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Bring on the Bacon
The so-called "swine flu" is making the pork industry sick. Sure, public health officials say it's as safe as ever to eat pork, but many consumers seem to have lost their appetite for "the other white meat" in recent weeks. Not our sister blogger, Sarah, however! As today's guest writer, our science blogger offers this homage to a particular pork product:
A food blogger who doesn't like bacon? "Fire her," my friends joked recently.
But we'll forgive Amanda for her heresy; she is a self-admitted recovering vegetarian after all, and could we really expect her to rave about both quinoa and bacon and write well, too? But at least I can fill this hole in Food & Think.
You may have noticed that every six months or so, there is a wave of bacon news on the Internet; I often then find a wave of bacon-themed emails among my friends. Our monthly Sunday brunches, you see, are now centered around the bacon in the frying pan, and the RSVP's most important purpose is to allow our host to determine the necessary poundage. Mention something that sounds like "bacon fest" and heads will turn, details eagerly sought.
We're not alone in our love. Last year, for example, Salon had a Bacon Week, with multiple articles devoted to the crispy pork product (yes, bacon has to be crispy, otherwise it's underdone). My favorite quote? "Bacon is the cocaine of the '00s," says author Sarah Katherine Lewis, "a visible sign of decadent rebellion.'" For my group, eating bacon is a hedonistic treat, one most of us indulge in only once a month, with friends. Consuming it every day would spoil the sensation (and our arteries).
Our latest round of bacon emails was spurred by a recent article about the "bacontrepreneurs" who invented Bacon Salt and Baconnaise. (Their motto is "Everything should taste like bacon." However, their products contain no bacon—they're actually vegetarian and kosher.) Is this really a good idea? Jon Stewart has shown that the Baconnaise is probably rank, but what's the point of bacon-like products? The kosher nature of some of these is obviously a draw for those who are otherwise excluded from the bacon fun (we received a recommendation for Bac-O's, which are also kosher, from a Jewish member of our group, but a non-Jewish friend had to be consulted on their taste—she described them as "like bacon on steroids"). I think I'll stick to the real thing, though. There seems to be too many fake foods in our lives.
Once I started delving into the world of bacon, I realized that not only are my friends and I not alone in our excitement, but we are on the sane end of it. There are Bring Home the Bacon Dangle Earrings on Etsy, for instance, gummy bacon (The Feedbag blog calls it an "affront," though) and instructions for bacon-infused vodka and the bacone, bacon fried into a cone shape and filled with eggs, hash browns and cheese, topped with a biscuit and country gravy. And then there is the Canonical Bacon Page, created by the man who taped bacon to his cat a few years ago and then was inundated with all things bacon.
Me, though? I'll just enjoy my three pieces of pepper bacon, possible from the Amish market, munched as I gossip with friends. And I'll have to leave the rest of baconalia to the real fanatics.


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BERLIN – On Saturday, Oct. 11, the waterfront docks of West Ocean City will come alive with the sights, sounds and smells of the sea.
The inaugural Harbor Day at the Docks will take place from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. and is being held along the working harbor docks adjacent to Sunset Avenue. This new event will celebrate the history and heritage of local maritime traditions, including both commercial fishing and sport fishing.
The Harbor Day At The Docks event is free and open to the public and will feature educational exhibits, the Fisherman's Challenge, the Lauren Glick Band, and local seafood prepared by The Shark on the Harbor.
Highlights of the program will include fish cleaning and seafood cooking demonstrations, commercial fish harvesting techniques and handling, deep sea fishing techniques, net mending, seafaring competitions, touch tanks, children's games, and much more.
Various fishing vessels will be located along the dock and local fishermen will be available to interact with visitors (though no ship boarding's will take place). There will also be maritime organizations exhibiting their projects, maritime related craft artisans, and Fish Tales "stories at sea" presentations. Ending the daylong event will be a "Blessing of the Fleet" beginning at 4:00p.m.
The public is invited. Parking will be limited along Sunset Ave. Complimentary shuttle buses will be running from the West Ocean City Park-n-Ride lot.
Event Schedule
(BOLD)Fish Scales & Tales Tent
10 a.m.: Opening ceremony
10:15 a.m.: Stories of rescues at sea
11 a.m.: Fish cleaning demo
11:30 a.m.: Seafood cooking demo
12:15 p.m.: Sea stories of Ocean City fishing
1 p.m.: Fish cleaning demo
1:30 p.m.: Seafood cooking demo
2:15 p.m.: Fish cleaning demo
2:45 p.m.: Seafood cooking demo
3:30 p.m.: Sea stories-Martin family
4 p.m. Blessing of the Harbor
(BOLD)Entertainment Stage
Noon-4 p.m.: Live music by the Lauren Glick Band
10:30 a.m.: Fishing gear demo
11 a.m.: Oyster farming demo
Noon: Scallop shucking
12:15 p.m. Phillips Crabhouse clam shucking
1:15 p.m.: Gill net mending
1:30-2:45 p.m.: Fisherman's Challenge featuring blindfolded knot tying, survival suit races, line toss competition and splicing
(BOLD)Kids Area
10:30-11:15 a.m.: Moon bounce
11:15 a.m.-12:45 p.m.: Scavenger hunt
12:45-4 p.m.: Kids games and moon bounce

subset: commoncrawl


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Lincoln Electric Schedules Webcast for Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2015 Results
CLEVELAND, Jan. 12, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Lincoln Electric Holdings, Inc., (Nasdaq:LECO) announced today that it will release its fourth quarter and full year 2015 results on Tuesday, February 23, 2016 prior to market open. An investor conference call and webcast will take place at 10:00 a.m. (ET) later that day.
The conference call will be webcast live and can be accessed on the Company's Investor Relations home page at http://ir.lincolnelectric.com. Listeners should go to the web site prior to the call to register and download and install any necessary audio software. Investors who are unable to access the webcast may listen to the conference call live via telephone by dialing (877) 344-3899 (domestic) or (315) 625-3087 (international) and should use confirmation code 20788418. Telephone participants are asked to dial in 10 to 15 minutes prior to the start of the conference call.
A replay of the earnings call will be available via webcast on the Company's website.
About Lincoln Electric
Lincoln Electric is the world leader in the design, development and manufacture of arc welding products, robotic arc welding systems, plasma and oxyfuel cutting equipment and has a leading global position in the brazing and soldering alloys market. Headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, Lincoln has 47 manufacturing locations, including operations and joint ventures in 19 countries and a worldwide network of distributors and sales offices covering more than 160 countries. For more information about Lincoln Electric and its products and services, visit the Company's website at www.lincolnelectric.com.
Contact Amanda Butler Director, Investor Relations Tel: (216) 383-2534 Email: email@example.com


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Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Dark Dungeons
I've only had a chance to look briefly at the PDF version, but it looks very good indeed. Best of all, it's completely Open Content, meaning that anyone looking to add, say, domain management or mass combat to their own retro-clone projects will find some useful material here. And of course it's even better for players whose preferred version of D&D is the 1991 Aaron Allston-edited compilation of the mid-80s Frank Mentzer-penned rules.
Check it out.
15 comments:
Its really cool its released, I just find the title unfortunateReplyDelete
I'm happy to see simpler versions of rpg's released, and I'm a big fan of the Gazetteer series, so I'll take some time to skim it over. Thanks for the heads-up.ReplyDelete
"Best of all, it's completely Open Content, meaning that anyone looking to add, say, domain management or mass combat to their own retro-clone projects will find some useful material here."ReplyDelete
And don't forget the Spelljammer clone rules.
Me, I like the name, and think it's a funny reminder of a bit of our history (there's a sample character called Black Leaf, even). I'm also happy that a lot of the rules from the Cyclopedia are now Open Content. Perhaps I'll base a section of my own retroclone house-rule project on the domain rules as modified by some of the Princess Ark articles in Dragon.
That looks awesome. I picked up a Rules Cyclopedia from ebay to go with my old D&D stuff not so long ago. But I did think that the aim of getting new players into old D&D would flounder if they couldn't get the rulebook themselves unless they were willing to compete against collectors for an out-of-print book. This just might solve those problems.ReplyDelete
Personally, I enjoyed the nods to the Chick tract. :-)ReplyDelete
I like the nod to one of gaming history's weirder moments. :)ReplyDelete
And I'm glad this was done. Other than the weapons-mastery rules, I think this is my favorite version of D&D.
I think a full on Jack Chick "Dark Dungeons" game would be genius. "Your character is dead, you don't exist any more. Muhahahaha." And at name level the GM takes you out back and initiates you into his sinister coven. LOL.ReplyDelete
Ah, I remember those days well. Pressure from the local Baptist church actually closed down the D&D club at our school.
Awesome! Thanks for bringing this to my attention.ReplyDelete
That is a really impressive piece of work. Even more impressive is that it polished up some of the problematic areas of the original RC, such as how random events are determined for dominions.ReplyDelete
WOW, that is a THICK book! Its like Basic/Expert D&D with a mix of 2nd ed, 3.0 D&D, Immortal, and Spelljammer - a mix of everything.ReplyDelete
Even if you are an expert role-player and know the gaming genre well, do make it a point to read the introduction to role-playing section - its an interesting read.
And yes, the book makes liberal use of the game character - Black Leaf - form the old Chick tract.
That Chick tract was great - I lifted one of my favorite character's names from it - Black Leaf!ReplyDelete
I've had a pet snake named Black Leaf for many years. I love the title.ReplyDelete
Black Leaf Died for your Sins.ReplyDelete
And Ms. Frost was a hot GM!
(at least I thought so in 1984).
The optional prestige classes that some classes have is a nice touch (druid, chevalier) -- similar to something I've been noodling of late.ReplyDelete
My personal druthers is to see a system with 3e style saves, ascending AC, and a non-d% thief system, but with more throwback sensibilities on skill points, monster design, no feats.. but dark dungeons definitely is something to chew on. I like the idea of appropriating the Chick Tract's name.
This looks great! And I love the title.ReplyDelete
"And Ms. Frost was a hot GM!"


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After being panned for having cramped keyboards and "junky" hardware, netbooks evolved over the past month to include bigger screens, better graphics and larger keyboards. Netbooks will now be able to play full high-definition movies with Lenovo's new IdeaPad S12 netbook. Asustek Computer this month introduced the Eee PC T91, a netbook with a touch screen. Jumping outside Windows, Acer announced plans to put Google's Android on its netbooks, which should provide an Internet-savvy computing experience.
Also see: The Coolest (and Craziest) Tech Gear and Trends From Computex 2009
Lenovo's great graphics game
One of the knocks against netbooks was poor graphics capabilities, but Lenovo has addressed that concern with its newly announced netbook. The IdeaPad S12 netbook has a 12-inch screen that can play full high-resolution movies, thanks to a powerful chip with an Nvidia graphics processor under the hood. The processor is part of an Nvidia chip package called the Ion platform, which couples the GeForce 9400 graphics core with Intel's Atom netbook processor.
"For the first time … users will be able to enjoy brilliant 1080p high-definition video with silky smooth playback," a Lenovo representative said. Strangely enough, Lenovo doesn't offer an optical drive, such as Blu-ray, with the netbook. But users can buy an external Blu-ray drive or download high-definition content from the Internet.
Before bringing a system with Ion graphics to market, Nvidia will first introduce an S12 netbook with Intel's integrated graphics. Those systems will become available in June, with prices starting at US$449. Models with Ion will become available a few months later, and pricing for them wasn't immediately available.
Strong graphics aside, Lenovo has added sundries such as a larger keyboard that make the netbook easier to use. Lenovo claims a six-hour battery life, though it was unclear whether this was for laptops with or without Ion graphics.
Asustek's touch-screen netbook
Only a few netbooks, such as Intel's Classmate Convertible, have touch screens. Now Asustek has joined that exclusive group. Asus finally introduced the Eee PC T91 touch-screen netbook, which was originally announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. The netbook has an 8.9-inch touch-screen on which users can touch up photos or leave handwritten memos using their fingertips.
The netbook is powered by an Intel Z520 processor that runs at 1.33GHz, and it is available with as much as 1GB of memory and 82GB of storage. The T91 weighs about 0.96 kilograms (2.1 pounds) and offers five hours of battery life on a single battery charge. It comes with optional GPS and mobile broadband components. It runs Microsoft's Windows XP OS.
Acer's Android netbook dreams
Acer showed its first Aspire One netbook with the Android operating system at the Computex show in Taiwan this week. The beauty of this operating system, according to Acer, is that it offers users outstanding wireless on the go. Acer conceded that Microsoft's Windows OS will be on a majority of the laptops, but it wants to put Android for the added convenience of users.
So what can users expect with an Android netbook? It's hard to predict, but I'm expecting Android to be a bare-bones OS, much like the version you see on Android smartphones. Users will do most of their tasks, such as word processing, using online applications such as Google Docs.
Top companies including Hewlett-Packard and Dell are already investigating Android for netbooks, so it may well evolve into a OS that competes with Windows. Acer plans to launch its first Aspire One netbooks with Android in the third quarter.
HP's Minis
HP last month launched a bare-bones Mini 110 Mi, which is a netbook that behaves like a smartphone. It has a souped-up interface that provides one-click access to everyday applications such as word processing and a Web browser. The netbook's user interface was developed by HP and runs on the Linux OS. The 110 Mi has a 10.1-inch screen and is priced starting at $279.99. It can accommodate as much as 2GB of memory and 250GB of hard drive storage.
The company also launched Mi's cousin, the Mini 110 XP edition, which comes with Windows XP. It can have as much as 1GB of memory and 160GB of hard drive storage. HP says an optional Broadcom HD video accelerator could become available in July, allowing the laptop to play back full 1080p high-definition content. Pricing for the laptop starts at $329.99
The netbooks weigh about 2.33 pounds and are powered by Intel's Atom N270 or N280 processors, which run at 1.6GHz and 1.66GHz, respectively.
Fujitsu's traditional take
Fujitsu this week launched the M2010 Mini-Note, which has a 10.1-inch screen and comes with the standard components you would find in netbooks, such as integrated webcams. The system can have as much as 1GB of DDR2 memory and 160GB of hard drive storage. The base netbook comes with a three-cell battery that provides as much as two-and-a-half hours of computing, but that can be doubled with an optional six-cell battery, according to the company. It is powered by an Atom N270 processor running at 1.6GHz.
The netbook's price tag of $449 is high, but the company has built-in Bluetooth capabilities and three USB ports, which is unusual for a netbook. However, vendors such as Dell, Asus and Acer offer cheaper netbooks with integrated features such as webcams, which could be a better option for those who don't need Bluetooth or extra USB ports.


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Jim Calhoun to be honored by Connecticut
Although he is no longer the head coach of the Connecticut men's basketball team, Jim Calhoun is still a fixture on the Storrs campus. Calhoun retired prior to the commencements of the 2012-13 season as head coach of Connecticut after leading the Huskies for 26 seasons, and is now in the role of "Special Assistant to the Director of Athletics."
On Sunday, September 22nd, Calhoun will be honored by the school and the state of Connecticut for all of his contributions and notoriety he brought to the Nutmeg State with "Heart of a Champion: A Tribute to Jim Calhoun."
From the press release: The event will pay tribute to Hall of Fame coach Jim Calhoun and his indelible mark on the UConn community and the entire state of Connecticut during his time as men's basketball coach from 1986-2012.
Former players who played for Calhoun during this stretch will be on hand to voice their thoughts and praise of the legendary coach. During his tenure as coach, Calhoun sent nearly 30 players to the NBA, so expect several of these Husky greats to be on hand for the tribute.
Prior to Calhoun's coming to Connecticut, the school had reached just two NCAA Tournaments since 1967, and were hardly contenders from a national perspective. In his 26 seasons at the helm, however, Calhoun led the Huskies to 18 NCAA Tournaments and three National Championships.
You can find Kevin on twitter @KLDoyle11


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COLUMBUS, Ohio – The Columbus Blue Jackets have acquired forward Matthew Ford from the Philadelphia Flyers in exchange for future considerations.
Ford will report to the Blue Jackets' American Hockey League in Springfield, Mass.
Originally selected by Chicago in the eighth round, 256th overall, of the 2004 NHL draft, Ford has 72 goals and 69 assists in 256 career AHL games with Hartford, Lake Erie, Hershey and Adirondack.
The 6-foot-1, 207-pound right winger, a California native who played college hockey at Wisconsin, has four goals and nine assists in 35 AHL games this season.


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LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - New rules in the Oscar documentary process are not going to make things harder for documentary filmmakers, director and AMPAS governor Michael Moore told TheWrap.
Instead, he said, the rules that go into effect this year are going to make what Moore called "a crazy, Byzantine process" more open, more democratic and more transparent -- and they're going to fix a process that has led to decades of snubs, surprises and inexplicable decisions.
"I saw a headline that said documentary filmmakers were fearing the changes," Moore said in a lengthy interview. "We've feared the process for the last 20 years -- this is the elimination of that fear."
And if anybody should be worried about the new rules, it's not the makers of small docs, it's a giant in the doc field, HBO (which he did not single out by name, but which is one clear target of the new rules).
The changes led to some controversy when the New York Times revealed a new requirement that films need to be reviewed in the New York Times or the Los Angeles Times in order to qualify for Oscar consideration.
But Moore, the architect of and prime lobbyist for the new system, described the review rule as a small part of a major overhaul. The main change is the elimination of the committees that have been responsible for nominations for decades.
In its place, the documentary branch will do what most Academy branches do: All members of the branch will vote for the nominations, and all members of the Academy will vote for the final awards.
"Why is it that year after year, so many great documentaries don't even make the shortlist?" Moore asked. "The main problem is committees, and I made it my mission to eliminate those committees."
Others, including TheWrap, have been lobbying for a change to the committee system for years. In fact, Moore said that a 2010 story in TheWrap was a particularly accurate summation of the problems with a process in which volunteers from the branch were assembled into small committees and given a number of films to score on a scale of six to 10.
"It was not a democratic process, and not a transparent process," Moore said. "With some branches, you'd see the nominations and be surprised that this actor got in or that film didn't make it. With our branch, every year it was five or six or seven surprises.
"It's so jarring to think that the Maysles never got an Oscar, D.A. Pennebaker never got one, Michael Apted never got one for the '7 Up' series. And it happened again this year, when Werner Herzog couldn't even make the shortlist."
The changes will also do away with a rule that said members who had a film in the running were not eligible to participate, a regulation that had the potential to knock out a hefty chunk of the electorate when you have a 166-member branch and more than 100 eligible films.
"If 50 people volunteer and you have 100 films to watch, you form 10 committees of five people each," said Moore, who in the past has served on those committees. "And if I saw 'Inside Job' in a theater and loved it but 'Inside Job' is not in the box of 10 movies that I get, there's nothing I can do to help that movie get nominated."
Even worse, he said, the small size of each committee meant that each member's vote is of inordinate importance. "If there's only a five-person committee deciding the fate of those 10 films, one or two low votes can kill the movie."
In fact, former Academy executive director Bruce Davis all but admitted to me that low scores from a small group of members prevented "Hoop Dreams" from receiving a nomination in 1994, even though that film had more scores of 10 than any other documentary in the competition.
In the fall, Moore said he took his concerns before the executive committee of the doc branch. "I made an impassioned plea that we're at a defining moment for our branch," he said. "Let's do it like everybody else does, and let everybody in the branch vote. Let's not allow one or two people to kill the chances for a film."
The new rules, Moore added, will call for filmmakers to submit screeners to all branch members at the end of the quarter during which the film is released.
"I'm guessing it will be about 15 films every three months," he said, "and I think most people will watch most of those films."
Once the entire branch has voted to create a 15-film shortlist and select the five nominees, the final vote will be open to all Academy members, without the current requirement that members must prove they've seen all five nominees in a theater. (The Foreign-Language category retains that rule.)
The rule restricting voting to those who'd seen all five films, he said, reduced the total number of voters in the category to between 200 and 400 out of the 6,000-member Academy. "When I presented this to the Board of Governors in December, I said that we stand up on the Kodak stage every year and say, 'The Academy has selected this film as the best documentary of the year.'
"But that isn't the truth, is it? It isn't the Academy, it's less than 5 percent of the Academy. And I don't think we want to have somebody stand on that stage and say, 'Less than 5 percent of the academy has chosen this film.'"
The executive committee, said Moore, voted unanimously to approve the new rules he'd drawn up. The Board of Governors then followed suit in December, approving rules that were not scheduled to have been publicly disclosed until after this year's Oscar show.
That changed when the New York Times ran its story, which focused on an additional wrinkle that was added to the rules for qualifying: Not only will films need to run for a week in theaters in Manhattan and Los Angeles County, but they'll also need a review in the New York Times or the Los Angeles Times.
The intent of that rule, he said, is simple: to prevent the common practice of television networks quietly playing their docs for a week in out-of-the-way theaters, qualifying them for Oscars before staging a splashy television "premiere."
"Too often, we are having to vote for films that are essentially television documentaries trying to get an Oscar," he said.
"Television has its own award. It's called the Emmy. It's a good award. I like it. I have one. But you don't see movies like 'The King's Speech' win Oscars and then go to TV and qualify for Emmys. In documentaries, some networks have been able to game the system."
Moore declined to single out any specific networks or films, but the culprits are fairly obvious. At the last Emmy Awards, nominees in the nonfiction categories included HBO's "Gasland" and PBS's "The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers," both of which had previously received Oscar nominations.
Three of the 15 films on this year's Documentary Feature shortlist, "The Loving Story," "Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory" and "Sing Your Song," are HBO films. All three received unpublicized one-week runs at Laemmle's Fallbrook 7 theater in West Hills prior to splashy debuts on the cable channel.
Located on the outskirts of the San Fernando Valley, the Fallbrook 7 is one of the most distant Laemmle theaters that still satisfies the requirement of a run in Los Angeles County, and is popular with companies "four-walling" their films for Oscar consideration.
Most of the non-HBO shortlisted docs had their qualifying runs at more visible theaters in Beverly Hills, Santa Monica or West Hollywood.
"I feel bad that theatrical documentary film directors -- Werner Herzog, Steve James, Errol Morris {"Tabloid"], the guys who made 'Senna' and 'Nostalgia for the Light' -- spend years making these films that are intended to be real theatrical experiences," Moore said. "And their potential slots on the shortlist are taken by films that were not truly theatrically released."
Moore is quick to add that he has no problem with documentaries funded by and intended for television if those docs receive true theatrical releases rather than out-of-the-way stealth bookings.
"Some networks, like the History Channel and A&E, are now giving their movies real theatrical runs," he said. "That's great. But don't try to sneak it into theaters when nobody's looking so you can have your big TV premiere. If you do that, it's a TV movie and you should be trying for the Emmys, not the Oscars."
That type of run, he said, is what the New York Times/L.A. Times rule is designed to stop. Because TV networks want the reviews to run when their films are debuting on the air, they do not solicit reviews for the stealth bookings.
The New York Times, he said, was chosen because it has a long-standing policy of reviewing every film that receives a one-week theatrical run in New York. The L.A. Times was added as a first-step fail-safe measure in case the New York Times missed a film.
And the new rules also add an appeals process for filmmakers whose work somehow doesn't get reviewed. "We will side with the filmmaker," Moore promised.
Moore admitted that the new requirement will reduce the number of eligible films, perhaps from 100 down to about 60. (This year's field of 124 is artificially inflated because it covers a 16-month eligibility period.)
And it could deal a severe blow to programs like the International Documentary Association's DocuWeeks, in which more than a dozen films are programmed in rotating one-week blocks specifically to meet Oscar qualifying rules.
Typically, DocuWeeks films do not receive separate reviews in the L.A. or New York Times.
Among the films that qualified that way in 2011 is the shortlisted feature "Semper Fi: Always Faithful." Asked how he felt about potentially knocking that film out of contention, Moore hesitated. "I showed 'Semper Fi' at my festival," he said. "It's a great film."
He paused. "The thing with 'Semper Fi,' I think they're going to be distributed in another month or two. So under the new rules, they could be eligible for next year's Oscars."
Moore said his next priority is to find ways to give small documentaries theatrical distribution, but that he doesn't want the Oscars to be bogged down with "vanity projects that try to game the system by four-walling theaters."
And he adamantly insisted that the new system will not harm smaller films to any significant degree.
"At the documentary branch meeting, we were talking about whether this was going to hurt the smaller film, the independent film," he said. "And Dawn Hudson pointed out that if you look at Oscar stats over the last 20 years, since screeners have been available, that has allowed for the rise of indie films.
"When you open up the process and make it accessible, what happens? 'The Hurt Locker' and 'Slumdog Millionaire' win Best Picture. The smaller films have been helped by a more open, more egalitarian process.
"The decades of a few people deciding have come to a complete end," he said. "I think we have a better chance of 'Hoop Dreams' not happening again."


text:
The first rule for tracking studies is to avoid any changes to the survey methodology. Of course, this principle is only true, if the quality of your research is already satisfactory, as you probably wouldn't want to preserve a poor quality.
Therefore, the second rule is that you should never sacrifice quality for comparability. This can require smaller tweaks to the questionnaire design, but sometimes you would even change the method as a whole.
From our experience, there are three major reasons, why researchers are considering a change of method for their running tracking study.
- Value for Money: During the last years, we have seen massive improvements in the quality of online samples, while online research still remains considerably cheaper than other methods. There may be exceptions, but for many trackers a change to online research will increase the value for money.
- New Technology: The availability of new technology in online research allows us to further improve the quality of our surveys. While the traditional methods can be limiting with regard to multi-media content and interactive question types, online research has almost no limits.
- Better Reach: Finally, it also has become easier to reach specific target groups on the internet, e.g. a younger target group with mobile phones only. This is not only relevant with regards to the costs of fieldwork, but also a matter of representativeness and sample quality.
If you would like to change the method, it can be challenging to preserve the comparability of your data – but it is possible, if you follow some simple rules. In fact, we have helped several clients to change the method of their tracking studies and maintain the comparability of the collected data.
If you want to learn more about it, visit our website.


text:
|Mod Options
|Adding Facebook/Facebook Messenger as a Communication Option Details »
Adding Facebook/Facebook Messenger as a Communication Option
Developer Last Online: Feb 2022
With my forum being a Trading and Buy/Sell Forum, communication is a key and vital for members making deals. This hack is really opening up another mode of communication to allowing my members to communicate.
The hack is adding Facebook Messenger as a communication option to your forum.
NOTE: This does require your members to have a Facebook Account and is using Messenger.
The steps are fairly straight forward, but does require some template and profile hacks as well as image uploads.
1) Download the images and upload them to your forums images/misc directory
1 - Messenger Icon -
2) Need to add a Profile Fields (Admincp->User Profile Fields->Add New User Profile Field)
Note - I added a Profile Group Called PayPal
Field 1 - Facebook/Messager
Name - Facebook/Facebook Messenger
Description - Add your Facebook (Messenger) username to add on your profile
Field Required - No
Editable - Yes
Private, Searchable, Show on Memberlist - No
Rest leave as default (unless you wish to set this)
Make sure that you jot down the field ID numbers!
There are 2 options that you can use to enable this hack.
Option 1 - User Postbit
Go to Styles & templates->Style Manager->Edit Template of the Style you wish to change
Find the postbit or postbit_legacy template (depends which one you are using for your forum) - Doubleclick to Edit
Note - I used postbit_legacy but this should be the same for postbit
Find the following
and below, add the following
Note - Make sure you replace the XX's in the fieldXX with your fieldid from the Profile Field setup
Could look as such this when applied
FYI - You can use the same type of structure to add other items like Twitter, Facebook, etc...
Option 2 - Member Action Dropdown
For this option there are 2 ways you can do this
1) Template Hack
2) Plug-in
You don't need both - either one should work
Template Hack
Go to Styles & templates->Style Manager->Edit Template of the Style you wish to change
Find the memberaction_dropdown - Doubleclick to Edit
Find the following
and below the Ending IF, add the following
When applied, your members will see the following
Thanks to MarkFL for this. If you choose to you a plug-in, this is the code that would need to be added.
Create a plugin hooked at "memberaction_dropdown" with the PHP code:
Again, you only need to use 1 of the 2 methods to tie this into the Memberaction_dropdown.
Again, Test
Lastly, alert your members to the change and bask in the praise of your genius (in your members eyes )
Notes -
1st release on 3 March 2018
Download Now
Only licensed members can download files, Click Here for more information.
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AS a point of note - on the Profile fields, you COULD separate Facebook from Facebook Messenger if you decide this is the best route for your site, you would need to get a Facebook Icon and upload it to your Image folder of your choice.
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Is there a way to do it through whatsapp instead of Facebook Messenger?
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Ferrari became the third team to unveil their 2013 Formula One charger this morning.
The famed Italian squad pulled the covers off of the F138 machine – an effort they hope will take them back to the top of the category.
Despite being ever present at or near the top of the standings, Ferrari have not enjoyed the easiest of paths in recent seasons.
Leading Spanish racer Fernando Alonso has twice come tantalisingly close to the Drivers' crown with the Scuderia – in 2010 and 2012 – only to be denied on both occasions by Red Bull and Sebastian Vettel.
Yet Ferrari have not helped their cause by revealing cars that have too often been a long way behind the curve at season start. Alonso commented prior to Christmas that it may prove difficult to repeat his 2012 performance; such was the intensity of the campaign – an understandable statement after he somehow dragged three wins and ten podiums from the F2012.
Alonso's superb talent, tenacity behind the wheel and driving force within the team has given the Tifosi some occasional cheer, but the need to play catch up with the leading pack is becoming a familiar tale.
The Spaniard has opted out of the opening test at Jerez, with teammate Felipe Massa and recently appointed reserve Pedro de la Rosa taking up testing and simulation duties; however Alonso seems far from worried.
"I will follow the tests with great interest and all the information that comes back from Jerez I will be looking at. In the next few weeks I will certainly be concentrating on preparing for the championship. I was busy in December and January, and up until a week ago we were involved in activities, so, it is right to step back and prepare a bit so I am 100 per cent from Australia to Brazil." He continued "we are lucky in this team to have a real good level of trust between us. We trust each other explicitly. We have an extended team; we are not just one person."
On the other side of the garage, Massa displayed a convincing turn in the second half of the season, following a dire opening segment. The Brazilian has currently notched up ten consecutive points finishes and at times toward the end of the year, was pushing Alonso hard.
Irrespective of his run, this will most likely prove to be Massa's final year with the Scuderia as the Italian team look to the future. Should the equipment be there, it would not be inconceivable for Massa to finally claim that first win since his life-threatening accident in 2009.
However, one cannot help but feel that Ferrari – in one sense – lucked into their runner-up spot in the Constructors' Championship last year.
During a campaign that saw the faster McLaren-Mercedes package repeatedly fail to finish and / or endure operation errors, Ferrari ploughed through races on the back of a stellar reliability record; all the while pulling together a reasonable development programme.
Indeed, Ferrari did not suffer a single mechanical ailment in a Grand Prix throughout the season and the recent appointment of Pedro de la Rosa as reserve and development driver may help steer the team in the right direction.
But last year, Ferrari were not good enough and the harsh glare that shun upon Team Principal Stefano Domenicali and Technical Director Pat Fry may only intensify if they struggle to deliver again.
According to Domenicali, "…the key objective that we must have is of immediately delivering a competitive car to our drivers. Unfortunately in recent years we have at the beginning of the winter unfortunately not been able to be right on top of what we are doing. We have tried to look at our organisation to be much more effective in the preparations over the coming week."
For analysis from people who actually know what they are talking about, check out Autosport, Racecar Engineering, Joe Saward and Kate Walker.
Key Personnel:
Team Principal: Stefano Domenicali
Techical Director: Pat Fry
Chief Designer: Nicholas Tombazis
Operations Director: Mario Almondo
Head of Aerodynamics: Loïc Bigois
Head of Production: Corrado Lanzone
Head of Tyre Development: Hirohide Hamashima
Engine & Electronics Director: Luca Marmorini


text:
For much of the past year, analysts have claimed that a host of political factors are inhibiting hiring—regulation, the fiscal cliff, the sequester, the debt ceiling, the reelection of a socialist.
Powerful forces, indeed.
But there's another force at work—more powerful, more ubiquitous, and arguably more delicious: Doritos Locos Tacos. The neon-orange, meat-filled miracle taco, wrapped in a Nacho Cheese Dorito shell, was Taco Bell's biggest hit of 2012, with 375 million sold, or roughly one million a day. It was largely responsible for the chain's incredible growth, outpacing not just KFC and Pizza Hut, but even McDonald's.
"It has been the biggest launch in Taco Bell history," said Greg Creed, chief executive officer of Taco Bell, which saw same-store sales rise 8 percent in 2012. "Last year, we added 15,000 people to handle the growth."
That's a lot of jobs for one little taco. And it's a sign, however troubling to nutritionists, that U.S. companies can still prosper by pitching new, innovative products to the perpetually pinched American consumer. While its competitors in the fast-food industry have been pushing for growth in developing markets, Taco Bell has been focusing on its own backyard.
Now, the chain is building on its unlikely success with a sequel to the original Doritos Locos Tacos: Cool Ranch Dorito Locos Tacos, which requires little explanation. It launched last week with the slogan, "Collect all two."
For the record, I have tasted and enjoyed Doritos Locos Tacos, possibly due to Proustian effects. (In my Midwestern youth, Taco Bell was Mexican food. And Creed told me that Michigan, for some reason, remains a big state for the chain.) But how can it—and Taco Bell—be succeeding in a nation that is growing more sophisticated about food by the day?
Creed says the Locos Tacos strategy is meant to cater to the chain's base, young people (men mostly) who regard cheap fast food as fuel. But the company is simultaneously trying to be "better and more relevant." Better means giving existing power users—young dudes, essentially—more reason to come in. And the company's website, with its videos and social-media feeds, is clearly designed to appeal to a younger demographic.
As for relevant? That means drawing in new users—women, say, or older people, or the health-conscious. For that, the strategy has been to go a little more upscale and try to capture some of the market that Chipotle and other companies have carved out—or what marketers call "going up the value chain."
The day I interviewed Creed, the radio ads I heard for Taco Bell on my adult contemporary station (that would be music that old people like myself listen to —the best of the 1980s, 1990s, and today) in Fairfield County, weren't for the Dorito Locos Tacos. Rather, they featured Lorena Garcia, the Venezuela-born Miami chef and restaurateur, talking about the quality of products in the new, more expensive line of Cantina Bell products she has helped develop.
The idea seems to be borrow some of the thunder of Chipotle and Baja Fresh, which have redefined quick Mexican food as healthier and having more vegetables. Thus, Taco Bell's bowl (carb-free!), has "citrus-herb marinated chicken, flavorful black beans, guacamole made from real Hass avocados, roasted corn & pepper salsa, a creamy cilantro dressing, and freshly prepared pico de gallo, all served on a bed of premium Latin rice." It costs about $5, compared to $8 or more for a burrito bowl from Chipotle.
"We've seen more women come in, and more people over 35," Creed said.
In the meantime, Taco Bell is relying on its alliance with Frito-Lay for growth. "We believe we can add 2,000 new restaurants in the next 10 years, because what we have is proprietary and exclusive. Nobody else can make a Cool Ranch Doritos taco. And that's just in the U.S.," says Creed.
And therein lies one big difference between Taco Bell and its corporate siblings. Creed is an Australian veteran of Unilever. He joined Yum Brands, parent company of Taco Bell, KFC, and Pizza Hut, in 2001 and he became CEO in early 2011.
An Australian who sells Mexican food to Americans: This is how globalization is lived today.
American fast-food concepts have proven to be enormously successful overseas, and the stocks of fast-food companies are in large measure bets on people in developing markets picking up tastes for burgers, shakes, and pizzas. McDonald's gets about two thirds of its sales from overseas. Yum Brands is often described as a Chinese restaurant company that happens to be based in Kentucky; most of the KFCs and Pizza Huts open today are now outside the U.S., with thousands of units alone in China.
In contrast, Taco Bell is surprisingly domesticated. "We only have about 280 restaurants outside the U.S., and they are largely in Canada," Creed said. There are none in Mexico (understandable). But south of south of the border, Taco Bell is popular (less understandable). "We have a pretty good presence in Central America," Creed said. There are three in India—roughly one for every 400 million Indians. Why hasn't Taco Bell gone more global? Creed says KFC and Pizza Hut were bigger to begin with, and the food they sell is more familiar to people in China and the Philippines than Taco Bell's. "If you go to Asia, how many cows do you see?" Creed asked.
Of course, one of the problems with expanding rapidly overseas is dealing with quality issues posed by foreign supply chains. Yum Brands's KFC has seen its sales suffer in the wake of concerns about the safety of chicken production in China. And Europe's horsemeat scandal has led to an inadvertent innovation at Taco Bell: caballo burritos. "It's a Europe issue," said Creed. But since the supply chains in Europe and U.S. are separate, the frat boys in Boulder, Colorado pounding a half-dozen Cool Ranch Dorito Locos Tacos should have nothing to fear.
Food quality is just one challenge the fast-food industry faces. The business is labor intensive, the health police are growing in number and influence, and the Obama administration, having pushed a new health-care policy, is now agitating for a higher minimum wage. Creed says his company takes all the changes in stride, which is easier to do when you're growing. "Obamacare doesn't come into effect until 2014, and we've got a good handle on what we think this health-care bill will cost per restaurant," he said.
Nor does he believe it will force the company to jettison full-time workers. "We know that the productivity of our full-time employees exceeds that of our part-time workers." Also, Creed views issues like wages and benefits through another lens. "We've done some research. The top thing that customers look at is how people treat their employees. They'll judge us not just on quality of food, but on how we treat our team members."
In a country that is raising a new generation of food snobs, asking to be judged on labor relations rather than taste may be a smart long-term move for restaurant chains that specialize in low-brow fare. In the meantime, Taco Bell's sales are surging on the strength of a Dorito taco. What a country.


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Mary Roberts Rinehart
Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876-1958)
Mary Ella Roberts was born on August 12, 1876 near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her parents, Tom and Cornelia were still living in his mother's house with five other family members. Shortly after her sister Olive was born, they moved into a home of their own just down the street.
At fifteen, her career was foreshadowed when she had three short stories published in a local magazine for a dollar each. When she was seventeen, she applied to nursing school and also met a young doctor by the name of Stanley Marshall Rinehart. They married when she was nineteen.
Mary found herself in the role of homemaker and a baby boy was soon on the way. Stanley Jr. was born in 1897. Her second son, Alan, arrived in 1900 and her third son, Ted, was born in 1902. One of the side effects of her pregnancies was constant nausea and she became very weak. Dr. Rinehart's half-brother, head of the hospital where she had been a nurse decided to try to feed her broiled lobster, bits at a time. By miracle this stayed down. This experience with lobsters served her well when she came to Bar Harbor.
She had always loved to write and had many short stories published in magazines but she was too busy to do any serious writings. However, when the Rineharts suffered a $12,000.00 loss in the stock market, Mary began writing more to help out financially.
Mary had also tried at writing plays. A few were Broadway hits, like Seven Days and The Bat. There were a few others that just did not make it.
World War I affected Mary's life tremendously. She consented to go to England as a war correspondent for the Saturday Evening Post in January of 1915. England was full of journalists and Mary wanted to get to the front but her contacts told her there was nothing they could do to help. She then convinced the Belgian Red Cross to give her the proper credentials she needed and she promised to make the American people aware of the horrible conditions at the Belgian front.
In 1921, her husband, Stanley Rinehart was appointed as a medical consultant to the Veteran's Bureau, so, they moved to Washington D.C.. They were soon caught up in the social and political scenes. Dr. Rinehart having grown frustrated with his government job and having arthritis which kept him from practicing surgery, resigned to open a private practice specializing in tuberculosis.
Mary's latest book at the time, Lost Ecstasy, a romance, was very successful. Hollywood paid her $15,000.00 for the movie rights. I Take This Woman, starring Gary Cooper and Carole Lombard was released in 1931.
Stanley Jr. and Ted, along with a friend John Farrar, started their own publishing company in 1929 and Mary Roberts Rinehart was one of their first authors.
Dr. Rinehart handled the finances since Mary had a tendency to spend easily. She had invested in some ventures unwisely and the Crash of 1929 had hit them hard. Stanley blamed himself and Mary thought this aided in his declining health over the next few years. Dr. Rinehart died in 1932 with his family by his side.
Mary continued to live in their Washington home, alone except for a few servants. One of these was Reyes, the Filipino cook, who always considered Dr. Rinehart his boss and was somewhat uneasy about taking orders from a woman-this attitude was to have bizarre consequences later. In 1934 Mary suffered a heart attack. This left her heart weak and she was mostly unable to climb stairs and get around her big house. She also missed the rest of the family. In 1935, she moved to an apartment in New York City.
The Rineharts had been spending their summers at a ranch out west or vacationing in Florida or renting beach houses on the northeast coast. She was looking for a new summer place.
She first came to Bar Harbor in 1935 and rented a cottage attached to one of the hotels. In 1936, she rented a house and in 1937 decided to buy Farview. This purchase gave Mary a new interest. Bar Harbor in 1937 was changing from the carefree life of earlier days. The beautiful sea, the mountains, and big cottages were still there but a lot of the large homes were for sale. Her 1945 book, The Yellow Room was in a Bar Harbor-like setting.
In the summer of 1938 Mary had a lot of construction and landscaping done. The house was built around an open courtyard with a reflecting fish pond. High on a hill, the view of the bay was breathtaking and reminded Mary of an aerie. She later renamed it Eaglesgate.
She moved into the house in 1939. She furnished it in light pastel colors and colorful upholstery. She had the architect put in a low-silled picture window in her bedroom so she could lie in bed and still see the water and islands.
In 1938, Mary finished her fortieth book, The Wall, set in a disguised Bar Harbor filled with intrigue, murders and a love story. She considered this one of her best novels. The Saturday Evening Post agreed and paid her $65,000.00 for the serial rights. She had just finished it when, unfortunately, she had her most severe heart attack, putting her on oxygen for a time and nitroglycerine for the rest of her life.
Mary, now in her mid-sixties was slowing down. She had just four books, along with some short stories and magazine articles during the war years of 1940-46.
Her summers in Bar Harbor were now filled with friends, dinner parties and social events as her health improved. Her son Alan was recovering from pneumonia one year and the two of them would go sit in the sun at the top of Cadillac Mountain.
The absence of her husband's handling of the finances were felt from time to time and at one point even put Farview up for sale. She could not let go of any of her servants. Farview was large and it was hard to find maids. She then hired a butler in the summer of 1947 and her Filipino cook, Reyes, was not happy about it. He had been with the Rineharts for 25 years and he was always highly praised for his skills.
One day, Reyes, told Mary he was leaving. She was used to hearing this from him and paid it no mind. The next day, Mary found his wife, Peggy, a maid, crying. Peggy said Reyes had been drinking the night before and they had a fight when she refused to leave with him. Mary was reading in the library before lunch when Reyes came in. They spoke a few words when he pulled a gun from his pants pocket and pulled the trigger within point blank range of her face. Luckily, the gun misfired. He tried again and Mary leapt to her feet and ran. She entered the kitchen, Peggy, and Theodore Falkenstrom, her chauffeur, saw what was happening. Ted tackled the cook and grabbed the gun. Peggy ran to get the breathless Mary a nitroglycerine tablet and Ted went and threw the gun over a garden wall. The butler ran down the street to get help thinking he was the intended victim. As Mary was in the hall on her way to phone the police, she saw a young man standing outside the door. The boy said he was looking for a job as a gardener's assistant.
"Young man," Mary said, "you'll have to come back later. There is a man here trying to kill me." The boy never returned.
As Mary stood at the phone, again in the library, Reyes came up behind her wielding a long carving knife in each hand. Ted and the gardener came running in and again knocked him down. Peggy sat on his chest, and Ted held his arms getting cut by the flailing knives. Finally, the police arrived and took Reyes away.
Mary's son Alan flew up that night to be with his mother. The next morning he gave her the news that Reyes had hung himself in his jail cell. A Catholic priest allowed him to be buried in sacred ground since he was "Plainly of unsound mind." Mary had no anger against the long-time cook and paid for his funeral.
After all this, there was still more in store for Mary Roberts Rinehart and the town of Bar Harbor. The summer was very hot and dry, and in October a small grass fire turned into an inferno. More than 17,000 acres and almost 250 houses burnt including Mary's Farview.
She wrote several more books, including a private memoir for her children before she succumbed to a final heart attack in 1958.
While she lived in Bar Harbor the latter part of her life, her presence there has never left. Farview is located on Eden Street where the Wonder View Inn is now located. Still, the view from the hilltop is breathtaking and the grounds beautiful.


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RIP Lincoln Henderson
Master Distiller Lincoln Henderson, Kentucky bourbon innovator and the man behind Angel's Envy, passed away late last evening. He was 75.
From the company's press release:
One of the original pioneers of the premium bourbon and whiskey categories in the U.S. and an inaugural member of the Kentucky Bourbon Hall of Fame, Lincoln spent his lifetime perfecting his craft and creating fine spirits.
He began serious study of bourbon as an undergrad in Oklahoma, ultimately graduating with a BS in Chemistry from the University of Louisville, and an MBA from Webster University. During his nearly 40-year tenure as Master Distiller at Brown-Forman Corporation, he honed his skills while developing brands such as Woodford Reserve, Jack Daniels's "Gentleman Jack" and Jack Daniel's Single Barrel. In recognition of his work, he was awarded Malt Advocate's Lifetime Achievement Award.
Lincoln came out of retirement in 2006 to create the world's finest bourbon on his own terms – with a simple desire to enjoy the art of making whiskey. He chose to return to the original way of producing whiskey – making decisions based on the specific taste profile he wanted to achieve – so that every batch was a natural expression of the distiller's craft. He believed that creating the best bourbons took equal parts science, art and luck and was known for experimenting with new spirits and methods, such as finishing whiskey in barrels formerly used for sherry, rum, tequila, brandy — and port.
The result was Angel's Envy, the culmination of his storied career, which Wine Enthusiast Magazine awarded 98 points – the highest-ever rating for a bourbon. The small batch artisan bourbon, which is finished in hand-selected port casks, has helped to revolutionize the industry and make bourbon more approachable. Lincoln continued to innovate with the recent release of Angel's Envy Cask Strength and Angel's Envy Rye. Each Expression exhibits his passion for experimenting outside of conventional norms and producing unique whiskey steeped in tradition, but finished with a twist. Angel's Envy Cask Strength was named the "best spirit in the world" on Paul Pacult's Top Spirits List in the June 2013 edition of Spirit Journal.
Lincoln will be remembered as an innovator and a raging perfectionist who helped to reinvent the category and challenged the established rules of bourbon. Known for his peculiar sense of humor and quick wit, he enjoyed storytelling, making appearances and giving talks to bourbon aficionados.
"I lost my Dad and best friend today, but I am blessed and grateful that together we created a brand that we're both incredibly proud of," said Wes Henderson, Chief Operating Officer, Angel's Envy. "Dad is with the angels now, but we will proudly carry on his legacy and keep his memory alive."
Our condolences go out to the Henderson family.


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Eye exam is free. Book today!
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This site documents the very first collaboration between OCADU in Toronto, Canada and TAMK in Tampere, Finland. The International Art Collaborations network has grown since this 2010 experiment into a ongoing program between global art universities. A current description of what we are engaged in can be found at www.INTACnet.ca .
In the fall semester of 2010, students from OCAD University and Tampere University of Applied Sciences (TAMK) connected through a series of video conferences to discuss work that hinged the borders of the evolving form of documentary. As a result, each student produced a body of work relevant to the world around them, resulting in a broad array spanning from the sweeping aspects of a life unreal, to the minuscule moments on the smallest patch of the human body.
To get you started, try clicking on the various works titled to the menu on your right.
Feel free to browse through the work, and leave comments at your leisure!


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American inventors have created some of the most important technological breakthroughs in the history of humankind. The telegraph, light bulb, artificial heart and sewing machine all were products of American minds. Americans also created box telephones, computers, the Internet, airplanes and the polio vaccine.
In 1987, the American Marketing Association started the Edison Awards to encourage and recognize inventors. Each year, the Edison Awards honor select individuals and organizations for their contributions to product innovation and economic development.
There are three types of Edison Awards. They include awards for achievement, best products and ecologically-sustainable business ideas.
The Edison Achievement Award goes to a business executive who stresses progress in product innovations, and the Green Award is presented to organizations that stress ecologically sound products. These companies recognize the importance of sustainable products and manufacturing processes.
The Edison Best New Product Award is self-explanatory, and is awarded in several categories, including science and medical, electronics and medical, energy and sustainability, technology, transportation and industrial design. Other categories include lifestyle and social impact, living and working environments, media and communications, and consumer packaged goods.
Some of the most recognizable winners of the 2009 Edison Awards include the Apple iPhone, Wii Fit and MacBook Air. In the transportation category, Trek scored with its Madone 5.2 bicycle. In science and medical, the OmniPod insulin delivery system took the gold.
Not many products win Edison Awards, so these prizes go only to individuals and companies with significant accomplishments. Keep reading to see 10 products, listed in no particular order, that were nominated for the 2010 Edison Awards.


text:
Maps help us understand our physical world.
They can locate and describe places, provide a sense of direction, or represent boundaries between nations or neighbors.
This map, printed in the Netherlands, has an unusual orientation with western areas at the top of the map and the northern frontier to the side.
Item 1 of 46


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Topic Overview
What is cholecystitis?
Cholecystitis is inflammation of the gallbladder, a small organ near the liver that plays a part in digesting food. Normally, fluid called bile passes out of the gallbladder on its way to the small intestine. If the flow of bile is blocked, it builds up inside the gallbladder, causing swelling, pain, and possible infection.
What causes cholecystitis?
A gallstone stuck in the cystic duct, a tube that carries bile from the gallbladder, is most often the cause of sudden (acute) cholecystitis. The gallstone blocks fluid from passing out of the gallbladder. This results in an irritated and swollen gallbladder. Infection or trauma, such as an injury from a car accident, can also cause cholecystitis.
Acute acalculous cholecystitis, though rare, is most often seen in critically ill people in hospital intensive care units. In these cases, there are no gallstones. Complications from another severe illness, such as HIV or diabetes, cause the swelling.
Long-term (chronic) cholecystitis is another form of cholecystitis. It occurs when the gallbladder remains swollen over time, causing the walls of the gallbladder to become thick and hard.
What are the symptoms?
The most common symptom of cholecystitis is pain in your upper right abdomen that can sometimes move around to your back or right shoulder blade. Other symptoms include:
- Nausea or vomiting.
- Tenderness in the right abdomen.
- Fever.
- Pain that gets worse during a deep breath.
- Pain for more than 6 hours, particularly after meals.
Older people may not have fever or pain. Their only symptom may be a tender area in the abdomen.
How is cholecystitis diagnosed?
Diagnosing cholecystitis starts when you describe your symptoms to your doctor. Next is a physical exam. Your doctor will carefully feel your right upper abdomen to look for tenderness. You may have blood drawn and an ultrasound, a test that uses sound waves to create a picture of your gallbladder. Ultrasound may show gallstones, thickening of the gallbladder wall, extra fluid, and other signs of cholecystitis. This test also allows doctors to check the size and shape of your gallbladder.
You could also have a gallbladder scan, a nuclear scanning test that checks how well your gallbladder is working. It can also help find blockage in the tubes (bile ducts) that lead from the liver to the gallbladder and small intestine (duodenum).
How is it treated?
Treatment for cholecystitis will depend on your symptoms and your general health. People who have gallstones but don't have any symptoms may need no treatment. For mild cases, treatment includes bowel rest, fluids and antibiotics given through a vein, and pain medicine.
The main treatment for acute cholecystitis is surgery to remove the gallbladder (cholecystectomy). Often this surgery can be done through small incisions in the abdomen (laparoscopic cholecystectomy), but sometimes it requires a more extensive operation. Your doctor may try to reduce swelling and irritation in the gallbladder before removing it. Sometimes acute cholecystitis is caused by one or more gallstones getting stuck in the main tube leading to the intestine, called the common bile duct. Treatment may involve an endoscopic procedure (endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography, or ERCP) to remove the stones in the common bile duct before the gallbladder is removed.
In rare cases of chronic cholecystitis, you may also receive medicine that dissolves gallstones over a period of time.
Related Information
Other Works Consulted
- Friedman LS (2012). Liver, biliary tract, and pancreas disorders. In SJ McPhee, MA Papadakis, eds., 2012 Current Medical Diagnosis and Treatment, 51st ed., pp. 644–698. New York: McGraw-Hill.
- Halpin V (2014). Acute cholecystitis. BMJ Clinical Evidence. http://clinicalevidence.bmj.com/x/systematic-review/0411/overview.html. Accessed October 2, 2014.
Current as of: November 7, 2018
Author: Healthwise Staff
Medical Review:E. Gregory Thompson, MD – Internal Medicine & Adam Husney, MD – Family Medicine & Kathleen Romito, MD – Family Medicine & Arvydas D. Vanagunas, MD, FACP, FACG – Gastroenterology
Topic Contents
This information does not replace the advice of a doctor. Healthwise, Incorporated, disclaims any warranty or liability for your use of this information. Your use of this information means that you agree to the Terms of Use. Learn how we develop our content.


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HESI Medical Assisting Hospital-Based Practice Test - Classic Version, 1st Edition
HESI Practice Test
HESI Medical Assisting Hospital-Based Practice Tests familiarize you with standardized tests and assesses your understanding of key concepts through application-level licensure or certification exam-style questions. Easily identify the areas with which you struggle before you take your exam and direct your study efforts to help ensure success.
Duration for access to this product, which may be at the discretion of your institution, is up to 36 months. Elsevier reserves the right to restrict or remove access due to changes in product portfolio or other market conditions.
- Detailed rationales for each question reinforce your understanding of key concepts and help you develop sound clinical reasoning skills.
- Self-study practice quizzes and exams give you unlimited opportunities to test your comprehension and include both comprehensive and content-specific assessments.
- Convenient, web-based platform allows you to study and assess your knowledge anywhere, anytime.


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|Photo: ABC
In "When You're Tired of Breaking Other Hearts," Katie Couric guest stars as herself when Rayna appears on the "Katie" show, trying to set the record straight about her marriage and balancing her career with motherhood. Juliette attempts to take her album launch into her own hands but it backfires when she tweets out a surprise concert location. Maddie lies to Teddy about her whereabouts -- with dangerous consequences -- and Deacon is drawn to his dog's pretty new veterinarian, Stacey.
Meanwhile Avery tries to control his music destiny by flouting Dominic and Marilyn, and things are awkward between Scarlett and Gunnar as he continues to process his brother's death..
Watch a sneak peek below:
Hayden Panettiere channels her character Juliette Barnes in this full-length performance of the iconic song "Fame."
NASHVILLE stars Connie Britton as Rayna Jaymes, Hayden Panettiere as Juliette Barnes, Clare Bowen as Scarlett O'Connor, Eric Close as Teddy Conrad, Charles Esten as Deacon Claybourne, Jonathan Jackson as Avery Barkley, Sam Palladio as Gunnar Scott, Robert Ray Wisdom as Coleman Carlisle and Powers Boothe as Lamar Wyatt.
Guest starring Katie Couric as herself, Kimberly Williams-Paisley as Peggy Kenter, Susan Misner as Stacey, Wyclef Jean as Dominic King, Sylvia Jeffries as Jolene, Jay Hernandez as Dante Rivas, Maisy Stella as Daphne, Lennon Stella as Maddie, David Alford as Bucky, Kourtney Hansen as Emily, Rya Kihlstedt as Marilyn Rhodes, Todd Truley as Marshall Evans and Aerica D'Amaro as Lindsay.
Official Show Handle: @Nashville_ABC
Guest Cast on Twitter:
Katie Couric @katiecouric
Cast on Twitter:
Jonathan Jackson @JonathanJackson
Lennon & Maisy Stella @lennonandmaisy
Clare Bowen @clarembee
Robert Wisdom @RobertRayWisdom
Sam Palladio @SamPalladio
Hayden Panettiere @haydenpanettier
Eric Close @EricRClose
Judith Hoag @heyjude629


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We took an unobvious approach to starting a payments company, building a platform from scratch. Now, Adyen serves the world's brightest companies like Facebook, Uber, L'Oreal, Casper, Bonobos, and Spotify.
Product Designer
We are seeking Product Designers who will push boundaries, help Adyen elevate our design standards and make a strong impact on product execution and quality. Adyen has traditionally been a developer-centric company, but this has been changing since 2013. Nowadays, the Adyen Design team is full of passionate and extraordinary designers. We value our merchants and team above anything else. Acting as a satellite team within the company, we're on an active mission to raise the bar of fintech product experiences through clever, delightful solutions that are focused around the needs of our (over) 5000 merchants and their millions of shoppers. Payment products generally aren't easy. But at Adyen, it's our priority to make them so and we feel deeply responsible for that.
The Platform and Financial Services Solution
We're building a single platform for embedded payments, finance and compliance. Our focus is currently in filling the gap in the market by providing platforms and marketplaces capital, issuing and bank accounts. With this team, you'll help shape the product vision as well as focus on a variety of these banking products.
What you'll do
This is you
Our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion commitments
Our unobvious approach is a product of our diverse perspectives. This diversity of backgrounds, cultures, and perspectives is essential in helping us maintain our momentum. Our business and technical challenges are unique, we need as many different voices as possible to join us in solving them - voices like yours. So no matter where you're from, who you love, or what you believe in, we welcome you to be your true self at Adyen.
Studies show that women and members of underrepresented communities apply for jobs only if they meet 100% of the qualifications. Sounds like you? If so, Adyen encourages you to reconsider and apply. We look forward to your application.
What's next?
Ensuring a smooth and enjoyable candidate experience is critical for us. We aim to get back to you regarding your application within 5 business days. Our interview process tends to take between 3 or 4 weeks to complete. Don't be afraid to let us know if you need more flexibility.
If you still think this is not the right role for you, please check our UX Researcher or UX Writer roles.How about sharing it with a friend or colleague who might be interested?


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The University of Manitoba is Western Canada's first university, founded on February 28, 1877 just seven years after the province of Manitoba and only four years after the City of Winnipeg.
At the time, Manitoba was a small postage stamp province, Winnipeg was hardly more than a town and the University of Manitoba was a university in name only, created to confer degrees on students graduating from its three founding colleges – St. Boniface College, St. John's College, and Manitoba College.
But from the beginning the University of Manitoba was pushing the boundaries of what a university should be. Alexander Kennedy Isbister, whose maternal grandmother was Cree, came to appreciate the power of education when he was earning his own degrees in Great Britain. When Isbister died in 1883 he left a legacy to the University of Manitoba: to provide scholarships and prizes based on merit to students who wished to attend the University of Manitoba. And it was Isbister's wish that the awards be made to people regardless of sex, race, creed, language, or nationality. Even then, the University of Manitoba took the view that education should be accessible to all people. Jessie Holmes put the truth to that belief in 1886 becoming the university's first female student and in 1889 its first female graduate.
Meanwhile, the family of colleges continued to grow, reflecting a diversity of skills, beliefs and locations throughout the province. In 1882 the Manitoba Medical College became a part of the University. It was followed by:
Methodist Church's Wesley College in 1888
Manitoba College of Pharmacy in 1902
Manitoba Agriculture College in 1906
St. Paul's College in 1931
Brandon College in 1938
St. Andrew's College, established to train the ministry for the Ukrainian Greek Orthodox Church, became an affiliated College in 1981. The professional schools went on to become faculties within the university.
In 1967 United College, which had been formed by the merging of Wesley College and Manitoba College, became the University of Winnipeg, and Brandon College became Brandon University. St. John's College, St. Paul's College, and St. Andrew's College maintain their affiliation with the university and are housed on the Fort Garry campus. Collège universitaire de St. Boniface retains its affiliated relationship with the University of Manitoba while operating independently on its own campus on Cathedral Ave. in St. Boniface.
The first faculty of the U of M, 1904. From left to right, Matthew Parker, Gordon Bell, A.H.R. Buller, Frank Allen, Swale Vincent, and R.R. Cochrance.
At the turn of the 20th century it was recognized that the University of Manitoba needed to be both a degree granting and teaching university and to do so it would need to have its own faculty members and facilities. To that end a science building was built on Broadway, where Memorial Park is now located, in 1901. In 1904 the university hired its first dedicated faculty, to teach in the newly created Faculty of Science. The new faculty members were supported by a gift from Lord Strathcona who, like Isbister, was willing to step forward and support something he believed in. Affectionately known as the university's original six, the new science professors included A.H.R. Buller, botany and geology, Frank Allen, physics and mineralogy, M.A. Parker, chemistry, R. R. Cochrane, mathematics, Swale Vincent, physiology, and Gordon Bell, bacteriology. The new faculty members took their positions seriously, establishing public lectures to build links between the university and the community.
The university's early history was alive with discussion about how teaching should be carried out in the province and how the workload should be divided between the university and its member colleges. But the trend was towards the university shouldering more of the teaching duties and the debate quickly turned to where a full university campus should be located.
An expanded location on Broadway and a site south of Assiniboine Park – now the home of the Canadian Mennonite University – were both held up as possible homes for a full grown University of Manitoba.
In the end, the Fort Garry site of the Manitoba Agricultural College was selected to house the university. Construction of the first buildings on the Fort Garry campus began in 1911 and the first buildings, Tache Hall, the Administration Building, and the Home Economics Building – now the Human Ecology Building – opened in 1912. The history of the Fort Garry campus is evident on the Administration Building which is adorned with the University of Manitoba's name on its western side and the Manitoba Agricultural College's name on the eastern side.
The transition to the Fort Garry campus and debate over where the University of Manitoba should be located would continue for some time and until 1950 the university was split with junior students studying at the Broadway campus and senior students studying in Fort Garry.
The University of Manitoba's second home, the Bannatyne campus, houses the faculties of Medicine, Dentistry and the Schools of Dental hygiene and Medical Rehabilitation. The Bannatyne campus is historic in its own right as the home of the Manitoba Medical College. In 2008, the Faculty of Pharmacy joined the Bannatyne campus.
While students had always been active in sports and social activities, the post First World War period also marked a boom in student organization with the creation in April 1919, of the University of Manitoba Student's Union and in 1921 the creation of the University of Manitoba Alumni Association.
During the First and Second World Wars, the University of Manitoba served as a training ground for troops and watched some of its best and brightest to go off and fight for their country. A sacrifice that was recognized after the First World War with the planting of the Avenue of Elms stretching from the Administration Building to Pembina Highway along Chancellor Matheson Drive. Following the Second World War the university also played a critical role in helping troops complete their education and re-enter civilian life.
The change in university life was substantial, enrolment reached 6,488 in 1946-1947 and then soared in the post war boom with many families sending their children to university for the first time. The Fort Garry campus saw significant growth in the 1960s to meet the demands of the baby boom generation of students with the addition of University College, University Centre and new teaching facilities.
Of course the Fort Garry site has faced challenges over the years. During the 1950 flood the campus grounds were inundated with water, forcing university employees to paddle between buildings in an effort to ensure that library materials and research equipment was not damaged in the flood. The 1950 flood would leave its mark on the graduating class of 1950, which had to miss its convocation as members took up the fight against the rising waters. At its 25th class reunion that loss was rectified with a mock convocation and in 2000 then-Chancellor Arthur Mauro recognized the alumni as the 'flood class.'
In 1999 the university launched Smartpark, a 100-acre research and technology park at the University of Manitoba's Fort Garry Campus. The park now hosts over 1,000 employees, many who are co-op students and graduates of the university. Smartpark serves as a bridge between basic research and industry, facilitating collaboration between the university and more than 30 research-oriented companies now residing in the park.
Building on Strengths: Campaign for the University of Manitoba, completed in 2004, raised $237 million to bolster student supports at the university and has had a tangible impact on the campus, helping create the Engineering and Information Technology Centre and supporting redevelopment of buildings across the campus.
In 2007 the university acquired the 120-acre Southwood Golf Course property directly adjacent to the Fort Garry Campus. The new land will provide the university with room to grow in the future and will help it create a true university community with increased housing for students and faculty.
In 2008 the university announced Project Domino, a $100 million project which will directly impact at least 13 faculties and departments at the university over the next five years. But the watch-word of Project Domino is conservation rather than construction. So, there will only be one new building constructed during the project – a new 350-bed residence on the south side of campus. The rest of Project Domino will focus on redeveloping old buildings for new tasks. The university's historic Tache Hall, for example, will be redeveloped as a home for the Marcel A. Desautels Faculty of Music and the School of Art. Once Music and Art move into Taché Hall their former buildings will be redeveloped to house the Faculty of Graduate Studies and International House … and so the dominos will continue to fall creating a revitalized campus.
University of Manitoba Archives & Special Collections
The collection consists of one object, a Manitoba Agricultural College Pennant.
No further accruals are expected.
This item was donated to the University of Manitoba Archives & Special Collections by Edmund Gill Shaw's son, Gill Shaw, in 2002. This Manitoba Agricultural College pennant belonged to Edmund Gill Shaw who attended the Manitoba Agricultural College in 1919. Edmund Gill Shaw had to leave the college after one year; he farmed in the Cardale district until the 1960s and remained actively involved in farming until his death.
[University of Manitoba Memorabilia Collections](http://umanitoba.ca/libraries/units/archives/collections/private_s-z.html)
There are no restrictions on this material.


text:
I've written a program in Python with GDAL bindings that generates a single band georeferenced GeoTIFF as output. From there I use the GDAL commandline tool
gdaldem to colorize that image to highlight certain classes of pixels. I'd like to also lay it on top of a basemap DEM as final output but I need to do this procedurally in my program as opposed to load both layers into a GIS tool and blend from there.
Are there any GDAL command line utilities I can use to blend two GeoTIFFs together and output a pretty png?
Here's a specific example with some random datasets:
DEM Pixels
Pixels + DEM Blended (This is what I want to do with command line tools)
I ended up using the
blend function from PIL like this:
basemap_image = Image.open('basemap.png').convert('RGBA')
overlay_image = Image.open('overlay.png').convert('RGBA')
combined = Image.blend(basemap_image, overlay_image, 0.8)


text:
Golden Isles Olive Oil
Callie's Biscuits & Southern Traditions
Callie's Biscuits & Southern Traditions
The popular owner-entrepreneur of Callie's Biscuits reveals her modern approach to traditional Southern cooking, sharing charming stories and fabulous, accessible recipes in a Southern-style Make the Bread, Buy the Butter.
Carrie Morey started her company, Callie's Charleston Biscuits, with a simple goal: She wanted to make her mother Callie's delicious biscuits—unbelievably tender, buttery creations—accessible across the country. Carrie's handmade biscuits combine unique, brilliant flavors—sharp cheddar with fresh chives, cracked black pepper with cream cheese and green onions, and cinnamon biscuits so buttery they melt in your mouth. The biscuits are an iconic Southern staple, but they are just the beginning.
Now Carrie Morey shares her modern approach to traditional Southern cooking in more than one hundred recipes that pair classic Lowcountry fare with surprising twists, for incredible results. Carrie guides you through the foundational techniques of Southern cooking to reveal how she developed her new takes on favorite heritage dishes and how to take the fuss and huge time investment out of traditional preparations. She shares skillet recipes passed down through generations, including Lemon Zest Cast-Iron Fried Shrimp, Macaroni Pie, and Cast-Iron Herb Lamb Chops. She gives roasting and slow-cooking techniques for Beef Stew with Herbed Sour Cream, Spicy Black-Eyed Pea Salad, and Roasted Pimento Cheese Chicken. Her DILLicious Cucumber Sandwiches, BBQ Chicken Salad Biscuits, Fiery Pimento Cheese Deviled Eggs, and Summer Crab Salad will make any picnic or casual get-together a true Southern affair. And her desserts are to die for: Mama's Sour Cream Banana Pudding, Alex's Chocolate Chess Pie (so good that Carrie credits the pie for sparking her and her husband's whirlwind romance), and Blueberry and Peach Cobbler finish your meal on the perfect sweet note.
Carrie also shares her family stories behind each recipe—growing up in Charleston, learning to cook from great Southern matriarchs, and founding and growing her business. Fill your kitchen with the comforting aroma of home-cooked goodness with Callie's Biscuits and Southern Traditions.


text:
Tk_BackgroundError - report Tcl error that occurred in background processing
#include <tk.h>
Interpreter in which the error occurred.
This procedure is typically invoked when a Tcl error occurs during ``background processing'' such as executing a Tcl command in response to a button press or menu entry invocation. When such an error occurs, the error condition is reported to Tk or to a widget or some other C code, and there is not usually any obvious way for that code to report the error to the user. In these cases the code calls Tk_BackgroundError with an interp argument identifying the interpreter in which the error occurred. Tk_BackgroundError attempts to invoke the tkerror Tcl command to report the error in an application-specific fashion. If no tkerror command exists, or if it returns with an error condition, then Tk_BackgroundError reports the error itself by printing a message on the standard error file.
Tk_BackgroundError does not invoke tkerror immediately (in some cases this could interfere with scripts that are in process at the time the error occurred). Instead, it invokes tkerror later as an idle callback. Tk_BackgroundError saves the values of the errorInfo and errorCode variables and restores these values just before invoking tkerror.
It is possible for many background errors to accumulate before tkerror is invoked. When this happens, each of the errors is processed in order. However, if tkerror returns a break exception, then all remaining error reports for the interpreter are skipped.
background, error, tkerror
To install Tk, copy and paste the appropriate command in to your terminal.
cpanm Tk
CPAN shell
perl -MCPAN -e shell
install Tk
For more information on module installation, please visit the detailed CPAN module installation guide.


text:
|Say What?!
|Richard Nixon's cameo on "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In." The race was close. "He would do anything to get elected," says 'Laugh-In' creator George Schlatter.
|Richard Nixon
|September 16, 1968
|Describes homosexual practices as "playing in a sewer"
|Sean Hannity
|April 4, 1989
|"It has not been proven that nicotine is addictive, the same with cigarettes causing emphysema [and other diseases]."
|Rush Limbaugh
|April 29, 1994
|"too many whites are getting away with drug use"
|Rush Limbaugh
|October 5, 1995
|(speaking to Sara Flounders co-director of the International Action Center) "You don't like this country, do you? You don't --- you think this is an evil country. By your description of it right here, you think it's a bad country."
|Sean Hannity
|September 25, 2001
|"'I hate America.' This is the extreme left. There is a portion of the left --- not everybody who's left --- that does hate this country and blame this country for the ills of the world..."
|Sean Hannity
|January 23, 2002
|"You could explain something about your magazine, [the Nation]. Lisa Featherstone writing about the hate America march, the [anti-war] march that took place of the weekend..."
|Sean Hannity
|January 22, 2003
|(to attorney Stanley Hohen) "Is it you hate this president or that you hate America?"
|Sean Hannity
|April 30, 2003
|"Now here's where we are. The inherited Clinton/Gore recession. That's a fact."
|Sean Hannity
|May 6, 2003
|"Governor, why wouldn't anyone want to say the Pledge of Allegiance, unless they detested their own country or were ignorant of it's greatness?"
|Sean Hannity
|June 12, 2003
|"I never questioned anyone's patriotism."
|Sean Hannity
|September 18, 2003
|Admitted addiction to prescription pain killers on radio.
|Rush Limbaugh
|October 10, 2003
|"They did inherit the recession. They did inherit the recession. We got out of the recession."
|Sean Hannity
|December 12, 2003
|"Historically in every recovery, because the president rightly did inherit a recession. But historically, the lagging indicator always deals with employment."
|Sean Hannity
|January 15, 2004
|"The president inherited a recession."
|Sean Hannity
|February 23, 2004
|"Well, you know, we're going to show ads, as a matter of fact, in the next segment, Congressman. Thanks for promoting our next segment. What I like about them is everything I've been saying the president ought to do: is focusing in on his positions, on keeping the nation secure in very difficult times, what he's been able to do to the economy after inheriting a very difficult recession, and of course, the economic impact of 9/11."
|Sean Hannity
|March 3, 2004
|Promises to undergo waterboarding during Charles Grodin interview to prove that waterboarding isn't torture.
|Sean Hannity
|April 22, 2009
|The band Rush demanded that Rush Limbaugh cease and desist using it's music during his show due to sexual insults made by Limbaugh on his Radio show about the Women Right's activist Sandra Fluke.
|Rush Limbaugh
|March 6, 2012
|Donald Trump hosts Saturday Night Live, repeating the Nixon wag on Laugh In in 1968.
|Donald Trump
|November 7, 2015
|Has yet to fulfil his pledge to be waterboarded to prove it isn't torture.
|Sean Hannity
|July 17, 2018
Showing 20 items


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Back when I got my first computer (a TRS-80 "Color Computer" with a whopping 32 kilobytes of RAM and Microsoft's "MS-BASIC" in ROM), programming was something that computer users took for granted they'd have to do. That's what you got a computer for! But something dark and sinister happened after that: a great divide opened up between the 'developer' lords and the 'user' serfs.
Fortunately, free software has liberated us from this digital feudalism, and revived a new middle class of 'user-developers'.
If you really want to know what's so cool about free software, you need to participate. It's never been easier—there are, as has been famously noted, no silver bullets to ease software development, but many incremental improvements in programming languages for 'scripting' and 'middleware' have been made—these languages can make programming a real joy. And I think you will find it a liberating experience.
I'm a do-it-yourselfer from a family of do-it-yourselfers, so it's possible that my perspective is unusual. But the reality is that things are often not so difficult as professionals—who have a vested interest in keeping you dependent—will make you think. Oh, sure, there are jobs I'm not going to do for myself, because I know a pro will do a better job; or because I don't want to spend the time on it; or because I really don't care that much about the particulars.
Sometimes the motivation for doing things yourself is saving money—either in the short term, because I don't have to pay a pro to do the job, or in the long run—because knowing your equipment well saves time and money (the latter is why I always build my own computers). Sometimes it's getting more exactly what you want. Sometimes it's just the joy of doing it yourself.
Honestly, how hard can it be? Another human being figured out how to do it, so should you be able to, too. There's a wonderful liberating feeling in just breaking out your tools and going to work on a problem instead of having to depend on someone else to do it for you.
In the digital world, that's what being able to program provides for you. And whereas learning to do that on your own is a lonely and often daunting process, learning to do it in collaboration—under the friendly, free-exchange culture that free software licenses allow—is downright fun.
The perfect language
There isn't one.
But there are a lot of nice options. Now I could try to sell you on my personal favorite, which is Python, but that's missing the point. The point is that programming has gotten easier. Much easier.
When I started out, personal computer programs were often written in BASIC, and certainly BASIC was what you typically started with as a do-it-yourself programmer.
Anybody with any coding experience at all, though, can tell you that BASIC is a terrible programming language. Yes, in one sense it is very 'basic' in that there are few statements and expressions to learn, and the program flow control is pretty simple. But that's precisely the problem: the lack of sophisticated program flow concepts like 'functions' and 'procedures' and of data abstraction concepts like 'structures' (let alone 'objects') makes anything more than short scripts impossible to figure out.
Nevertheless, I did quite a lot with BASIC back in my youth. And then I graduated to Fortran when I went to college. I was an engineering and science student, so I didn't have to worry about all those pesky software guys complaining about the poor design of the Fortran language, we just went to town. I had a lot of fun writing a data-reduction tool for the McDonald Observatory Planet Search program (MOPS, although they hadn't actually coined that name until a while after I left).
Still, it really is a poorly-designed language. Other languages like Lisp and Pascal and C brought different insights into computer science, along with the acid test of production development (which, for example favored C, but killed Pascal). Then came the 'object-oriented' craze with Smalltalk and Java and C++. Then there was the devil-may-care attitude of the Perl scripters who called their language the "duct tape of the internet" and themselves "perl-mongers". They didn't invent 'regular expressions', but they made them sing.
Now it's well-known that all of these languages, movements, and styles promised sweeping improvements in productivity and revolutionary new powers of expression. It's also well-known that they all failed to deliver on those wild promises.
What is less well appreciated is that they all succeeded in advancing the state of the art, and while the revolution never came, evolution happened. Life is what happens while you're making plans. And programming got easier, more powerful, more ready-made.
A modern language, like Ruby, or my favorite Python, makes life easy. There are huge libraries that can dice the potatoes, crack the eggs, and heat up the saucepan—so that actually making the omelets has become embarrassingly easy. You owe it to yourself to learn one of these easy languages, even if you don't plan to ever program professionally.
'Knowledge architects'?, oh come on!
Back when I started programming, people who wrote programs were called 'programmers'. There were no 'coders', 'computing consultants', 'software engineers', or 'database application programmers', or 'knowledge architects' (or at least I was blissfully ignorant of such pretentious titles).
I'm not saying that code didn't get written, database applications programmed, or software engineered. I'm just saying that people weren't so hyper-specialized, nor was there so much professional mystique built around the processes of software development. What we have seen is the professionalization of the field—the erection of guilds with coded passwords and shibboleths to keep out the unbelievers.
Or as Thornten Wilder put it, "Wherever you come near the human race there's layers and layers of nonsense"*. The realities of programming for pay in a proprietary software development world make it necessary as a matter of career-maintenance to overcomplicate, overspecialize, and obfuscate the practice of writing software. The reason that world has produced so few truly easy and expressive programming languages is because its language developers have a fundamental vested interest in not succeeding at doing so.
Fortunately, the dynamics of the free software world are different: here, there's always a need for more developers and for users to become developers. The fastest way to ingratiate yourself with free developers is to stop being a dependent and "submit a patch". That's why the most amazing and powerful programming languages have come from free software: Perl, Python, Ruby, and Scheme were all born and raised here.
Or you can make a whole lot of friends among users and developers alike by finding a simple problem and solving it simply: typically by using one of these late-generation scripting languages.
Getting paid is good, but free communication is better
Of course, it's a nice thing to get paid to write code. Selling licenses is one way to do that. But it carries a terrible price: you can't share. That hurts producers much more than conventional wisdom would have you think. Because, as James Burke tried to point out in his landmark documentary, Connections, inventions do not spring fully formed in the minds of a few brilliant inventors. They come instead out of the mixture of ideas that occurs in a free environment where ordinarily clever people freely share their ideas.
That's an old idea in academia, but it's the basis of free software collaboration and development.
For the do-it-yourselfer, though, free software is more than just a good model for writing code, it's often the only model that will work. An amateur or do-it-yourself developer can get code written using a free model because they can get help from other interested amateurs or from pros who are often willing to lend their expertise to a fun and useful project. Even if you don't get donations of actual code, it's usually trivial to get comments and suggestions. I've long since lost count of the number of road blocks that have been cleared for me by a throw-away comment on a programming newsgroup or mailing list. There are sharp minds out there, and working on free projects with just a bit of skill gives you the credibility to tap them.
People want to help you because they know they'll be contributing to a public good. You can surf that goodwill, and it's really quite a rush!
So pick up a copy of a programming book or a free online tutorial. Learn to love text terminals and editors. Find your inner geek. Develop a little skill and see where it takes you—you just may find it an addictive thrill. Free software is fun to use—but it's even more fun to write!


text:
VCS-1216B Biscuit Rectangle Porcelain Undermount Sink
Are you a Pro?
We offer exclusive pricing and a dedicated pro sales team.Pro Price 571-291-3484Contact UsTechnical Data
The VCS-1216B biscuit rectangle porcelain undermount sink is made from true vitreous china which is triple glazed and triple fired to ensure your sink is durable and strong. Undermounting a bathroom sink creates a sleek look and allows for more space on your countertop. The overall dimensions for the VCS-1216B are 14″ x 18″ x 7 1/4″ and requires a 21″ minimum cabinet size.
- 21″ Minimum cabinet size
- Undermount installation
- True Vitreous China
- Installation Hardware Included
- Certified and Listed by UPC, cUPC
- Limited Lifetime Warranty
- Total Dimensions of Sink: 14″ x 18″ x 7 1/4″
- What size base cabinet is needed to fit this sink?This sink fits a 21" cabinet.
- What is vitreous China?Vitreous China is fired longer and at a high temperature than regular Ceramic sinks. This makes them more durable and less likely to crack or chip over time. Our porcelain sinks are all made from Vitreous China.
- What is the drain size for this sink?This sink has a standard 1.5" drain opening.
- Does this sink have an overflow?Yes, this sink has an overflow drain.