text:
Building an e-Commerce Application with MEAN by Adrian Mejia
Building an e-Commerce Application with MEAN Adrian Mejia ebook
Publisher: Packt Publishing, Limited
Page: 176
Format: pdf
Time services, and so on for the building of complex e-commerce systems. Angularjs Node.js powered fullstack web framework - MEAN. Walmart is growing fast, and Walmart Global eCommerce is leading the charge. An introduction to eCommerce Platforms for non-technical people. For an e-commerce mobile app platform, which is the best back end web Web Application Frameworks: Should I start building on Node.js or Ruby on Rails? They can build so-called native apps, use HTML5 and JavaScript with to the code, meaning that the app only really needs to be written once. Have you ever stopped to consider what makes an e-commerce website Building and maintaining a secure network, protected by proper I'll explain what this means in practical terms using Newfangled as an example:. You can learn to build an eCommerce store by yourself, or you can use one of the four This means widespread availability of thousands of useful extensions. Architecture Definition Application Components / Web Services. The the definition of business objects that are independent of the application. New England Electronic Commerce Users' Group over time.


text:
Testing is an important part of software development. Whether you're making a small app to learn new skills or building a multiplatform app that will have millions of readers, making sure that it is tested robustly will ensure that your app has the highest possible quality at all points in it's life.
There are many types of and approaches to testing. You may have heard of terms like Automated Tests and Software Tests, and you may have also tried your hand at it before but want to learn more. In this article, we will see why testing is so effective, and explore its benefits while focusing on testing in Android.
Table of Contents
- How I learned the value of testing
- Why you should test
- Types of tests in Android
- Level of tests
- Exploring testing levels
- Test-driven development
- Keys to success: learn more
How I learned the value of testing
When I began my Android development journey, I didn't really delve into testing. I used to see two folders named androidTest
and test
that I didn't use at all. Even as I went deeper into the field as an Android developer, I assumed that the testing that a lot of books and speakers talked about, Testing and Automated Tests, were advanced topics. My focus remained on learning to create apps and finding clients (as I am a Freelancer).
Eventually, I came to incorporate testing into a project for a client, as I believed it was important for a professional Software Developer to test apps for clients. All software developers know that we should test, and I found myself writing test code to verify my production code. For example, I wrote code to verify if users were shown an error message if they tried to login to the app with an unverified email. At the time, it seemed tedious, since I knew it worked based on my manual tests. I felt like it was a waste of time, so I abandoned it and completed the app, got my money, and started searching for my next client.
After some time, I found a new client that needed an android app built. This app development process invovled many changes through the development lifecycle. I would develop and test everything manually: the login, adding orders to the database, displaying error messages correctly when there is no internet, and so on. My manual testing ensured that everything was working correctly, but I didn't like the workflow: every time the client sent me an update or a new feature request, I had to retest everything every time I made a change!
I was also afraid of forgetting to test something with each iteration. So I came up with this brilliant idea; I created a checklist in my notebook for that project to hold all the features I had to test so that I could give my client a good quality app. Here are some of the checkpoints from that checklist:
- Test if the login screen shows an error when we leave the email or password field empty.
- Test if the login screen shows an error when we enter an invalid email.
- Test if the login screen shows an error when we enter a password that's smaller than 8 characters.
- Test if the login screen shows an error when we enter a password containing just numbers or letters (it should be both).
- Test if the app transitions from the login screen to the main screen when the user enters valid credentials that are in the database.
- Test if the login screen shows an alert that there's no internet connection detected when the user's device is offline when they enter the required credentials.
The complete list is too extensive to replicate here, but you can get an idea of how much manual testing I had to do, not just once, but with every change that had to be deployed to the client. I called each testing cycle testing week: I would grab my phone and my notebook, start testing each checkpoint to see if the app was working correctly, mark it as a failure when it wasn't, and then move to the next point. Once I went through the checklist, I would check the code for every failed test separately and try to fix it, then test all over again. This process would take a week or so to complete.
This is when I remembered that androidTest
folder. I remembered that had I written a test before and realized that if I wrote a test once, I could run it many times, without the frustration of manual testing. So when I completed the app and began searching for my next client, I promised myself that I would incorporate automated tests into the next project.
Though that project took so much time and energy from me, it taught me that manual testing is hard to do efficiently and accurately at scale, and it eats into time I could spend on other productive tasks.
Now, I have a great green button in Android Studio that I can push to run all my tests, and guess how much time this takes? 6 seconds! It really takes 6 seconds to check that the latest system build works correctly. If a test runs into a problem, I would then correct it and run that test alone (20 ms) before running the entire suite of tests again for another six lovely seconds. That's a total of 12 seconds and 20ms compared to a week running a manual testing workflow. I can ship that code with confidence because I have the power of Automated Testing.
My software development worldview changed dramatically after applying software testing, especially with Test Driven Development (which we will explore shortly). Now I design and apply high quality architecture, implement clean code, refactor, and create decoupled modules easily, and use all the best practices of Software Development thanks to testing.
Why You Should Test
Perhaps by now, you can see why it's useful to write tests: It provides a great way to validate a system quickly and efficiently and frees up your time to give attention to other aspects of the development process.
Here are some other advantages that automated tests provide:
- When writing tests, you are writing the documentation of how to use the software/application: think about it, if we write a test about the function
that takes two numbers and adds them together, here's what the test will look like:
result = add(5, 6)
assertEquals(11, result)
The test clearly demonstrates that add()
takes two number and returns a result. This shows me how this function can be used.
- You will have the power to refactor your code without fearing it: Sometimes, when you already have code that is working great, and you may fear having to make changes to its design and refactor it to look more pretty and efficient, as it might lead to the code breaking. So we may leave it as it is instead of making changes to improve the app.
With automated tests, you simply click that green button and see if the changes you introduced have affected that piece of code. If it has broken the code, you can simply roll back and see what caused the error. Because of the marginal time required to test, you can concentrate on fixing the code because testing is no longer a big task that eats into your time.
The list of advantages is endless, we can write a whole article about why you should write a test, but the most important thing to remember is that testable software is high-quality software. So, removing the time barrier for testing makes it easier for you to keep testing your apps and thus ensure high quality software.
Types of Tests in Android
Testing in Android is a bit different from other platforms. There are two types of tests that you can carry out when developing apps for this platform. Let's take a quick look:
Instrumented Tests
When testing the entire app, you will have to push your app to a Device to run it rather than test on a workstation. We call this type of test Instrumented Tests. Any test that requires the Android framework needs to be run on the device and requires some android specific components, like Context.
Local Tests
The second type of test is Local tests. These tests run locally on the JVM and don't have dependencies on Android Specific dependencies. For example, imagine we've created a function to convert temperature from Celsius to Fahrenheit. This function will take a number and return a number. There's no dependency on any part of the Android Framework to run this task. You can test this behavior easily with a local test.
fun convertCelsiusToFahrenheit(fahrenheit : Double) : Double {
return ((fahrenheit - 32) * 5)/9
This function can be incorporated into an Android app that does the conversion. Let's imagine that the app has a button and a text view. It makes sense then to test this portion of code separately from testing it with the button click.
Local tests run much faster than instrumented tests, and you should know how to separate the code that requires the android framework from the code that doesn't need it. For example, the previous function can be written in a separate utility class. A bad implementation will be if we write that function into an Activity directly, and when the button clicks we execute the following:
button.setOnClickListener {
val fahrenheit = editText.text.toString()
val celsius = ((fahrenheit - 32) * 5)/9
resultTextView.text = "celsius C"
This code is a bad implementation because we can't test the function aspect of the conversion algorithm. We always need to run an Instrumented test to see whether the function is working correctly or not. This is a powerful concept to learn: always try to separate
You can create local tests even if you need android dependencies, but you should mock or create fakes with custom responses for those dependencies; for example, let's take a function that computes the size of a Bitmap, where the bitmap is an Android Specific Class, but this function only uses the public function getRowBytes()
and getHeight()
fun calculateBitmapSize(bitmap: Bitmap) : Int {
return bitmap.rowBytes * bitmap.height
As you can see we can create a mock or a fake with custom responses for getRowBytes() and getHeight() and test this function separately. Here's what the tests will look like:
import org.junit.Test
import org.junit.runner.RunWith
import org.mockito.Mock
import org.mockito.Mockito
import org.mockito.junit.MockitoJUnitRunner
class BitmapTest {
lateinit var bitmap: Bitmap
fun testCalculatingBitmapSize(){
This is how you can mock android specify class, but don't overload this type of test, you shouldn't mock everything you see. There is a rule: don't mock what you don't own. For example, if we mock the Button class of Android, we are testing our implementation of the mocked button, and not the actual Android Button class. Something like bitmap.height
is simple, so consider the simplicity of the behavior as well.
Exploring testing levels
For software testing, there are a variety of testing levels that may be used to verify behavior of a section of code. These levels help us focus in to a specific area to make sure if functions as planned, bring various elements together to see if they work well together, and then test system wide to make sure the entire app works as planned. Let's dive into these levels.
Unit Tests
This is the most basic type of test: you test a unit of your code. These types of tests aim to verify each part of the software independently and see if they fulfill the requirements of the app.
To start unit testing, add a dependency for JUnit
and mockito
dependencies {
// JUnit 4 framework
testImplementation 'junit:junit:4.13'
// Mockito framework
testImplementation 'org.mockito:mockito-core:1.10.19'
Then, under the test folder, you can create classes and packages to structure your tests, here is an example of a test in the Android Documentation (https://developer.android.com/training/testing/unit-testing/local-unit-tests):
import com.google.common.truth.Truth.assertThat
import org.junit.Test
class EmailValidatorTest {
fun emailValidator_CorrectEmailSimple_ReturnsTrue() {
assertThat(EmailValidator.isValidEmail("[email protected]")).isTrue()
In this test, we are testing the function of isValidEmail()
to see if it works well via multiple assertions and different emails combinations.
Integration Tests
After testing each component separately with the help of Unit Tests, it is time to put them together to test their integration. These are called Integration tests because they verify that the interactions between classes or modules are correct. This is where you bring multiple classes that collaborate together and see whether they are interacting correctly.
Here is an example from one of my recent projects:
lateinit var messagesRepository: MessagesRepository
// 1
lateinit var remoteMessageDataSource: RemoteMessageDataSource
lateinit var cacheMessageDataSource: CacheMessageDataSource
// 2
fun setUp() {
messagesRepository = MessagesDataRepository(remoteMessageDataSource, cacheMessageDataSource)
fun `when repository get all messages is invoked, the remote and data source should be invoked`() {
val order = orderTest
// 3
// 4
//launching the action
// 5
// verifying
Although it has a lot going on, I will try to explain everything. First, this method is testing a message repository class. This class is responsible for getting messages from an API (with remoteMessageDataSource
), cache them into the database (with cacheMessageDataSource
), then return the messages list from the database. Pretty easy, right?
This is clearly an integration test that runs in the local machine under the test folder because it is testing what happens when we integrate these components.
Let us understand what I am trying to achieve with this test.
- The first thing to notice here is that I mocked the remote and the cache data sources, so I don't have to do real database calls and real network calls. This is because the real database calls and real network calls will slow down the tests. What I did was simply mock these interfaces (I own these classes, so I am mocking what I own).
- The
method is simply initializing themessageRepository
class, we do it in thesetUp()
method to not do it in every test method because this method will run before each test, for that we used@Before
- In the test method, we start by mocking the call of the
In the real-world, this method will return a list of messages, but for the purpose of testing, we can return a list of our own that contains several dummy messages. The content doesn't matter, we just need a list with random messages. - After that, we launched and invoked the main action we want to test.
from the repository. Don't be confused by the othergetAllMessages()
from theremoteMessageDataSource
. I will soon introduce another one fromcacheMessageDataSource
After invoking the method, it is time to verify that our implementation is correct. I will show you the implementation in a second, but bear with me for a moment. Let's first understand what we are verifying? First, we are verifying that some methods in the cache and remote data sources were called. Then, we are verifying that no other methods have been invoked from these data sources. That's it!
- We are verifying that
from the remote were called. - Then we are verifying that the cache data source has inserted those messages into the database with the
- Then we are verifying that we got that result from
of the cache data source. - Finally, we are verifying that no other calls have been made from the remote and message data source.
Here is the implementation of the getAllMessages()
of the repository we were testing:
override suspend fun getAllMessages(order: Order): List<Message> {
val messageResult = remoteMessageDataSource.getAllMessages(order, lastUpdateDate)
if (messageResult.isNotEmpty())
return cacheMessageDataSource.getAllMessages(order)
You may ask, don't we need to test the getAllMessages()
for remote Data Source, insert, and the cache data source? Of course, we must, but these should be unit tests instead. We have to write them first, then we write the integration tests. Here is an example of a unit test for the room implementation of the cache data source:
fun testInsertingNewMessages() =runBlocking{
val messages = roomMessageDataSource.getAllMessages(orderTest)
End to End Tests
With End to End Tests, you test the system to see whether it works correctly and to ensure that the overall system meets the requirements of the app and that it is very close to what the user will experience.
In the next section, we will talk about espresso, which is one way to perform simple end to end tests in our application. When the end to end tests involve complex, multi app testing, there are tools specially designed for that, such as UiAutomator.
Espresso is a framework made by the Google Android Team to test app UIs. Using Espresso, you can write concise, beautiful, and trustworthy Android UI tests. These tests are very quick! It allows you to leave your waits, syncs, sleep, and polls behind while manipulating and asserting the application UI.
When a user performs a certain action or inputs something specific into the target app's activity, this sort of test checks that the app behaves as intended. It lets you verify that the target app responds to user inputs in the app's activities with the right UI output.
To start using espresso in your development machine, you need to do two things: add the dependencies that Android Studio requires and set the test device environment.
The test device environment needs to have no view animation, that's a constraint imposed by Espresso to not wait until the animation is done to perform tasks on the device.
- Go to Settings, then choose the Developer option, and disable the three main settings: Window Animation Scale, Transition Animation Scale, and Animator Duration Scale.
- Add the following dependencies in the
androidTestImplementation "androidx.test.espresso:espresso-core:3.3.0"
androidTestImplementation "androidx.test.ext:junit-ktx:1.1.3"
androidTestImplementation "androidx.test:rules:1.3.0"
androidTestImplementation "androidx.test:runner:1.3.0"
androidTestImplementation "junit:junit:4.13.2"
- After adding the required setup, go into the
folder, and start writing tests, here is an example of a real UI test from the Android documentation (https://developer.android.com/training/testing/espresso):
fun helloWorldTest() {
onView(withText("Hello Steve!")).check(matches(isDisplayed()))
A lot is going here, so let me explain how it works:
- First, we have to locate the view we want to perform an action on with the method
. This view can be a Button, EditText, or any other view, and the action can be clicking, long click, typing a text, or any other action. - To find the view, you can either locate it by its ID with the method
, by its text withwithText()
, and other methods provided by the Android SDK. These methods are called ViewMatchers, and you can also create your own matcher if your layout is complex and it is hard to locate a view. - After locating the view, you can perform an action using the
You can useclick()
to perform a click on the selection view,typeText()
to type a text,longClick()
, and many more action, and you can also create your custom actions. - After locating and performing the action, it's time to check the expected behavior. You can do that by chaining the
method, this method can be chained to aViewMatcher
, orViewAction
. You can check whether after clicking a button that the button is not displayed any longer, or after typing some text, a prompt or error text is shown, and so on, and guess what, you can also write your own ViewAssertion class to perform custom checking.
There is a lot to learn about Espresso, there are Intents, Recycler View Actions, Idling resources, and many more, I advise you to check the following packages online:
– Contains resources for WebView support.espresso-idling-resource
– Espresso's mechanism for synchronization with background jobs.espresso-contrib
– External contributions that containDatePicker
, andDrawer
actions, accessibility checks, andCountingIdlingResource
– Extension to validate and stub intents for hermetic testing.
Here is another test from a project that I am working on. I'm sure you'll be able to understand what it's doing from what we've learned so far:
fun whenClickingOnForgetPassword_shouldGoToResetPasswordActivity() {
Test-Driven Development
I'm sure that you've heard about Test Driven Development (TDD). You may have even tried it out and become frustrated after writing the test first and then the code for it. Believe me, I can't express how frustrated I was by the idea at first. I tried it, but my frustration kept increasing because I thought it was a complete waste of time (yeah, I was still uninformed back then). I kept wondering what sense it made to write a test for something that does not exist? How can I waste time by watching the test fail? Really, TDD learning was a bad experience for me the first time I tried it because I thought I knew better. But ultimately, after trying it out and testing it repeatedly, TDD gave me much more than I thought it would.
What is TDD?
TDD is a practice where a developer writes a functional test before building the code. TDD means that you should write your tests first, watch the test fail (obvious because you don't have any code for it), then write the code to make the test pass, then refactor the code to refine it in multiple aspects: code design, smaller functions, and good names; basically, clean code.
The current understanding of TDD was described by Kent Beck based on an idea he discovered (or rediscovered as he prefers to label it) in an old programming book:
- You should write new business code only when an automated test has failed.
- You should eliminate any duplication that you find.
Kent Beck described the discovery as follows:
The original description of TDD was in an ancient book about programming. It said you take the input tape, manually type in the output tape you expect, then program until the actual output tape matches the expected output. After I'd written the first xUnit framework in Smalltalk, I remembered reading this and tried it out. That was the origin of TDD for me. When describing TDD to older programmers, I often hear, "Of course. How else could you program?" Therefore, I refer to my role as "rediscovering" TDD.
You can find his explanation on Quora.
There are multiple approaches to achieve TDD, I personally use the Uncle Bob way:
- You are not allowed to write any production code unless it is to make a failing unit test pass.
- You are not allowed to write any more of a unit test than is sufficient to fail, and compilation failures are failures.
- You are not allowed to write any more production code than is sufficient to pass the one failing unit test.
Benefits of TDD
TDD has many benefits for your code design and for your productivity as a developer because you will get a lot of things done. Here's what I love about TDD:
- It creates documentation on how to use the code.
- TDD Improves the code architecture and the code quality.
- TDD reduces the time required for software development because you have less time dealing with the debugger and bug chasing.
- TDD helps you achieve good code quality and high code coverage
- With TDD, you are creating a testable code, so consequently, you will use all the best practices of good software development such as dependency injection.
Importantly, when using TDD, for each failed test you are writing production code, which means each line written was to pass a failed test, and with that, all your code is of high quality.
When should you start TDD
You shouldn't start TDD immediately because it takes a lot of time to grasp the ideas behind it, and there's a high probability that you will do it wrong in the beginning.
You should work on an experimental project instead of trying it directly in your live projects. I advise you to start by solving simple project or code exercises using TDD. For example, try to solve the TDD katas here. These exercises are simple but very effective for learning TDD before you bring it to your project, and trust me, at first you will find it slow, then you will adapt to it to make it much faster. I recommend watching TDD demos to see how TDD is performed in real-world scenarios. Here is a good place to start: TDD Demo with Kotlin by Uncle Bob.
You can also watch this video from the First International TDD Conference, held in July 2021.
Keys to Success: Learn More
To be good at anything, you should be a constant learner, especially in the world of testing in Android because it is not always trivial. I advise you to read the following documentation and articles but also check Stack Overflow for how to test things. for example, I had an issue when testing if a UI Element is not present in the User Interface, so I searched for it and learned the solution. You won't find this information directly, but it's a matter of searching and learning. also, always try to read other people code and their testing strategies.
- Build Local Unit Tests
- Build Instrumented Unit Tests
- Android Testing Codelab
- RecyclerViewSample
- Espresso Code Samples
- Android Testing Codelab
To wrap things up, we can certainly assume that code testing is the best thing you can do to improve your code quality and your software project. It may look time-consuming, especially if you are using TDD; but trust me, these processes will give you a lot of value as your projects move along the software development lifecycle.
I hope that you will start testing if you are not doing that already, and I hoped you enjoyed this article. I know testing in Android takes extra time, but it's something we can't escape and should plan for in our project roadmaps.
About the author
Younes Charfaoui is a Google Certified Android Developer and Github Campus Expert. Besides his work as a software engineer, he's also an author and speaker, with interests in Android and Machine Learning. You can find him on Github.
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
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- and also, some consider him to have founded the Bombay School of Batsmanship, from where top players in this position have originated.
1931 was a prolific year for Merchant's career. During that period, he secured a spectacular record of 504 and 29 wickets. He did so by playing for the Hindus cricket team while they participated in the 1929 edition of the Bombay Quadrangular. High-profile tournaments of this kind are featured at the 1xBet bookmaker, where you can make your online cricket bet on many different events.
A brief international career
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text:
Frank Morse Robb's Wave Organ
The world's first electronic organ
The Robb Wave Organ
Canadian Frank Morse Robb of Belleville, Ontario created the world's first electronic organ in 1927 (Kallmann 2014). His stated aim was to produce an electronic replacement for the pipe organ. However, due to manufacturing and financial difficulties, it is believed that only 16 to 20 instruments were built, and until recently it was thought that no examples survived.
Newspaper reports and critical response to the organ were very favourable. William Harrison Barnes reported as late as 1937 that, when comparing it to the Hammond Organ, "some of the tones were equal to good [pipe] organ tones, and a better Trumpet quality was obtained than I have heard on any other electronic" and "the attack of the tone was much more like that of an organ than either the Hammond or Orgatron" (Barnes 1937, 356). The authors were intrigued as to the possible reasons for the "better tones" and positive reviews, and have endeavoured to investigate the approach used by Robb. Fortunately, a partially-working Robb Wave Organ (circa 1936) was recently discovered and donated to the National Music Centre in Calgary (Alberta, Canada) and has been made available to the authors for analysis.
Sample-Based Synthesis
Robb was among the first inventors to utilize sample-based synthesis (Murphy and Kupp 2013). Neither of the two other organs mentioned by Barnes utilized a sample-based synthesis process: the Hammond employed an additive synthesis process and the Orgatron relied on an electrostatic system (Bush and Kassel 2006, 168). Sample-based synthesis is a well-known technique for reproducing natural musical instruments by manipulating a library of sampled sounds. It is generally contrasted with other techniques such as additive and subtractive synthesis, and has become a widely used music technology thanks to the evolution and reduced cost of computer-based memory and processing power. It is popular belief that viable sample-based synthesis tools and methods historically followed additive and subtractive synthesis by some 30 years. With the discovery of the Robb Wave Organ's sampling technology, the authors were excited by the prospect of potentially disproving this belief and shedding new light on the origins of sampling.
"Digital" Sampling?
Robb's patents explained his plan to create and reproduce samples by capturing complex waveforms of pipe organs on an oscilloscope and photo-mechanically transferring the samples to spinning metal tone wheels by cutting in the smooth "analogue" waveforms (Robb 1927).
Through the authors' examination of the surviving organ, they discovered that, by 1936, the tone wheel design had further evolved into a slotted tooth style. The tone wheels appear to be cut in what we would recognize as a digitized, almost Pulse Code Modulation (PCM) scheme. As this was fully a year before Alec Reeves conceived of PCM, and about a decade before Oliver and Shannon's PCM patent (Deloraine and Reeves 1965), it is not yet clear how or why Robb elected to modify his design.
Bringing the Organ Back to Life
The researchers next embarked on a plan to recreate the entire organ sound palette, including individual stops and pedal sounds (Murphy and Cotter 2014). The goal was to create a sample set that would be able to reproduce any sound the original organ was capable of generating, using a two-manual keyboard arrangement as well as a pedal board.
Creating a Sample Set
The original controller was available but the umbilical cabling to the tone generation module had been severed. Because circuit diagrams and other documentation were sparse, the authors needed to take a different approach to tease out the subtle individual stops of the organ. In addition, the organ electronics are in a bad state, with many of the original hand-wound relays requiring replacement or repair. Clearly, a conventional restoration of the organ would be a painstaking and time-consuming process. As this is the only known surviving example, it would be highly desirable to have the organ eventually fully restored for historical purposes. However, a full restoration was beyond the resources available to the researchers.
The researchers decided to take an incremental approach using digital sampling tools. Fortunately, the mechanical tone wheel mechanism of the organ is very robust, being manufactured to very high tolerances and using an automotive-style oil sump for bearing lubrication. In addition, the individual electromagnetic pickups all appeared to be in working order.
Figure 3 shows one of the twelve rotating tone wheels of the organ. Each wheel represents one note in the chromatic scale across all octaves (in this example "D"). Different notes across each octave are generated by the number of "slots" spinning past a pickup. The pickups are arranged to generate different fundamental frequencies as well as the various upper harmonics of the sampled waveform. The organ control circuitry would normally be used to add and subtract various pickups to respond to the selected organ stop(s) as well as the octave of the note being played.
As we were unable to rely on the control circuitry, each individual pickup was sampled in isolation. This resulted in the creation of a master digital sample super-set.
Sample Clean-up
A total of 384 raw samples were digitally recorded (Pro Tools HD) by directly connecting to the pickup using a transformer-based direct-input (DI) box. Most of the samples were of usable quality. A few were unacceptable due to noisy or damaged pickups, and while these were retained for authenticity, the worst offenders were replaced by interpolating and pitch-shifting adjacent samples.
The samples were finally trimmed to one-second loops and all were painstakingly edited to remove DC-offsets and cut to zero-crossings to ensure seamless looping. The samples have been packaged into several popular sampler formats (ESX24, Structure, HALion, Ableton, Kontakt, etc.) and will be uploaded to the authors' web site for free download and audition by the general public.
The "Flora" Stop
One stop on the Robb Wave Organ was of particular interest, as it is not a conventional pipe organ stop. Further research revealed that Robb created the "Flora" stop by using the voice of Lady Flora Eaton as the basis for the sample (Keane 1984). Lady Eaton was an investor in the Robb company (Kallmann 2014) and Robb intended this flattery to be an example of future marketing potential, allowing wealthy clients to have their organ personalized by creating custom stops based on the voice of a loved one.
Recreating and Matching the Stops
Determining which sample combinations corresponded to the original stops proved to be challenging without access to definitive schematics. One available document contained some hand-scrawled notes that provided hints. Eventually, various sample combinations were sonically compared to traditional pipe organ stops. As a veracity test, the authors consulted several texts and organ sheet music indicating the use of different stops (Truette 1919).
The approach taken has resulted in the recreation of a useable sample set of the Robb Wave Organ, which will soon be available to the general public for download on the AccessFabrik Lab website. The contribution of Robb to both electronic organ development as well as early sample-based synthesis can be better understood by hearing the organ once again. It is remarkable that such a technology was developed in 1927, and these samples allow a contemporary audience to better appreciate the significance of Robb's achievement.
Future Work
The authors intend to further analyze and research the digitized, almost Pulse Code Modulation (PCM) scheme used by Robb in his evolved instrument. They are also building a replica Robb Wave Organ console that will contain a "MIDI-fied" pedal board and manuals to trigger their sample set from an internally housed computer running Hauptwerk, an organ sampling software.
The authors gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the Ryerson University Faculty of Communication and Design SRC Committee (Toronto), the Ryerson University Creative Fund (Toronto), the The National Music Centre (Calgary) and the Canada Science and Technology Museum (Ottawa).
Barnes, William H. The Contemporary American Organ. New York NY: Fischer, 1937.
Bush, Douglas and Richard Kassel. The Organ: An Encyclopedia. New York NY: Routledge, 2006.
Deloraine, E. Maurice and Alex H. Reeves. "The 25th Anniversary of Pulse Code Modulation." IEEE Spectrum 2/5 (May 1965).
Kallmann, Helmut, "Robb, Frank Morse." The Canadian Encyclopedia. http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/frank-morse-robb [Last accessed 18 March 2014]
Keane, David, "Electroacoustic Music in Canada: 1950–1984." eContact! 3.4 — Histoires de l'électroacoustique / Histories of Electroacoustics. https://cec.sonus.ca/econtact/Histories/EaMusicCanada.htm [Last accessed 18 March 2014]
Murphy, Michael and Max Cotter. "Recreating Robb: The sound of the world's first electronic organ." e-Brief 148. AES Convention 2014. Convention e-Brief.Proceedings of the 136th Audio Engineering Society Convention (Berlin, Germany: 26–29 April 2014).
Murphy, Michael and Eric Kupp. "An Examination of Early Analog and Digital Sampling — The Robb Wave Organ circa 1927." Convention e-Brief. AES Convention 2013. Proceedings of the 134th Audio Engineering Society Convention (Rome, Italy: 4–7 May 2013).
Robb, Frank Morse. "Sound-Reproducing Instrument." US Patent 1,785,915 filed 29 September 1927, issued 23 December 1930. http://www.google.ca/patents/US1785915 [Last accessed 19 March 2014].
Truette, Everett Ellsworth. Organ Registration: A Comprehensive treatise on the distinctive quality of tone of organ stops. Boston MA: C.W. Thompson, 1919.


text: The Olympic Park's Esplanade offers an annual lively outdoor line-up based on physical activity, sustainable development and culture. MC2 has captured key moments of these activities in order to produce various briefs allowing audiences and the media to see the diversity of events it features. Pictures do speak for themselves without words!


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"We're staying there and we're not going nowhere. Last night didn't do anything, but just made us stronger in taking over our borough," said Mayor Helen Thomas.
Monday night, police were enforcing a 9:00 p.m. curfew in Darby Borough's 3rd ward when someone fired a metal ball bearing at a patrol car using what is referred to as an arm rocket or sling shot, shattering a rear window and narrowly missing the 22-year-old female officer inside.
"Basically, I guess you could call it a war! We have a drug problem down there," said Chief Robert Smythe.
Last week, officials declared a state of emergency in the 3rd ward due to a rash of violent incidents that has made elderly residents hostages in their own homes.
"It's not safe to even go out your house," said Moses Smith.
"Just, people just crazy that's all," said Mable Wimberly.
"I hear gunfire, I hear all this stuff and I'm tired of it, most of the elderly people on this block are definitely tired of it," said Smith.
Police have tripled patrols in the ward in the wake of the violence. And Tuesday police were investigating yet another incident in which spots were fired at a car at 2nd and Greenway.
"We're about taking back the streets. We need to make that area safe and if that means we need this curfew to stay on, it's gonna stay on," said Chief Smythe.
Officials are also concerned that some people have been going on Facebook and Twitter trying to inflame the situation.
"For those of you on Twitter and on Facebook who I read today when they said a Police Officer was almost hurt and they said, 'Good!', I don't think that's right," said Council President Janice Davis.
Officials say it's bad enough officers and residents are facing violence that could mean life or death and some people are out there spreading rumors on the Internet.
"Do not listen to this false information that's going on in Darby Borough over the internet and on Facebook and Twitter and all this stuff, it's just not real."
Police are making progress. They have identified several people of interest in the rash of violence which they believe will eventually lead to a number of arrests.
You can get the latest crime statistics from the Philadelphia Police by CLICKING HERE for the force's crime data mapping site.


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In a statement posted on Twitter, Amazon-owned Twitch, the giant online streaming platform confirmed the reports of yet another data breach – arguably one of the biggest in the company history.
The data is considered to have been obtained as recently as this Monday, as the company saw sensitive company information and streamer earnings.
While the leaks do not seem to contain the login credentials like email IDs or passwords, the users are still being encouraged to change the login information as soon as possible.
The "extent" of the leak
More than 100GB of confidential information, including the source code of the streaming platform, technical details of unannounced and unreleased projects, and the income of the streamers was leaked to the anonymous image hosting site 4chan.
In the tweet, Twitch said it was "working with urgency to understand the extent of this" and will "update the community as soon as additional information is available".
The metadata posted on several internet forums seems to suggest that the leaked data is from important software areas, including "infosec", "core config packages", and "devtools". The documents also allegedly contain the website's source code and other related services. Interestingly, it is titled "part one", hinting that there may be more leaks to come.
In addition to the technical code, the document also contained the income of several top-earning Twitch streamers from August 2019 to October 2021. Since Twitch fiercely guards the operational details, the leak just adds salt to the injury at this stage, amid the reports of its competitors offering huge salaries to lure some of the gaming talents away from the platform.
That said, the list of income is highly unlikely to include sponsorship deals and third-party income sources. Even if genuine, since most of the top-earning streamers are effectively independent media operators, the income leaks do not necessarily indicate the actual take-home pay.
Events leading up to the leak
In recent months, Twitch has been battling several so-called "hate raids", where several Black, LGBTQIA+, and other minority users are being harassed on the platform.
Just last week, the streaming platform introduced new verification features to combat this situation, but the company has been facing criticism for failing to contain these practices.
In early September, creators announced a boycott titled "a day off Twitch" against organised harassment.
The anonymous user linked to the leak called the Twitch community a "disgusting toxic cesspool" and announced that the leak was an attempt to "foster more disruption and competition" in the video streaming space.


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Clinverse, Inc., provider of an end-to-end, cloud-based financial lifecycle system for automating global clinical payments, announced that Naurex Inc. has implemented ClinPay to automate investigator payments for a current Phase II trial.
Clinverse, Inc.
, provider of an end-to-end, cloud-based financial lifecycle system for automating global clinical payments, announced that
Naurex Inc.
has implemented
® to automate investigator payments for a current Phase II trial.
Naurex, a clinical-stage company developing treatments to address unmet needs in psychiatry and neurology, implemented ClinPay for a Phase II trial of its investigational antidepressant agent, GLYX-13. The trial is expected to enroll subjects at up to 25 sites across the US.
Naurex's VP of Finance Jim Schulz was focused on finding an automated payment solution that would allow the biotech company to have complete control over its financials, including payments, invoicing, and cash management. According to Schulz, "As a smaller company, having a system in place that allows us real-time visibility into our financial outlook is an important time and resource saver, and in turn gives us a higher level of confidence as we move forward in our trial."
In addition, ClinPay addresses the following:
1. Ability to generate benchmark data for financial trending and forecasting for future trials – predicting how much and when the company will be spending cash in future studies.
2. Level of control over financial data that leads to significant time saving and resource efficiencies.
3. Ability to ensure timely and accurate payments to sites, which result in better performing, higher enrolling, and more satisfied sites.
ClinPay's open application programming interface (API) provides seamless integration with existing external systems, such as the EDC system used by Naurex and other biomedical firms. When data is captured in the EDC system, those clinical activities are matched to relevant contract terms in ClinPay, triggering payment transactions, which can be reviewed online and then automatically routed for payment. Clients also rely on reports directly from ClinPay to help complete month-end accounting. ClinPay's fully validated accounting system also provides automated GAAP standards and compliance, automated contract amendments, and full audit trail capabilities.
"In the past, our old system required an 8-10 hour manual process on a monthly basis to reconcile payments," noted Schulz. "With ClinPay, at the simple push of a button, a report is generated which shows how much we owe each site. What used to be a cumbersome process has been streamlined to a 5-minute process, providing us with definitive results that show our real-time, true liabilities."
ClinPay's patent-pending contract meta language (CML) converts contracted payment terms, regardless of complexity, into actionable items triggered by clinical activity, without further programming required. With these capabilities, sponsors can expect to reduce costs and manual efforts required to pay sites and other vendors by as much as 30-40% or more.
"The ability to pay our sites accurately and more frequently, even when managing very complex payment terms and guidelines, has changed our site relationships for the better," said Kamran Alam, Director of Finance at Naurex.
Based on the success of the ClinPay implementation with the current Phase II trial, Naurex plans to use ClinPay in an upcoming Phase III trial.


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Mahatma Gandhi is—and always has been—many things to many people, but a sex symbol? In Canadian provocateur Bruce LaBruce's bluntly titled Gerontophilia, a hugely enlarged rendering of the Indian politician's visage looms, wall-mounted, over the bed of young protagonist Lake (Pier-Gabriel Lajoie). It's a sly sight gag, pointing both to the ostensibly straight Lake's burgeoning desire for aging male flesh, and functioning as a subversive re-contextualization of the familiar. This goes for the subject matter, which has been addressed in films like Hal Ashby's evergreen Harold and Maude, but still remains a taboo—as does LaBruce's work. Anyone familiar with the director's thematically transgressive, sexually explicit canon (No Skin Off My Ass, Skin Flick) might be expecting a result even more startling than usual given the premise, but Gerontophilia may be his most formally conservative film to date.
Propelled by the blooming affection between Lake, whose name suggests the openness and fluidity with which LaBruce approaches issues of sexuality, and black eightysomething Melvin Peabody (Walter Boden), whom Lake springs from a care home in order to embark on a road trip, Gerontophilia is engaging from the start and pleasingly non-judgemental of its protagonist's peccadilloes. However, it's badly hamstrung by a wan central performance from the pretty but ineffectual Lajoie, and there are some terribly ham-fisted dramaturgical moments (it's impossible not to howl with laughter when one character takes one of the goofiest, most-telegraphed tumbles down a staircase you'll ever see). Yet the overriding impression is of a sensitive, normalizing approach to a thorny subject, enlivened considerably by Broden's sparky performance as the born-again Peabody. Oh, and further bonus points for the inspired use of Pulp's "Help the Aged" over the closing credits, though I'm not entirely sure that's what Jarvis Cocker was singing about.
Promising an adventure, but delivering only a ploddingly predictable triumph-over-adversity narrative, John Curran's episodic (and tellingly blandly titled) Tracks makes heavy weather of adapting the memoir of the same name by Robyn Davidson, a young Australian woman who, in 1975, embarked on a 67-month trip from Alice Springs to the Indian Ocean. Mia Wasikowska plays Davidson as a cynical loner without much time for anyone other than her beloved dog, Diggity (whom, sadly, at no point does she ever address after shouting the word "No!"), and the small fleet of large camels she's trained. The film may be brave in spotlighting such an inherently unlikable character, but it fails to provide a truly compelling reason as to why we should be interested in Davidson's foolhardy quest; woozily shot flashbacks reveal a family bereavement, but the film treats her journey like a selfish, particularly bloody-minded "gap year"—or, for the Americans reading this, a post-high school sabbatical. It's made even less clear why everyone who the standoffish Davidson meets on her journey is prepared to bend over backward to help her—including, most egregiously, an Aboriginal man, Eddie (Roly Mintuma), who's given an unmistakable sprinkling of magical-negro dust. Throughout there persists the nagging suspicion that the real-life Davidson would have been far flintier and eccentric than the film ever allows her to be, or is interested in finding out.
However, if one tires of the predictable story and frequent segues into sentimentality, there's always Mandy Walker's beautiful, sometimes breathtaking, widescreen landscape cinematography to catch the eye. Elsewhere, the lanky Adam Driver, here sporting even stragglier facial hair than usual, injects some much-needed color in his intermittent appearances as a goofy, good-hearted photojournalist on his own improbable quest to thaw Robin's heart.
Cult Japanese director Sion Sono (Cold Fish, Love Exposure) is well-known for the thematic outrageousness and Grand Guignol aesthetic overdrive of his films. His latest, Why Don't You Play in Hell?, is no exception, an arch, deeply meta ode to the joys of cinephilia, boasting overcranked formalism (crash zooms, freeze frames, wipe cuts) and a near-deafening sound mix. The convoluted plot revolves around the interaction between rival yakuza gangs, an earnest collective of deadbeat but spirited filmmakers named, wonderfully, "The Fuck Bombers," and a hapless bystander who has the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Connecting them all is a single femme fatale, the daughter of a mafia boss whose time as a child actor was cut short, but is now a reluctant movie star herself.
The narrative is awkwardly stitched together and hugely telegraphed (we can guess fairly early on exactly how everything will come together) and the pace frequently drags, but in the interim there's plenty of fun to be had in seeing just how far Sono will push his barrage of farce, references (kung-fu movies most frequently), and ultra-violence in the name of cinema. The answer is pretty far, though the effect is more often laughable than visceral—a fact compounded by Sono's use of lamentably unconvincing CGI blood which often simply dissolves mid-spray. Despite its excesses, Sono's film is deeply nostalgic and sentimental about cinema culture from a fan and filmmaker point of view. As sour on the movie business as Mulholland Drive (Sono, like Lynch, makes an explicit connection between producing and outright gangsterism), but as deeply in love with the creative side of the medium as the work of Quentin Tarantino, it's designed as catnip for midnight-movie hounds. But there's one nagging irony to the whole endeavor: Despite its openly fetishistic take on 35mm, it's shot on shiny digital.
The Venice Film Festival runs from from August 28—September 7.
Since 2001, we've brought you uncompromising, candid takes on the world of film, music, television, video games, theater, and more. Independently owned and operated publications like Slant have been hit hard in recent years, but we're committed to keeping our content free and accessible—meaning no paywalls or fees.
If you like what we do, please consider subscribing to our Patreon or making a donation.


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Over the past nine months, the world has generally reached the consensus that the keys to slowing the spread of COVID-19 include widespread testing, aggressive (and enforced) contact tracing, mask-wearing, and social distancing. At Boston College, however, only two of these criteria—mask-wearing and social distancing—have been met, with testing severely lacking and contact tracing being outsourced to the state of Massachusetts.
But we already know this. So does the city of Newton—earlier this month, the mayor expressed her disappointment over how inefficiently BC seems to be handling the pandemic on campus. Unfortunately, student accounts of their experiences this semester reinforce the mayor's criticisms. From lax enforcement of contact tracing to disgraceful conditions for students in isolation, each person I interviewed painted a picture of a university woefully out of touch with the needs of its constituents.
From the beginning of the summer, various BC officials and administrators promised extensive contact tracing for students exposed to someone who carried the COVID-19 virus. In practice, however, contact tracing has been spotty—in some cases, students are quickly notified and placed in isolation, but in others, students realize sources of contact through their own means, long after they have been exposed.
Students living in isolation can also see a disconnect between the promises of the university and the reality of their situation. According to the BC website, "Students in University isolation housing will be able to attend classes remotely, will have food provided to them by BC Dining Services, and will be under the care and supervision of University Health Services." While technically true, this statement is vague in that it fails to reflect the poor living conditions for those placed in isolation.
One student (who requested her name not be published) explained that food in isolation, or lack thereof, was a major issue for her. Each day, she received only a bagel, two hard-boiled eggs, a chicken with two sides, and a fruit cup—not nearly enough food for a college student—and without a microwave, the food was generally brought to her "soggy and gross." Supplementing this was 24 ounces of water, which is arguably insufficient considering that dehydration can exacerbate the symptoms of COVID-19.
What's more, is that the rooms in isolation housing are not conducive to students taking online classes. The same student explained that the WiFi was not strong enough for consistent connection during online class, and got worse as more people were placed in her hotel. More recently, the Pine Manor dormitories suffered a power outage for almost half a day. Given the pace of classes and the penalties many professors impose for missing lectures, an effective wireless connection should be something BC prioritizes when choosing where to place students in isolation.
Some students also reported not having space to do work, or even a desk in their room, until they asked for one from a BC employee. While BC did eventually provide the students with the resources they needed to succeed in online classes, it is reasonable to expect that these resources be included from the start, without being requested by students.
Besides the poor conditions for physical health and online learning, students in isolation risk impacts on their mental health, too. Not being able to go outside, even by oneself, and a lack of windows in the isolation rooms can exacerbate feelings of loneliness and social isolation that arise from being alone for an extended period of time.
To their credit, BC requires isolated students to check in daily with a ResLife employee as a way to ensure that their mental health doesn't deteriorate during their time away from campus. BC has also recently added a mental health module (to be completed by all students) and more University Counseling Services resources in an effort to address an expected rise in mental health crises amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Updated 7:26 p.m., October 4, 2020.
Preventing a COVID-19 outbreak on campus requires personal responsibility from all BC students, but it also requires the administration to hold up their end. Students in isolation expect their needs for health and learning to be met. By listening to the experiences of isolated students, the BC administration can work to ensure that students can continue learning without concern for their health or well-being.
As you read this, I'm probably eating popcorn, napping, or playing Mario Kart. Or some combination of the three.


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Company Dancer
JanpiStar (they/them/Janpi) was born and raised in Puerto Rico. They got involved with art for the first time through the music at the Fine Art School Anita Toro Hernández as a 12-year-old playing the clarinet. In 2012 Janpi began their Bachelor Degree in Drama at the University of Puerto Rico Rio Piedras and had the opportunity to work with Viveca Vazquez, Carola Garcia and Petra Bravo. Janpi began to dance on January 2013 with Juan Maria Seller in the School For the Performing Arts at Guaynabo Puerto Rico. They then took workshops in writing, movement, acting and semiotics in Ecuador with the group Malayerba.
Janpi has also done workshops with the Candoco Dance Company and went to their audition. They worked with the theater group "Jóvenes del 98" directed by Maritza Perez and trained dance in The School for the Performing Arts directed by Waldo Gonzalez. Janpi has worked with choreographers including Robert Dekkers, Arthur Pita and Jennifer Archibald as well as Petra Bravo with "instalaciones Coreograficas , la casitas de Santurce" in The Fine Arts Center of Puerto Rico. Janpi's most recent solo work of choreography was commissioned for the inaugural Queering Dance Festival, FROLIC.


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The dynamic duo might be making amends.
Charlamagne was introduced to most of us through Wendy Williams when she use to do radio. Charlamagne was her co-host.
The duo split up and stopped speaking to each other and we were all left kind of confused.
We now know Kevin Hunter was the root of the problem.
Wendy announced on her show that Charlamagne reached out to her and they are going out to dinner!


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Any team looking to add offense this July will be taking a look at Jay Bruce in Cincinnati. Slashing .279/.325/.569, he lags behind only breakout star Adam Duvall in SLG on the Reds roster, with 17 HR and 59 RBI. In the last year of a six-year, $51 million deal (with a $13 million option for 2017), Bruce is exactly the type of player a team in the opposite position as the floundering Reds would take on as they attempt to contend into late summer.
And Bruce, to his credit, is more open to switching to a contender than ever, having lifted his self-ban on being traded to eight particular MLB teams, per MLB.com's Mark Sheldon.
Bruce said on Thursday he is open to any deal, including to any of the eight clubs that are listed in his contract's limited no-trade clause. That list includes the Yankees, Red Sox, A's, Rays, Marlins, Twins, Indians and D-backs.
Back in spring training, the Reds had seemed to lock up a deal that would send Bruce to Toronto, but medical issues with a player headed to Cincinnati in the deal sent the whole thing off the rails. It also just seemed unfair to add a hitter like Bruce to a lineup like Toronto's, merely on principle.
But now is the time when teams will be even more desperate for that last burst of offense, and Bruce is capable of providing it. Like most players, the 29-year-old Bruce would prefer to go to a team that is more likely to end the season jubilantly piling on each other than, say, the Reds. As a lefty, Bruce could fit rather seamlessly into Cleveland's outfield, one of the few contenders on his newly revised list. The Marlins' acquisition of Fernando Rodney made it clear they view themselves as buyers at the deadline, and the Red Sox are trying to remain within nipping distance of the Orioles in the AL East.
In any case, Bruce, despite saying he was fine staying in Cinicnnati, has made himself easier to move for the Reds, who now have the opportunity to bring in some much-needed assets in return for his bat. In doing so, the team will potentially send him to a more successful situation in the middle of his return to form from last season. There is no shortage of contenders (or former contenders) who already have Bruce's name on their shopping lists, with the Giants, Dodgers, White Sox, and Royals all having been mentioned at some point as having interest in him this season.


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In an effort to educate the general public - BEFORE they even contact a lawyer - about the necessary elements to a successful claim in the areas of:
- school negligence;
- construction accidents;
- defective or dangerous products;
- auto accidents; or
- slip and/or trip and fall accidents
Long Island & Queens, New York personal injury attorney Jonathan Cooper has published numerous educational articles on these topics. By way of background, Jonathan Cooper is the published author of the Free book on New York accident claims, "Why Most Accident Victims Do Not Recover the Full Value of Their Claim," as well as the New Yorker's guide to defective product claims, "Why Are There So Few Successful Defective Products Lawsuits?"
- Page 1
When Non-NY Companies Have Arbitrability Decided by New York's CourtsThere are circumstances where New York's courts must decide whether arbitration clauses are enforceable - even for two Non-NY companies, explains Jonathan Cooper.
Why Corporate Officers Aren't Personally Liable for Guarantees Under NY LawNew York law clarifies why corporate officers aren't - as a general rule - personally liable for their guarantees.
Why Whistleblower Policies May Not Be Grounds to Contest Firing in New YorkA recent decision by one of NY's appellate courts reveals why whistleblower policies may not be grounds to contest firing in NY.
Understanding the Limits of the Attorney-Client Privilege Under NY Law
7 Tips for New Yorkers to RecoverTheir Losses After Hurricane SandyArticle sets forth 7 Tips for New Yorkers to Recover Losses After Hurricane Sandy by Long Island, NY negligence lawyer Jonathan Cooper.
The Deadline for Disclosing Your Experts in New YorkIn a recent decision, one of NY's appellate courts addressed the deadline for disclosing your experts under NY law.
How Pleading Guilty to a Crime Can Affect Your NY Negligence CaseLong Island, NY negligence lawyer Jonathan Cooper explains how pleading guilty to a crime can affect your New York negligence case.
When Videotaping a Deposition is a Good (Great) Idea in New YorkThere are some limited circumstances in which videotaping a deposition is a very good idea, and worth the extra expense, explains Jonathan Cooper.
When a New York Building Owner Can Be Held Liable for Negligent SecurityAlthough NY building owners are not generally liable for assaults committed on their premises by third parties, there is a narrow exception to this rule.
How New York's Courts Assess Comparative Fault in a Negligence CaseFollowing is a brief discussion by a Long Island, NY negligence lawyer regarding how each party's relative share of fault for an accident comes into play in NY.
When an Independent Contractor's Negligence Can Lead to Liability Under NY LawLong Island, New York negligence attorney Jonathan Cooper discusses When Independent Contractor's Negligence Can Lead to Liability in NY.
What NY Courts May Do When a Plaintiff Can't Remember the AccidentLong Island & Queens, NY accident attorney Jonathan Cooper discusses what New York's courts may do when a plaintiff can't remember the accident.


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One mom shares her experience of Peer Coaching Circles and explains how, by joining with other parents, autism families can find great support.
Everyone travels on their own path. On my journey, I have moved, overcome, and in vain left some of the pebbles behind. Each path is a path of clearing, reclaiming, and reconnection to oneself.
My distinct child has led me to discover so many good people as well as to face the looks, the comments, and experience the feelings of isolation—as well as exhaustion.
What I would like to share with readers is that, although my path has been marked by challenges and failures, I have discovered the true strength of compassion and empathy. Thanks to other parents who have understood my tearful gaze, my tired traits, and my constant worry of not knowing what tomorrow will hold for my autistic daughter, I have journeyed on. My child has been given many labels and diagnoses, but, to me, she is simply Daphnée.
Discovering Peer Coaching Circles
One of the most powerful discoveries during my parenting journey is the impact of coaching and peer coaching groups. What is the difference between these and the support groups offered by different associations of parents of different children? Well, the approach and techniques for getting people to help each other are completely different.
A coaching circle is a small group of six to 12 circle members plus a facilitator who meet approximately once a month over a period of several months. The format I will describe is based primarily on an approach called Action Learning.
I noticed for a long time that the conversations in support groups often revolved around challenges or problems and, although I felt understood by my peers, I didn't always feel I was coming back to my home environment with all the tools to help me find solutions. Yes, the mutual care was there, but I needed an extra push that would allow me to move forward. I felt the more traditional group conversation approach did not help my self-confidence, and my sense of empowerment and motivation was often at a standstill.
It wasn't until I participated in a peer coaching group that I noticed the elements that allowed me to spread my parental wings and move through the many struggles on my path. Here are seven benefits of participating in a peer group coaching circle:
1. Accelerates learning
2. Provides practical experience
3. Helps you solve problems
4. Motivates you
5. Opens doors
6. Helps you be a better peer/coach
7. Provides a supportive community
Many will say they experience the same positive elements in traditional support groups. For me though, the big difference was learning to listen to others differently in an authentic and non-judgmental way, to appreciate the stories of others and to make positive connections with my reality and my learning. I felt I was able to trust and learn to ask questions that open up possibilities instead of feeling locked into my problems with limited access to resources.
So, what I have gained from these coaching circles that helped me and my family to progress?
1. They've helped me to reconcile my career and aspirations with my child's many needs
2. I make more informed choices about the steps and resources required for my child
3. I've eliminated the feeling of guilt at sometimes having to "choose me" to avoid emotionally "going under"
4. I'm finding solutions to help avoid exhaustion
5. I'm creating and trusting the support network I have developed for my child
6. I feel I've become a better person through the skills of coaching, support, listening, and open questioning
7. I now feel able to play a part in changing the world by offering coaching circles and teaching the process so more will benefit from it
I sincerely hope that peer coaching circles—also called peer coaching groups or variations such as co-development groups—will be offered by self-help organizations. I truly believe this approach can help us to come out of our "victimhood" and spread our wings for a better future for all.
This article was featured in Issue 112 – Understanding Diagnosis & Disorders


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By Mathilde Ngo Mbom
The birth of the Fight for 15
The "Fight for 15" movement began when 200 fast-food workers in New York City started striking on November 29, 2012 to demand better employment conditions, including a huge bump in hourly minimum wage from $7.25 to $15.
In 2017, the social justice phenomenon has gained some ground around the world including Canada, where 3 provinces have already considered the partial or full implementation of the $15 minimum wage. The Canadian pioneer of this labor policy was Alberta, with Ontario and British Columbia following suit. These provinces argue that the program will reduce the number of people living in poverty, the majority of whom earn the minimum wage rate. However, the $15 minimum wage hike is an initiative with a lot of opposition that reveals a deeper area of contention in economics: a combat of economic ideologies aiming to reduce poverty.
What does basic economics theory say?
On one side, the economic critics of the campaign claim that the policy will fail to meet its purpose since it defies the law of demand, given that a higher salary wage will reduce the demand for employees. As a matter of fact, the Fraser Institute reported disemployment as one major consequence of the minimum wage hike. The loss of employment would mostly affect the low-wage workers that the policy intended to help, notably young people and immigrants. The report also noted increased prices for consumers, thereby decreasing the spending power of minimum wage earners in spite of increased earnings.
Another study that appeared in the Journal of Labor Research in 2012 by Michele Campolieti, Morley Gunderson and Byron Lee revealed that a minimum wage hike would not have significant statistical effect on poverty because "about 30 percent of the net earnings gains from minimum wage increases go to the poor while about 70 percent 'spill over' into the hands of the non-poor." In line with these findings, a working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research in June found that the average low-wage worker in Seattle lost $125 a month following the gradual increase of hourly minimum wage to $15.
What does progressive economics theory say?
On the other hand, the economic supporters of the wage hike claim that its benefits will outweigh the costs. While not denying the possibility of job losses, economist Armine Yalnizyan recently stated that the hike will improve productivity and consequently the economy from the bottom up. With household consumption accounting for 57 percent of Canadian GDP, she claims that minimum wage earners will have more disposable income, a condition that will result in "more demand for what businesses have to sell." She also noted that the potential job loss among teenagers may be unrelated to only labor wage hikes, citing a study conducted by the National Employment Law Project which found no correlation between minimum wage hikes and job losses.
Are there other alternatives to fight against poverty?
Since economists cannot all reach a consensus that the "liveable" hourly wage can permanently reduce poverty, other economic tools can be used as anti-poverty devices. Among them is the increase in the Working Income Tax Benefit in Canada, or the Earned Income Tax Credit in the US, a program in which low-income earners are motivated to be members of the workforce by receiving a subsidy from higher income taxpayers. A 2015 University of New Hampshire survey of 166 US-based economists has revealed that 71% of the economists believed that the subsidy could help reduce poverty, contrarily to the $15 minimum wage that only gathered a support of 5%. Other suggestions include a decrease in taxes, an increase in child tax credits, accessibility to more training programs and implementation of a guaranteed basic income program, an initiative that is currently being tested by the Ontario government in three cities.
What's next?
Whether the contradiction in opinion regarding the impact of a rise in minimum wage on poverty derives from economic theory, humanitarian goals, or political motivation, the Fight for 15 campaign is in full swing in Canada and won't be without noticeable consequence. Interestingly, one such consequence may be with regards to automation in the workplace, which may be expanding faster than expected. For example, in light of the minimum wage hike proposal by the Ontario government, the grocery chain Metro is considering replacing human cashiers with machines to offset the $50M increase in labor costs. Will other chains do the same?


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Are you using Android phone? I'm afraid you need to uninstall and reinstall the game. If you have saved the game with Kongregate/ Google Play / Game Center account, you should be able to get the progress back after you go through the new player tutorial.
If you are having trouble getting progress back, please send us your new game ID. We'll try to find your progress and transfer it over.
I use an iPhone 6S. Will the re-installing the game work in this case?
I think I did link my game with FB & a few other services but I'm not sure if the sync had ever worked. It'd pity to lose all my progress since I've played from the very beginning.
Hi Rain,
Sorry for the delayed reply. What's your iPhone device name? You can find it in iPhone settings > General > About. Please refer the attached for example. I'll try to search for your game data using the device name and if there is a match, we can copy the data to a new account once you reinstall the game.
Thanks Mars. I hope it would be possible to find my game data & get everything back. I haven't uninstalled my game yet. My phone's name is PinkPanther
Actually you might still have my account details because I was in beta group (Etana).
Hi Etana,
Yes! We've got your ID. It seems there is some data issue with the account. We are urgently investigating the issue and will get back to you ASAP.
Hi Etana,
We've found the issue. It's something to do with the data structure. We've now got the data ready. Could you uninstall and reinstall the game and send over the new ID?
Hi Mars,
Just had a chance to reinstall my game.
My current ID is vnDh@E@3L
Thanks for sorting everything, Mars.
You are welcome! And thank you for all the support!
I'm having the same issue using Android. I have reinstalled but it doesn't appear to have restored the saved data from my google account. I also had my kongregate account linked but I'm afraid to relink it in case I lose my progress.
I'm not sure what my old ID was but my new one is FnvNv9ygS.
Hi Cat543,
I have found your previous data and transferred it to the new ID. Would you like to check if everything is OK now?
Connecting to your Kongregate account should be able to bring back to the last saving point. However, as this is a new account, you will need to reconnect to Kongregate and start saving the new account from now on.
Thanks it's all looking good!


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Test Engineer
Recruiters Comments:
Job Description:
Are you driven, ambitious Test Engineer who want to make a difference and change the world?
We have an amazing opportunity for You in a start-up tech company located in the heart of Limerick City!
The company developed and patented a software capable of tracking patient whereabouts in hospitals using Wi-Fi networks and wearable devices.
Now, they are focusing on returnable packaging to help companies with the challenge of single-use packaging. By using their technology, companies can track products through the supply chain, understand consumer behaviour, reduce wastage, improve sustainability, generate consumer engagement, and create a returnable packaging infrastructure that will revolutionise how they do business.
That is why, they are looking for talented IT professionals to come onboard and join them on the incredible journey to become a global leader in their sector.
If you want to learn more and use the most modern and innovative tools and platforms daily, build great products, see them in the world and take pride in that, you need to apply now!
They would like to hire a skilled Test Engineer to design and implement test procedures, automated test cases, create and maintain automated test suites and test reports for our products.
As a test engineer, you will be responsible for analysing the product features, understanding exactly how the product works, designing test cases, creating test suites, creating, and executing functional tests, system tests, integration tests, performance and load tests, writing up test reports and maintaining test suites.
To ensure success as a Test Engineer, you should have in-depth knowledge of software engineering and product design, a good eye for detail, and the ability to think outside the box. Ultimately, a top-level test engineer can create simple yet thorough quality-test processes and procedures to ensure the peak reliability and performance of a product.
- Meeting with the product design team to determine product testing parameters.
- Writing high level test plans, low level test plans and creating functional test cases for the product.
- Conducting quality assurance and designing performance and load tests using the new testing procedures and test cases.
- Troubleshooting errors/bugs and streamlining the testing procedures.
- Writing up the final QA and test procedures.
- Training any new quality assurance staff and providing technical support when needed.
- Ensuring all tests and procedures meet company and industry standards.
- Preparing test reports for management.
- Bachelor's degree in engineering, computer science, or computer engineering.
- Previous work experience as a test engineer.
- Familiarity with testing tools including Apache, Selenium, JMeter or similar.
- Familiar with Test Driven Development (TDD) and Behavioural Driven Development (BDD) techniques
- Experience with Test Frameworks.
- Software Programming knowledge and experience
- Database knowledge and experience
- Linux command line and Bash scripting
- Experience with GIT
- Extensive knowledge of engineering and testing procedures.
- Good problem-solving skills.
- Ability to project manage.
- Ability to troubleshoot and think outside the box.
- High-level technical writing skills.
Technologies used by the company:
- Node.js
- React and React Native
- NestJS
- Jest (test framework)
- PostgreSQL
- Typescript
Clicking the "Apply Now" button means that you agree to the processing of your personal data for the purposes of current and future recruitment processes, carried out by QPTech in accordance with the provisions of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (EU) 2016/679. You also agree to share your personal data with other entities of QPTech and potential employers for purposes related to the recruitment process. QPTech may also contact you from time to time to inform you of events we are hosting that you may find interesting.
Providing data is voluntary, you have the right to inspect, correct or request deletion of your data at any time. A request to delete data means withdrawal from any further engagement in QPTech's recruitment processes and will result in the immediate deletion of your data. If you do not agree, please do not click the "Apply Now" button.
Salary: DOEContact: Vandana Sharma
Telephone: 0858704692
Email: email@example.com
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Next in the #MarchMeetTheMaker challenge is to share the best decision I ever made.
Well goodness! I can think of several! Create Art 4 Good is not my first business. It is, however, the business I have taken most seriously. The first thing I did was to write a business plan, set goals, and do everything I could to attain those goals.
My first big goal was to have a brick-and-mortar in five years of beginning my business. I had it in TWO! I would say, the business plan AND taking the leap to have a gallery space were two of the best business decisions I have ever made! #grateful #CreateArt4Good #greetings4good #artistlife


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ATLANTA — DiversiTech Corp., an aftermarket manufacturer and supplier of highly-engineered components for residential and light commercial HVACR, announced that it has acquired hilmor® from Stanley Black & Decker. The acquisition was completed Aug. 10.
Introduced to the HVACR market in 2013, the hilmor brand enjoys a leading reputation as a trusted supplier of innovative and quality HVACR tools. More than 300 hilmor products ranging from manifolds and gauges to vacuum pumps and electronic tools are available to HVACR technicians across the U.S., Canada, and Latin America. The brand has consistently introduced new and revolutionary products over the years, including its Compact Swage Tool, Compact Bender, and Dual Readout Thermometer.
"Our mission, and the driving force behind all we do, is to simplify the way our customers work," said DiversiTech CEO Andy Bergdoll. "The addition of the hilmor brand to the DiversiTech family is a major step toward furthering that mission. We're adding a tool brand and a portfolio of products that are synonymous with innovation and are highly complementary to the products we currently offer. Our wholesale customers and contractors now have an additional way to build their business while simplifying their work through streamlined product ordering, reduced shipping charges, and other benefits. Over the coming months we will be looking at ways to strategically grow and optimize the hilmor brand within our business."
Bud Sjogren, DiversiTech chief sales and marketing officer, added that the DiversiTech leadership team is working closely with its hilmor and Stanley Black & Decker counterparts to ensure a seamless transition.
"Several key hilmor personnel, including all current hilmor sales reps, will be joining the new business under DiversiTech, further securing continuity, expertise and an extended platform for growth," said Sjogren.
DiversiTech's acquisition of hilmor is one of 10 acquisitions by the company in the past 24 months. The company currently offers more than 17,000 product items in over 200 product categories.
Contractors and wholesalers with questions can contact their DiversiTech or hilmor regional sales manager.
Publication date: 8/13/2018
Want more HVAC industry news and information? Join The NEWS on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn today!


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May 292012
What a nice way to start this new day . . . seeing a video of Kartikeya rehearsing a new song called "Vayu". No vocals yet, but man, this sounds very fucking nice. It appears that this will be released as a single on June 22, and will feature guest appearances by Keith Merrow and Aleksandra Radosavljevic. Should be interesting, to say the least.
Check out the video after the jump. And if, by some remote chance, you don't know about Kartikeya already, click this link and read one of our 5,000 previous posts about the band.
One Response to "NEW KARTIKEYA ON THE WAY!"


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The below offer Bed & Breakfast and are all within a 15 mile radius of Thornhill
West Wing of a Scottish 'Castle' - up to 8 guests (Dalswinton)
Eliock Dower B&B The Glenauchtree Room - Private room - 2 guests (Eliock)
Eliock Dower B&B The Willowgrain Room - Private Room - 2 guests (Eliock)
Trigony House - Room in Boutique Hotel - 2 guests (Closeburn)
Nithbank Country Estate - 2 Suites (Thornhill)
Kelton B&B, 60 Drumlanrig St - M: 07932 918205 (Thornhill)
The Buccleuch & Queensberry Arms Hotel - 12 Rooms - Dog Friendly (Thornhill)
Scaurbridge House - 2 double rooms and 1 kingsize room (Thornhill)
Newark Farm Bed & Breakfast - 2 double rooms (Sanquhar)
Mrs Clark, 4 Baron's Court - M: 07950 035757 or T:01659 50361 (Sanquhar)
South Mains B&B, Lorna Greenshields T:01659 50362 (Sanquhar)
The above websites and details are listed solely as suggestions for accommodation located close to the Scottish National 2022 trial field, they are not recommendations. The ISDS and local committee are not connected with the accommodation providers and therefore are not liable for your booking and stay. Bookings, terms and conditions are solely between you and the accommodation provider.


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LONDON, May 7, 2009 / FW/ — Harrods, the quintessential place of luxury shopping in London with its Luxury Gift and Object Room location at the second floor as the ultimate place to look for precious items.
Today, Ralph Lauren Home marks a milestone as it presents a luxurious collection of decorative accessories, barware and gifts at Harrods Luxury Gift and Objet Room.
As the first American designer to launch a comprehensive collection of home furnishings, Ralph Lauren captures distinctive lifestyles with iconic pieces and enduring classics
Drawing inspiration from the heritage world of equestrian sportsmanship, this iconic collection redefines the classics for enduring style
Fashioned with modern elegance and inspired by the glamour of Art Deco, this sophisticated collection lends chic style to any décor
City Modern
With a spirit of modernity and timeless design, this bold, urban collection is inspired by the sleek lines and rich textures found in luxury sports cars
For more information, please visit www.ralphlaurenhome.com


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Like described by Abby Jean on the Feminists with Disabilities blog recently, I'm obsessed with public policy.
It's true. I am a policy wonk. I am endlessly interested in it. I read about it, think about it, talk about it and … write about it. (As in, what I'm doing right now.) And I do all of this because I think it's immensely important. Crucially important. Vitally important.
Public policy is how the government – whether local, state, provincial, federal, or any other level – takes action on a particular issue. It covers a whole huge range of potential state actions – allocating and spending money, setting and enforcing professional guidelines and standards, creating agencies and staff, structuring tax incentives, even defining what constitutes criminal behavior. That's an extremely big category that clearly has an enormous and unparalleled effect on the world.
Excerpted from I Love Policy | FWD (Feminists With Disabilities) by Abby Jean (not me)
I am captivated by political decision making, how it works and the impact it has on our lives. True, I am super nerdly; I can't read something or watch a movie without ideas about the history of policy and the effects it has had firing around in my brain. That means the new HBO series Boardwalk Empire is like catnip for me. It brings the history of the '20s and its politics to life in lush, vivid photography and provides fascinating context and insights into Prohibition, the mafia, suffragettes, corrupt politicians and politics of the era, fashion, the flapper girls, and the feminism of the era. The intense dissimilarities and the intense similarities the '20s have with life today also really draw you in. Recently *yet another* economic study confirmed that the 2000s have the most unequal division of wealth in U.S. history, excepting the 20s. Unprecedented corruption is similar, struggles over prohibition similar too. What isn't similar is the feeling of free-wheeling American personal freedom, including the "feminine liberation" of the time that went the way of the stock market after the Great Depression, and the economic boom that brought incredible opportunities–people are super nostalgic for those dissimilarities. I heart the show; it's triggered a major '20s obsession for me.
I especially liked last week's episode, it took us inside the back room and explicitly explored policy and the politics of divvying up new state-level funding for highways; we got an anatomy of the back room deal. Notorious Jersey City machine boss Frank Hague was pitted against the show's principal protagonist (and anti-hero) "Nucky" Thompson, the machine boss of Atlantic City, and Republican Senator Walter Edge trying to arbitrate between them. Hague wants all the road appropriations to go to Jersey City, and Nucky wants everything to go to Atlantic City, where he says he has new hotels (at this point in the timeline, the Ritz-Carlton Atlantic City had recently opened) but tourists can't get to them because the current roads to South Jersey are so muddy and inadequate. Both men are corrupt bosses used to getting everything they want (and expect to skim off a nice slice of any new funding for themselves) and compromise is difficult to impossible. Nucky pretty much created Edge's political career, serving as his campaign manager and using his money and connections to win him the gubernatorial race (then he moved from the governor's mansion to the U.S. Senate) so Nucky expects him to go to bat for Atlantic City, but Hague tipped the Democratic vote for Edge, crucial to win anything; Edge has presidential ambitions and can't afford to alienate either of them, so he plays the diplomat. The fact that Nucky, Hague and Senator Edge were all REAL POLITICIANS and that the dynamics at play are real (Nucky really was Edge's campaign manager, etc.) makes it all the more riveting.
Here's a clip from that scene.
Fair Use law lets me use this copyrighted material because its 1) a really brief clip and 2) used for the purpose of critique (i.e. it's legal for the same reason Roger Ebert or Jon Stewart showing a clip in order to comment on it is legal). See Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video.
80 Second Clip from HBO's "Boardwalk Empire": Back room Dealing
Coarse language warning: Nucky drops many F-bombs on Frank Hague in this clip, he thinks Hague just wants "a payoff" and is really frustrated and angry.
So, after watching this scene, my policy mind started buzzing. The corrupt incentives of the 1920s were perhaps different than the corrupt incentives of today. Both Nucky and Hague are motivated by corruption, but that corruption is motivating them to fight really hard for highways going to their respective counties (unquestionably a benefit for the economy and the average voter). In cases like this, is corruption helping the public?
These are the questions I wrote this post to ask: Did the certainty that they would get a hefty slice of any new project make them fight harder than politicians today to get projects for the public good?
Should we incorporate such incentives into the current system, like bonus pay or free stuff or public accolades if a politician helps the general population? Because right now, we have a system of open, legal bribery; ALL the incentives and thus, inevitably, ALL the policymaking energy is lined up against efforts to help normal constituents, and lined up for the special interests that give money to elect candidates. I always refer to this as giving "campaign bribetributions." It's essentially bribery, it totally skews the system so that the corrupt incentives make the government serve powerful private interests first and the public good only accidentally, but it remains completely legal.
At least in this scene, the corrupt incentives make public officials do something for the public good. I am desperate to address the crisis of campaign bribetributions making government only serve moneyed interests (not democracy but bribeocracy). If the powerful will never let us remove campaign bribetributions from our system, how do we realign the corruption to serve the people NOT just narrow interests with fat stacks of $$$$???


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Looking for a quote? Need to schedule service? Fill out this form below and we'll get you in touch with one of our skilled, service professionals.
Runyon and Sons Roofing is a residential and commercial roofing contractor that specializes in all types of shingle roofs, flat roofs, metal roofs and roof repairs. Located in Mentor Ohio, they have been servicing Lake, Geauga, Cuyahoga, Ashtabula, and Summit counties.
Clyde Runyon Sr. founded C & R Roofing in 1962. With one employee, and one truck, he began a residential roofing business that has grown rapidly over the past 50+ years. By the late 60's the business employed a six man crew, three of whom were his eldest sons, working out of a two-car garage with two trucks. In July 1973, Clyde Runyon Sr. decided to change the company name to more closely reflect its organization, thus Runyon & Sons Roofing evolved.By the early 90's the company grew to 30 full time employees. As the business became more substantial, so did the complexities. The roofing industry as a whole became exceedingly more challenging as the result of three specific issues: (1) New government regulations, specifically the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA), (2) Rapidly changing technology affecting material composition, material fastening systems, manufacturer's warranties, etc., (3) Economy inflation heavily influenced by the cost of petroleum and petroleum based products. It was during these years that only the strongest of companies survived.In the roofing business, as in every service business, there is only one factor that keeps companies in operation. That common factor is customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction comes only from consistent quality and performance. Our quality and performance begins with the proposal and ends only when the roofing system reaches its specified effective life period.
On every business opportunity, it is our goal to be the favored supplier. We strive to be the lowest evaluated bidder on each occasion. However, because no two installations are identical, each installation must be evaluated for its unique requirements. Because our excellent reputation is our most valued asset, rarely will we be the low price alternative. As is the case in every industry, there are those suppliers that will sacrifice in the selection of materials, reduce workmanship standards and disregard warranty representations. We are not one of these contractors. Please recognize that a sizable portion of our business is the repair and replacement of inferior roofing systems installed by others.
Currently, our company employs about 40 skilled craftsmen as well as a full time office staff and sales team. Our crews specialize in residential and commercial roofing and we have four full time repair crews for your year 'round emergency needs. We are fully licensed, bonded and insured and are compliant with all Workers' Compensation laws in the state of Ohio. We are proud to be one of the few GAF Master Elite Contractor's in the United States as well as the 2003 recipient of the prestigious BBB Torch Award for Businesses of Integrity.
Clyde Runyon Sr. passed away in the fall of 2005, but was pleased to see his small, family-oriented business passed on into the hands of his 2 sons, Clyde Jr. and Tommy. The business has now grown into a multi-million dollar company that still recognizes customer satisfaction and quality as its number one goal.


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Bethesda has announced that both the spacefaring RPG Starfield and Arkane's co-op shooter Redfall have been delayed. With a Twitter post the developers quietly pushed both projects into 2023, and, considering that we haven't seen gameplay for either, it's not exactly a huge surprise. Who really thought we were getting Starfield this year anyway?
The Twitter post says: "We're made the decision to delay the launches of Redfall and Starfield to the first half of 2023. The teams at Arkane Austin (Redfall) and Bethesda Game Studios (Starfield) have incredible ambitions for their games, and we want to ensure that you receive the best, most polished versions of them.
"We want to thank everyone for their excitement for Redfall and Starfield. That energy is a huge part of what inspires all of us everyday and drives our own excitement for what we are creating. We can't wait to share our first deep dive into the gameplay for both Redfall and Starfield soon. Thank you for your support."
An update on Redfall and Starfield. pic.twitter.com/pqDtx26Uu6May 12, 2022
Starfield especially has had a rather strange marketing process so far. Bethesda has been publishing videos detailing parts of the game, like the music, for quite a while before any substantial information on what the game actually is. Though we're hoping to see more of both projects this summer, we're going to have to wait at least until next year to get our hands on them.