 26 now, which makes him 10 years older than me, but Darien is an entirely different story.
My dad is Peeta Mellark, the Victor of the 74th Hunger Games, and the symbol of the rebellion, along side my mother. She is Katniss Mellark, but if you see her in my school books, it refers to her as Katniss Everdeen. She is the Mockingjay. The girl on fire. The girl who started the idea of a rebellion in ordinary people, though she didn't intend to. She alone, is the rebellion put into a human body, as the books say. My name is Primrose Mellark, and this is my story.
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Miracle Fortress are off on a quick international adventure. They're the third consecutive band to make the trek out to Iceland for the excellent annual Airwaves festival, and will be playing a showcase tomorrow night in Reykjavik. Then it's off to London for what are sure to be two packed shows. If you're on either island, check 'em out!
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Jones' Last-Second Jumper Lifts Trojans Past Carson-NewmanJanuary 29, 2014
ANDERSON, S.C. – Anderson junior Myson Jones drained a 15-foot jumper from the right side with 0.9 seconds remaining, as the Anderson men's basketball team claimed its fifth consecutive victory by outlasting Carson-Newman, 83-81, in South Atlantic Conference action Wednesday night at the Abney Athletic Center.
Anderson (14-5, 9-4 SAC) moved into second place in the league standings, a half-game ahead of Newberry and Wingate, which had their respective contests postponed due to weather concerns. By winning its third straight home contest, the Trojans moved five games above .500 in conference play on the season.
Carson-Newman (11-6, 8-5 SAC) suffered its third straight road setback and dropped into a tie for fifth place in the conference standings.
Both teams displayed shooting accuracy, with the Eagles recording 52.5 percent from the field, while Anderson shot 50 percent on the night, including 11-of-23 from beyond the arc (47.8 percent). The Trojans out-rebounded Carson-Newman, 32-28, marking the sixth straight game Anderson has pulled down more rebounds than its opponent. But the Eagles flexed their muscle inside, outscoring AU, 44-26, in the paint.
Four Trojans reached double figures for the second time in three games, as senior guard Chandler Hash led the Trojans with 22 points, while senior guard CJ Gleaton added 19 points and five rebounds. Jones finished the night with 16 points, while redshirt junior Nick Jackson came off the bench to tally a career-high 13 points on 5-of-7 shooting in 21 minutes of action.
Carson-Newman forward Antoine Davis led all scorers with 29 points and pulled down a game-high eight boards, while guard Ish Sanders dropped in 15 points. Junior guard Jared Johnson netted 12 points and handed out seven assists for the visitors and Carson Brooks chipped in 10 points.
"We just made the last play," said Anderson head coach Jason Taylor. "[Carson-Newman] is a very good team. We out-rebounded them in the second half, which was huge."
Jackson connected on the second of two free throws with 24.9 seconds on the clock to give the Trojans an 81-78 lead, but Sanders quickly answered for Carson-Newman with a deep 3-pointer from the corner on the other end to even the score at 81-81 with just 19.6 seconds left.
The Trojans inbounded the ball and worked upcourt with Jones getting a screen at the top of the circle from Chris Ross and as he moved to his right, the 5-foot-9 guard launched the game-winning shot as he went toward the basket. Jones played a pivotal role in the closing seconds of an AU victory for the second straight contest after delivering the assist on Chandler Hash's last-second game-winner in last Saturday's win past Queens.
The contest was a game of offensive surges, with both teams posting multiple scoring runs throughout the 40-minute span. The score was knotted 13 times and there were 18 lead changes.
Anderson snapped a 14-14 tie with six straight points only to see the Eagles counter with nine unanswered points to claim a 23-20 edge with 11:17 remaining in the opening half. The Trojans then reeled off seven consecutive points over the next 1:30 to regain a four-point advantage, as Jackson nailed a jumper and Hash followed with five straight points.
The Eagles' Davis responded with a traditional three-point play and a 3-pointer, and with the Eagles holding a 29-27 lead, AU posted nine unanswered points to push out to a 36-29 lead at the 6:27 mark of the half. Carson-Newman then recorded seven straight points as part of a 14-6 run to close the half, as the Eagles took a 43-42 lead to the locker room.
Carson-Newman took its largest lead of the contest, 55-50, on a jumper from Davis with less than 15 minutes to play, but Anderson's Hash knotted the score for the ninth time on a traditional three-point play with 13:05 on the clock. Gleaton followed with a pair of free throws to give AU a lead and the Trojans would not trail again until there was just more than a minute left in the contest.
Anderson opened its largest lead of the contest, at 74-66, at the 5:58 mark on DJ McGowan's 3-pointer, but Davis' jumper with 1:06 left gave the visitors a brief 78-77 edge – their first since the 12:05 mark of the second half. Hash's old-fashioned three-point play with 41.4 ticks left gave AU the 80-78 lead and the Trojan defense then forced a turnover 15 seconds later. Jackson drew a foul on the Trojans' next possession and connected on one-of-two from the line to boost AU's edge to three and set up the final heroics.
Anderson embarks on a three-game conference road swing, its longest of the season, as the Trojans travel to Newberry on Saturday. The Trojans edged the Wolves, 85-83, in overtime earlier this season at the Abney Center. Tip-off is set for 4 p.m.


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Port Royale 3: Pirates & Merchants: Xbox 360 for $19.88
Key Features:
Two different single player campaigns: Adventurer and Trader
Naval battles, raids, plundering and invasions await the Adventurer, while the Trader will develop trade routes and the economy to earn glory, fortune and power
16 different ship types, such as powerful Galleons or versatile Frigates
Organize trade with 60 different cities such as Port-au-Prince or Tortuga
A comprehensive trade system, with supply and demand dynamically setting the price of goods and wares, like in the real world
2 Comments add a comment
Has anyone played this? Wondering if it was a "Age of Empires" type game.
@crazyusmarine: Check this out, this is a video of the first one for PC which I used as a tutorial to play Port Royale 3. Awesome game, so far I has put 10 hours, as time flys when you play it.


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Nutrition Before, During, and After Pregnancy
In This Article:
Diabetes; nutrition for breastfeedingPregnancy and Diabetes
Gestational diabetes occurs in approximately 4 percent of all pregnancies. Gestational diabetes is distinguished by an elevated glucose, or blood sugar level, during pregnancy. Women are routinely tested between the twenty-fourth and twenty-eighth weeks of pregnancy to make sure they are not showing symptoms of gestational diabetes. The risk is usually higher for women who have a family history of diabetes, who are overweight, or who have had problem pregnancies in the past. Gestational diabetes is usually diagnosed during the second or third trimester of pregnancy. Women who have known diabetes before pregnancy are not diagnosed as having gestational diabetes. This type of diabetes disappears in 90 percent of women after giving birth.
ALERT! Women who experience gestational diabetes are at an increased risk, as much as 60 percent, for developing Type 2 diabetes later. Women can decrease their risk by maintaining a healthy weight after their pregnancy.
The nutritional goals for women with gestational diabetes are to provide adequate calories, optimal nutrition, and normalized blood sugar levels. Monitoring blood sugar on a regular basis is essential to knowing if normal blood sugar levels are being achieved. Guidelines for treating this type of diabetes vary and are very individualized, but one constant recommendation is limiting carbohydrate intake at breakfast. Most women with gestational diabetes cannot tolerate large amounts of carbohydrates in the morning, but are generally able to tolerate them later in the day. Foods high in total amounts of carbohydrate are also limited. Eating small, frequent meals throughout the day, as well as getting regular exercise, can also help to normalize blood sugar levels during pregnancy.
If you are diagnosed with gestational diabetes, your doctor and/or a dietitian should work with you closely to help you develop a meal and lifestyle plan that will help you to control your blood sugar levels.
For Women Who Breastfeed
If you are breastfeeding, good nutrition after giving birth is as important as ever. The fuel supply that helps produce your breast milk comes from energy stored as body fat during your pregnancy and from extra energy from food choices. Your body uses about 100 to 150 additional calories per day to produce breast milk. While breastfeeding, a woman needs an additional 500 calories per day, beyond nonpregnancy maintenance needs. In other words, if you needed 2,000 calories to maintain your weight before pregnancy, you need 2,700 calories per day while you are breastfeeding. Trying to lose weight through a strict weight-loss regimen is not recommended while you are breastfeeding. If your caloric intake goes lower than 1,800 calories, you probably will not get enough of all the nutrients your body needs for proper breastfeeding.
As in pregnancy, the need for most nutrients increases while breastfeeding. It is important to pay extra close attention to your protein, calcium, magnesium, zinc, vitamin B12, vitamin D, folate, and vitamin B6 intake. If your nutrient intake is low, you can still produce breast milk sufficient enough to support your baby's health, but only at the expense of your own body's nutrient reserves. Also remember your fluid intake during this time: continue to get at least 8 to 12 cups of fluids daily, and more if you are thirsty.
Alcohol can pass into breast milk, so it is not advised during breastfeeding. It is also advised that you not smoke. Nicotine does pass into breast milk. It can reduce your milk supply and increase your baby's risk for developing colic or a sinus infection. If you do smoke, avoid smoking for two and a half hours before nursing, and never smoke around the baby. Some medications, both prescription and over-the-counter, can be passed through breast milk. It is advised to consult your physician before taking any type of medication when breastfeeding.
More on: Nutritional Resources for Families
excerpted from:
Copyright © 2002 by Kimberly A. Tessmer. Excerpted from The Everything Nutrition Book: Boost Energy, Prevent Illness, and Live Longer with permission of its publisher, Adams Media Corporation.
To order this book visit Amazon.com.


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by Melissa Brunner
Dec. 7, 1941 is a date which will live in infamy. It's hard to believe it's been 70 years since America came under attack, sparking the nation's entry into World War II and giving rise to what many now call "The Greatest Generation."
It's hard to believe it's been 10 years since I met with several of those veterans to share their stories. Two survivors of Pearl Harbor were among them. Max Baker and Verne Stephens both have vivid memories of the day. At the time, they'd only recently begun sharing those memories aloud. Perhaps they realized their value to history. Perhaps, in what were the days after the 9/11 attacks, they wanted us to remember how we'd learned decades before that America can become vulnerable and we must keep our guard so it doesn't happen again.
I thought of Verne and Max today. I dug into my archives and found their stories to share again with you here. And I once again applaud the sacrifice they and so many other men and women have made for our nation.


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Wofford to hold egg hunt Saturday in Glendale
Published: Friday, March 22, 2013 at 3:38 p.m.
Last Modified: Friday, March 22, 2013 at 3:38 p.m.
Wofford College's Goodall Environmental Studies Center at Glendale will host the Glendale Shoals Easter Egg Hunt at 2 p.m. Saturday at the Cole Family Amphitheatre at the center.
The event is free and open to the public, though RSVPs are requested.
Contact Haley Briel at email@example.com or 419-490-3121. Plans are to go ahead with the egg hunt regardless of the weather.
Reader comments posted to this article may be published in our print edition. All rights reserved. This copyrighted material may not be re-published without permission. Links are encouraged.


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Racing Seat - Safe SeatingWritten by on March 5, 2012 Quick guide to racing seat installment
There are lots of things in racing that you can afford to learn the hard way. What's the best setup for your car? What air pressure should you run? Does a neon yellow and orange paint scheme look good on the racetrack? You get the idea.
But when it comes to your safety equipment, that's one area that you really need to nail down right from the start. But never fear, Circle Track is here to help. We recently spent a long evening at the Performance Automotive shop owned by longtime racer and car builder Les Lesneski. Lesneski was building the framework to install a new Butler Built seat into a Monte Carlo being built to race in the Super Street class (basically a high-end Street Stock).
Granted, different car builders have their own little tricks when it comes to installing a racing seat and belts into a race car. But the main points are to build a hoop attached to the rollcage that both the seat and belts can be attached to. After that it's just a matter of properly attaching the seat and belts to the hoop and rollcage. This way, in the event you take a hit in the driver-side door hard enough to crush the door bars, you--safely inside your racing seat--will move right along with it instead of being tied down while the bars are pushed into you.
As you will see, this chassis has a long way to go until it is ready to be called a race car. So the seat and belt installation is only roughed in since it will have to come back out again. Still, you will see more than enough to get you going on your own build.
More Photos From This Article View Slideshow
2 We've seen seat hoops made of the same tubing the rollcage is constructed from, but Lesneski prefers to use thick-wall 1-inch tubing. Here's the general shape that's just wider than the seat. He also fabricated the seat mounting brackets, but you can also purchase them already made from Butler Built if you like.3 The hoop's main contact points will be with the rear lower crossbar, as you can see here. Another tube will connect it to the lower door bar, and it will also be lightly tacked to the frame. But the main connection will be to the rollcage.4 After Lesneski confirmed that the hoop fits the car correctly, he pulled it out to install a sheetmetal floorpan. Here, he uses a hole saw to cut an opening in the sheetmetal so that the right-side of the hoop can be attached to the X-brace you saw previously.5 Here, the hoop is back in place after the floorpan has been installed. If you look closely, you can see where the piece of tubing runs through the floor to connect the hoop to the X-brace.6 Gulledge sets the seat in place to begin the process of determining exactly where it needs to be located inside the car. When doing this, you need to also try to take into account where the pedals will need to mount (if they aren't already), the steering wheel location and your line of sight. Be prepared to put the seat in and pull it back out more times than you can count before you are done.7 Once Gulledge has marked where he is comfortable in the seat, Lesneski welds in the seat mount brackets. The brackets have slots to allow for fine tuning the seat later on. You will also notice Lesneski has added a second crossbar. This is in the best spot for attaching the anti-submarine belt.8 Gulledge locates and levels the seat back mounting bracket before welding it in place. It's difficult to see here, but the sheetmetal has been slotted. The bracket will be welded directly to the rollcage's upper rear crossbar. The bracket is a piece that we sourced from Butler Built.9 This is the aluminum brace that is used to bolt the seat to the bracket that has already been welded to the rollcage. Butler Built makes it large on purpose, so it will probably need to be cut down to fit precisely in your race car.
11 After the positioning for the holes has been located and marked, Gulledge drills four into the steel bracket.13 Use two cross braces to connect the seat to the hoop. These will bolt to the slotted brackets with 5/16- or 1/2-inch Grade 8 bolts. Mount the seat to the braces with four bolts each, spaced as widely as possible. This helps prevent the seat from tearing loose in the event of a wreck.14 We only have two holes drilled at this point, but mount the seat back to the bracket with four Grade 8 bolts as well. Using button-head bolts here can make life a little easier on your back. You will also notice the use of large fender washers. These are critical to provide a more widely distributed clamping load on the aluminum sheetmetal the seat is constructed from to minimize the chance of it ripping loose. All we had on hand were Grade 5 fender washers, so they will be replaced with hardened fender washers on final assembly.15 After the seat's position has been located, Lesneski welded in these brackets for mounting up the lap belts for the Impact five-point harness. They should be slightly behind the driver's hips so that the lap belt will be able to make one continuous arc from one side of the hoop, across the driver's hips, and to the other without any bends or kinks.16 Impact includes bolt-in brackets. The belt loops through this steel bracket which can then be bolted to the tab that was already welded in place. This method allows you to adjust the angle of the bolt in bracket so that the belt isn't kinked at one side or the other but is instead engaged equally all the way across. When the driver is in place, the lap belts should ride over his or her hips so that it doesn't even touch or rub the side of the seat.17 The anti-submarine belt is wrapped around the bottom bar that has already been welded securely to the hoop.18 Just as with the lap belts, when the driver is belted in, the anti-submarine belt shouldn't even touch the edges of the hole in the seat that it is routed through.19 You can wrap the shoulder belts over the upper crossbar on the rollcage, but Gulledge and Lesneski chose to weld in a bracket a bit lower. Here, Gulledge finds and marks the center point of the seat on the bar so that the belts will place an even load across the driver's shoulders and chest.
20 Lesneski securely welds in the tab. If you aren't confident in your welding skills, have a qualified welder help you out with all the tabs securing both your racing seat and belts.21 One slide-through bracket is bolted to each side of the tab, and then the shoulder belts are routed through them. You can also weld two separate mounting brackets to the bar and route one belt to each.


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We are often told to only use web-safe colors for font's and background colors etc when not using an image. I don't understand why this is? Most websites contain high quality jpegs these days with minimum 16-bit color so why are we being restricted only to web-safe colors of which there are only 256?
It sounds like an out-of-date concept. I think there were problems when the colours could not be rendered, because they were sometimes shown as speckled - a combination of colours, that appear correct in large swathes, but would not work at all for narrower items like borders.
Unless you are explicitly designing for very old computers, then I would not consider this to be a valid restriction these days. If someone is telling you to use these, then ask them why - they may not know either.
The main issue with colours now is to ensure they are Accessible. Web-Safe colours were more releated to hardware compatibility (monitors and such like) whereas now we are more concerned that the colours pass the required W3C Accessibility guidelines.
Unless you're still reading w3schools, I don't think you're going to come across advice to use "web safe" colors much anymore.
When it was first given, browsers couldn't support the entire spectrum of colors available in a 6-digit RGB string. Now-a-days, ~100% of users support the whole RGB spectrum.
Some advice that is still relevant is to check your color accessibility. Make sure you've got enough contrast, and that you're not using colors that blend together for colorblind users. You'd be surprised how common colorblindness is, and many colorblind people don't see in greyscale, they just can't differentiate some colors.
as Schroedingers Cat said.. it is a very old concept related to visualisation issues on old hardware, if you don't have W3C as a requirement than consider this.
How will the brand and the user experience benefit from a wider range of colours? How much will if benefit from the W3C compliance?
One of the advocates of "Web-safe colours" many years ago was visibone.com. The idea was that when running on an 8-bit display, only 216 colours were actually available for the browser to assign as it saw fit. The 216 "web-safe" colours were thus chosen.
Unfortunately, there are several problems with sticking to this colour palette. The first was that whilst on Windows or Mac in 8-bit mode the browser can setup all 216 colours, in a limited-colour X Windows environment, it might have access to a smaller palette, which wrecks the 216 colour palette. The second problem is that most PCs run in 16-bit or 24-bit colour now and such a limited palette is pointless.
The last problem is that there are many colours that are not in the web-safe palette. It still provides a good starting point, but don't be bound by it.
Basically, Web-safe color are depends on the hardware component (like monitor). Many computer screens back then had 8-bit color displays, which could only display 256 different colors. The computer system itself uses some 40 colors, for menus and such, and the remaining 216 colors could be used to display the actual web pages.
Now, 216 colors might sound like quite a bit, but the problem is that no aesthetic considerations were made when these colors were decided, but rather they are based solely on mathematical formulas. To be more exact, the web-safe colors are what you get when you use 0%, 20%, 40%, 60%, 80% and 100% of the three different primary colors, and then mix these in every possible combination.
more details here: http://www.colorsontheweb.com/websafecolors.asp
RGB codes for web-safe colors are made up of the digit zero plus the other hex digits that are multiples of three: 3, 6, 9, C (12), and F (15). Additionally, the digits are always used in equal pairs.
See also list of web-safe colors: http://www.pawprint.net/designresources/web-colours.php
On the other hand I still can appreciate conventions sticking to a reduced color palette if they do not unnecessarily dampen the user experience or complicate development, that is.
Coming from a unit testing perspective, I launch Xvfb servers in 8-bit depth to conserve resources predominantly, and within those perform a plethora of web automation tests. My scripts take screenshots at critical steps or liberally for debugging. I try to save as optimized 8bit PNGs, but even in true color a lot of websites and web apps turn out looking pretty bad, or simply unreadable to the eye.
Not necessarily on the Linux/Xserver paradigm but also my Selenium grid uses Windows XP/Vista/7 hosts. Often not using the actual user's screen, but launches (and destroys) remote terminal sessions reduced to 256 colors, or virtual machines of those OSes.


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Hearing Loss Bugs 1 in 5 Americans
College Students Often Set Volumes Too High, Risking Hearing Loss, Study Finds
By Kathleen Doheny
WebMD Health News
Reviewed By Louise Chang, MD
Nov. 15, 2011 -- One in five Americans aged 12 and older has hearing loss that interferes with their ability to communicate, according to new research.
"It's a pretty shocking number," says study researcher Frank R. Lin, MD, PhD, of Johns Hopkins University. The one in five, or about 48 million, have hearing loss in one or both ears.
Lin also found that one in eight people aged 12 and older have hearing loss in both ears. That's about 30 million people.
Previous estimates have been lower, finding about 21 million to 29 million people with hearing loss, Lin says. His research is published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
In another study, researchers found that college students, especially men and minorities, often turn up the volume on personal audio devices to hazardous levels.
"They tend to turn it up in noisy environments and then are surprised later at how loud it is," says study researcher Pamela A. Smith, PhD, assistant professor of audiology and speech pathology at Bloomsburg University. She is due to present the findings this week at the American Speech Language Hearing Association annual meeting in San Diego.
The good news, she says, is that people given information about these noise hazards tend to listen.
Tracking Hearing Loss
Previous estimates of hearing loss have been calculated from self-reported studies or from samples that do not represent the entire population, Lin says. He is an assistant professor of otolaryngology and epidemiology at Johns Hopkins.
To get a more accurate number, he analyzed data from the 2001-2008 cycles of the National Health and Nutritional Examination Surveys (NHANES). The data included results of hearing tests given to some participants.
Lin used criteria developed by the World Health Organization to define hearing loss. It was defined as a loss if it began to impair communication in daily life.
With every decade of age, hearing loss nearly doubles, Lin found. Women and blacks are less likely at any age to be affected. Lin is not sure why.
"Hearing loss as a whole is caused by a lot of different things," he tells WebMD. Genetics and aging are major factors. "Noise-induced hearing loss plays a role," he says.
People have different sensitivities to the effects of noise, he says.
Personal Listening Devices and Hearing Loss
In her survey of 384 college students, Smith found that 92% used a personal listening device.
Men and non-whites were more likely to set the devices at high volumes of 75% to 100% of maximum. They were especially likely to turn up the volume when in noisy backgrounds.
However, few students reported symptoms of hearing loss. These include, for instance, difficulty hearing speech when in a crowd.
More than three-quarters said they listen with ear-bud headphones. Those who use them tend to listen at higher volumes, other research shows.h3>Reducing the Risk of Hearing Loss
Educating people about the dangers of noise-induced hearing loss does help, Smith says. The American Speech Language Hearing Association has its "Listen to Your Buds" campaign. It teaches youth how to use personal audio technology safely to protect their hearing.
The American Speech Language Hearing Association works with schools to deliver the message.
Lin is not involved in the campaign, but tells WebMD it is a good idea. "It's all about the length of exposure and intensity," he says of hearing loss risk. Very loud noise over a long period is especially hazardous, he says.
Smith's findings were presented at a medical conference. They should be considered preliminary as they have not yet undergone the "peer review" process, in which outside experts scrutinize the data prior to publication in a medical journal.
Frank Lin, MD, PhD, assistant professor of otolaryngology-head and neck surgery and epidemiology, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore.
Pamela Smith, PhD, assistant professor of audiology and speech pathology, Bloomsburg University, Pa.
Lin, F. Archives of Internal Medicine, Nov. 14, 2011.
© 2011 WebMD, LLC. All rights reserved.
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Using Clonezilla, I cloned a Windows 7 installation from the first partition on one drive to the first partition on a second larger drive and then installed Ubuntu into the second partition (same configuration as the original drive, just newer version instead of old).
Ubuntu detected the Windows 7 partition properly and added it to the grub menu. However, when I choose the win7 option in grub, I just get a black screen and blinking cursor. How can I fix this?
@CentaurusA: Here is the output of boot info script output http://pastebin.com/778RP7Lp


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5 Stupid Questions You Won't Believe Scientists Answered
One of the best things about Science is that it answers questions we never realized needed answering. In fact, Science gets so overeager sometimes that it starts answering questions that really shouldn't have been asked in the first place. And then sometimes Science gets stuck on those questions and ends up skipping work at the cancer lab or the rocket dome that day because, for reasons it can no longer recall, it is now direly important that it figures out exactly how many licks it really takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop.
#5. Is It Possible to Walk Without Spilling Your Coffee?
Jupiterimages/Stockbyte/Getty Images
It doesn't matter if your job involves driving trucks, operating on brains, or ruling the free world -- chances are you still need a dose of caffeine to function in the morning. The problem is that transporting the precious elixir to your workstation, be it a cramped cubicle or a secret laboratory inside a volcano, can be as precarious as walking a tightrope ... while holding scalding liquid.
Jupiterimages/Photodisc/Getty Images
The flimsy lids are to herd out the weak.
That's why Rouslan Krechetnikov and Hans Mayer, two fluid physicists from the University of California at Santa Barbara, finally said "no more" and pooled their efforts to answer the age-old question: How the hell do you get from the break room to your desk with all of your finger-skin intact?
Creatas/Creatas/Getty Images
"This stopped being science long ago, gentlemen ... now we are playing God."
In order to solve this mystery, the researchers employed a rigorous scientific formula called "a bunch of people carrying cups of coffee to places." In each case, they studied the motion of the volunteer's walk, the trajectory of the coffee mug, and spillage from the mug. By analyzing this data, they found that coffee normally spills between the seventh and 10th step and, in the least helpful discovery ever, that trying to change your pace to stabilize the liquid only makes things worse. The logical conclusion is that coffee -- and probably God -- just straight up hates you.
Hemera Technologies/AbleStock.com
They went on to try different mug designs, but the Coff-Piece never really took off.
The researchers used all this information to devise a number of scientifically tested ways to transport coffee without spilling a single drop. The first technique they suggest is simply to walk slowly -- most people try to walk fast, as if making the trip shorter decreases the chances of spillage, but that doesn't work thanks to the "no doy" principle. The second suggestion is a little more counterintuitive: watch the cup instead of your feet, since this allows you to make small adjustments to correct for sloshes of the liquid. The third suggestion is to get an unusually shaped cup, one with an interior series of rings to suppress sloshing. They got the idea from the way fuel tanks are stabilized inside missiles. So there you go: block your office hallways by walking infuriatingly slowly, focus on the coffee itself while paying absolutely no attention to where you're going, and carry a missile around. You won't waste a single ounce of precious caffeine for all of the 10 minutes before you're fired.
#4. What Are the Chances of Taking a Group Picture Where No One's Blinking?
Getty Images/Digital Vision/Getty Images
Quick: Locate a picture of several strangers smiling at the camera in a social situation. Google image search it, or just open up that one weird folder you have where you store all your spy shots of happy families taking portraits. You know, the sad folder named "things I can never have." Open that sucker up: Did someone ruin the photo by blinking at the precise moment it was being taken? Of course they did. That's just one of the two unavoidable realities of life: You will never be loved or happy because you are fundamentally broken inside, and somebody will always blink during a group portrait.
Thinkstock/Stockbyte/Getty Images
"Blink again, and your next pic will be a coroner's photo."
Photographer Nic Svenson and physicist Piers Barnes set out to figure out why this should be. No, not the whole "you dying alone" thing -- nobody cares about that. They wanted to know why we blink during group photos and how best to avoid it. To begin the experiment, the pair calculated the average number of times people blinked in a minute, which turned out to be 10. Since a blink lasts on average 250 milliseconds and the length of time a camera shutter opens is estimated at eight milliseconds, the probability of a single person ruining a photograph is equal to their expected number of blinks (x) multiplied by the length of time the photographer takes to snap the picture (t).
Via Velocity
Apparently someone blinding you with a flashbulb doesn't factor in.
Or, for those of us who slept through math class, it's as simple as this: To calculate the number of shots needed to get a blink-free photo, divide the total number of people in the group by three -- so, if you have 12 people, four snaps should suffice. Unless the lighting is poor: In that case, divide the number of people by two instead, which would leave us at six photos. This is all assuming the group includes fewer than 20 people. If your group photo includes more than that, you're probably loved and respected by your fellow human beings and you have better things to obsess over than blink ratios. You spoiled bastard.
#3. Is Eating Your Boogers Good for You?
Medioimages/Photodisc/Photodisc/Getty Images
University of Saskatchewan biochemistry professor Scott Napper gives a lot of thought to boogers and their consumption, which sounds like something we'd say to ruin his rep with a bunch of second graders. But it's true. And in fact, he posits that there's an important biological reason why children do it. Scott Napper isn't just fooling around here; this is a serious and respected scientific professional.
Carla Shynkaruk, CTV News
His research into why none of the other scientists ever invite him to lunch has proven less fruitful.
As Napper tells his students, the mucus in our noses is designed to catch airborne pathogens in the environment. By eating those pathogens, kids could be teaching their bodies what sort of toxic stuff is floating around them, thus preparing and strengthening their immune systems. Napper also points out that the fact that nasal fluids have a sweet, sugary taste could be a sign that they're supposed to be ingested, rather than shunned and confined to trash bins. Napper presumably also points out that you should "stop making fun of him," and that he is not, in fact, "hitting himself" -- you're just moving his hands in such a way that he appears to be hitting himself.
Raisa Pezderic/The Sheaf
"Today we're going to test my theory that a single photo can keep all us from ever getting laid again."


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6 Inventors Who Changed the World and Got Screwed in Return
#3. John Walker, Inventor of the Match
About 500 billion matches are used every year in the United States -- that's the kind of volume you can do when your product sets itself on fire with every use. Before the invention of self-igniting friction matches, people simply used sticks that caught on fire when you, y'know, put them near fire.
It was a bad system.
This changed when John Walker, an English chemist born in 1871, began coating sticks in a number of dangerous-sounding chemicals until he happened upon one that, when struck against a surface, erupted in flames. Other self-igniting matches had been tried before, but they were extremely impractical, by which we mean that a lot of people probably lost their eyebrows or worse using them.
And clearly, eyebrows were very important to this man.
Walker's invention caught on fire, both literally and figuratively, and we still keep matches around today, despite the fact that we've all heard of lighters.
But Then He Got Screwed
Walker, unaware of the potential of his invention, worked on these new "friction lights" for about a year, then promptly forgot about the whole thing and stopped selling them. People close to him implored Walker to patent his friction light, since he'd just revolutionized the creation of fire and all. Walker declined, believing that his invention could better benefit mankind without a patent.
Others, however, believed that Walker's invention could better benefit mankind by making them rich.
"How does fire help humanity if it doesn't allow me to buy prostitutes?"
In 1829, another inventor named Isaac Holden independently came up with an improved version of Walker's friction matches. Like Walker, Holden neglected to patent his idea ... and that's where one Samuel Jones came in. Jones, realizing that Walker and Holden had effectively created one of the most useful inventions in the history of civilization and weren't making money from it, decided to do it on their behalf, because he was nice like that.
Almost immediately, Jones patented the exact same thing and began selling it under the name "Lucifers," because fuck it -- if you're gonna be evil, you might as well go to the source. Soon other brands began offering improved versions of the same thing, all for a price, of course. It wasn't until they were all dead that Walker was credited for his invention, and Jones for being a douchebag.
"To Samuel Jones, the man who made the modern bar possible!"
#2. Stephen Foster, the Father of American Music
There are some tunes that you're just born knowing. If we somehow forced you to hum a melody right now, chances are that a great number of you would go with something like "Oh! Susanna":
Or "Camptown Races" (you know, the one that goes "doo-da, doo-da"):
Or maybe something more nostalgic, like "Old Folks at Home":
Man, can you imagine if all these songs had been written by the same guy, and that he'd been actively trying to get money from them? That dude would have been richer than Madonna and Bono combined.
Actually, all those songs and more were written by the same person, and he did try to cash in on them -- the keyword being "try."
Then "she" came around the mountain and snatched up all his royalties.
But Then He Got Screwed
In the 1800s, Stephen Foster wrote classics like "My Old Kentucky Home" and "Beautiful Dreamer" and over 200 other songs. Foster was a professional songwriter before those existed. Seriously: The profession literally did not exist before Foster trailblazed it like a motherfucker.
Not many pop stars can pull off a bow tie.
Of course, the problem with being the first in his profession was that there were no such things as "enforcing copyright" or "not screwing over songwriters" back then. Today, Foster would have earned obscene amounts of money from "Oh! Susanna" alone, but in 1848, he got exactly $100 for the rights to publish the sheet music, while the publisher made $10,000 selling his work.
Even when Foster became a minor celebrity, he continued getting nothing but pennies for every copy of his work that was sold. For his dozens of hit songs, he saw around $15,000 in royalties in his whole life. In the 1860s, he was dumped by his wife, who had probably had enough of sticking around with this dude who wrote like a rock star, and drank like a rock star, but was not rich like one. He died at the age of 37 after hitting his head on a washbasin, with around 40 cents in his pocket.
Some of which were melted down to make this statue.
His contributions can't be overstated. Not only did he create most of the conventions of popular songwriting as we know them today, but he also demonstrated the need for intellectual property laws by getting repeatedly screwed.
#1. Gary Kildall, the Father of the Operating System
Gary Kildall is one of the guys we have to thank for the fact that you don't need to be a genius to use the ultra advanced computer you are looking at right now to search for porn. Thank you, Gary.
Thank you for the porn.
In 1973, Kildall made life a lot easier for nerds everywhere when he created CP/M, a groundbreaking operating system for microcomputers (which is what they called any computer smaller than a semi truck back then). The program became the industry standard for the next decade. This guy was basically Bill Gates before Bill Gates was Bill Gates.
Michael Ochs Archives / Getty
"It's cool, I'll just donate a bunch of money to charity someday when I'm all old and prune-faced."
But Then He Got Screwed
Of course, at the same time, Bill Gates was busy trying to become Bill Gates, and he eventually achieved that at Kildall's expense.
In 1980, IBM was getting ready to launch its first personal computer and needed an operating system to operate the shit out of it. They first knocked on Microsoft's door, but Microsoft wasn't really into the OS-making business at that point, so they directed the IBM suits to Gary Kildall's company. However, as nerd lore has it, Gary picked that day to go flying (he was an amateur pilot), blowing off IBM and his chance at history.
DigiBarn Computer Museum
Let he who hasn't blown off a corporate giant to go flying cast the first stone.
Accounts differ on whether Kildall met the IBM suits that day or not, but either way, the company went back to Microsoft, totally forgetting the whole "We don't make OS's here" part. Not one to miss out on an opportunity, Bill Gates turned to local programmer Tim Paterson, who had built a CP/M clone he called QDOS (for "Quick and Dirty Operating System"), bought it for a paltry 50 grand, then turned around and sold it to IBM under the name PC-DOS.
The term "user-friendly" meant something very different back then.
PC-DOS, later renamed MS-DOS, was included in every computer IBM made, and, long story short, that's why roughly 90 percent of you are using Microsoft Windows right now.
Today, Kildall's name is barely known, while Bill Gates will be a household name in the fucking 25th century. Most of Kildall's innovations ended up being credited to other people -- and he can't even defend himself, having died in 1994 after falling down in a tavern, which pretty much just seems like his luck.
Today's lesson is, if you're an inventor, wear a freaking helmet.
Karl Smallwood wrote a book (yes, a real one), which you can read all about here. If you want to read words he's written for free, feel free to follow him on Twitter. Mike Floorwalker has a website that's like ... whoa. Like, seriously, dude ... whoa.
For more people who should probably be a little more famous, check out 7 Inventors You Didn't Know You Wanted to Punch In the Face and 5 Important People Who Were Screwed Out of History Books.
If you're pressed for time and just looking for a quick fix, then check out 4 Things Nobody Admits About Modern Human Sexuality.


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Let $G$ be a finitely generated group. Does the following condition imply the amenability of $G$: there is a function $\mu:\mathcal{P}(G) \to [0,1]$ such that:
A group distinguishing this condition from amenability cannot contain $F_2$. I am aware of the relationship to the (now solved) Maharam problem.
I am not expecting an answer so much as asking whether (and where) this question has been studied.


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There's a chance you may be the only person cosplaying James Bond at the Skyfall premiere, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it.
4 Comments add a comment
Spend a little extra for the non-iron option.
Introductory only.
I want that tie...where do I get one of THOSE?
These shirts are a great staple for your business wardrobe. Non-iron cotton is unnecessary as they look best cleaned, starched, and pressed by your local drycleaner. Will last for years if cared for properly.


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Let's consider a algebraic contact structure $P$ on $\mathbb CP^3$ and a algebraic curve $C$ degree $d$ and genus $g$. Let's assume that contact structure has degree $p$ (see Polynomial contact structures on $RP^3$ about algebraic contact structure).
It seems that there is some constant $f(d,g,p)$ (maybe, even polynomial!) such that if $C$ is tangent to $P$ at $f$ points then $C$ is tangent to $P$ everywhere.
For example, it is easy to prove that $f(d,0,0)$ equals $2d-1$.
Somebody can expect that this question is about some homological conditions : generic curve is tangent to $P$ at $a$ points, so, if it is tangent to $P$ at $a+1$ points then it is tangent everywhere. It seems that it is true because pull-back of contact form to tangent bundle of $C$ is a holomorphic form, so it has some degree..
So, my questions are:
1) How can we prove that $f(d,g,p)$ exists? At least for some values $d,g,p$? It seems that the case $p=0$ is the most easy.
2) Is it true that $f$ is a polynomial? (Thom polynomial of something...) I'm sure that it is known or similar constructions are already examined.


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Claire Cain Miller
Claire Cain Miller is a writer for The Upshot, the Times site about politics, economics and everyday life. She covers gender, work and family as well as technology and the way it changes our lives. Based in the San Francisco bureau, she previously wrote for the business section, covering Google, e-commerce and start-ups, among other Silicon Valley stories. Her articles have also appeared in The Times's Science, Styles and National sections and in The New York Times Magazine. Ms. Miller is a graduate of Yale University and the University of California at Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. She is from Portland, Ore. and lives with her family in San Francisco. She can be found on Twitter at @clairecm.
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The nature of marriage is changing, and that is contributing to income inequality, research shows.
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Murray Leinster wrote a number of fascinating short stories. One that has caught my interest is Gateway to Elsewhere(Baen) being a story about the nature of dimension travel through what amounts to probability.
The central narrative conflict comes from the choices and shaping of environment around the protagonist by two supporting pseudo-characters: a coin manufactured in an alternate dimension and the protagonist's quite vocal conscience imparted by a "maiden aunt who raised him."
From a RPG perspective, the conflict is between the ability of these two forces to manipulate the protagonist's environment such that he (in the coin's view) can return the coin to its native dimension and (in the conscience's view) behave like a proper young executive in the 1950's milieu.
This question in many ways inverts the traditional RPG, providing a requirement of multiple GM-conflict with a sole PC. Therefore, is there a system that allows for players to act as world-shaping entities like a coin or conscience that impact the GM's narration of a protagonist or a system that more directly provides for multiple conflicting GMs and a single PC?


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I have a layer in WGS84 (Geographic, DD) that I need to label in DDM (Degrees Decimal Minutes).
I need to calculate within an arcpy UpDateCursor, a label field with DDM in it.
I saw that you can run the Convert Coordinate Notation, but I need to be able to calculate these labels on the fly within my cursor (this script is also moving points around).
After trapsing through the Esri forums I have not seen any snippets with how to achieve this.
This is likely a noob question, but this is very early steps for me any arcpy.


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I have seen many videos that make Ubuntu faster, but only makes the desktop faster. I am looking to make my computer boot faster. Is their anything i can do to make Ubuntu boot significantly faster?
Generally, the less programs you have loading on bootup, the faster your system should be. Try BUM (from software center) to disable some unneeded services, and also ensure you don't have any unnecessary programs installed that will be loaded when booting. Finally, using a solid state drive (SSD) as your boot device should significantly improve bootime.
Oh one more thing, your filesystem type makes a difference as well. EXT4 has suffered some performance regressions (according to phoronix) but I've still found EXT4 to be great for booting fast.
Switch from a magnetic drive to a Solid State Drive, or a Magnetic & Solid State Hybrid drive. That will make any OS boot a lot faster. Hybrid drives are not that much more expensive. If you don't want to go that far, then just get a 7200 or 10K RPM hard drive.
I just ran across this the other day. Its "e4rat" Instructions Here
This little app is amazing.
I took an overtired single processor AMD sempron running at 2800+ which normaly boots Natty at 1.45 mins to 27.885 secs.
I have the boot-charts to prove it. Its crazy!
I assume you're talking about Ubuntu 11.04?
1. Removing unneeded packages
2. Using both cores/CPU's during the boot process
3. Disabling unneeded daemons
This is a bit more advanced, so best not to do it if you don't know what this means.
After completing these steps, reboot twice. FOr some reason the first reboot after changing all these options takes much longer than the other ones, but you should notice some difference during the second reboot.
Replace your hard disk with a SSD is probably the only practical method. Example:
The time does sound a little excessive but you haven't posted any details.
Use bootchart to produce detailed graphs of what takes time during boot. It might help in deciding what to tweak or remove. From https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BootCharting :
For anybody else struggling with this, just install BUM and start it s a root user. Then un check the service you want (I disabled Apache2, PostGreSQL daemon, MySQL, virtual box et al) and it will be a bit faster. You can enable it back anytime if you do not delete!
My machine booted WAY faster if I did an alternate install and added the GUI packages manually. Of course, it just strips out things I don't need that I am capable of adding myself. If you are going to come back with "how do I compile/install X,Y, and Z apps" this might not be a good idea.
Garbagecollector is right. Proceed with caution. But some of the programs you can safely disable are email popping utilities such as Evolution, especially if you are not using Evolution at first. Also, anything related to printing can be disabled if you do not print at all. Same for Wireless if you are wired.
Try editing the "/etc/default/grub" file, like most blogs are pointing at. You probably know that one. First adding word "profile", then rebooting, then removing "profile" then rebooting again... it really does improve boot speed. Here is one example: http://lgjsheron.wordpress.com/2010/07/06/how-to-speed-up-boot-of-ubuntu-10-04-lucid-lynx/
I have to say 32 seconds is actually good enough. It won't get much faster with traditional hardware. My new Lenovo T530 takes the same amount of time to boot in legacy mode. With the new micro SSD I recently installed and Ubuntu in UEFI mode it is down to 15 seconds from pressing the power button to login. It still feels like it is wasting 5 seconds during post, but it is absolutely not wasting time starting the actual operating system. The micro SSD has transfer speeds of 280 MB/s, may be a 500 MB/s SSD might make it to 7 seconds. But it is really up to manufacturers to reduce pre OS boot time (POST and what not).
Regarding boot profiling and shell concurrency. Those information can be seen as dated or eventually myth. I remember that automatic boot profiling or something that made boot profiling absolutely superfluous was added to Linux or the core system years ago, since then I didn't used boot profiling anymore after a new kernel package was installed. The shell concurrency setting was said to break things, but with Systemd and Upstart it should be superfluous too, and should have no positive effect.


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Sochi Olympics: How a Big Bet on Racing Suits Left U.S. Speedskaters in the Cold
U.S. Speedskaters Face Disappointing Results, Leaving Lingering Questions About High-Tech Suits
SOCHI, Russia—Last Tuesday, U.S. Speedskating executive director Ted Morris was approached outside the rink here by a member of his Olympic squad with a problem. Someone on the staff was worried the team's new high-tech skinsuit might be slowing down skaters on the ice.
"I started laughing," he said. It was "an opinion unsubstantiated by fact," Mr. Morris says he replied.
A week later, the only facts staring at the U.S. team are the skating results, among its poorest in recent Olympics, which have created a host of lingering questions about the suits. Produced by Under Armour Inc., UA -0.48 % a popular and rising star in the sporting garment business, they were designed to be fastest in all of speedskating, a feat of aerodynamics developed with the help of a defense contractor.
Instead, as stars like Shani Davis and Heather Richardson failed to medal, the suits known as Mach 39 quickly became a lightning rod for a demoralized team and a prominent headline coming out of Sochi itself.
According to interviews with skaters and coaches, a key decision in the suit controversy—that the skaters wouldn't wear them in competition before the Games—was largely agreed to by the athletes and coaches. They hoped to provide Team U.S.A. with a competitive edge in a suit that had a custom fit, special texture and five synthetic materials.
Instead, spooked by early results, the American athletes began fretting that they were formally racing for the first time, on their sport's biggest stage, in a suit with a possible design flaw. Panicked, they pressured U.S. Speedskating to abandon its prized new suit—putting the speedskating federation in an awkward situation with its most visible sponsor.
With a global TV audience watching, the losing continued after the team reverted to a previous Under Armour model. The team is now likely to leave Sochi without winning a single medal—the worst Olympics in three decades for American speedskaters.
To be sure, no one knows what role, if any, the Mach 39 played in the team's performance. Some insiders say that once doubts about the suit were planted in the team's psyche, the skaters' collective mental focus was broken. Team U.S.A. itself has pored over a multitude of other factors that could have contributed to their poor showing: race tactics, skate blades and the decision to hold their pre-Olympic camp at high altitude.
The dramatic turnabout, meanwhile, has created a crisis for Under Armour. With revenues of $2.3 billion, the Baltimore-based company has skyrocketed to prominence in recent years with sleek skin-gripping sports apparel that made it a darling of athletes and investors alike. Long term effects are yet to be known, but on Friday, the stock fell 2.38%.
In an interview, Matt Mirchin, executive vice president of marketing at Under Armour, said Monday the company still believes the skinsuit gave the skaters "the strongest chance of winning." But the controversy hit the company where it hurt most—its credibility in high quality athletic apparel—exactly when it needed to shine on the world stage. With more than 90% of its revenues coming from North America, its partnership with the U.S. speedskating squad was supposed to help the company vault into new international markets.
"That's why this is so troubling," he said. Neither the company nor the U.S. Speedskating federation would comment on whether the contract with Under Armour would continue beyond these Olympics.
In the world of sports endorsements, the typical risk for companies is that a sponsored athlete might land in legal trouble or in a doping scandal. Under Armour has a different nightmare: Its elite athletes were rejecting the product the company had made for them.
The road to the Sochi Games wasn't smooth for U.S. Speedskating. The organization was marred by a cheating scandal on the short-track side in 2011, which led to a coach, cleared of the accusation, eventually leaving the team. With other disarray pending, the federation was threatened with decertification by the U.S. Olympic Committee.
Compounding U.S. Speedskating problems were various financial concerns. According to tax records, the federation was $752,000 in debt for the fiscal year ending May 31, 2012, and that grew to $785,000 for the year ending May 31, 2013. When Mr. Morris came on as executive director in September, he said improving U.S. Speedskating's financial health as well as broadening its sponsorship base were issues he hoped to improve. "We want to be more self-sustainable," Mr. Morris said.
Meanwhile, the sportswear maker was on a tear. Driven chiefly by successes in performance apparel, the brand had great appeal to football fans and weekend-warrior types in the U.S. Its stock price has climbed ever higher over the past four years, hitting an all-time high after beating estimates in its latest earnings call in January. But it had yet to make a splash overseas, which is where U.S. Speedskating came in.
As part of their initial deal, Under Armour provided competition suits for the team. And with the Sochi Olympics approaching, they began developing something special.
Working with skaters, Under Armour produced dozens of prototypes stitched together with five different synthetic materials, each selected to reduce drag and friction on different parts of the suit. They built fiberglass mannequins and logged more than 300 hours in a high-speed wind tunnel. Defense stalwart Lockheed Martin Corp. LMT -0.71 % , which declined to comment, was brought in for its aerodynamic expertise. A person familiar with the matter said the resources poured into the effort totaled nearly $1 million.
When Under Armour announced the suit last fall, U.S. Speedskating's technical staff and athletes were so impressed that they decided to keep the details of it secret, according to Mr. Morris and several people familiar with the matter. They figured that in a culture of "suit watching" in speed-driven winter sports, including speedskating and skiing, the suits would catch their rivals' eyes. The decision was unanimous, athletes and Mr. Morris said: The skaters wouldn't compete in the Mach 39 until the Olympics.
The skaters then got their first look at the suit on Jan. 1 at the Utah Olympic Oval, in Salt Lake City, where the skating federation is based, according to several people present. Under Armour marked alterations for each athlete and sent the suits back to Baltimore that day, said Mr. Mirchin.
But with the Olympics only five weeks away, the skaters didn't know how they would feel on the ice. Many of the athletes wouldn't see the suits again for three weeks. Still, at the time, none of the athletes worried about it, said Brian Hansen, a middle-distance speedskating specialist for the U.S. team. The team didn't actually skate in the Mach 39s until Jan. 22, when they arrived at a pre-Olympics training camp in Collalbo, Italy, and when the first day of competition in Sochi was 17 days away.
The camp, where they wore the suits in simulated races, posed other problems. The rink was outdoors and at altitude, nothing like Sochi's indoor, sea-level rink.
Looking back, coaches and athletes said they had a hard time gauging their overall performance because of all the variables. "It's cold, it's windy, the ice isn't as smooth," said skater Joey Mantia. Mr. Hansen's private coach, Nancy Swider-Peltz, said she had pleaded with U.S. Speedskating at the time to reconsider the whole trip. "You don't know what's a good time."
Introducing WSJD, the Journal's new home for tech news, analysis and product reviews.
The team arrived in Sochi on Jan. 31 and practiced in the suits at the Olympic Park's Adler Arena. Four Under Armour technicians arrived on Feb. 7, the day of the opening ceremony, to attend to last-minute alterations, if needed.
Competition began on Feb. 8, and for three days, the new suit didn't generate complaints. Mr. Davis, in fact, said he felt good on Feb. 10 in his 500-meter race, in which he wasn't expected to medal.
But a day before the competition moved to longer races that Americans were supposed to win, the first concerns reached Mr. Morris through a member of the staff.
Then Mr. Davis, a two-time Olympic champion in the 1,000 meters, finished eighth in a race he was started as a favorite. U.S. national coach Ryan Shimabukuro was stunned.
"The fact that we're that far out, something's up," he said that day. Running through the list of possibilities, some athletes turned their attention to the suits. Were they causing drag? Should they have competed in them sooner?
The whispers soon reached Under Armour in Baltimore, when Mr. Mirchin says one of the company technicians in Russia phoned him to pass on what he was hearing. A few hours later, Mr. Mirchin spoke to Mr. Morris, of U.S. Speedskating.
Mr. Morris said they spoke about the "rumbling around the athletes and that there was not a whole lot we were going to be able to do to control that. The psychological aspect of it was in the athletes' heads. We were going to let the athletes decide."
Coaches still insisted that despite the poor finishes, Mr. Davis and the rest were actually skating faster than when they had competed at the same arena in Sochi at the 2013 World Single Distance Championships. Mr. Davis improved his time in the 1,000 meters by 0.18 seconds, for example, but finished five places worse.
But other teams skated faster too. And their improvements made Mr. Davis's look modest: While he picked up fractions of a second, the Sochi gold medalists were whole seconds quicker on this ice than they were 11 months ago.
Several people close to the team told The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday and Thursday that there were concerns about the suits. By Thursday night, the team was in full-blown panic, a person close to the team said. And the suit alteration team from Under Armour was suddenly much busier.
Skaters Ms. Richardson and Brittany Bowe had the vents on the back sewn shut. The Under Armour seamstresses toiled until 6:30 a.m. Friday patching vents with rubber before that day's 1,000-meter event.
The untested fix didn't help. That evening, favorites Ms. Bowe and Ms. Richardson finished seventh and eighth, but neither blamed the suits. "Unfortunately, we have not had the results we would have wanted, but it is hard to pinpoint one or two reasons," Ms. Bowe said.
But behind the scenes, team officials and coaches worried about the growing interest in the topic. They worked into the small hours of Friday coming to grips with the medal drought that had cold-cocked them.
Mr. Morris says he spoke several times a day to Under Armour's Mr. Mirchin, who felt strongly that the function of the suit wasn't the issue.
"We didn't believe that it was the right thing to change the suits," Mr. Mirchin said. "We didn't believe it was the right thing to cover the vents. But we did what we could to give confidence to the athletes."
Meanwhile, damage control was under way. Coaches emailed the team on Friday with "talking points" to manage the media attention.
"Many factors determine Olympic success, and we are constantly making adjustments to improve results wherever and whenever we can," said the memo, which was reviewed by the Journal. It also urged athletes to stress "our long-term successful partnership" with Under Armour.
Diane Pelkey, a spokeswoman for Under Armour, said that the company wasn't aware of this directive.
Friday afternoon, divided coaches and federation executives held a series of emergency meetings. The sense from the athletes was that a majority was ready to make the suit swap.
"It was good, but it was intense," said Matt Kooreman, a coach who works for the Utah Olympic Legacy Foundation and who partners with U.S. Speedskating.
The problem with the suits was mainly psychological, not functional, those in favor of a switch argued. If skaters didn't believe the Mach 39 could help them perform, then that would be enough to knock them off their games.
Another question hung over the discussion, too: Could U.S. Speedskating really afford to offend Under Armour? Their partnership is up for renewal after the Games. "We were super concerned about upsetting Under Armour," Mr. Kooreman said. "They've been a great partner and we need them."
Under Armour stood by the Mach 39 but deferred to the skaters' preference as it became clear a change was coming. "The focus is on the athlete, putting them on the ice in a suit they're confident in," said Kevin Haley, the company's senior vice president of innovation.
By 10:30 p.m., the discussion was over. They were switching to the World Cup suit. But at the following day's 1,500-meter race, the story didn't change. Mr. Hansen finished seventh. Mr. Davis slipped into 11th.
Two days of internal debate and external scrutiny had taken a psychological toll on the team. During the meetings on Friday night, Mr. Hansen said, things had gotten "a little crazy." The serene focus they needed to perform at their best went the way of the Mach 39s.
The next day, Ms. Richardson and Ms. Bowe suffered the same result in the 1,500, finishing seventh and 14th, respectively. Both denied that the suits had caused any of the distraction. "Like I said, that's just one little factor out of a million," said Ms. Bowe.
Write to Joshua Robinson at firstname.lastname@example.com and Sara Germano at firstname.lastname@example.com


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A staple in the life of any fighting game fan, Mortal Kombat earned its place in the childhood memories of gamers worldwide. With the most crazy special moves, absolutely brutal fatalities, and diverse character selection, it remains one of the greatest fighting games of all time. This shirt harkens back to the classic rivalry between Fire and Ice, and our two favorite ninjas: Scorpion and Sub-Zero. The Mortal Kombat Thermal tee will show your love for the most memorable dragon icon in gaming, and a truly epic fighting franchise.
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- Jinx
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DRM, iPhone 2.2.1, & iTunes – Apple screwed up big time
I've recently been one of a large number of victims to a very unfortunate bug involving the iPhone 2.2.1 software update issued earlier this month. Since I upgraded to 2.2.1, whenever I would attempt to sync anything with DRM to/from my phone (this includes ringtones, videos, movies, FairPlay music from the iTunes store and Apps(!)), iTunes would crash and the iPod app's database would become slightly more corrupted (as in, some songs would not play, the current progress of my podcasts would be erased, etc). Thus, I'm unable to sync my podcasts (99% of my use for my phone), can't listen to music (the other 1%), and can't fix this problem since, importantly, restoring the phone doesn't do a single thing to solve the problem.
Plus, it looks like I'm not alone. This thread on the Apple support forums details the struggles others have gone through in response to this bug. Unfortunately, I didn't find this until after I had restored my phone, so now I'm stuck with an App-less iPhone that only has a partial collection of my music.
And, as you can see from the support form, this is due entirely to some problem with protected music, movies, and applications. This enfuriates me. In general, I try and buy the music I like; same for TV shows and movies (which I usually rent, but nonetheless pay for). Of course, there are exceptions, but for the most part I try and support the artists, etc, that I like.
If I had stolen all my music and videos, I wouldn't have a single problem right now (except maybe with Apps) – but since I was honest for at least some of my library, I'm screwed. Thanks, Apple. Really. Thanks.
Have you run into this problem as well? Does anyone have other stories of DRM causing unnecessary problems? Leave a comment, or email me at neurotechnica at gmail dot com.


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1642 N. Fayetteville Street, Asheboro, NC 27203
Balfour Baptist Church
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Impact a child's life with a simple shoe box gift. Fill a shoe box with school supplies, toys, necessity items and a note of encouragement for a child overseas suffering due to disaster, disease, war, terrorism, famine or poverty. This year, Operation Christmas Child expects to reach a milestone with more than 100 million children receiving shoe box gifts since the project began in 1993.
National Collection Week for Operation Christmas Child is November 12-19. There are collection sites around the Asheboro area. To find a location near you, visit www.samaritanspurse.org/occ.


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My title explained it all. I have a site to be tested which has almost 100 million lines of codes. This site hasn't been tested yet. I don't know what type of testing should I start with. Should I start with some automation or manual testing? I thought of testing with QTP, but before that thought of consulting with the greatest experienced tester community.
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With something like this, that's huge and has no prior testing, I'd say that your first priority would be exploration (most likely manual) to both gather information and to determine the best approach to build regression for it.
I'd approach this way:
Most important, make sure that everyone you're working with knows this is not going to be fast, easy, or cheap (if only in terms of time invested). You need to make sure the people you're working with know what to expect in terms of increased complexity generating increased testing and automation time.
Good luck!
100 million (codes? lines? or something else?) and the site hasn't been tested at all?
You should consider some manual functional testing first. No sense in looking at automation if you aren't even sure the site works at all.
Do you know the requirements? Is it at least clear what the site should be doing?
Well, who are you testing it for?
What do they want to know, in general? What kind of decisions will they make as a result of the information you find for them?
What oracles do you have - i.e. what can you use to help you understand when you might be seeing a problem? Don't get too stuck on "requirements" - if it's never been tested ever ever, then I doubt you have any. Think laterally - you could make use of people like product owners, users or support staff who you can ask about desired behaviour, documentation such as help guides, comparison with competitor's sites (industry standards), and so on.
Do you have anyone else to help you with this testing? Are there any tools that you can use to help you, and what kind of testing environments do you have available, if any?
How soon does your client want to get this information? And in what form? And how often? If they're not too sure, you might want to suggest that you start out by giving them a sample report quite early, and then they can figure out what they like and don't like and let you know.
Testing is an investigation: if you don't know what your client wants, or worse, if your client doesn't know what they want - you have little hope of providing them with useful information. Figure out your mission first: I use my own mnemonic to help guide my questions, SORT (Scope, Oracles, Resources, Time) - you might notice that's how I've structured the questions above. If the client has never had any experience of testing before, you may need to guide them a little by suggesting options. Whatever you do, it's essential to ensure that you review with them on a regular basis to make sure they're still happy.
For any testing project, you should be starting off by discovering this kind of information. If you have that, let us know. If you don't have it - go find out! (You can begin testing once you know some of it - it's likely to be a gradual process and you'll probably uncover more and more as you go, but if you don't know ANY of the above, you should be talking to your client.)
You (or better application owner) should split application into function zones/features by priority. Proper organize your tests which makes easier maintain them. Type of testing depend on application itself. Some application behavior is more efficient to test with automated tests (especially when it be planed to repeat test time to time). But there can be web application features which could be not efficient to test with automated tests (hard to write automated tests for it or it takes lots time). So in reality mixed testing styles often used. Which automated testing framework you choice depend of your personal experience and needs.
The other posters have made excellent points. When you get to where you are ready to start adding automation to the web site testing, I have found WATIR to be extremely helpful:
My first question would have to be why did you let it get to 100 million lines of code without testing anything so far? Have any of your developers done any unit testing at all?
If your developers have carried out some unit testing then you may be out of the starting blocks already. Build this up with some exploratory testing initially. Whilst you're doing that look at creating a more structured test plan which will allow you to prioritize your testing.
I'd agree with the post above that you could start by breaking the app down by functional area. Then talk to the developers and end users. From the end users get a feel for which parts of the application are most critical to them and which areas will be used most frequently. From the developers find out which areas/features of the code were the most complex to implement. From here you can list the functional areas by priority and risk.
You've got a lot to do here. So if you can I'd engage the end users early in this too. That is assuming that they don't mind seeing the unfinished, untested product. If putting a poor quality product in front of the customer early on is likely to give you bad press then avoid this. However, if they don't mind helping out with a bit of feedback then it's another few pairs of hands to the pump.
Personally I'd steer well clear of automation until you've got a good manual test process in place first. If you don't understand what you're testing from a manual perspective automation will just add another layer of complexity. Wait till you've got a good feel for the application then you can start thinking about which areas of the application will be well served with automated testing.
Hope you've got plans to get a good team of testers on board to help you with this.


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Whenever I connect my S2 to the power outlet (not to a computer), the Kies application pops up. Where do I disable this auto-activation?
Go to Settings > Applications > Development > and check USB debugging
After that if you connect your S2 to a PC it will connect in USB mode and you won't get the KIES application popup.
Sounds like there's something funny with either your USB cable, the charger or the socket on your phone that's causing it to detect it as a full PC connection, rather than just a dumb charger.
You should be able to get rid of that prompt for the moment by going into Settings -> Wireless and Network -> USB Settings and selecting the Mass Storage mode rather than the Samsung Kies mode.
However you really ought to try with another charger and cable to see if that fixes the actual problem, pure-charger cables shouldn't be detected as a PC, the signal on the cable is different and the phone should detect that.
They seem to have removed this option completely for S4 Active. One keeps wondering why Samsung chose to use Kies, which slows down file transfer substantially and, moreover, may do weird things like changing the photo date of image files when moved across the device's folders...


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This may be a silly question, but I have no intuition in this direction. Every category internal to a Mal'cev category is a groupoid (this is why categories internal to $Grp$ are groupoids). If this was true it would put restrictions on generalising algebraic stacks (which are stacks of groupoids by default) to algebraic stacks of categories.
So my question is:
Is the opposite of the category of commutative rings (= category of affine schemes) Mal'cev?