text:
How to Relocate to Asia 101: Beta Version 1.0
Einstein (one of the most famous Jews in history) once said "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." That is the approach that I have decided to take when it comes to the "How to Relocate to Asia 101: Beta Version 1.0
Notes before moving any further:
- As my intelligent Social Science professor says, all theories or approaches need to be tested. This is Beta version 1.0
- I am open to your feedback on making this better
- The profiles below are generalizations
Know Thy Self, Which Profile fits You?
Beginners are usually:
OBC, ABC, OBA (Overseas-born Chinese, American-born Chinese, Overseas-born Asian), Non Asian without any Asian experience, conservative, low tolerance threshold, less openness, less risk taking, English is the only language spoken and not willing to learn another language, prefers Western-style freedoms and Rule of Law individuals should consider the following:
- Singapore (Western-Style Oasis in the Middle of Asia)
Intermediates are usually:
Somewhat curious about Asia, perhaps spent some time vacationing in Asia or during childhood, open to new experiences, speaks multiple languages, open to learning or adjusting a bit should consider the following:
- Hong Kong (Best Asset is Low Taxes)
- Taiwan (Taiwan Survival)
Advanced are usually:
People who are willing to do whatever it takes to blend into the local culture. Whether through learning the language, understanding the culture, winning natives over etc. People who are adaptive, resilient and flexible. Tolerance for the fast pace of change, pollution and native personalities. High-risk taking means high rewards people should consider the following:
- Mainland China Cities (Not for the Faint-of-Heart)
Niche are usually:
I know of many Japanophiles (I'm one) and Korea Lovers. Niches are people who just love Japan or Korea because of its unique language, culture and advanced economy. They already or are learning to speak Korean and Japanese or are fans of Japanese and Korean dramas, technologies, and pop culture.
- Korea and Japan (Experience First World Asia)
Which one fits your profile?


text:
my problems using dutch ovens...
I have several concerns about using dutch ovens.
1. LOTS of parchment paper. Is anyone concerned about using reams of paper for each loaf? I feel bad about setting my loafs on small rounds of parchment - then re-using them as long as they hold up. One day, I hope to get good enough to bake without the parchment.
2. How to deal with that HOT pot! Getting the loaf out with crumbly paper from the hot pot - or do you leave it to cool down? ...See #3.
3. I like to bake 8 loafs in one oven heating. I don't have that many dutch ovens - or oven space. So using baking stones & a pan of lava rocks on the bottom of the oven means I can bake 4 loafs at a time.
4. Note: I recently discovered SOAPSTONE! The only U.S. quarry is off Rte 81 in Virginia. We went there & bought 3 huge stones for $150 - we cut them into 9 stones & gave several to friends. They bake better than ceramic baking stones - but are very heavy to handle. The guys at the quarry swear by using them on the grill. If you buy online - the soapstone will be from Brazil (if you care about such things).

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Baby Dolls & Accessories
Baby Dolls & Accessories
Perfect for pretend mums and dads, these dolls are a role play essential. Get a doll for your little one to cuddle, feed and dote on, browse our collection of accessories like pushchairs, Moses baskets and beds. Allowing them to continue looking after the baby when they are out the house.
Filter by:
Age Suitability
Minimum Age
Please Select
Sorry your search options returned no results
Please try again with new options or back to your previous search options.
Product list
23 products from £10.00 to £89.98


text:
LODI - It took the Brookside Christian football team a while to clamp down on Foresthill, but once the Knights applied their pressure, the Wildfires did not stand a chance.
LODI - It took the Brookside Christian football team a while to clamp down on Foresthill, but once the Knights applied their pressure, the Wildfires did not stand a chance.
Brookside Christian led by two points at halftime, yielding 294 passing yards to Tommy Sawyer in the first two quarters. Sawyer could not complete a pass in the third period, when the Knights scored 18 unanswered points and rolled to a 60-28 win in the Sac-Joaquin Section Division VI championship at the Grape Bowl, the second blue banner for Brookside Christian in three years.
"I am so proud of these guys," Knights coach LaTe'f Grim said. "The kids kept believing in the program and they came through."
Brookside Christian (10-2) led 20-18 after the first half, when neither team was able to pull away. That all changed in the third quarter.
The Knights started the second half with a seven-play, 64-yard drive capped off by Lee Johnson's 11-yard touchdown for a 26-18 lead. Two plays later, Anthony Castro intercepted a Sawyer pass, setting up a 54-yard scoring pass from Austin Caldron to Edrico Oliver Jr. for a 32-18 lead and the second of four consecutive Brookside Christian touchdowns.
Caldron finished 17-of-27 passing for 255 yards with two touchdowns to Oliver Jr. - the second was for 10 yards - and one to Blake Smallie for 6 yards.
"We lost to Central Catholic to start the year but when we won the next few I knew we were going on a roll," Caldron said. "And today coach got us fired up at halftime and we came out and went real fast."
With Caldron directing the offense, Darius Henton stepped up on both sides of the ball for the Knights, gaining 153 yards on 17 carries with touchdown runs of 6 and 16 yards. On defense, the 6-foot, 200-pound senior made a fumble recovery and was in on nine tackles.
"Without the linemen, we wouldn't have been anything," Henton said. "In the first half, we really weren't ourselves - we were kind of arrogant and thought we were going to have it in the bag. But after our locker-room discussion, we knew what we had to do."
Foresthill (10-2) could not focus on Henton and Caldron because they were not Brookside Christian's only weapons. Cameron Chew churned out 104 yards on 14 carries with a 10-yard touchdown run, and Johnson gained 73 yards on 16 carries with a 44-yard scoring run. Jacob Matsuka started the Knights scoring with a 1-yard run in the first quarter.
Labron Alofaituli led Brookside Christian with 13 tackles, and teammate Chris Napoli was in on 10 stops with four sacks in the second half.
"We had a total change-around of attitude in the second half," Napoli said.
"We humbled ourselves and then came out with the intensity to win."


text:
Table of Contents:
This article provides information on "Configuring Scan to Gmail on 3333dn / 3335dn / B3465dn / B3465dnf / 5535dn Dell Laser Printers"
Please understand that Dell does not control future changes Google makes to their SMTP configuration. If unable to connect, the following considerations should be evaluated:
In order to prevent the Gmail service from being used by spammers, Gmail requires security certificates for any device sending email via SMTP (such as our printers). The first thing we need to do is download the two certificates needed and install them on the printer.
note: The Thawte Server Root Certificate must be installed first.
Now we need to install the certificates on the printer.
Now that we have the security certificates we need, lets setup the Scan to Email server settings.
After clicking submit, turn off the printer, turn it back and you may now Scan to Gmail.
When unable to get scan to Gmail working try enabling less secure apps here. (Google article)
For more information about less secure apps click here. (Google article)
Article ID: SLN295575
Last Date Modified: 08/22/2018 01:48 PM
Thank you for your feedback.


text:
Latest Reviews
Latest Previews
Mythos is an online, action RPG that is free to download and free to play. The land of Uld is a fantasy world arising from the ashes of an epoch-long war of darkness. Players assume the roles of fantasy heroes as they explore, adventure, and quest through entirely randomized dungeons and environments.


text:
GREENVILLE, Ill. -- The men's basketball team saw their winning streak come to a close as they were defeated 87-86 by conference leader Webster Wednesday night. Travis Garrison and Jonas McBride led a six-man contingent of Panthers with 10 or more points, scoring 13 points each in the effort.
The game was tied at halftime 45-45, and Greenville held the ball with a one-point lead in the final 30 seconds of the game. However, Webster came up with a defensive stop, regaining possession, and allowing Roman Robinson to hit the game winning bucket on a reverse layup with six seconds to go. McBride took a shot as time expired, but it wouldn't fall.
Markeith Brown and Dondrale Campbell added 12 points, Simon Martin chipped in 11 points and eight rebounds, and Jose Garcia tallied 10 points. McBride passed out eight assists.
The Panthers (8-6, 3-3 SLIAC) return to action at Spalding on Saturday at 3 p.m.


text:
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - Minnesota has picked Richard Pitino, the son of Louisville coach Rick Pitino, to take over for Tubby Smith.
A person with knowledge of the discussions says Pitino reached a verbal agreement with Minnesota on Wednesday. The person requested anonymity because the deal has not been officially announced.
In his lone season at Florida International, Pitino led the Panthers to an 18-14 record, the school's first winning season in 13 years. He will turn 31 in September, fitting the profile of the young, up-and-comer that Minnesota athletic director Norwood Teague has preferred to hire in the past.
Smith was fired last week after six seasons at Minnesota. He was hired at Texas Tech on Monday.


text:
With version 3.0 the SSMS 2014 is fully supported. Since this is a new major version you'll eventually need a new license. Please check the EULA to see when. As a thank you for your patience with this release, everyone that bought the SSMS Tools Pack after April 1st, the release date of SQL Server 2014, will receive a free upgrade. You won't have to do anything for this to take effect. First thing you'll notice is that the UI has been completely changed....
posted @ Tuesday, May 20, 2014 12:04 AM | Feedback (6) |
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SQL Server
SSMS Tools Pack
As we were working on our first SQL Saturday in Slovenia, we came to a point when we had to print out the so-called SpeedPASS's for attendees. This SpeedPASS file is a PDF and contains thier raffle, lunch and admission tickets. The problem is we have to download one PDF per attendee and print that out. And printing more than 10 docs at once is a pain. So I decided to make a little console app that would merge multiple PDF files into a single file that would be much easier to print. I used an open source...
posted @ Friday, January 10, 2014 7:38 PM | Feedback (1) |
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SQL Server
2013 has started great and the SQL community is already brimming with events. At some of these events you can come say hi. I'll be glad you do! These are the events with dates and locations that I know I'll be speaking at so far. February 16th: SQL Saturday #198 - Vancouver, Canada The session I'll present in Vancouver is SQL Impossible: Restoring/Undeleting a table Yes, you read the title right. No, it's not about the usual "one table per partition" and "restore full backup then copy...
posted @ Wednesday, February 13, 2013 1:34 AM | Feedback (0) |
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SQL Server
What better way to end the summer and start those productive autumn days ahead than with a fresh new version of the SSMS Tools Pack.
This is a big release with two new features that are huge productivity boosters.
First new feature are Tab Sessions. Every SQL tab you open is saved every N (default 2) minutes and is stored in a session. This works similar to internet browser sessions. Once you reopen SSMS you can restores your last session with a click of a button. You even get every window connected to the server it was previously connected to. The Tab...
posted @ Wednesday, September 21, 2011 6:24 PM | Feedback (5) |
Filed Under [
SQL Server
SSMS Tools Pack
SQLBits: April 7th - April 9th 2011 in Brighton, UK
Free community event on Saturday (April 9th) with a paid conference day on Friday (April 8th) and a Pre Conference day full of day long seminars (April 7th).
It'll be a huge event with over 800 attendees and over 20 MVPs. I'll be presenting on Saturday April 9th.
SQL in the City: July 15th 2011 in London, UK
One day of free SQL Server training sponsored by Redgate. Other MVP's that'll be presenting there are Steve Jones (website|twitter), Brad McGehee (blog|twitter) and Grant Fritchey (blog|twitter)
At both conferences I'll be presenting about database testing.
posted @ Monday, March 28, 2011 7:40 AM | Feedback (1) |
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SQL Server
SQL injection is a method by which a hacker gains access to the database server by injecting specially formatted data through the user interface input fields. In the last few years we have witnessed a huge increase in the number of reported SQL injection attacks, many of which caused a great deal of damage.
A SQL injection attack takes many guises, but the underlying method is always the same. The specially formatted data starts with an apostrophe (') to end the string column (usually username) check, continues with malicious SQL, and then ends with the SQL comment mark (--) in order...
posted @ Wednesday, February 16, 2011 7:00 AM | Feedback (2) |
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SQL Server
Back to Basics
WMI is Windows Management Instrumentation infrastructure for managing data and machines. We can access it by using WQL (WMI querying language or SQL for WMI). One thing to remember from the WQL link is that it doesn't support ORDER BY. This means that when you do SELECT * FROM wmiObject, the returned order of the objects is not guaranteed. It can return adapters in different order based on logged-in user, permissions of that user, etc… This is not documented anywhere that I've looked and is derived just from my observations.
To get network adapters we have to query the Win32_NetworkAdapter class....
posted @ Thursday, November 04, 2010 8:00 AM | Feedback (6) |
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Today I had an interesting problem.
If I rebuilt my solution every thing would succeed but after that if i pressed F5 (build) the whole solution would get built again but it would error out. Now this doesn't make any sense because the difference between Build and Rebuild is that Rebuild always compiles and links all files + all dependencies, while Build only compiles and links files that have changed since the last build. So everything should be fine. The thing about our solution is that the we have some post build events that do some IL merge, etc… the...
posted @ Monday, August 24, 2009 1:31 PM | Feedback (0) |
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Back to Basics
There are times when you want to have one .cs file in multiple projects. However if you do Add existing item you'll notice that the file is copied to each project's folder. This is not what we want.
The solutions is of course pretty simple once you know where to look. In the Add existing item dialog you have to add the file as a Link as is shown on the picture:
And there you go. you can have one file in multiple projects.
posted @ Friday, June 05, 2009 4:03 PM | Feedback (2) |
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Back to Basics
A while back we had an interesting problem at work. We were calculating MD5 hashes for some values in both .Net and SQL Server and although the input values were all the same our MD5 hashes were different. After some time spent looking dumbfounded at the code I've realized what the bug was and started laughing. I saw that HashBytes function was the "culprit". HashBytes function was introduced in SQL server 2005 to simplify creating hashes in the database. It can convert values to MD2, MD4, MD5, SHA, or SHA1 formats. HashBytes' result depends on the input text's data type...
posted @ Tuesday, April 28, 2009 11:43 AM | Feedback (4) |
Filed Under [
SQL Server
With this new version you can use it for SQL Server Management Studio 2008 and SQL Server Management Studio 2008 Express.
I've added a new feature to Search through the Database data. There are times when you'd like to find some value but can't remember in which table it is.
Also the SQL Query History Log Viewer has been remodeled. I'm open to suggestions on how to improve it further.
You can also have the SSMS Tools Pack installed for both SSMS 2005 and SSMS 2008 on the same machine, however they don't share the same settings.
I would also like to...
posted @ Monday, October 06, 2008 10:59 AM | Feedback (8) |
Filed Under [
SQL Server
SSMS Tools Pack
Let us start with a simple question: What is the goal of software development, be it database or .Net (or any other language)? The first answer would be: Customer satisfaction! And you'd be right. However there's more to customer satisfaction then the immediate product delivery effect. We have to think about future change requests, maintenance periods, etc... Almost every business application out there consists of 2 basic parts: database back end and some kind of front end that consumes the data. In our case the front end is anything with access to the database. In regard to future code...
posted @ Wednesday, September 17, 2008 10:38 AM | Feedback (6) |
Filed Under [
SQL Server
Back to Basics
On Monday I've finally installed the VS 2008 on my system. I put the installation DVD in, choose custom install, pressed run and went to lunch. After I returned, my computer was one VS 2008 richer. And this is where the fun started. We use command line MSBuild and when I fired up the Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt I got this:
Setting environment for using Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 x86 tools.
\Utilities\Bin\x86";C:\WINDOWS\system32;C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\System32\Wbem;C:\Program Files\ATI Technologies\
ATI Control Panel;C:\Program Files\IDM Computer Solutions\UltraEdit-32;C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\8
0\Tools\BINN;C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\80\Tools\Binn\;C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Too
ls\binn\;C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\DTS\Binn\;C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\Bin
n\VSShell\Common7\IDE\;C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE\PrivateAssemblies\;C:\Program Fi
les\QuickTime\QTSystem\;C:\WINDOWS\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0;C:\Program Files\Microsoft...
posted @ Wednesday, May 28, 2008 9:57 PM | Feedback (7) |
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This is an implementation of the Grayscale Immersion Watershed Segmentation in C# based on the
Vincent-Soille immersion watershed algorithm
Read Full Post.
posted @ Monday, February 11, 2008 6:46 PM | Feedback (69) |
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In 2007 I've worked a lot with NUnitForms. It contains all major controls testers and you can easily create
your own ones for e.g. a Data Grid or a 3rd party control. I had to create one for Janus GridEx and it wasn't really
that hard. A little reflection went a long way :) Lately, the whole project was at a standstill for some time but now it seems
it's revitalizing nicely with new people on board. So if you haven't yet go take look. This is just one open source GUI testing platform
and I'm sure there are others... I haven't...
posted @ Thursday, January 03, 2008 9:21 PM | Feedback (12) |
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Today I feel a bit evil minded so I thought I'd share this little prank-friendly function.
If you put this into a .Net Assembly you import to SQL Server as a function or a stored procedure
you can wreck some real havoc :)
private static void SQLPrank()
Random r1 = new Random(DateTime.Now.Millisecond);
int lowerBound = r1.Next(1000, 2000);
int upperBound = r1.Next(3000, 4000);
int randomNumber = r1.Next(1000, 4000);
1000 2000 ...
posted @ Thursday, November 15, 2007 10:05 PM | Feedback (5) |
Filed Under [
SQL Server
After i've been proven wrong in the comments below I have to say this:
Go take a read of this article to see how circular references are really handled.
While Delegate.GetInvocationList() really is a great and usefull thing and it could be used in clearing up events,
there's no need for it since you can do that as easily by simply unsubscribin from the event when
you want to dispose your class.
You can read this post on, but know that this example is WRONG, except for the last part about
Observer pattern and WeakEvent pattern.
Maybe you should read this post since...
posted @ Wednesday, October 24, 2007 8:30 PM | Feedback (26) |
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I can't believe these properties aren't already natively implemented. Come on Microsoft... we do live in the year 2007 you know!!
I know that you can do this using P/Invoke and SendMessage but i wanted a nice managed way of finding
the current line and column of the Caret position in a multiline TextBox.
After a bit of experimenting i've come up with this extended class:
public class TextBoxEx : TextBox
public TextBoxEx()
{ }
public void GoTo(int line, int column)
if (line...
posted @ Friday, October 19, 2007 3:40 PM | Feedback (5) |
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We're all familiar (i hope :)) with this construct:try
// ... some code here ...
catch (Exception ex)
// one of these 2 lines are usually seen
throw; // presereves the full call stack
//throw ex; // changes the origin of exception to this method
// more stuff here
It's a standard error catching routine in .Net.
But what if you want to pass some user info back to the caller method with the Exception being thrown?
Reader... meet Exception.Data. Exception.Data... meet reader.
Now that you're both properly aquainted...
posted @ Monday, September 24, 2007 5:36 PM | Feedback (5) |
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I haven't been using this function at all. Who knows why... maybe because i didn't know about it :)
But in my latest pet project i had to do something really quickly on a lot of items in a list.
After a bit of research into foreach and for loops, i saw the List<T>.ForEach method.
Did some testing and sure thing List<T>.ForEach proved to be faster than others.
I thought about posting the whole setup and how i've tested it, but then i saw that Dustin Russell Campbell
did exactly the same thing a bit more thoroughly, so why double it up, right?
Read it, like...
posted @ Saturday, September 01, 2007 9:37 PM | Feedback (9) |
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A negative Width value??
I can hear it now:
Are you insane Mladen?? Do you want our apps going around looking ugly??
Well... of course I do! It means i can go around fixing them for big bucks :))
But joking aside, -1 and -2 width values are very usefull.
Setting the width to be -1 means that the column will have the width of the longest item in it.
Setting the width to be -2 means that the column will have the width of the column heading.
Pretty cool, no?
posted @ Wednesday, August 29, 2007 7:25 PM | Feedback (6) |
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Tests are a pretty much a must in today's world of programming. There's even a whole Test Driven Development methodology that deals with this.
There comes a time when we have to test how our app interacts with the database.
More here
posted @ Friday, July 06, 2007 7:00 PM | Feedback (15) |
Filed Under [
SQL Server
Arity is the number of arguments that a method takes.
For example
void MyMethod(int i1, int i2)
has an arity of 2, since it takes 2 arguments.
In C# the arity is marked with `
"So why is this important?", you might ask.
Well it isn't. Until you deal with reflection. :)
A while ago I had to create some code using CodeDOM and i was getting a few errors that the ` in code isn't correct
when i tried to compile the code.
Here's an example of how arity is shown using reflection:
List<string> list = new List<string>();
// output: System.Collections.Generic.List`1[System.String]
Dictionary<int, string> dict = new Dictionary<int, string>();
// output: System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2[System.Int32,System.String]
You can...
posted @ Friday, June 08, 2007 6:01 PM | Feedback (3) |
Filed Under [
Now this is something i really didn't think it would compile in C#.
private int _someVar = 0;
private void DoStuff1()
int _someVar = 0;
_someVar = 6;
// ... code that uses _someVar
private void DoStuff2()
_someVar = 5;
// ... code that uses _someVar
We should at least get a warning if you ask me...
One learns something new every day.
posted @ Wednesday, May 23, 2007 9:52 PM | Feedback (11) |
Filed Under [
This is something i assumed was common knowledge, but apparently it isn't.
If you want to have a method in your derived class with the same name as the one in the base class and the base class one isn't marked
as virtual you can use the NEW keyword.
This is also the default behaviour and the compiler treats the child class method as new, however you get a warning for this.
Some code to illustrate this:
public class BaseClass
public BaseClass()
{ }
public void IAmANonVirtualMethod()
posted @ Monday, April 09, 2007 7:08 PM | Feedback (14) |
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I've written an article about Multiple Active Result Sets (MARS) and it's published on SQLTeam.com
Multiple Active Result Sets is a new SQL Server 2005 feature that, putting it simply, allows the user to run more than one SQL batch on an open connection at the same time.
More here.
posted @ Tuesday, April 03, 2007 3:10 PM | Feedback (7) |
Filed Under [
SQL Server
I have written before about running Windows Forms GUI tests on a compiled application exe here.
And i must say that it works GREAT!
I had a few problems of which the most annoying was the Drag and Drop functionality. If you have it enabled with AllowDrop = true
on your controls or any other 3rd party controls the moment your control gets loaded you will get this error:
System.InvalidOperationException: DragDrop registration did not succeed. --->
System.Threading.ThreadStateException: Current thread must be set to single thread apartment (STA) mode
posted @ Thursday, March 22, 2007 5:08 PM | Feedback (17) |
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I just hate having nulls in my DateTime columns. Having them always mean you also have to handle them in some way in your app.
The most common way is something like this:
public DateTime SomeDate
if (dr["SomeDate"] == DBNull.Value)
return DateTime.MinValue;
return (DateTime)dr["SomeDate"];
posted @ Wednesday, March 14, 2007 7:21 PM | Feedback (27) |
Filed Under [
SQL Server
A while ago i explained why do you need a [Flags] attribute on the Enum here. We'll since then i was happy with my flags until i got to the point of having 16 flags. So why is that a problem? Well it's not really but 2^16 is how much? If you had to open the all mighty calculator you see my point. I stop counting powers of 2 after 4096 = 2^12. I see no reason to remember those. That's why I wanted to write my enums a bit simpler. Like saying this is 2 to the power of 1, 2,...
posted @ Monday, March 05, 2007 10:10 PM | Feedback (7) |
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NUnitForms is a pretty awsome tool for GUI unit testing.
However it lacks one major thing. You can't test a whole exe or dll.
For example if you have a MyTestApp.exe with various win forms etc., you can't just run it and test it's gui.
And i really wanted to do it because our app sets a lot of other stuff and it's pretty complex so you can't just
call Form.Show() and start playing with it.
So with a lot experimenting and reading and going through NUnitForms source code I've come up with a way to do it.
The first thing to know is how NUnitForms...
posted @ Thursday, March 01, 2007 11:06 AM | Feedback (47) |
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Ever missed a Prod(columnName) function that works like a sum but it multiplies the column values?
If you have then you probably know that there's a workaround using a bit of high school math knowledge about base 10 logarithms.
It goes like this:
SELECT exp(sum(log(c1))) as MultiplicationResult FROM test
However this little helper doesn't yield correct results for a large enough set, because it goes from integer to decimal.
So there's a possibilty of an error.
This is also a perfect example of a user defined aggregate that can be implemented in CLR. And becuase there's no int to deciaml transition
it yields correct results.
posted @ Monday, February 12, 2007 12:22 PM | Feedback (9) |
Filed Under [
SQL Server
If you're reading this blog you're probably familiar with ADO.Net and it's SqlCommand object.
Now this SqlCommand object has a CommandTimeout property that specifies the number of seconds
after which the command will terminate. The default value is 30.
Now we get to the SqlConnection and the connection string. in the connection string you can specify
Connection Timeout = numberOfSeconds
after which the connection timeouts.
We also have to set the SqlConnection object to the SqlCommand.Connection property.
Nothing special so far.
Now my question is:
If we set the Connection Timeout in our connection string to higher value than the SqlCommand.CommandTimeout's is,
WHY DOESN'T the SqlCommand.CommandTimeout get set to that higher...
posted @ Wednesday, January 31, 2007 6:42 PM | Feedback (9) |
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Enums are a great tool. They give meaning to meaningless numbers. I love using them as flags since it couldn't be simpler. So i always used the [Flags] attribute on my enums But why do we need that attribute? You can bitwise non [Flags]'d enums just the same. The difference lies in the Enum.ToString() method. If your enum has the [Flags] attribute set then the ToString() will return a CSV separated list of bitwised enum values. If there's no [Flags] attribute ToString() will return a number for every bitwised value. As always it's best ilustrated with an example:[Flags]
enum StateWithFlags
posted @ Friday, January 12, 2007 5:40 PM | Feedback (11) |
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A SELECT tag is what a DropDowList in Asp.Net renders to in HTML and it's a standard web control. If you ever had to pop up a DIV over it (a menu in most cases) then you know that in IE6 and below and FireFox 1.x the select tag showed over the div tag. This was/is annoying as hell. There was a hack for this by putting an IFrame into a DIV but this introduced problems with linking etc... Now FINALLY this is fixed in IE7 and FireFox 2.x. I'm glad! Aren't you? :)
posted @ Wednesday, January 10, 2007 11:21 PM | Feedback (6) |
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I was playing with some historical data (family tree) and i wanted to store data in sql server. When looking into family trees you reach the minimum datetime value of 1753-01-01 very soon. But .Net can save dates from 1.1.0001 on. So i went looking into using SQL CLR user defined datatype (UDT).
UDT's are interesting because you have to serialize them.
There are 3 ways of doing that:
- Format.Native
- Format.UserDefined
- Format.Unknown
When Format.Native is used you can only use blittable datatypes. Bol says these are:
bool, byte, sbyte, short, ushort, int, uint, long, ulong, float, double, SqlByte, SqlInt16, SqlInt32, SqlInt64, SqlDateTime,...
posted @ Saturday, December 16, 2006 10:11 PM | Feedback (8) |
Filed Under [
SQL Server
In a previous post I've shown how to use High precision timer.
That method had a drawback of working for whole server not distiguishing between connections.
So if you ran the time measurement in 2 different windows in SSMS the times would be incorrect.
You'd get the correct time in the window which was run last.
This of course isn't very usefull for proper performace diagnosys.
So with little experimenting i've managed to fix the timer to work properly for each connection.
The code is self explanatory. For each function run I return the spid to which it belongs and i store the HiPerfTimer objects in a...
posted @ Saturday, December 02, 2006 9:46 PM | Feedback (0) |
Filed Under [
SQL Server
Update: I've created a muliti connection version which can be found here.
Usually time measuring in sql server is done in 2 ways: with the help of GetDate() function or with SET STATISTICS TIME ON.
For doing hardcore performance analysis where any time reduction counts you need more precise measuring capabilities and the two mentioned are only accurate to a milisecond order.
In SQL Server 2000 there was no practical way to change this.
SQL server 2005 to the rescue. It has DMV's which hold time in microseconds which is better. but they can't be always used to measure the duration of the statement. You...
posted @ Wednesday, November 29, 2006 12:24 PM | Feedback (3) |
Filed Under [
SQL Server
A coworker found this in code generated by Visual Studio 2005:
this.sqlSelectCommand2.CommandText = "SELECT columnName1, columnName2, columnName3, columnN" + "ame4, columnName5, columnName6 FROM MyViewFromMa" + "nyTables"
Searching for...
posted @ Monday, November 27, 2006 11:34 AM | Feedback (5) |
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Ever since I discovered the ?? colaesce operator I embraced it with full force.
Today I discovered another usefull use:
// this:
string[] arrayOfStrings1 = new string[] { "arr1s1", "arr1s2", "arr1s3" };
foreach (string str in (arrayOfStrings1 ?? new string[0]))
// do some stuff on the array elements
// equals to this:
string[] arrayOfStrings2 = new string[] { "arr2s1", "arr2s2", "arr2s3" };
if (arrayOfStrings2 != null)
foreach (string str in arrayOfStrings2)
// do some stuff on the array elements
// in terms of what it does
posted @ Monday, October 09, 2006 6:36 PM | Feedback (5) |
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I had so much "fun" with viewstate last weekend.
I'm developing a site that has a master page Master.aspx and a few child pages (Page1.aspx, ..., pageN.aspx).
Now when rendering HTML that is displayed an ASP.NE rendering engine first reads the child page
then takes the master page and incorporates it's contorls into the child page control hierarchy so the
child page actually becomes the overall master. A master page is treated as a user control, after all it
is derived from UserControl class. All this happens on the pre Init part of the Page creation.
So now comes in the viewstate. I won't...
posted @ Friday, September 29, 2006 6:03 PM | Feedback (4) |
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I've come accross this these articles which i think are
a must read before starting to design any kind of a serious application
Designing and building a robust data access layer
Managing SQL exceptions in .NET applications
Very nice.
posted @ Wednesday, September 27, 2006 9:33 AM | Feedback (3) |
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I had some fun this weekend with ASP.Net 2.0 Master pages and submit buttons when pressing Enter key. The catch here is that with the introduction of Master pages there's only one form per page which is specified in the master page.
UI simplicity for users has been pressing the Enter key when they wanted to submit the form data.
In older versions of ASP(.Net) you could put any number of forms on the page. The only rule was that they couldn't be nested. When you were in a form and you pressed Enter the browser used the submit button of that form...
posted @ Sunday, September 10, 2006 7:52 PM | Feedback (16) |
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I've written about bulk insert methods for text files in sql server 2005.
.Net 2.0 brings the SqlBulkCopy Class in System.Data.SqlClient namespace.
Speed wise it can't even compare to native sql server methods but it's usefull
if it's the only viable solution.
SqlBulkCopy.WriteToServer has 4 overloads:
SqlBulkCopy.WriteToServer (DataRow[])
Copies all rows from the supplied DataRow array to a destination table specified by the
DestinationTableName property of the SqlBulkCopy object.
SqlBulkCopy.WriteToServer (DataTable)
Copies all rows in the supplied DataTable to a destination table specified by the
DestinationTableName property of the SqlBulkCopy object.
SqlBulkCopy.WriteToServer (IDataReader)
Copies all rows in the supplied IDataReader to a destination...
posted @ Saturday, August 26, 2006 9:03 PM | Feedback (48) |
Filed Under [
SQL Server
In my previous post i showed how a generic comparer class in .net C# 2.0 can be made with the use of reflection.
This is the version 2. Faster, preetier, better. :))
It uses IL code generation in runtime with the use of a new .Net 2.0 class DynamicMethod.
More here.
posted @ Wednesday, July 05, 2006 5:21 PM | Feedback (2) |
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I've been doing a "bit" of .net development lately and i had a problem where i would get
a variable of type object and it's type in a string. So I wondered how to convert it to proper type at runtime.
The solutions is one of those things that is unbeliveably hard to find because you don't really know what
to search for, but when you find it, it seems unbeliveably simple. :)
Here it is:
string sType = "System.Int32";
object o1 = "123";
object o2 = Convert.ChangeType(o1, Type.GetType(sType));
Type t = o2.GetType(); // this returns Int32 Type
posted @ Friday, June 30, 2006 11:27 AM | Feedback (13) |
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I often wondered why is there no ISortable interface of somekind in .Net.
I recently needed to sort items in the context menu in alphabetical order.
Sorting them was the begining of a journey which produced this class.
It sorts simple objects like int, string, etc... as well as complex objects
that have properties you wish to sort on.
I've removed the code because I published version 2 of this class which is better and can be found here.
posted @ Tuesday, June 27, 2006 2:16 PM | Feedback (5) |
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I had to convert a project from .Net 1.1 to .Net 2.0 this week.
It built ok with a few warnings. Amongst others there was this one:
Warning: 'System.Threading.WaitHandle.Handle' is obsolete: 'Use the SafeWaitHandle property instead.'
That's cool, no problem, right? As it turns out it's not just replacing one property with another.
Handle property is IntPtr type and SafeWaitHandle is a class.
So .Net 2.0 has a new class called SafeWaitHandle which represents a wrapper class for a wait handle.
Why it's there is well explained on BCLTeam's blogs here.
So what to do?
It preety simple in the end.
instead of
just use
where _Event is...
posted @ Friday, June 23, 2006 4:50 PM | Feedback (5) |
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If there was one thing that was going preety steadily on my nerves in VS2005 was region collapsing/opening with mouse.
So i was determined to find a shortcut for it.
And I found so much more...
Every shortcut there is in Visual Studio 2005 is listed here.
All SSMS keybard shortcuts are listed here.
These two pages are the holy grail of fast development if you ask me :))
oh and by the way.... collapsing/opening a region is CTRL + M + M. Yes, hit M twice while holding CTRL.
And do try CTRL + I... it's pure pleasure. a hint: Incremental Search :) <-- select text...
posted @ Friday, June 16, 2006 4:49 PM | Feedback (6) |
Filed Under [
SQL Server
This is a good explanation on how to acctually bill a customer for your service over a credit card in your web application.
More here.
posted @ Thursday, May 18, 2006 5:06 PM | Feedback (5) |
Filed Under [
Visual studio's DataSet visualizer is ok but it's not that great :))
This one is excellent and if you do a lot of db development (which you do if you're reading blogs on SQLTeam :)) you need this.
You can get it here.
posted @ Wednesday, April 12, 2006 10:56 AM | Feedback (1) |
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I've posted an article about WebDAV protocol and my use of it for accessing MS Exchange store. WebDAV is based on HTTP 1.1 and is based on sending XML requests to find, set, remove and search for item properties.
Microsoft recommends that Exchange access from .Net is made with WebDAV. This MS article explains more.
It also works with Office documents...
More here.
posted @ Saturday, April 08, 2006 7:47 PM | Feedback (2) |
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If you do a lot of managed/unmanaged code interaction with COM objects
then this is a page you must bookmark.
posted @ Tuesday, April 04, 2006 4:49 PM | Feedback (0) |
Filed Under [
I saw this operator in use today in a code example. I must say when I figured what it does my geek side went "YES!!!!".
It resembles an old "if" abbreviation:
(condition ? true result : false result);
now what ?? does is a null check same as the SQL Servers Coalesce function. It returns the first non null parameter.
function test(class1 variable)
if (variable == null)
variable = new class1();
// equals to
variable = (variable ?? new class1());
I'm starting to use this and giving a "What!?!???" moment...
posted @ Monday, March 27, 2006 12:35 PM | Feedback (6) |
Filed Under [
why is there no reverse string function in c#?? Is there realy no need for that function??
there are of course a few ways to make your own reverse function. most favorite is definitly the one using recursion with substring. that's preety cool i thought why not... and then i remembered something that i learned in my first year of college... bitwise operations. i knew that there was a handy little way of switching 2 values using something with XOR without using a 3rd variable. i just couldn't remember it... so i went googling... it sure was faster than going through...
posted @ Sunday, March 19, 2006 6:04 PM | Feedback (51) |
Filed Under [
Well we decided we should do some unit testing on our asp.net project. We used NUnit.Asp. i must say the thing works realy great. the whole thing is based on xml document model of the page. so accesing tags and their attribs is preety simple. the only "drawback" i could think of is that every tag you want to get has to have an id. all in all i must say the thing is quite usefull. i build some wrapper classes that we needed and we could test anything you can think of, except javascripts that executed on the client...
posted @ Tuesday, February 15, 2005 5:47 PM | Feedback (2) |
Filed Under [
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text:
Verschijning van de architect-bemiddelaar
Een verkenning van een architecturale productie gericht op bemiddeling
Architectuur in naam van de vader
Column #3 over de oorsprongsmythen van de architectuur
Uplace of Shopping K? Nee, bedankt
Artikel over de architectuur van een vals dilemma rond winkelcentra
Dood van een dienstverlener
Column over het bouwen als olifant in de kamer van de architectuurcultuur.
Het belachelijk sublieme in de Vlaamse architectuur
Artikel over humor als het teken van kritische afstand in de architectuur
Verslaafd aan architectuur
Een artikel over de betekenis van de Biertempel discussie voor de architectuurcultuur in België
Wafels, bier en architectuur
Een artikel naar aanleiding van de herbestemming van de Beurs in Brussel tot biertempel naar ontwerp van Robbrecht & Daem Architecten.
Creatio ex nihilo
Column #1 over de oorsprongsmythen van de architectuur
Zorg dragen voor architectuur
Artikel over gebruik en postproductie in de architectuur naar aanleiding van het Jozef Plein in PC Cartias (Melle).
Do Good architectuur
Artikel over de rol van ontwerp in zorgarchitectuur.
Pic Nic Architectuur
Een retroactief manifest voor Pic Nic the Streets als bijdrage aan de architectuurcultuur in België. > Version Française > English Version
Wraak op de commons
Een artikel over het nakende einde voor Agrocité en de toekomst voor architectuur onder zelfbeheer.
Architectuur van de schaamteplek
Wie grip wil krijgen op de problemen van in psychiatrische ziekenhuizen, begint bij het ontwerp van de isolatiekamer.
Van Utopia naar Wuustwezel
Er zijn weinig termen die zo'n beladen betekenis hebben in de architectuurgeschiedenis als utopie. Version Français
Relational Architecture
Read about the production proces of the Kanunnik Petrus Jozef Triest Square in the Psychiatric Centre Caritas, Melle. Article in Dutch / English / French
Hoeveel samenwerking kan architectuur verdragen?
Artikel over de tentoonstelling 'Ensembles. Architectuur en Ambachtschap' in deSingel en Vlaams Architectuurinstituut.
Bouwstenen voor het psychiatrisch centrum van de toekomst
Lees meer over de visieontwikkeling rond het psychiatrisch centrum van de toekomst gepubliceerd in Psyche.
Eco-politiek in Brussel: Bas Smets en de Brussels Urban Landscape Biennial
Artikel over het nut en nadeel van landschapsarchitectuur als instrument voor regionale ontwikkeling in Brussel.
Architectuur vol van verlangen
Artikel naar aanleiding van de opening van het Kanunnik Petrus Jozef Triest Plein in Melle.
Proud to present the A+261 issue on architecture and politics - Dutch and French edition.
Architectuur met schaduw
De 20ste eeuw baarde vele duivelspacten tussen architectuur en politiek. Opvallend genoeg wordt de architectuur van het Italiaanse fascisme tot op vandaag geprezen omwille van haar abstracte vormentaal. Dergelijke rehabilitatie is de architectuur van het Derde Rijk nooit te beurt gevallen. België heeft zo zijn eigen kleine trauma in de relatie met de politiek.
Ingebedde architecten
Lees meer over de architectuur van oorlog en vrede
Vakmannen aan het front
Een recensie over de bijdrage van Bravoure in de Architectuurbiennale van Venetie.
Toiletemmers in Werelderfgoed
Er is iets curieus met de inrichting van de gevangenis van Merksplas, waar enkele weken geleden een opstand uitbrak. De geschiedenis van de site reflecteert een utopisch beeld van de gevangenis van de toekomst, de manier waarop omgegaan wordt met die geschiedenis symboliseert dan weer de gemiste kansen.
FPC Gent: geen markt, geen gevangenis
De opening van het Forensisch Psychiatrisch Centrum in Gent zorgt na één jaar werking voor een grote opluchting - zelfs bij voormalige critici. De juiste vraag is niet of aanvankelijke bezorgheid terecht was, maar wel of de opluchting niet een beetje voorbarig is?
Het penitentiair verdriet van België
In de bouw van het gevangenisdorp Haren vormen de lokale en regionale overheid samen front met de actiegroepen tegen de federale overheid - of toch niet? Hoe kunnen we de knoop tussen activisme en politiek ontwarren?
Een psychiatrisch centrum bouwen we samen
Ook architectuur heeft zijn plaats op de Vlaamse Hersteldagen. Doe mee op 18 november in de Vooruit.
Eindelijk een kennisplatform voor humane gevangenisarchitectuur
De website www.prisongear.be presenteert het onderzoek naar een humane gevangenisarchitectuur.
Ontmanteling van de psychiatrische kliniek
Lees de gevalstudies over zorgarchitectuur in Vlaanderen gepubliceerd in Psyche
Een sterke leefomgeving begint met ruimteregie
Wie is er bang van het Bouwmeestercollege?
Iedereen lijkt het roerend eens dat de Vlaamse architectuur zonder de Bouwmeester overgeleverd is aan de wetten van de markt en de willekeur van het politieke bedrijf. Lees de opinie 'De Bouwmeester en de onheilsprofeten'.
A humane prison is coming to your neighbourhood
As part of the Conflict & Design Triennial the knowledge platform Prison Gear presents design studies that pave the way for a humane prison in Leopoldsburg, Belgium.
Een humane gevangenis komt naar je toe
Als onderdeel van de Conflict & Design Triënnale presenteert Prison Gear twee visieontwerpen voor de toekomstige gevangenis op het militaire domein Reigersvliet in Leopoldsburg.
Limburg City / Stad Limburg
Read the memorandum of the Limburg Europa Workshop / Lees de projectnota van Atelier Limburg Europa
The dismantling of the psychiatric clinic
Read the case studies on care architecture in Flanders
Wat is ontwerpend onderzoek?
Drie vragen over ontwerpend onderzoek, drie antwoorden vanuit de Noorderkempen.
Heeft een gemeenplaats ook een gemene waarde ?
Commentaarstuk bij het Architectuurboek n° 10: Radicale Gemeenplaatsen - Europese architectuur uit Vlaanderen
Is onzichtbare psychiatrische zorg mogelijk?
Review van de opstart Pilootprojecten Zorg door de Vlaams Bouwmeester
Limburg heeft ambitie / Limburg has ambition
Presentatie van de Startnota Provinciaal Bouwmeester Limburg / Presentation Initial Memo Limburg Government Architect
Hoeveel vernieuwing kan de gevangenis verdragen ?
Lees hoe de modernisatie van de gevangenisarchitectuur in handen van Stéphane Beel begon en eindige bij het Ducpétiaux-model.
San Gimignano aan de Zenne
Lees de column naar aanleiding van de Keukentoren van XDGA
Sociaal-realisme of zelfcensuur
Met Jonas Staal schreef BAVO een pleidooi voor een nieuw sociaal-realisme in de kunst. Sociaal-realisme is broodnodig in het tijdperk van de hysterische reproductie.
Nu ook een schreeuw om architectuur!
Niet occupy-en, maar de gevestigde orde verleiden om in crisistijden te investeren in leuke projecten. Lees hier meer over de Studio for Unsollicited Architecture.
Gesloten architectuur is ook humaan
Lees meer over Fleur Agema's gevangenismodel
Waarom kunstenaars niet fascistisch genoeg zijn
Lees het artikel in het decembernummer van Rekto:Verso.
De Culturele Elite
Lees de bijdrage.
Recensies van boek Too Active to Act
Artist Participation in South Africa
The international PR campaign to showcase Rotterdam's robust policy on artist participation is now also tapping into the emerging African art markets.
Denkverbod op liberale kunst
Column over de stellingenoorlog naar aanleiding van de aangekondigde bezuinigingen in de cultuursector.
Maak liberaal kunstbeleid liberaal
Lees BAVO's advies aan staatssecretaris Zijlstra met betrekking tot de noodgedwongen keuzen die de cultuursector in Nederland te wachten staat.
Vrijheidscampagne met inhoud
Edinburgh prepares for artist participation
Kunstenaars vormen een nieuwe alliantie met Geert Wilders / Artists form a new alliance with Geert Wilders
International promotion campaign of the Office for Artist Participation kicks off
The City of Edinburgh will be the first to host an international promotion event of Rotterdam's innovative cultural policies for enforcing the participation of artists in heightening a city's competitiveness and securing social peace on the local level.
Culture and Contestation
The essay 'Neo-Liberalism with Dutch Characteristics: The Big Fix-Up of the Netherlands and the Practice of Embedded Cultural Activism' is published in the book volume 'Culture and Contestation in the New Century'.
Art and Activism
BAVO's essay 'Artists... one more effort to be really political!' is published in the volume 'Art and Activism in the age of Globalisation'.
Boek verschenen: Too Active To Act
Het boek biedt een kritische analyse van de maatschappelijke betrokkenheid van culturele actoren in Nederland in de afgelopen tien jaar.
Commoning the Clinic
Read more about the Kanunnik Triest Square (designed by architects De Vylder Vinck Taillieu) in the Caritas psychiatric centre (Melle) and how it results from a participative process with psychiatrists, managers, staff, and patients.
The Borders of Europe as Ideas of Europe / Report EF lecture Etienne Balibar
project: EUREGIONAL FORUM
date: 28/06/2009
author: BAVO
source: Euregional Forum Newspaper
status: review
On Thursday 28 May 2009, it was political philosopher Etienne Balibar's turn to engage with the problematics of the lecture series 'The Unresolved Borders of Europe'. Balibar tackled the issue of the borders from the perspective that borders of Europe are based, to a high degree, on certain ideas about Europe and, more precisely, ideas about European identity and politics.
The border is an idea
The structural openness of Europe
Balibar started by affirming what he called the "structural condition of openness of the European space". This should not only be interpreted, on a purely natural, geographical level, with the lack of clear borders between Europe and Asia. For Balibar, the same openness also applies with regard to European history or political development. Accordingly, he spoke of Europe as a "complex assemblage of peoples, languages, religions and states". Precisely because of this open, border-less state of Europe, every border one draws, he further claimed, will very much be based on certain ideas about Europe. The most basic lesson one could thus draw from Balibar's lecture was that 'the border is an idea' or, more concretely, that the borders of Europe are ultimately based on certain notions of what Europe is or stands for, both culturally and politically.
Mapping the ideas of Europe
In line with this thesis, the main objective of Balibar's lecture was to map and reflect on previous and possible future ideas of Europe as well as current debates and dilemmas in the "idealising of Europe". However, Balibar forewarned that precisely because of Europe's indeterminate, 'border-less' character, a multiplicity of conflicting ideas on Europe will inevitably remain – hence, 'ideas' in the plural in the title of his exposé. This multiplicity not only turns the search for, and struggles over the idea of Europe into a never-ending process, but may also constitute the essence itself of what Europe is, what has been the driving-force of its rich culture and politics and what might guarantee its dynamism in the future.
Since ideas on Europe are, to a large extent, ideas about its identity and form of politics, Balibar mapped his ideas of Europe by exploring these two aspects in consecutive order, starting with the issue of Europe's identity.
Ideas of Europe and European identity
The identities of Europe
Balibar first went through some historical determinations of the European identity. He started off with German romantic poet Novalis, who saw European identity as an essentially 'lost' identity – what he considered to be lost was a common European 'Christianity', as a result of centuries of secularisation. Next, Balibar talked about the 'social contract theories', according to which identities (mainly national ones) were seen as originating from the conscious decisions of a certain people. Balibar believes that previous notions still adhere too much to a pure and homogeneous conception of identity. In the dialectical model of German philosopher Hegel, on the contrary, he saw a more complex notion of identity, according to which the encounter with the Other plays a key role in its constitution. Balibar contended that these different philosophical ideas on European identity still largely determine how Europeans imagine their collective identity, and thus where they (attempt to) draw the borders of European space.
The paradox of the European periphery
As a first example, Balibar referred to the seemingly endless debates on the admittance of so-called peripheral countries to the EU. This discussion usually concerns countries that may have strong historical, political and cultural ties with Europe, but have similar ties with other continents, like Asia, Africa or Northern America (as is the case with Great Britain). Balibar detected a strange paradox in one of the main arguments for or against admitting such countries as EU members: namely, that in order to become members of the EU, these countries already have to be European, possess the imprint of 'Europeanness'. According to Balibar, this inconsistent reasoning is the result of the pure and homogeneous takes on identity to which he referred earlier, which lead to simplistic binary thinking about borders in terms of inside or outside.
A cross-over of overlapping plates
Against this notion of homogeneity, Balibar put forward the idea that Europe has never been a closed space, nor will it ever become one. He stated that the borders of Europe do not exist, except for arbitrary strategic and technical reasons (such as monetary policies or police controls). He rather conceived of Europe's space as a "cross-over of several overlapping plates" and regarded Europe's so-called border regions (such as Russia, the Mediterranean countries) as important parts, which play a key role in the determinations and transformations of its identity.
The post-colonial Other as idea of Europe
Intending to prove the key role of the peripheral areas or borders of Europe for the construction of its identity, Balibar referred to the crucial role of the period of colonisation in the first conceptualisations of Europe. According to him, it was both in the rivalry and in the collaboration of the various European countries in conquering the globe and dividing it among each other, that Europe first saw and defined itself as a civilisation. Balibar then referred to the theorist Edward Said, who claimed that the idea of the "Orient", as Europe's "Other" or "anti-type", was essential to the definition of Europe's humanist identity. The aim of so-called post-colonial theorists like Said would be to grant to this Other its constitutive, yet historically negated role in order to re-evaluate and rethink the idea of Europe.
Re-thinking Europe's universality
Central in these attempts at redefinition is the supposed universal character of a European identity. This is the idea that Europe, of all world cultures, is most based on a non-particularistic notion of identity and community, and is therefore an open, all-inclusive project. Balibar disagreed with those who simply dismiss this claim to universality, by pointing to the particularistic motives behind it, such as economic self-gain or cultural self-promotion – something that is subsequently generalised to discredit universality as such. As opposed to this cynical view, Balibar observed how the idea of universality is in fact radically being reasserted and rethought by precisely those who were historically its worst victims, namely the colonised; it is even being used as a weapon against its previous European colonisers.
Europe as province of the universal
In this regard, Balibar referred to historian Dipesh Chakrabarty's thesis (developed in his book Provincialising Europe) that the tension between universalistic and particularistic tendencies runs through, and divides every culture in our globalised world; Chakrabarty believes that it is rather a case of what Balibar called 'conflicting rationalities' running through every culture – which is thus also true for Europe itself. The colonial debacle has not divorced Europe forever from a universalistic self-conceptualisation. It can still become a 'province of the universal', but it should be more humble in its attempts, while also becoming more open to what Balibar called "alternative interpretations of the human".
Political ideas of Europe
But also ideas about the type of politics Europe stands or should stand for, or what type of political community it forms, determine and animate the ideas of Europe and, in extension, discussions on the borders of Europe. Balibar devoted the second part of his lecture to the political ideas of Europe.
The double meaning of politics
Balibar started by emphasising the double meaning of the word 'politics', inherited from the Greek word 'politeia'. This can either refer to the gathering of people discussing and collectively deciding on public affairs, or to the internal system and logics of political institutions. This dual definition of politics can still be seen as haunting European politics, for instance in the popular struggles against the so-called 'Eurocracy', referring to the supposedly high and mighty bureaucratic European institutions that are said to operate in complete isolation from its European citizens. According to Balibar, these two meanings of politics are today being reformulated in terms of what he called "the two monsters of political theory": the European 'demos' (or: 'political people', according to the first meaning of 'politeia') and the European 'federation' (according to the second, institutional meaning).
Whither European community
Balibar then went on to complicate this picture even further, by saying that due to the dual, conflictual meaning of politics in Europe, and the ensuing failure to clearly think the European people as a political community, two other notions are increasingly more successful in imagining the kind of community Europe is, or creates. The first notion sees Europe as a quasi-ethnic, cultural community (according to the Greek 'ethnos'), the second as an "elect civilisation" and "a nation with a historical mission" (cf. Greek 'laos'). Balibar regarded both as undemocratic or, to be more precise, as acting against conceiving the European people as a political community, which decides on its own form of community, through discussion and deliberation.
Radical democracy
Balibar then referred to the work of social and political philosopher Jacques Rancière, who locates the problematic, conflictual status of democracy in Greek thought in the fact that the citizens to which it referred also clashed: democracy then referred to those classes who enjoyed full rights and privileges in the community, but also to those who were excluded from these communal and political circles of privilege. Democracy in the most fundamental sense then concerns not so much the process of collective decision-making by the privileged classes, as the extent to which the excluded are allowed to take part in that process, which always entails conflict. One could thus say that the dual, conflictual meaning of democracy is based on the conflictual social process of democracy itself.
Towards an insurgent democracy
Balibar used these reflections on the essence of democratic politics as a springboard for his own notion of it, which he called "the insurgent moment of democracy", or "insurgent demos". Balibar conceived of this insurgent democracy in terms of a combination of social movements and struggles that, although rooted in social conditions, act as political forces – not so much by expressing political positions as by expanding the frontiers of the political polemically. This European demos would function as a constituent power, which is not so much a source of legitimacy for its supra-national institutions, but rather a source of the latter's political life. Balibar's notion or idea of European politics can thus be seen as navigating between the two, conflictual meanings of European politics as European demos and federalism. His insurgent notion of democracy does not challenge the existence or idea of specialised federal political institutions at a European level as such. Rather, it argues for the necessity, not so much of a European people that can legitimise those institutions through political representation, but of a revolutionary collective agency on a European scale that transforms the social relations, thus heavily influencing the politics and policies of the European institutions. He saw a precedent of this insurgent democracy in the political practices of the inhabitants of the classical cities, but also a current manifestation of this phenomenon, in what he referred to as "the new emerging trans-national public sphere".
The global financial crisis as an opportunity for European democracy!
Balibar saw a possible application and relevance of his notion of insurgent democracy in the present global financial crisis. Balibar was hopeful about the possibility that under pressure of mass political action and debate by an active European social citizenship, the central European financial institutions could be made to be used in an alternative way and steered towards alternative goals. That is to say, less technocratic and neo-liberal and more oriented towards the maintenance of productive investments and the protection of jobs.
- A first question addressed one of the causes Balibar mentioned for the persistence of very reactionary, identity-related ideas on Europe, namely processes of economic competition, which would set peoples in Europe up against one another. It was asked whether this is sufficient as an explanatory model, especially since these ideas seem to originate from the majority of the European people itself, and whether this doesn't seriously undermine Balibar's plea for a more active, militant and progressive European citizenship.
Balibar started by stressing that he did not think a natural logic exists that would either prevent the European people or masses from giving in to reactionary thoughts, or would conversely lead them to affirm the type of politics that are not in their best interests. On the contrary, he stressed how mass movements are always historical constructions. Next he went on to say that he considered the recent, explicitly anti-European stances based, for instance, on the idea that the European construction has destroyed certain rights and has caused a massive transferral of jobs due to unlimited deregulation, to be progress. According to him, it would force the political representatives and institutions to address the economic issues at a European level, and no longer at a national level. This would be a step forward, because the problem with addressing economic issues at a national level, Balibar further claimed, is that national parties and governments, whether conservative or social-democratic, usually speak a double language, in which everything that suppresses jobs is attributed to Brussels and everything that defends them is attributed to themselves. It is such hypocrisy, according to Balibar, which makes it very difficult for the peoples of Europe, most often working class people, not to become reactionary.
- It was then asked whether the socialist party in the Netherlands (SP), which also has a very anti-European stance, especially with regards to economic and labour issues, could be seen as an example of such seemingly reactionary parties and which could nevertheless have a progressive effect by forcing European politicians to better address economical problems on a trans-national scale.
Balibar stated that from a social point of view nothing proofs that the European construction is in itself progressive. According to him, the EU emerged due to geopolitical and economic reasons, not as a result of progressive social parties. Still, it was in Western Europe that a form of social citizenship emerged that, even if it was unequally incorporated in formal institutions, formed the core of democracy. Balibar claimed that it would not have been possible for the EU to build itself without incorporating these social rights. Moreover, it provided a political possibility for progressive forces within Europe to argue that the European construction will have to incorporate those rights or, if not, will finally crash.
- It was further noted that, in the Netherlands, certain political parties are using the same argument of protecting the strong tradition of social and labour rights to plead for closing the borders, not only between the EU and Eastern Europe, but even around the Netherlands itself, in order to keep cheap labour out, which is said to undermine those rights.
Balibar affirmed his belief that a common economic and social European policy, with an equalisation of social rights at a European level, would form a better protection for national social rights than closing the national borders and returning to a purely nationalistic kind of politics.
- Another question focused on Balibar's thesis of the predominance of understandings of the demos in terms of ethnicity or a chosen people, over notions focusing on institution building. It was asked what institutions he thought were missing from the way Europeans talk about the concept of democracy, especially in light of the clear incapacity of the European bureaucratic institutions in this regard.
Balibar started by saying that the current state of democracy at a national level should be used as the standard or measure that can form the basis for discussing democracy at a European level and for deciding whether it constitutes progress or not. He disagreed with positions that believe democracy is functioning well at a national level and is missing at a European level, thus fearing and resisting the transferral of national democratic institutions to a European level. The crisis would be as much a crisis of democracy as it is of the nation-state. According to him, it is this crisis of democracy at both levels that delegitimises public institutions and stands in the way of addressing the issues that were already under discussion and caused parliaments to get stuck on imaginary problems of identity, origins or civilising missions. Finally, Balibar held a plea for both more participation and direct democracy at a local level and more accountability at a European level, for instance, by increasing the power of the European Parliament in proportion to that of the European Commission.
- Somebody referred to Balibar's earlier stress on the importance of a cross-border European social movement and labour union and asked whether this could be an example of such missing and highly needed democratic institutions.
Balibar first stressed his belief that social movements, trade unions, popular culture initiatives and even socialist or communist parties have been very effective in securing and enhancing a certain degree of democracy at a national level in Europe. Secondly, he said that with a revival of social movements he did not mean their institutionalisation in the construction of Europe. According to him, the type of social initiatives and activism, without which there would never have been any advances on the road of democracy, is not something that can be written in the constitution or that one can incorporate in a plan. It is mainly something one can try to contribute to.


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by Rachel Jolbert
The members of the Youngstown Volunteer Fire Co. are actively raising funds for a new ambulance, and they need your help. The new ambulance fund, "Survives on donations alone," explained YFC Trustee Greg Robertson Sr.
Taxpayer money has never been used for operation or maintenance of the fire company's ambulance and its services in the past, and YFC members hope to keep it that way. They maintain it is vital for the company to raise the money through donations, sponsorships, and fundraisers to keep its services free. The fire company, its emergency personnel and the community will greatly benefit from a new and updated ambulance.
The fire company has been conducting the "Drive for Life" campaign for the past three years, and Robertson was happy to admit the company has collected approximately 75 percent of the goal, largely due to corporate sponsorships and donations from residents of the Youngstown community. The fire company plans to raise the remainder of the $125,000 and have the new ambulance by the end of 2013.
Robinson encourages readers to support Youngstown's 100-percent volunteer-staffed fire company by making a donation today. Donations can be made to the Youngstown Volunteer Fire Co., P.O. Box 387, Youngstown, NY 14174.


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Steelers and Eagles fans will be taking over Big Game Waterfront Grill for the fourth annual Pennsylvania Day Wednesday, Jan. 29. The fun-filled party begins at noon with Philly cheesesteaks and Yuengling beer, along with plenty of other Pennsylvania favorites.
"If you're from the Keystone State, grab your friends and head over to Big Game for food and fun Wednesday!" said Jaime Huffman, PR director for Salty Sam's Waterfront Adventures. "I bet you didn't know that Pittsburgh has over 300 sets of city maintained steps. If they were stacked on top of each other, they would reach over 26,000 feet high. They would measure higher than a lot of the Himalayan Mountains. Brush up on your trivia for a chance to win fun prizes that day. Fans are invited to come out wearing Steelers and Eagles team colors."
This will mark the fourth Pennsylvania Day the waterfront sports bar's held.
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Be sure to swing by Big Game during one of its many States Days taking place now through March. Kicking off the national celebration will be Pennsylvania Day Wednesday, Jan. 29, starting at noon. Enjoy treats and tastes of Pennsylvania, along with live music and more! Photo courtesy JAIME HUFFMAN.
"Last year's turnout was great. We had a full house of Pennsylvania natives and they danced away to Frank Torino's music," Jamie said. "We decided to feature Pennsylvania for one of our States Days because we had a ton of requests from our customers. It is the fourth annual event, so we hope it continues to get bigger and better. We added pierogies to the menu this year they are my personal favorite, so I can't wait to enjoy those and a Philly cheesesteak!"
Frank Torino will provide live entertainment from noon to 4 p.m., followed by Erik Huffman from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. There's sure to be plenty of music, dancing, trivia, drink and food specials, along with classic football games playing on the big screen TVs.
"I'm a huge Steelers fan and grew up in Cranberry Township, a suburb of Pittsburgh," said Colleen McCaffrey. "We have a blast at Big Game on Pennsylvania Day! Our friends travel from all over to attend the party, so it is a fun reunion for all of us!"
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Fact Box
Not from Pennsylvania? Big Game is sure to still have a special States Day celebration planned for you. Here's a list of the upcoming state days:
Buffalo/Rochester/Western New York Day, Wednesday, Feb. 5
Michigan Day, Wednesday, Feb. 12
Ohio Day on, Wednesday, Feb. 19
Wisconsin Day, Wednesday, Feb. 26
Chicago Day, Wednesday, March 5
Minnesota Day, Wednesday, March 12
Boston Day, Wednesday, March 19
Canada Day, Wednesday, March 26


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Find Hotels in Chincha Alta
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Looking for cheap accommodation in Chincha Alta, Peru? ZUJI helps you compare hotels in destinations all over the world for any time of year, whether youre booking early to secure a great rate or trying to snap up a cheap last minute room. Compare TripAdvisor reviews, browse our comprehensive range of Chincha Alta hotels and make your travel booking with ZUJI today!


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So this is how it is, then? Phillip Seaton (pictured)—an innocent man who went in for a routine adult circumcision and awoke to find that a ding dong doc had dinged his ding dong till it was clean gone—has been awarded not one red cent by a jury of his peers. (A "six-man, six-woman jury," his peers? Are they, really? Are they? Penis peers? Are they?)
The unkindest cut of all: the devil-may-care reaction of Dr. John Patterson, the pork-purging surgeon who moonlights as a trouser snake exterminator:
Patterson said after the verdict, "I think we're feeling pretty good."
Who is this "we," Dr. John Patterson? Dr. John Patterson is feeling just fine, secure in the knowledge that his hose is safely stowed below. Meanwhile poor Phillip can do little but reminisce about the days before John Patterson trimmed his Jimmy Johnson like an unwanted peepee weed. Geez. A fine bite of schnitzel that is, eh?
Dr. John Patterson: no matter what a jury says, you, sir, are a dork.


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IUP Legacy Gala
Indiana University of Pennsylvania saluted its distinguished friends and alumni at the Carnegie Museum Music Hall Foyer with the inaugural IUP Legacy Gala and awards in the categories of Alumni Distinction, Civic Service, and Philanthropy. The evening raised $150,000 for the University Fund for Academic Excellence, thanks in part to silent auction bids on a trip to California for a tour of YouTube and dinner with one of its creators, IUP grad Chad Hurley. Photography by David Bachman.Read More