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With each new SQL Server release, it becomes increasingly clear that the product is no longer just a database. SQL Server is a powerful application platform, loaded with capabilities to enhance and complement its traditional database features. Among other benefits, this ongoing development of the product greatly decreases the need to rely on external or third-party applications to create robust, feature-rich enterprise database solutions. The new Native XML Web Services feature in SQL Server 2005 removes dependency on IIS to expose standards-based, secure Web services.
The ability to serve Web services from SQL Server isn't entirely new. The feature is provided in SQL Server 2000 through the Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Web Services Toolkit and SQLXML. However, the XML Web services implementation in SQL Server 2005 greatly enhances the feature while making it more efficient, more secure, and easier to manage. And the feature is no longer dependent on Microsoft IIS. The Native XML Web Services feature supports many Web services standards such as SOAP 1.1 and 1.2 and standard Web Services Definition Language (WSDL). In this article, I explain how the Native XML Web Services feature works, how to implement it, and how to code client applications. I also cover security, best practices, and recommendations for using the feature. You can download the project files for the examples in this article by clicking the Download the Code link.
Native XML Web Services Implementation
Web service requests communicate with SQL Server 2005 by using the new protocol SOAP over HTTP. In this protocol, HTTP calls are intercepted by a listener driver called http.sys. This kernel-mode component processes HTTP requests and routes them to applications that have registered a particular URL path with http.sys. If the URL you're requesting has been registered, the HTTP handler sends the request to SQL Server through the http .sys API. Thus, SQL Server become another consumer for HTTP requests, removing the need for using IIS with Web services. A restriction exists, though: http.sys is currently implemented only on Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2), so if you consider using Native XML Web Services, your SQL Server has to be installed on one of these OSs.
You create Web services by establishing one or more SOAP endpoints on the server. (SQL Server 2005 has several types of endpoints, such as the Database Mirroring or Service Broker endpoints.) You could view a SOAP endpoint as an equivalent of the WebService class in .NET; it's a point of contact for client applications. In each endpoint, you expose one or more stored procedures or scalar user-defined functions (UDFs) as Web methods. Although it's not recommended, you can configure the endpoint to allow ad hoc execution of T-SQL batches; but because of its security risks, this feature is off by default and use of it is highly discouraged. Surprisingly, no UI tool exists for creating and managing endpoints. You have to use your T-SQL skills and master the art of using the CREATE ENDPOINT, DROP ENDPOINT and ALTER ENDPOINT commands. Listing 1 shows the most common options for the CREATE ENDPOINT command when creating a SOAP endpoint. I'll discuss only these most common options; I won't discuss options for endpoints other than the SOAP type.
You control the state of the endpoint by using the STARTED, STOPPED, or DISABLED setting for the STATE option, as Listing 1 shows. When the endpoint is stopped, it still responds to requests but returns an error. The stopped state can be useful for minimizing the timeframe of exposure. For example, you can run a couple of scheduled jobs and start an endpoint before scheduled data transfers, then stop it when the transfers are finished. Disabling the endpoint turns off all functionality.
The next few options in Listing 1 are HTTP related. The SITE and PATH options determine the Web service URL. The SITE setting configures the first part of the URL after "http." You can define a specific Web address (using computer name, localhost, or an IP address), or you can use one of the wildcards. The asterisk (*) wildcard lets you use all possible host names that haven't been explicitly registered with http. sys by other applications. The plus sign (+) wildcard enables the use of any host name. The best option is to use the * because it prevents potential conflicts with other registered URLs while giving you the flexibility of using different address formats. Here's what a sample Web service URL looks like after setting a site to myserver and path to /sql/mysqlendpoint:
The two other important HTTP endpoint options are PORTS and AUTHENTICATION. You use the PORTS option to configure whether the Web service will work with HTTP, HTTPS, or both. For security reasons, Microsoft highly recommends that you require SSL if your Web service will be called from outside of your network. The AUTHENTICATION option determines the type of HTTP authentication, which can be one several types: Basic, Digest, NTLM, Kerberos, or Integrated. These options are similar to authentication that IIS uses, with one major difference: SQL Server doesn't allow the anonymous option because of the sensitive nature of accessing data over a Web service. Another difference is that you'll need Basic authentication if your server is running mixed authentication and you want to pass SQL Server credentials. You have to use valid Windows credentials to be authenticated, either in a domain or locally. Also, because Basic authentication sends credentials in clear text, this option is supported only when the endpoint is configured to require SSL. If you try to use the combination of AUTHENTICATION = (BASIC, …) and PORTS = (CLEAR, …), you'll get the following error: The 'CLEAR' and 'BASIC' options are not allowed on the same statement. You'll have to set up the port to allow connections only over HTTPS by specifying PORTS = (SSL).
Now, let's look at a few SOAP-specific options for creating an endpoint. You use these options to configure what database objects you want to expose as Web services, what type of .NET objects will be used as return types, what type of SQL Server authentication you want to use, the WSDL generation type, and whether the endpoint should support T-SQL batches.
The most important part of the SOAP section in Listing 1 is one or more WEBMETHOD settings. This is the place where you expose your stored procedures and scalar UDFs as public Web methods. The WEBMETHOD='method_alias' statement defines the public name for your Web method. This is the name that client applications will use. The NAME='database.owner.name' setting maps that public function to the database object you want to expose. The public alias doesn't have to match the internal object name. In fact, SQL Server experts recommend that you don't use the same name so that you hide inner database details as much as possible from potential hackers.
After defining one or more WEBMETHOD sections, you have a few more options to set. Native XML Web Services support both Mixed and Windows-only authentication. You configure this option by setting LOGIN_TYPE to WINDOWS or MIXED (WINDOWS is the default). Note that if you decide to use Mixed authentication, you'll have to set up the port to allow only HTTPS access, as I mentioned earlier when I explained using Basic HTTP authentication. Again, the same reason applies—we don't want unencrypted network packets transporting usernames and passwords in clear text. Also note that you'll need to use Basic HTTP authentication with Mixed SQL authentication because the other security types won't be translatable against the SQL Server authentication engine. If you set BATCHES=ENABLED (the default is disabled), SQL Server will add a method called sqlbatch() to the endpoint. This method takes two parameters: a string containing your T-SQL batch and an optional array of SqlParameter objects. As I already mentioned, you should enable this option only when absolutely necessary, and you need to be aware of security implications.
You have three options for WSDL generation. You can specify DEFAULT to generate standard WSDL, you can use NONE if you don't want to expose your WSDL, or you can set the option to point to a stored procedure that uses the StoredProcedureName setting, then generate your own custom WSDL in that stored procedure. Using this option gives you more flexibility for supporting non-Microsoft Web services, development environments, and toolkits because you can tweak the WSDL to support whatever format they require.
Once you've created an endpoint, you can retrieve the WSDL from the endpoint by appending ?wsdl to the Web service URL:
The WSDL you get back is considered "default WSDL," and it supports the new SQL Server 2005 data types. If you're using Visual Studio 2003 or another development environment, you can request "simple WSDL" by using this URL format:
The simple WSDL uses primitive XSD data types, thus providing better backward compatibility.
The SCHEMA setting determines whether SQL Server returns the XSD schema for the method with the resultset (SCHEMA=STANDARD) or not (SCHEMA=NONE). You don't have to request schema for Web methods mapped to scalar UDFs and stored procedures that use FOR XML. You have to request schema when executing a stored procedure or a T-SQL batch that returns a tabular resultset. If you want schema with the FOR XML type of procedure, you need to specify XMLSCHEMA in the SELECT statement. If you don't request schema when calling an endpoint Web method mapped to a FOR XML stored procedure, you'll still be able to load the resultset into an XmlElement object.
This process is a little different if you want to work with a DataSet object. If you specify SCHEMA=NONE, the Web service returns a dataset, and without a schema, you'll get an error in your .NET code when you try to access a DataTable object in the returned dataset.
The last Web method option I'll mention is FORMAT. The default setting is ALL_RESULTS, for which SQL Server returns an array of objects containing a result set (either a dataset or an XML element) plus a few additional objects such as row count, SQL Server errors and warnings, stored procedure output parameters, and results of PRINT statements. If you don't want all that extra stuff, you can optimize the Web method by specifying FORMAT = ROWSETS_ONLY and you will get back just the result set.
Now, let's create a stored procedure and expose it as a Web method. For my example, I wanted to create something that could be used in the real world. One area in which I expect Native XML Web Services to be used a lot is remote database monitoring. Monitoring SQL Server installations behind firewalls isn't easy. But if you expose some monitoring and management stored procedures as Web services, you should be able to connect much more easily through HTTP, as long as your firewall routes the HTTP traffic to your SQL Server.
Listing 2 shows the code that creates a stored procedure that returns a list of indexes in which fragmentation is greater than the specified parameter. The stored procedure uses the new dynamic management function sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats. (Note that this function is the SQL Server 2005 replacement for the DBCC SHOWCONTIG command.) The next step is to run the code in Listing 3 to create an endpoint. When you run the script, SQL Server creates an endpoint called DBAdministration. This endpoint will have the GetFragmentedIndexes method mapped to a stored procedure of the same name in the AdventureWorks sample database.
Once you create the endpoint, you can start creating a client application in Visual Studio. The first step is to right-click the project and select Add Web Reference. Next, type the URL for WSDL as specified when you created the endpoint. On my computer, the URL is http://rehakr/sql/dba?wsdl, as you can see in Figure 1.
Click Add Reference, and you're ready to start coding. First, you create an instance of the Web service and set credentials. In this case, I use the credentials of the logged-on user:
DBAdministration ws = new DBAdministration(); ws.Credentials = System. Net.CredentialCache. DefaultCredentials;
Next, call the Web service. The return object is an array of objects:
object\[\] results = ws.Get FragmentedIndexes(int. Parse(txtFragPercent. Text));
Because the return object contains many types of objects, you need to loop through the array and find the type of object you're looking for. To get the resultset, we need to search for a DataSet object:
DataSet ds = null; for (int i = 0; i < results. Length; i++) \{ object result = results\[i\]; if (result.ToString() == "System.Data.DataSet") \{ ds = (System.Data.DataSet) results\[i\]; break; \} \}
As you can see, you need to do some extra work to get the data from the return object. Because this is the same code you'll have to use in every client application, I recommend that you create a helper object that implements methods such as GetDataSet() or GetXmlElement() to minimize coding the same plumbing over and over. Please consult SQL Server 2005 Books Online (BOL) to get the complete list of possible objects returned by an endpoint. Figure 2 shows a grid displaying the results of calling GetFragmentedIndexes(80).
Security Recommendations and Best Practices
The most basic security advice I can give you is to stick to the defaults as much as you can because the design of Native XML Web Services is heavily security focused. Use the default Windows-only authentication, keep T-SQL batches disabled, use SSL, and utilize Kerberos for HTTP authentication.
Although Native XML Web Services offers new options for data access, you need to be careful about when you consider using them. The most important thing you should know is that the overhead of making a SOAP call is much higher than using ADO.NET. In my own benchmark, I could see that stored procedures with minimum duration time (1ms to 2ms) executed about 15–20 times slower. As the length of execution time increases, the overhead becomes less significant, but my results clearly show that SOAP access is not the best choice on systems that have heavy loads in which you need to process high volumes of short OLTP transactions. SOAP is also not the best choice for returning very large result sets or retrieving binary objects.
Another big concern is scalability. Because an endpoint essentially replaces your middle tier, it can become a bottleneck. Unlike when you use a Web farm with .NET Web services as a middle tier, you can't easily scale out a SOAP endpoint because it's tied to a single instance of SQL Server.
However, it can make sense to use this feature in heterogeneous environments in which you need to expose your data easily to non-Microsoft clients, as long as your SQL Server is expected to handle only a slow to medium load. Native XML Web Services can also be useful if you need Web-service functionality without having to use IIS, if you require zero-footprint for data access on your clients, and if your applications don't require the use of a middle-tier layer. I also already showed another useful scenario, remote database monitoring over HTTP without using IIS. You shouldn't blindly use this feature, but when you take into consideration all the performance, security, and scalability implications, it can be a useful part of your enterprise architecture.


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#1: Check processes not run by you
- Difficulty: Expert
- Application: bash
OK, let's list all the processes on the box not being run by you!
ps aux | grep -v `whoami`Or, to be a little more clever, why not just list the top ten time-wasters:
ps aux --sort=-%cpu | grep -m 11 -v `whoami`It is probably best to run this as root, as this will filter out most of the vital background processes. Now that you have the information, you could just kill their processes, but much more dastardly is to run xeyes on their desktop. Repeatedly!
#2: Replacing same text in multiple files
- Difficulty: Intermediate
- Application: find/Perl
perl -i -pe 's/Windows/Linux/;' test*To replace the text Windows with Linux in all text files in current directory and down you can run this:
find . -name '*.txt' -print | xargs perl -pi -e's/Windows/Linux/ig' *.txtOr if you prefer this will also work, but only on regular files:
find -type f -name '*.txt' -print0 | xargs --null perl -pi -e 's/Windows/Linux/'Saves a lot of time and has a high guru rating!
#3: Fix a wonky terminal
- Difficulty: Easy
- Application: bash
resetand all will be well again.
#4: Creating Mozilla keywords
- Difficulty: Easy
- Application: Firefox/Mozilla
http://www.google.com/search?q=%sNow select the entry in the bookmark editor and click the Properties button. Now enter the keyword as gg (or this can be anything you choose) and the process is complete. The %s in the URL will be replaced with the text after the keyword. You can apply this hack to other kinds of sites that rely on you passing information on the URL.
Alternatively, right-click on a search field and select the menu option "Add a Keyword for this Search...". The subsequent dialog will allow you to specify the keyword to use.
#5: Running multiple X sessions
- Difficulty: Easy
- Application: X
startx -- :1to get into your graphical environment. To go back to the previous user session, press Ctrl+Alt+F7, while to get yours back press Ctrl+Alt+F8.
You can repeat this trick: the keys F1 to F6 identify six console sessions, while F7 to F12 identify six X sessions. Caveat: although this is true in most cases, different distributions can implement this feature in a different way.
#6: Faster browsing
- Difficulty: Easy
- Application: KDE
#7: Backup your website easily
- Difficulty: Easy
- Application: Backups
rsync -vare ssh firstname.lastname@example.com:/home/jono/importantfiles/* /home/jono/backup/Here we are backing up all of the files in /home/jono/importantfiles/ on 192.168.0.2 to /home/jono/backup on the current machine.
#8: Keeping your clock in time
- Difficulty: Easy
- Application: NTP
ntpdate ntp.blueyonder.co.ukA list of suitable NTP servers is available at www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/ntp/clock1b.html. If you modify your boot process and scripts to include this command you can ensure that you are perfectly in time whenever you boot your computer. You could also run a cron job to update the time.
#9: Finding the biggest files
- Difficulty: Easy
- Application: Shell
ls -lSrhThe "r" causes the large files to be listed at the end and the "h" gives human readable output (MB and such). You could also search for the biggest MP3/MPEGs:
ls -lSrh *.mp*You can also look for the largest directories with:
du -kx | egrep -v "\./.+/" | sort -n
#10: Nautilus shortcuts
- Difficulty: Easy
- Application: Nautilus
- Open a location - Ctrl+L
- Open Parent folder - Ctrl+Up
- Arrow keys navigate around current folder.
#11: Defrag your databases
- Difficulty: Easy
- Application: MySQL
mysqlcheck -o <databasename>You may also find it worth your while to defragment your database tables regularly if you are using VARCHAR fields: these variable-length columns are particularly prone to fragmentation.
#12: Quicker emails
- Difficulty: Easy
- Application: KMail
mailto:email@example.com return and KMail will automatically fire up, ready for your words of wisdom. You don't even need to fill in the entire email address. This also works for Internet addresses: try typing www.slashdot.org to launch Konqueror.
#13: Parallelise your build
- Difficulty: Easy
- Application: GCC
make -j4; make -j4 modules
#14: Save battery power
- Difficulty: Intermediate
- Application: hdparm
hdparm -y /dev/hdb hdparm -Y /dev/hdb hdparm -S 36 /dev/hdbIn order, these commands will: cause the drive to switch to Standby mode, switch to Sleep mode, and finally set the Automatic spindown timeout. This last includes a numeric variable, whose units are blocks of 5 seconds (for example, a value of 12 would equal one minute).
Incidentally, this habit of specifying spindown time in blocks of 5 seconds should really be a contender for a special user-friendliness award - there's probably some historical reason for it, but we're stumped. Write in and tell us if you happen to know where it came from!
#15: Wireless speed management
- Difficulty: Intermediate
- Application: iwconfig
In fringe areas with a barely adequate signal, packets may be needlessly lost while the radios continually renegotiate the link speed. If you can't add more antenna gain, or reposition your equipment to achieve a better enough signal, consider forcing your card to sync at a lower rate. This will mean fewer retries, and can be substantially faster than using a continually flip-flopping link. Each driver has its own method for setting the link speed. In Linux, set the link speed with iwconfig:
iwconfig eth0 rate 2MThis forces the radio to always sync at 2Mbps, even if other speeds are available. You can also set a particular speed as a ceiling, and allow the card to automatically scale to any slower speed, but go no faster. For example, you might use this on the example link above:
iwconfig eth0 rate 5.5M autoUsing the auto directive this way tells the driver to allow speeds up to 5.5Mbps, and to run slower if necessary, but will never try to sync at anything faster. To restore the card to full auto scaling, just specify auto by itself:
iwconfig eth0 rate autoCards can generally reach much further at 1Mbps than they can at 11Mbps. There is a difference of 12dB between the 1Mbps and 11Mbps ratings of the Orinoco card - that's four times the potential distance just by dropping the data rate!
#16: Unclog open ports
- Difficulty: Intermediate
- Application: netstat
root@catlin:~# netstat -lnp Active Internet connections (only servers) Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address State PID/Program name tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:5280 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 698/perl tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:80 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 217/httpd tcp 0 0 10.42.3.2:53 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 220/named tcp 0 0 10.42.4.6:53 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 220/named tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:53 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 220/named tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:22 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 200/sshd udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:32768 0.0.0.0:* 220/named udp 0 0 10.42.3.2:53 0.0.0.0:* 220/named udp 0 0 10.42.4.6:53 0.0.0.0:* 220/named udp 0 0 127.0.0.1:53 0.0.0.0:* 220/named udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:67 0.0.0.0:* 222/dhcpd raw 0 0 0.0.0.0:1 0.0.0.0:* 7 222/dhcpdThat shows you that PID 698 is a Perl process that is bound to port 5280. If you're not root, the system won't disclose which programs are running on which ports.
#17: Faster Hard drives
- Difficulty: Expert
- Application: hdparm
hdparm -Tt /dev/hdaYou'll see something like:
Timing buffer-cache reads: 128 MB in 1.64 seconds =78.05 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 18.56 seconds = 3.45MB/secNow we can try speeding it up. To find out which options your drive is currently set to use, just pass hdparm the device name:
hdparm /dev/hda /dev/hda: multcount = 16 (on) I/O support = 0 (default 16-bit) unmaskirq = 0 (off) using_dma = 0 (off) keepsettings = 0 (off) readonly = 0 (off) readahead = 8 (on) geometry = 40395/16/63, sectors = 40718160, start = 0This is a fairly default setting. Most distros will opt for safe options that will work with most hardware. To get more speed, you may want to enable dma mode, and certainly adjust I/O support. Most modern computers support mode 3, which is a 32-bit transfer mode that can nearly double throughput. You might want to try
hdparm -c3 -d1/dev/hdaThen rerun the speed check to see the difference. Check out the modes your hardware will support, and the hdparm man pages for how to set them.
#18: Uptime on your hands
- Difficulty: Expert
- Application: Perl
Save this as a script called tl, and save it to your ~/bin directory:
#!/usr/bin/perl -w use strict; $|++; my $host=`/bin/hostname`; chomp $host; while(1) { open(LOAD,"/proc/loadavg") || die "Couldn't open /proc/loadavg: $!\n"; my @load=split(/ /,<LOAD>); close(LOAD); print "$host: $load[0] $load[1] $load[2] at ", scalar(localtime); print "\007"; sleep 2; }When you'd like to have your titlebar replaced with the name, load average, and current time of the machine you're logged into, just run tl&. It will happily go on running in the background, even if you're running an interactive program like Vim.
#19: Grabbing a screenshot without X
- Difficulty: Easy
- Application: Shell
chvt 7; sleep 2; import -display :0.0 -window root sshot1.png; chvt 1;The chvt command changes the virtual terminal, and the sleep command gives it a while to redraw the screen. The import command then captures the whole display and saves it to a file before the final chvt command sticks you back in the virtual terminal again. Make sure you type the whole command on one line.
This can even work on Linux installers, many of which leave a console running in the background - just load up a floppy/CD with import and the few libraries it requires for a first-rate run-anywhere screen grabber.
#20: Access your programs remotely
- Difficulty: Easy
- Application: X
X11Forwarding yesWe can now run The GIMP on 192.168.0.2 with:
ssh -X 192.168.0.2 gimp
#21: Making man pages useful
- Difficulty: Easy
- Application: man
man -k loginWhen you access a man page, you can also use the forward slash key to search for a particular word within the man page itself. Simply press / on your keyboard and then type in the search term.
#22: Talk to your doctor!
- Difficulty: Easy
- Application: Emacs
Esc-X tetriswill transform your 'editor' into the old favourite arcade game.
Does the madness stop there? No! Check out your distro's package list to see what else they've bundled for Emacs: we've got chess, Perl integration, IRC chat, French translation, HTML conversion, a Java development environment, smart compilation, and even something called a "semantic bovinator". We really haven't the first clue what that last one does, but we dare you to try it out anyway! (Please read the disclaimer first!)
#23: Generating package relationship diagrams
- Difficulty: Easy
- Application: Debian
apt-cache dotty > debian.dotThe command generated the graph file which can then be loaded into dotty:
dotty debian.dot
#24: Unmount busy drives
- Difficulty: Easy
- Application: bash
lsof +D /mnt/windowsThis will return the command and process ID of any tasks currently accessing the /mnt/windows directory. You can then locate them, or use the kill command to finish them off.
#25: Text file conversion
- Difficulty: Easy
- Application: recode
However, the command parameters of recode are a little arcane, so why not combine this hack with HACK 26 in this feature, and set up some useful aliases:
alias dos2unix='recode dos/CR-LF..l1' alias unix2win='recode l1..windows-1250' alias unix2dos='recode l1..dos/CR-LF'There are plenty more options for recode - it can actually convert between a whole range of character sets. Check out the man pages for more information.
#26: Listing today's files only
- Difficulty: Easy
- Application: Various
ls -al --time-style=+%D | grep `date +%D`The parameters to the ls command here cause the datestamp to be output in a particular format. The cunning bit is that the output is then passed to grep. The grep parameter is itself a command (executed because of the backticks), which substitutes the current date into the string to be matched. You could easily modify it to search specifically for other dates, times, filesizes or whatever. Combine it with HACK 26 to save typing!
#27: Avoid common mistypes and long commands
- Difficulty: Easy
- Application: Shell
alias lsnew=" ls -al --time-style=+%D | grep `date +%D` "But there are other uses of alias. For example, common mistyping mistakes. How many times have you accidentally left out the space when changing to the parent directory? Worry no more!
alias cd..="cd .."Alternatively, how about rewriting some existing commands?
alias ls="ls -al"saves a few keypresses if, like us, you always want the complete list.
To have these shortcuts enabled for every session, just add the alias commands to your user .bashrc file in your home directory.
#28: Alter Mozilla's secret settings
- Difficulty: Easy
- Application: Mozilla
about:configYou can then change each setting that you are interested in by changing the Value field in the table.
Other interesting modes include general information (about:), details about plugins (about:plugins), credits information (about:credits) and some general wisdom (about:mozilla).
#29: A backdrop of stars
- Difficulty: Easy
- Application: KStars
KStars can be run with the --dump switch, which dumps out an image from your startup settings, but doesn't load the GUI at all. You can create a script to run this and generate a desktop image, which will change every day (or you can just use this method to generate images).
Run KStars like this:
kstars --dump --width 1024 --height 768 --filename = ~/kstarsback.pngYou can add this to a script in your ~/.kde/Autostart folder to be run at startup. Find the file in Konqueror, drag it to the desktop and select 'Set as wallpaper' to use it as a randomly generated backdrop.
#30: Open an SVG directly
- Difficulty: Easy
- Application: Inkscape
inkscape http://www.somehost.com/graphic.svgRemember to save it as something else though!
#31: Editing without an editor
- Difficulty: Intermediate
- Application: Various
To print columns eg 1 and 3 from a file file1 into file2, we can use awk:
awk '{print $1, $3}' file1 > file2To output only characters from column 8 to column 15 of file1, we can use cut:
cut -c 8-15 file1 > file2To replace the word word1 with the word word2 in the file file1, we can use the sed command:
sed "s/word1/word2/g" file1 > file2This is often a quicker way to get results than even opening a text editor.
#32: Backup selected files only
- Difficulty: Intermediate
- Application: tar
cat >> /etc/backup.conf # /etc/passwd # /etc/shadow # /etc/yp.conf # /etc/sysctl.conf EOFThen run tar with the -T flag pointing to the file just created:
tar -cjf bck-etc-`date +%Y-%m-%d`.tar.bz2 -T /etc/backup.confNow you have your backup.
#33: Merging columns in files
- Difficulty: Intermediate
- Application: bash
#!/bin/sh length=`wc -l $1 | awk '{print $1}'` count=1 [ -f $3 ] && echo "Optionally removing $3" && rm -i $3 while [ "$count" -le "$length" ] ; do a=`head -$count $1 | tail -1` b=`head -$count $2 | tail -1` echo "$a $b" >> $3 count=`expr $count + 1` doneGive to this script the name merge.sh and make it executable with:
chmod u+x merge.shNow, if you want to merge the columns of file1 and file2 into file3, it's just matter of executing
/path/to/merge.sh file1 file2 file3where /path/to has to be replaced with the location of merge.sh in your filesystem.
#34: Case sensitivity
- Difficulty: Intermediate
- Application: bash
#!/bin/sh for i in `ls -1`; do file1=`echo $i | tr [A-Z] [a-z] ` mv $i $file1 2>/dev/null doneBy executing it, FILE1 and fiLe2 will be renamed respectively file1 and file2.
#35: Macros in Emacs
- Difficulty: Intermediate
- Application: Emacs
- Press Ctrl+X to start recording.
- Insert all the keystrokes and commands that you want
- Press Ctrl+X to stop when you're done.
Ctrl -u <number> Ctrl -x ewhere <number> is the number of times you want to execute the macro. If you enter a value of 0, the macro will be executed until the end of the file is reached. Ctrl -x e is equivalent to Ctrl -u 1 Ctrl-x e.
#36: Simple spam killing
- Difficulty: Intermediate
- Application: KMail
The result is that, while you may have anti-spam stuff set up on the client-side, you can make its job easier by writing a few filters to remove the spam that's already labelled as such. The label is included as a header. In KMail, you can just create a quick filter to bin your mail, or direct it to a junk folder. The exact header used will depend on the software your ISP is using, but it's usually something like X-Spam-Flag = YES for systems like SpamAssassin.
Simply create a filter in KMail, choose Match Any of the Following and type in the header details and the action you require. Apply the filter to incoming mail, and you need never be troubled by about half the volume of your spam ever again.
#37: Read OOo docs without OOo
- Difficulty: Intermediate
- Application: OpenOffice.org
unzip myfile.sxwThe file you want is called 'content.xml'. Unfortunately, it's so full of xml tags it's fairly illegible, so filter them out with some Perl magic:
cat content.xml | perl -p -e "s/<[^>]*>/ /g;s/\n/ /g;s/ +/ /;"It may have lost lots of formatting, but at least it is now readable.
#38: Find and execute
- Difficulty: Intermediate
- Application: find
Suppose we have a lot of tarballs, and we want to find them all:
find . -name '*.gz'will locate all the gzip archives in the current path. But suppose we want to check they are valid archives? The gunzip -vt option will do this for us, but we can cunningly combine both operations, using xargs:
find . -name '*.gz' | xargs gunzip -vt
#39: Use the correct whois server
- Difficulty: Intermediate
- Application: whois
whois -h whois.geektools.com plop.info
#40: Where did that drive mount?
- Difficulty: Intermediate
- Application: bash
Practically all devices that invoke a driver - such as usb-storage - will dump some useful information in the logs. Try
dmesg | grep SCSIThis will filter out recognised drive specs from the dmesg output. You'll probably turn up some text like:
SCSI device sda: 125952 512-byte hdwr sectors (64 MB)So your device is at sda.
#41: Autorun USB devices
- Difficulty: Expert
- Application: hotplug scripts
For devices that don't rely on kernel drivers, a lookup table is used matching the USB product and manufacturer ID. Many distros already set this up to do something, but you can customise these scripts pretty easily. See http://jphoto.sourceforge.net/?selected=sync for an example of what can be done.
#42: Rename and resize images
- Difficulty: Expert
- Application: bash
#!/bin/sh counter=1 root=mypict resolution=400x300 for i in `ls -1 $1/*.jpg`; do echo "Now working on $i" convert -resize $resolution $i ${root}_${counter}.jpg counter=`expr $counter + 1` doneSave the script in a file called picturename.sh and make it executable with
chmod u+x picturename.shand store it somewhere in your path. Now, if you have a bunch of .jpg files in the directory /path/to/pictdir, all you have to do is to execute
picturename.sh /path/to/pictdirand in the current directory you'll find mypict_1.jpg, mypict_2.jpg etc, which are the resized versions of your original ones. You can change the script according to your needs, or, if you're just looking for super-simple image resizing, try looking at the mogrify command with its -geometry parameter.
#43: Secure logout
- Difficulty: Easy
- Application: bash
clearYou can add any other useful commands here too.
#44: Transferring files without ftp or scp
- Difficulty: Easy
- Application: netcat
nc -l -p 1234 | uncompress -c | tar xvfp -And on the sending server run:
tar cfp - /some/dir | compress -c | nc -w 3 [destination] 1234Now you can transfer directories without FTP and without needing root access.
#45: Backing up a Debian package list
- Difficulty: Easy
- Application: Debian
dpkg --get-selections > debianlist.txtThis will put the entire list in debianlist.txt. You could then install the same packages on a different computer with:
dpkg --set-selections < debianlist.txtYou should bear in mind that you would also need to copy over configuration files from /etc when copying your system to a new computer.
To actually install the selections, use:
apt-get -u dselect-upgrade.
#46: Hardening ssh
- Difficulty: Easy
- Application: ssh
PermitRootLogin noNow the only way to get root privilges is through su, which means crackers now need to break two passwords to get full access. While you are editing that file, find the line which says:
Protocol 2, 1And change it to:
Protocol 2This removes the option to fallback on the original SSH protocol, now considered very vulnerable.
#47: Stop replying to pings
- Difficulty: Easy
- Application: sysctl
sysctl -w net.ipv4.icmp_echo_ignore_all=1To turn it back on, again use:
sysctl -w net.ipv4.icmp_echo_ignore_all=0If turning off ping is too severe for you, take a look at the next hack.
#48: Slow down ping rates
- Difficulty: Easy
- Application: sysctl
sysctl -w net.ipv4.icmp_echoreply_rate=10This slows the rate at which replies are sent to a single address.
#49: Clean up KDE on logout
- Difficulty: Easy
- Application: bash
First, you need to create a directory called shutdown in your .kde directory:
mkdir /home/username/.kde/shutdownNow create a script to do any stuff you like on shutdown. Here is an example:
#!/bin/bash #clear up temp folder rm -rf ~/tmp/* #clear out caches rm -rf ~/.ee/minis/* rm -rf ~/.kde/share/cache/http/* # delete konqueror form completions rm ~/.kde/share/apps/khtml/formcompletionsNow make sure you set the correct permissions:
chmod ug+x ~/.kde/shutdown/cleanup.sh(or whatever you called it). As well as cleaning up sensitive files, you can also have global shutdown scripts for all users, by placing the script in your default KDE folder, in a subfolder called shutdown. To find out which is your default KDE directory, try:
kde-config --path exe
#50: Password-less ssh
- Difficulty: Intermediate
- Application: ssh
ssh-keygen -t dsa -C your.email@ddressEnter a passphrase for your key. This puts the secret key in ~/.ssh/id_dsa and the public key in ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub. Now see whether you have an ssh-agent running at present:
echo $SSH_AGENT_PIDMost window managers will run it automatically if it's installed. If not, start one up:
eval $(ssh-agent)Now, tell the agent about your key:
ssh-addand enter your passphrase. You'll need to do this each time you log in; if you're using X, try adding
SSH_ASKPASS=ssh-askpass ssh-addto your .xsession file. (You may need to install ssh-askpass.) Now for each server you log into, create the directory ~/.ssh and copy the file ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub into it as ~/.ssh/authorized_keys . If you started the ssh-agent by hand, kill it with
ssh-agent -kwhen you log out.
#51: Using rsync over ssh
- Difficulty: Intermediate
- Application: Shell
rsync -ave ssh greendome:/home/ftp/pub/ /home/ftp/pub/Note the trailing / on the file spec from the source side (on greendome.) On the source spec, a trailing / tells rsync to copy the contents of the directory, but not the directory itself. To include the directory as the top level of what's being copied, leave off the /:
rsync -ave ssh bcnu:/home/six .This will keep a copy of the ~/six/ directory on village in sync with whatever is present on bcnu:/home/six/. By default, rsync will only copy files and directories, but not remove them from the destination copy when they are removed from the source. To keep the copies exact, include the --delete flag:
rsync -ave ssh --delete greendome:~one/reports .Now when old reports are removed from ~one/reports/ on greendome, they're also removed from ~six/public_html/reports/ on the synced version, every time this command is run. If you run a command like this in cron, leave off the v switch. This will keep the output quiet (unless rsync has a problem running, in which case you'll receive an email with the error output). Using SSH as your transport for rsync traffic has the advantage of encrypting the data over the network and also takes advantage of any trust relationships you already have established using SSH client keys.
#52: Asset scanning
- Difficulty: Intermediate
- Application: nmap
nmap rigelnmap can also scan ranges of IP addresses by specifying the range or using CIDR notation:
nmap 192.168.0.1-254 nmap 192.168.0.0/24nmap can provide much more information if it is run as root. When run as root, it can use special packets to determine the operating system of the remote machine by using the -O flag. Additionally, you can do half-open TCP scanning by using the -sS flag. When doing a half-open scan, nmap will send a SYN packet to the remote host and wait to receive the ACK from it; if it receives an ACK, it knows that the port is open.
This is different from a normal three-way TCP handshake, where the client will send a SYN packet and then send an ACK back to the server once it has received the initial server ACK. Attackers typically use this option to avoid having their scans logged on the remote machine.
nmap -sS -O rigel
Starting nmap V. 3.00 ( www.insecure.org/nmap/ ) Interesting ports on rigel.nnc (192.168.0.61): (The 1578 ports scanned but not shown below are in state: filtered) Port State Service 7/tcp open echo 9/tcp open discard 13/tcp open daytime 19/tcp open chargen 21/tcp open ftp 22/tcp open ssh 23/tcp open telnet 25/tcp open smtp 37/tcp open time 79/tcp open finger 111/tcp open sunrpc 512/tcp open exec 513/tcp open login 514/tcp open shell 587/tcp open submission 7100/tcp open font-service 32771/tcp open sometimes-rpc5 32772/tcp open sometimes-rpc7 32773/tcp open sometimes-rpc9 32774/tcp open sometimes-rpc11 32777/tcp open sometimes-rpc17 Remote operating system guess: Solaris 9 Beta through Release on SPARC Uptime 44.051 days (since Sat Nov 1 16:41:50 2003) Nmap run completed -- 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 166 secondsWith OS detection enabled, nmap has confirmed that the OS is Solaris, but now you also know that it's probably Version 9 running on a SPARC processor.
One powerful feature that can be used to help keep track of your network is nmap's XML output capabilities. This is activated by using the -oX command-line switch, like this:
nmap -sS -O -oX scandata.xml rigelThis is especially useful when scanning a range of IP addresses or your whole network, because you can put all the information gathered from the scan into a single XML file that can be parsed and inserted into a database. Here's what an XML entry for an open port looks like:
<port protocol="tcp" portid="22"> <state state="open" /> <service name="ssh" method="table" conf="3" /> </port>nmap is a powerful tool. By using its XML output capabilities, a little bit of scripting, and a database, you can create an even more powerful tool that can monitor your network for unauthorized services and machines.
#53: Backup your bootsector
- Difficulty Expert
- Application Shell
dd if=/dev/hda of=bootsector.img bs=512 count=1Obviously you should change the device to reflect your boot drive (it may be sda for SCSI). Also, be very careful not to get things the wrong way around - you can easily damage your drive! To restore use:
dd if=bootsector.img of=/dev/hda
#54: Protect log files
- Difficulty: Expert
- Application: Various
This is where file attributes come in to save the day (or at least make it a little better). Both Linux and the BSDs have the ability to assign extra attributes to files and directories. This is different from the standard Unix permissions scheme in that the attributes set on a file apply universally to all users of the system, and they affect file accesses at a much deeper level than file permissions or ACLs.
In Linux, you can see and modify the attributes that are set for a given file by using the lsattr and chattr commands, respectively. At the time of this writing, file attributes in Linux are available only when using the ext2 and ext3 filesystems. There are also kernel patches available for attribute support in XFS and ReiserFS. One useful attribute for protecting log files is append-only. When this attribute is set, the file cannot be deleted, and writes are only allowed to append to the end of the file.
To set the append-only flag under Linux, run this command:
chattr +a filenameSee how the +a attribute works: create a file and set its append-only attribute:
touch /var/log/logfile echo "append-only not set" > /var/log/logfile chattr +a /var/log/logfile echo "append-only set" > /var/log/logfile bash: /var/log/logfile: Operation not permittedThe second write attempt failed, since it would overwrite the file. However, appending to the end of the file is still permitted:
echo "appending to file" >> /var/log/logfile cat /var/log/logfile append-only not set appending to fileObviously, an intruder who has gained root privileges could realise that file attributes are being used and just remove the append-only flag from our logs by running chattr -a. To prevent this, we need to disable the ability to remove the append-only attribute. To accomplish this under Linux, use its capabilities mechanism.
The Linux capabilities model divides up the privileges given to the all-powerful root account and allows you to selectively disable them. In order to prevent a user from removing the append-only attribute from a file, we need to remove the CAP_LINUX_IMMUTABLE capability. When present in the running system, this capability allows the append-only attribute to be modified. To modify the set of capabilities available to the system, we will use a simple utility called lcap (http://packetstormsecurity.org/linux/admin/lcap-0.0.3.tar.bz2).
To unpack and compile the tool, run this command:
tar xvfj lcap-0.0.3.tar.bz2 && cd lcap-0.0.3 && makeThen, to disallow modification of the append-only flag, run:
./lcap CAP_LINUX_IMMUTABLE ./lcap CAP_SYS_RAWIOThe first command removes the ability to change the append-only flag, and the second removes the ability to do raw I/O. This is needed so that the protected files cannot be modified by accessing the block device they reside on. It also prevents access to /dev/mem and /dev/kmem, which would provide a loophole for an intruder to reinstate the CAP_LINUX_IMMUTABLE capability. To remove these capabilities at boot, add the previous two commands to your system startup scripts (eg /etc/rc.local). You should ensure that capabilities are removed late in the boot order, to prevent problems with other startup scripts. Once lcap has removed kernel capabilities, they can be reinstated only by rebooting the system.
Before doing this, you should be aware that adding append-only flags to your log files will most likely cause log rotation scripts to fail. However, doing this will greatly enhance the security of your audit trail, which will prove invaluable in the event of an incident.
#55: Automatically encrypted connections
- Difficulty: Expert
- Application: FreeS/WAN
To begin, you'll need to generate a key for each host that you want to use this feature with. You can do that by running the following command:
ipsec newhostkey --output /tmp/`hostname`.keyNow you'll need to add the contents of the file that was created by that command to /etc/ipsec.secrets:
cat /tmp/`hostname`.key >> /etc/ipsec.secretsNext, you'll need to generate a TXT record to put into your DNS zone. You can do this by running a command similar to this one:
ipsec showhostkey --txt @colossus.nncNow add this record to your zone and reload it. You can verify that DNS is working correctly by running this command:
ipsec verify
Checking your system to see if IPsec got installed and started correctly Version check and ipsec on-path [OK] Checking for KLIPS support in kernel [OK] Checking for RSA private key (/etc/ipsec.secrets) [OK] Checking that pluto is running [OK] DNS checks. Looking for TXT in forward map: colossus [OK] Does the machine have at least one non-private address [OK]Now just restart FreeS/WAN - you should now be able to connect to any other host that supports opportunistic encryption. But what if other hosts want to connect to you? To allow this, you'll need to create a TXT record for your machine in your reverse DNS zone.
You can generate the record by running a command similar to this:
ipsec showhostkey --txt 192.168.0.64Add this record to the reverse zone for your subnet, and other machines will be able to initiate opportunistic encryption with your machine. With opportunistic encryption in use, all traffic between the hosts will be automatically encrypted, protecting all services simultaneously.
#56: Eliminate suid binaries
- Difficulty: Intermediate
- Application: find
find / -perm +6000 -type f -exec ls -ld {} \; > setuid.txt &This will create a file called setuid.txt that contains the details of all of the matching files present on your system. To remove the s bits of any tools that you don't use, type:
chmod a-s program
#57: Mac filtering Host AP
- Difficulty: Expert
- Application: iwpriv
When using MAC filtering, most people make a list of wireless devices that they wish to allow, and then deny all others. This is done using the iwpriv command.
iwpriv wlan0 addmac 00:30:65:23:17:05 iwpriv wlan0 addmac 00:40:96:aa:99:fd ... iwpriv wlan0 maccmd 1 iwpriv wlan0 maccmd 4The addmac directive adds a MAC address to the internal table. You can add as many MAC addresses as you like to the table by issuing more addmac commands. You then need to tell Host AP what to do with the table you've built. The maccmd 1 command tells Host AP to use the table as an "allowed" list, and to deny all other MAC addresses from associating. Finally, the maccmd 4 command boots off all associated clients, forcing them to reassociate. This happens automatically for clients listed in the table, but everyone else attempting to associate will be denied.
Sometimes, you only need to ban a troublemaker or two, rather than set an explicit policy of permitted devices. If you need to ban a couple of specific MAC address but allow all others, try this:
iwpriv wlan0 addmac 00:30:65:fa:ca:de iwpriv wlan0 maccmd 2 iwpriv wlan0 kickmac 00:30:65:fa:ca:deAs before, you can use addmac as many times as you like. The maccmd 2 command sets the policy to "deny," and kickmac boots the specified MAC immediately, if it happens to be associated. This is probably nicer than booting everybody and making them reassociate just to ban one troublemaker. Incidentally, if you'd like to remove MAC filtering altogether, try maccmd 0.
If you make a mistake typing in a MAC address, you can use the delmac command just as you would addmac, and it (predictably) deletes the given MAC address from the table. Should you ever need to flush the current MAC table entirely but keep the current policy, use this command:
iwpriv wlan0 maccmd 3Finally, you can view the running MAC table by using /proc:
cat /proc/net/hostap/wlan0/ap_controlThe iwpriv program manipulates the running Host AP driver, but doesn't preserve settings across reboots. Once you are happy with the contents of your MAC filtering table, be sure to put the relevant commands in an rc script to run at boot time.
Note that even unassociated clients can still listen to network traffic, so MAC filtering actually does very little to prevent eavesdropping. To combat passive listening techniques, you will need to encrypt your data.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
|Drainpipe is a Scrabble word. Scrabble point value for drainpipe: 14 points.
|Drainpipe is a Words with Friends word. Words with Friends point value for drainpipe: 14 points.
Above are the results of unscrambling drainpipe. Using the word generator and word unscrambler for the letters D R A I N P I P E, we unscrambled the letters to create a list of all the words found in Scrabble, Words with Friends, and Text Twist. We found a total of 200 words by unscrambling the letters in drainpipe. Click these words to find out how many points they are worth, their definitions, and all the other words that can be made by unscrambling the letters from these words. If one or more words can be unscrambled with all the letters entered plus one new letter, then they will also be displayed.
1. a pipe through which liquid is carried away
|Words that start with drainpipe
|Words that end with drainpipe
|Words that contain drainpipe


text:
I recently had a Mal-Ware problem, which I was helped with here and I am also having problems with random restarts of my computer. I was referred over here by jwang01 as he feels that someone here would be better equipped to assist me.
Sometimes Flash will restart my computer, but other times it will just restart. One of those times appears to be when my AVG starts for it's scheduled scan at 3 AM. When I get to the computer in the morning it has been restarted and looking at the AVG history it appears that the scan starts but no files are ever scanned.
I do not get the blue screen of death, just a restart of my computer.


text:
Many times they have made me happy,few times they made me sad
So many things that have me saying "I wish"
But I cling to the "highs" in a bid to forget the "lows"
I cling to the saying "You can't imprison a man with hope"
So many dreams yet to be realized
So many ambitions still unfulfilled
But as I look at the grey skies of months past
In this 2nd half, I c my silverlining!
The light at the end of the tunnel
My reason not to lose faith!
With eyes filled with tears, I fall to my knees
Even as I wave my goodbyes to the 1st half
Dear 1st half,I had a crush on you for a while
But now am over it!
Dear 2nd half, I welcome you with open arms
Dear 2nd half, please don't break my heart
I have been hurt in the past "few months"
My heart s fragile
Dear 2nd half, I want our time together to be filled with prosperity
2nd half sounds like a perfect bride
Be just that!
Dear 2nd half, thank You for accepting me into your life
Don't worry I love you too!
Signed by a grateful heart.
Tom Busin


text:
Monday, September 12th 2016
Today started out fun… so fun.
I found a spider in the bathroom, a big one, so I got everything I needed out of the bathroom and into my room (with a towel on top of my head whenever I had to pass underneath it) and then put a tower at the door crack so it doesn't escape.
I went off to school and I had coding first. I enjoyed it, fun as always, then I had alimentation. We baked some sugar cookies and the other teams' were way better to be honest. I was full for lunch, so I didnt eat much. I sat with my close friends as usual and we talked about what we didn't like and liked about school.
Then I had technology class and Kohai and I started watching The Call (our teacher wondered why we weren't working, but we explained) and THE CHARACTERS ARE SO FUSTRATING. (Spoilers) Why the heck did the girl redial? Did she not know that'd alert the killer? And THAT TUXEDO GUY WHO TELLS THE KILLER HIS LIGHT IS BROKEN AND HAS PAINT WHERE THE VICTIM IS TRYING TO ESCAPE AND THEN IS STUPID ENOUGH TO CALL 911 IN FRONT OF HIM AND THEN RUINING ALL CHANCE OF THE GIRL ESCAPING. Sorry, little of a rant, haha. It's a really good movie so far though. I recommend it.
We finished with math class and studied for tomorrow's quiz.
When I got home we lost the spider (but it was recently found in my bedroom, of course), I completed my math all while telling younger staff to do their math, and then I ate and played Dead by Daylight with one of them. I eventually went on the server because Kohai was and I caught someone with an afk machine. Then I proceeded to watch YouTube and read.
That's all for today.


text:
Washington, D.C. — A new local documentary from WETA TV 26, More Unusual Attractions — The WETA Guide, uncovers more of Greater Washington's lesser-known landmarks and destinations. A companion piece to 2007's Unusual Attractions, the latest production in The WETA Guide series explores 18 local hidden wonders. This half-hour WETA production premieres Friday, October 7 at 9 p.m. on WETA TV 26 and WETA HD and repeats Monday, October 10 at 9 p.m.
"More Unusual Attractions provides viewers with more exciting places to explore locally," commented Kevin Harris, vice president and television station manager of WETA. "We are proud to premiere this entertaining showcase of one-of-a-kind attractions in our region."
The program will introduce new sites to even longtime residents of the region, spotlights intriguing locations in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., and revealing places of interest for all ages. Among others, the documentary divulges where visitors can walk alongside giant dinosaurs, pay tribute to the chivalrous men who died on the Titanic, and climb a bearded giant breaking free from the earth.
The film includes the following quirky places of interest, beautiful escapes and off-the-beaten-path landmarks:
- Acorn Gazebo
- Awakening Statue at National Harbor
- Boundary Stones of the District of Columbia
- Boy Scout Memorial
- Dinosaur Land
- Fireman Monument in Glenwood Cemetery
- Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land in America
- Globe Water Tank, AKA "earthoid"
- House of the Temple
- Movie Sites Tour of Washington
- National Firearms Museum
- National Museum of Crime and Punishment
- National Pinball Museum
- President Lincoln's Cottage
- The Maine Lobsterman Statue
- Theodore Roosevelt Island
- Titanic Memorial
- Zero Milestone
More Unusual Attractions follows the tradition of previous programs in The WETA Guide series such as The WETA Guide to Montgomery County and The WETA Guide to Christmas (available for streaming at weta.org) by spotlighting special places and happenings in the region.
The complete WETA television schedule is available at weta.org. Viewers can watch WETA TV 26 over the air on channel 26.4, and on Comcast 26 and 267, Cox 26 and 802, Dish 8076, FiOS 26 and 471, and RCN 164. WETA HD is available over the air on channel 26.1, and on Comcast 220, Cox 1026, FiOS 526, Direct TV 26 and 26-1, and RCN 613.
WETA Television and Classical WETA 90.9 FM are public broadcasting stations serving the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia with high-quality programming. Classical WETA 90.9 FM brings classical music, concerts and specials to Greater Washington. As the leading PBS station in the nation's capital, WETA Television broadcasts on four channels: WETA TV 26, WETA HD, WETA Kids and WETA Create. WETA Television celebrates the people and history of this region through programs such as WETA All Access, WETA Around Town and WETA Extras. For national PBS audiences, WETA produces PBS NewsHour; Washington Week with Gwen Ifill and National Journal; history films by Ken Burns such as Prohibition, premiering this October; and performance specials from the White House, the U.S. Capitol and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Embracing the educational mission of public broadcasting, WETA creates leading public service websites such as www.ReadingRockets.org, www.LDOnline.org, www.ColorinColorado.org, www.AdLit.org and www.Brainline.org; and develops community outreach programs to engage people of all ages in the joy of lifelong learning. WETA's headquarters is located in Arlington, Virginia. Sharon Percy Rockefeller is president and CEO. More information on WETA and its programs and services is available at www.weta.org.
# # #


text:
Starting tomorrow morning, three Gameloft games are going on sale for just 99 cents. Adventure fans can nab Eternal Legacy, Gameloft's Japanese RPG homage, and the Zelda-ish Sacred Odyssey: Rise of Ayden for a steal. StarFront: Collision – the StarCraft-like real-time strategy game – is also under a dollar.
The sale lasts all weekend, so if you want to grab one, get with the clicking before Sunday at midnight.


text:
LEP particle accelerator, CERN
A084/0118 Rights Managed
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Keywords: acceleration, accelerator, adult, caucasian, cern, engineer, engineering, engineers, equipment, europe, european, european centre for, european particle physics lab, female, geneva, high energy, human, large electron positron, lep, maintaining, maintenance, male, man, nuclear research, particle physics, particle physics laboratory, person, physical, physics, switzerland, technological, technology, tunnel, white, woman
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text:
My long run today will take me on a 12.1 mile path around our nation's capital. I'll be starting a couple blocks north of Dupont Circle at my hotel, and then down to the north side of the White House. Then, I'll continue down 15th street to the Washington monument and then east on the mall to the United States Congress. There's some nice hills around Congress, so I'll go up the north side and then run south in front of the U.S. Supreme Court to the other side of the Capital building and then turn west over the hills and head back down the mall. From there, it's all the way down the mall to the Lincoln Memorial and then across the Arlington Memorial Bridge to the entrance of Arlington National Cemetery. From there, I'll turn around and head back to the Lincoln Memorial and then back to the Washington Monument. Then, I'll head north up 17th street back to the White House and then up to DuPont Circle to my starting point. Todays plan is to run this in zone 2 at a pace of about 11 minutes/mile. Once I'm finished I'll post a link to the run below.
My training regime each week includes four miles of hill work on Mondays, an easy four mile run on a track on Tuesdays, speed work on a track (either a zone 4 tempo run or intervals in zone 5) on Wednesdays, an endurance run (zone 2) on Thursdays, and a long run (zone 2) on Saturdays. Friday and Sunday are my days off. Distance for the long run follows a formula that comes from Rodale's The Runner's World Big Book of Marathon and Half Marathon Training. I'm currently training based on heart rate zone and not pace (that's a subject for a later blog). As I think about these three events this year, I would like to finish both half marathons under 2 hours (PR is currently 1:58:26) and the full marathon under 4:30. My training plans are designed with those goals in mind.
For the next few weeks, leading up to the Chick-fil-a Half Marathon, Gail and I will run 8 miles (March 21st), 10 miles (March 28th), 8 miles (April 4th), and 6 miles (April 11th). Post-race, we'll take it easy for three weeks and then start a 16 week plan that will focus on building the necessary endurance to finish a full marathon (more on that training plan will also come in a later blog).
It's amazing, but what they say is true. That once you start long-distance running it becomes highly addictive and you can't turn off the desire to hit the road and log some miles. In fact, you begin planning your entire life around your training schedule, especially when traveling. On the road, I'm having to pack an extra bag in order to carry all my gear with me.
|Here's the bag of running gear that I now travel with
So, what's the goal of all of this? Simply put, it's just to get better. To move the needle. To make progress. To set stretch goals and meet them. But doing so in a way that recognizes that real, lasting, sustained progress happens in regular increments not in quick bursts. Moving forward and maintaining momentum takes work because you can't ever, ever rest. The second you pause, atrophy sets in and momentum shifts the wrong way. Cycles are hard to break out of, both good ones and bad ones. That's why I go to bed early every night and get up hours before daybreak to go running.
This blog has always served as the forum for writing about things that I currently have as passion for. Right now, that's running. In the past it's been topics like technology, IT leadership, changes in higher education, and so on. Those topics will still pop-up from time to time, but for now you will see more about the activities I tend to plan my life around these days - and that's running. Life is a marathon, it's not a sprint.


text: A Whole New Card World: Dave & Adam's to Open Mega Store May 19, 2015 | Tom Bartsch | Leave a reply Dave & Adam's makes a giant push in the collectibles world, literally, with a 46,000-sq.-ft. store themed like a fanfest event. From non-sports cards to Michael Jordan signed jersey, the store will be an attraction for sports and entertainment fans. Read More


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A Scam Email with the Subject "3% Loan Offer!!!" was received in one of Scamdex's honeypot email accounts on Wed, 24 Feb 2016 02:18:46 -0800 and has been classified as a Employment/Job Scam. The sender was QUICK LOAN <email@example.com>, although it may have been spoofed.
We can help you with a genuine loan to meet your needs. Do you need a personal or business loan without stress and quick approval? Do you need an urgent loan today? No Credit Checks * LOAN APPROVAL IN 60MINS !! * GUARANTEED SAME DAY TRANSFER !! * 100% APPROVAL RATE !! * LOW INTEREST RATE !! Contact US for more information about loan offer and we will solve your financial problem. contact us via email: email@example.com


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Welcome to our daily photo diary. I am stopping the 'Ghost writing' which I have been doing for the past 3 years as more and more people are looking at the site on ipads or similar. Only if you see this blog on your computer can you read the html. Thanks for your continued visits and I will always reply to any comments.
Thursday, August 4, 2016
04/08/2016 Nigel enjoys an Indian Cookery Course.
6 comments:
Makes me hungry looking at all this great food!ReplyDeleteReplies
Ha ha it does look good.Delete
The same with me too! All these food gives me a great appetite!ReplyDeleteReplies
We love spicy food so I hope to try some at home!Delete
OK, so next visit I'm letting Nigel do the cooking.ReplyDeleteReplies
LOL. I think if we manage another long trip it will be more than likely RSA, we need to meet Joan. The problem is we are in the UK every Christmas in the cold and we need to go in the opposite direction! DDelete
Thanks for taking the time to visit and pass a comment. Every comment is appreciated and I try to reply to each and every one. All comments are verification free but will come to me for approval first :-))
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No anonymous Users!


text:
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Karl R Lilliendahl
Karl R Lilliendahl
Bærums Verk, Bærums Verk, Norway
About Karl R Lilliendahl
My work consist mainly of two types of photography. Classic and Abstract. All shot in Italy. All prints are available in a limited edition of 15. Signed and numbered with artists stamp on rear side. Printed on museum quality Hahnemuhle Fine Art Paper. Classic work. Where I aim to capture the daily life in Italy, Italians and their surroundings. Individuals going about their business in everyday life. There is something unique about each and every one of these people, they are all a part of something bigger. Abstract In my abstract serie "Past Refraction" I focus on the connection between war and peace in a symbolic and abstract way. I connect the symbol of peace to an old construction crane located in Venice Italy. The doves of peace flying around the old crane that was used to make armaments in war times. It now rests its arms overlooking the ancient city of Venice. My story From early age I was always facinated by photography. Being with my uncle, a local news photographer in my old hometown in Iceland, in his darkroom watching him turn a white paper into black and white photograph was amazing experience for me. In my early 20´s I was presented to my mentor, a legendary photographer, Pall Reynisson, who tought me the craft. Even though I´ve turned to digital technique the method is the same as being in the darkroom. The only thing I miss from the darkroom is the smell from the chemical liquids. I´ve been exhibiting my photographs through Scandinavia in recent years with good success and I am grateful to be able to share my vision with others and meet new people who are interested in black and white photography. All the best, Karl R Lilliendahl
Here is a list over my private exhibitions
2015 Eataly Restaurant, Oslo Norway
2014 ELLA slow fashion house, Reykjavik,Iceland
2013 Fotografiens Hus, Oslo Norway
2012 Café La Sosta, Oslo Norway
2012 NRK (Norwegian Broadcasting Service) Oslo Norway
2011 Reykjavik Museum of Photography Iceland
2011 Mokka Café Reykjavik Iceland
2010 Fotomuseet Sundsvall Sweden
2009 Gallery Mazarin Söderhamn Sweden
2008 Länssjukhuset Ryhov Jönköping Sweden
2008 Värnamo sjukhuset Sweden
2008 Eksjö Höglandssjukhuset Sweden
2007 Galleri Fotografi Reykjavik Iceland


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Uh Oh - It's Another Repost Au Go Go!
Starting up... here's 4 OTR SF episodes adapted from stories by Phil Dick dedicated to someone i know who's kinda M.I.A., but hopefully A.O.K. Everybody else in the room can just go "Huh?" and keep on movin'... do i LOOK like i care? You can check
hyper dave's myspace profile if you have any hesitation on this issue. Just remember, you don't HAVE to understand something to ENJOY it.... 'nuff said!
"The Defenders",
"Made In Avak",
& "Imposter".
When enjoying these, it's probably a good idea to keep a can of UBIK close at hand.....
Forbidden Planet - The radio version..... from Australia!?!
This is pretty cool too....and you ALL knew this is an adaption of "THE TEMPEST" right?
Morbius is Prospero, Robbie is Caliban and so on....
Click here to download an Australian radio adaption as an mp3!
Just to be sneaky, i'm gonna stick these in here... they're not stricly all repost, but i'm gonna slide 'em in here on the D. L. to foil those lazy folks who rely on the old RSS feed for their intel...
and as my momma dun tol' me - ALWAYS check the small print... heh heh heh....
Tales of Tommorrow - "Watchbird"
Tales of Tommorrow - "Betelgeuse Bridge"
Tales of Tommorrow - "The Other Now" starring Dick York!
Tales of Tommorrow - "Martians Never Die"
Tales of Tommorrow - "The Old Die Rich"
Tales of Tommorrow - "Morrow on Mars"
Tales of Tommorrow - "The Girls from Earth"... and i've been having more than my fair share of headaches with one or two of those of late.... whoever said they were easy must be from another friggin' planet!
Plus, for you funny-book fans, a couple of early, EARLY Pre-Code tales by a very young Stevey Ditko, both reprinted in the 70's in black and white, scanned by me in a few days, downloaded by you in a minute or so, and hopefully read and enjoyed by you and your loved ones in the years, nay, even decades to come......
Ah yes, the circle of life in all it's fullness here at the ultra-holistic ashram of the kooky and bizarre that is datajunkie H.Q.
We (i guess that's me, myself and i) cover the fads with NONE of the ads...
A handful of hot-spots where the internet is still fun and free... oops, started to get up on the 'ol soapbox again, sorry 'bout that. Rant aborted.
Anyhow, here's "Stretching Things"
...and "Hair-Yee"!
PS - if you couldn't guess, i've been ultra-busy, so no Skywald Horror-Mood goodies today... hang in there folks, they're comin' soon... and that's a promise!
hyper dave been very busy dj-boy..... now me go take out the trash......


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I'll be in Salt Lake City next week, September 8-10, for AutoTestCon.
AutoTestCon is a large Mil/Aero conference and trade show sponsored by the IEEE.
I'll be doing a couple of presentations...
On Monday, I'm presenting as part of a seminar entitled, "VXI, PXI, IVI & LXI Standards Improve ATE Systems Design". I will be presenting the part about IVI. I'll cover what IVI is, the current state of IVI, future work, as well as technical informationi on configuration, the differences between IVI-C and IVI-COM, and how to use class and specific drivers together.
On Wednesday, I will be part of a panel discussion on "Test Applications Using LXI Instruments". Hosted by Test & Measurement World chief editor Rick Nelson, the panel plans to share some of what we've learned over the past three years creating multi-vendor LXI-based test systems.
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
AutoTestCon 2008 in Salt Lake City
I'll be in Salt Lake City next week, September 8-10, for AutoTestCon.
Posted by Brian Powell at 9:22 AM
Labels: AutoTestCon, IEEE, IVI, IVI-C, IVI-COM, LabVIEW, LXI, PXI


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Should Malcolm Farr write political hard news and editorials.
With editorials like this do you think Farr will be able to keep his opinions out of his hard news reports? Farr looks like he may take over David Penberthy's role of blurring news and opinion for this election.
Maybe The Age and the Australian should get Robert Manne and Philip Adams to write hard news for their respective papers?


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Results called selling point for advertisers in info technology
BPA International completed its first third-party audit of a publishing company's World Wide Web site last week, presenting The Economist Group's d.Comm site with demographic and traffic data measured during the first three months of the year.
D.Comm is a free site for information technology professionals with sponsors like Microsoft Corp. and Frontier Technology.
According to BPA's data compiled from complete log files (rather than samples) of the Web site, there are 12,011 registered users, with nearly 30% in continental Europe or the U.K. and 47% hailing from the U.S.
"I think the big IT [information technology] advertisers will be far keener now that we've got the audit," said Chris Kirk, publisher of the site.
Mr. Kirk said the most useful information provided by the audit was on user age: More than 65% are between 26 and 50 years old, with only 9% over 50.
Since the audit period ended, the site has both begun requiring registration by users and marketing itself interactively on search service Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.com), two moves that could create effects worth watching in further audits, Mr. Kirk said.
"They're providing a sound system," said Judy Black, chairwoman of the Council for Advertiser Supported Information & Entertainment, and senior partner of new-media technology and director of interactive development at Bozell, New York. CASIE is a consortium of marketers and agencies working on measurement standards for the Web.
BPA President-CEO Mike Marchesano said his company will start clients with quarterly reports, but could "optimally allow them to drill down to monthly data" later this year.
Ms. Black said quarterly reports leading to reports on a greater frequency were a wise strategy for BPA's first efforts. "Consistency in general is one of the themes we're encouraging" among companies that offer audits, she said, both in terms of frequency and report categories.
Separately, the Audit Bureau of Circulations takes its Web auditing software out of beta effective today and begins offering clients monthly reports, said Mike Lavery, president-managing director.
Conde Nast Publications' Conde Net is the audit bureau's first client, and has worked with the company during beta testing of the software.
The audit bureau's service licenses Market Arts' Webtrack software exclusively. Last week, Jupiter Communications acquired the Webtrack auditing service, which it will rename Webfacts effective June 1, said James Kennedy, senior VP-publishing of Webtrack.
Copyright June 1996 Crain Communications Inc.


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- Start Playing
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- Software
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Microgaming is the world's oldest and most successful online casino software provider and it has been supplying games to online casinos since 1994 when it powered the world's first true online casino, Gaming Club Casino. Microgaming has developed several impressive platforms and products and it has produced a stunning range of games.
Microgaming has developed an instant flash casino platform, as well as a downloadable casino platform (known as its Viper client) and also a non-downloadable Quickfire platform. The company has also produced an impressive mobile casino platform which is compatible with most modern handheld devices including the iPhone, iPad, Windows Phone and Android Devices. Microgaming has also developed a Bingo Product, a Poker Product and a state of the art Live Dealer Product which features regular Live Dealers and sexy Playboy Bunny Live Dealers.
Microgaming has won numerous industry awards over the past decade or so and this impressive casino software can now be found in more than 300 different online casinos, many of which can now be accessed by Australian players. These world-class online casinos are connected by Microgaming's Online Pokie Tournament Network and also by Microgaming's Multi-Player Network and Progressive Jackpot Network. Players can sign up for daily blackjack and pokie tournaments from within the download client at their favourite Microgaming casino and some of these events are even free to sign up to.
The types of events that you can expect to find on Microgaming's tournament network include Weekly One Shot Events, All Day Extender's, All Day Reloader's, The Weekly Whopper, the Midweek Moolah, The Accumulator and The Monthly Monster. You get to play on some great pokies throughout these events and you can play for some huge prizes.
Most Microgaming powered casinos are packed with more than 700 individual games, but to access the entire catalogue of games you need to install the software on to your computer. Entering Microgaming's instant flash casino platform will only give you access to approximately half as many games. Altogether Microgaming has actually developed more than 1000 game variants and these include plenty of unique 'in-house' titles such as Thunderstruck (1 and 2), Avalon (1 and 2), Immortal Romance and Girls with Guns (1 and 2).
Microgaming has also developed an impressive line of branded titles over the years with major releases such as Tomb Raider (1 and 2), Battlestar Galactica, Playboy, Hitman, Hellboy, Jurassic Park, Terminator 2, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises. Some of Microgaming's other most famous titles include progressive jackpot pokies such as Mega Moolah, Tunzamunni, Cash Splash, Treasure Nile, Major Millions, King Cashalot, Fruit Fiesta and Wow Pot.
Microgaming's download client comes equipped with 24 hour built in support and the software can actually be installed onto your computer in one of several different languages. The games are available in the real cash mode and in the free play mode (apart from a couple of progressive jackpot games, which are only available in the real money mode) and Microgaming continues to release at least one or two new games each and every month, without fail.
Some of the very best Australian online casinos that we have found for you include the following top Microgaming powered casinos which we have reviewed right here on this site. When you get a minute, why not check out the reviews for Jackpot City Casino, Gaming Club Casino, Red Flush Casino, Spin Palace Casino, Lucky Nugget Casino, Ruby Fortune Casino, Casino-Mate, 7 Sultans Casino, Royal Vegas Casino, Platinum Play Casino, Crazy Vegas Casino and Roxy Palace Casino.


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Saints headed into Tuesday night's friendly against Bradford City on the back of their 3-1 win away to Elgin City in the League Cup. Saints brought in Alan Mannus, Paul Paton, Liam Gordon, Aaron Comrie, Liam Craig and Chris Kane as Saints prepared for Saturday's League Cup clash with Falkrik. Visiting manager Stuart McCall's last game in Scotland managing a side which played in claret and amber came at McDiarmid with Motherwell.
It was Saints who kicked off, but after a quiet spell, it was former Saintee Filipe Morais who crafted the first opportunity, blasting into the outstretched arms of Mannus, and moments later the winger struck the post from 2 yards after being flagged offside, reminding Saints fans of his ability.
Tam Scobbie was first to threaten for Saints, heading wide a Liam Craig corner after 17 minutes as Saints looked composed in the evening sun.
Graham Cummins was next to try his luck, striking from the edge of the box, only to be denied by Colin Doyle in the Bantam's goal.
Bradford failed to find the net after a goalmouth stramash saw Billy Clarke loop a volley over the crossbar on the half hour mark as both teams were still hunting for the opener.
But Saints found it shortly after, as Graham Cummins looped in a header from 15 yards from a deep free kick to the delight of the Saints fans enjoying the July sunshine. 1-0.
And minutes later, Brad McKay doubled the advantage, volleying in a Liam Craig free kick past Doyle, the centre back impressing having spent the second half of last season on loan at Dunfermline. 2-0.
Just on half time, Stuart McCall's side almost pulled a goal back, but for goal hero Brad McKay to clear the strike off the line, ensuring the sides went in at half time with Saints holding onto their two goal lead. HT: St Johnstone 2-0 Bradford City.
Saints changed the look of the side at half time, bringing on Criag Thomson for Brian Easton and Connor McLaren for Graham Cummins, as Bradford brought on Mark Marshall for Timothy Dieng.
After 53 minutes, Jordi Hiwula came close to scoring for the visitors, weaving his way into the box from the left and curling his effort over the bar.
Nathaniel Knight-Percival headed over after a well-worked corner for the visitors as Stuart McCall's side edged their way into the game.
Saints brought on George Hunter and Eoghan McCawl for Liam Craig and Blair Alston on 65 minutes as Saints looked to build on their lead.
Bradford then brought on Paul Anderson for Billy Clarke as they looked to claw back a result.
Hiwula came close for the visitors again, as his looped cross was looped over the goal line and cleared by Scobbie.
Bradford took off their trialist for Webb Foster with ten minutes to go, still searching for a goal.
Craig Thomson burst into the box after flicking a bouncing ball beyond Danny Devine but his next touch was booted clear before the youngster could convert.
But it finished like that, as Saints remained unbeaten in their preseason fixtures, with a fine win over the League 1 side. Full time: St Johnstone 2-0 Bradford City.
St Johnstone: Mannus, Scobbie, Alston (McCawl, 65), McKay, Paton, Gordon, Easton (Thomson, 45), Kane, Craig (Hunter, 65), Cummins (McLaren, 45), Comrie. Unused subs: Clark, Anderson, Millar, Swanson, Shaughnesy.
Goals: Cummins (33), McKay (37)
Bradford City: Doyle, McMahon, Devine, Law, Clarke, Knight-Percival, Morais, Dieng (Marshall, 45), Hiwula, Trialist (Webb-Foster, 80), Clarke (Anderson, 68). Unused subs: Cracknell, Boating, Payne.
Attendance: 1177 Man of the Match: Aaron Comrie
Match report by Ross Gardiner.
©Copyright 2016 - all rights reserved by St Johnstone Football Club
Registered in Scotland 7629
Unless otherwise stated all photographs on this site are ©Perthshire Picture Agency and may not be used without permission.


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NEW YORK, Dec. 2 (UPI) -- Stocks were mostly up across Latin America this week, as strong economic indicators buoyed investors.
While those numbers look good now, the International Monetary Fund's Managing Director Rodrigo Rato said this week that growth in Latin America will slow next year.
That after an optimistic 2004 in which the region is forecast to have grown 4.5 percent.
"Certainly many countries have very substantial external financing needs and therefore remain exposed to external shocks," Rato said.
One of the biggest external shocks that Rato sees ahead for the region are higher interest rates in the United States and Europe.
When interest rates climb in industrialized nations, it tends to draw investor capital away from emerging market countries, like those in Latin America.
While the returns remain higher in emerging market nations, investors place more value on the security of industrialized nations' securities once returns in those nations rises to a reasonable level.
Rato also said that public debt still poses a problem for Latin America.
"Even with the recent fiscal consolidation, the average public debt for the region is around 55 percent of gross domestic product, far above levels at the end of the 1990s," he said.
Rato didn't provide specific projections on what Latin America's growth would be next year.
Brazil's economy grew 6.1 percent in the third quarter, as compared to the same period the previous year.
Additionally, the government said investment in the country jumped 20.1 percent in the third quarter, which could indicate that the growth will be sustainable.
The gross domestic product growth, while slightly under market forecasts, is still good news for the government, as citizens have become restless with the job promises President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva made when he came into office.
Lula and the central bank have come under attack for maintaining high interest rates in the country, which has dampened GDP and job growth. But government officials say they're sticking with their tough line, indicating that inflation remains one of their chief concerns.
For the week, Brazil's Bovespa stock index shot up 867 points to close Wednesday at 25,235 points.
Argentina's President Nestor Kirchner said this week he wants the IMF to stop issuing its tough demands on the country.
"They left us with millions of poor and indigent people," Kirchner said. "Now is the time to stop playing with the poor of Argentina."
Kirchner has in the past made similar caustic comments, but they have been shelved of late as the country got down to serious work on restructuring its debt.
Kirchner said at a campaign rally -- which goes a long way in explaining the comments, as IMF bashing scores nice political points with the populace -- that Argentina wouldn't accept any more impositions from the IMF.
The Fund is currently withholding Argentina's credit line. They have said they will not renew loan payments until the country finalizes its debt restructuring, which is tentatively thought to come to an end in mid-January.
The IMF is indicating that it will stick to the demands it has made on Argentina before any lending program is renewed. Chief among these demands is reform to how the federal government shares money with the provinces.
Argentina's Merval stock index gained 39 points to end at 1,221.
The Bank of Mexico said Wednesday that inflation expectations for 2004 are rising.
The Bank, which takes a monthly survey of private economists, said that the forecast rose to 5.36 percent from 5.18 percent in October.
The Bank's target for this year is 3 percent.
Additionally, the forecast for next year is up. Economists polled for the Bank's survey put inflation in 2005 at 4.29 percent, up from 4.19 percent a month earlier.
The Bank said it drew upon the survey when it decided late last week to undergo monetary tightening, the eighth time it has done so this year.
Annual GDP growth is also queried in the survey. Economists put growth this year at 4.07 percent, up from 4.02 percent in October, while the forecast for 2005 stood at 3.76 percent, up from 3.72 percent the previous month.
For the week, Mexico's IPC stock index added 327 points to close at 12,234.
Industrial production in Chile jumped 5.2 percent in October as compared to the same month the previous year, the government statistics agency said this week.
That is substantially lower than September's big jump of 12 percent, but government officials were quick to point out that there were three fewer working days in October than September.
Industrial sales were also up, rising 4 percent.
Meanwhile, Chile's finance minister said that GDP growth for this year should be between 5.5 percent and 6 percent.
The government had earlier set 5.5 percent as its upper target, but now indicates that forecast was a bit short.
The IPSA stock index gained 39 points to close at 1,809.
Unemployment in Venezuela fell to 13.7 percent in October, officials said this week. That is down from 16.7 percent unemployment in the same month the previous year.
During the last 12 months, the government said that 774,400 people had found work in the formal job sector.
In Venezuela, like all Latin American nations, the informal job sector -- such as selling goods on the streets -- is how a large percentage of the population survives.
But government statistics indicate that informal sector employment dropped 6.2 percent during the past 12 months, but that it still makes up 46.6 percent of the workforce.
For the week, the IBC stock index lost 219 points to close at 29,613.
Colombia's Congress passed a bill that will allow the popular President Alvaro Uribe to run for re-election.
Uribe has pulled off a double feat in the country. He has instilled confidence in Colombians that he is making progress on the war against leftist rebels. He has also given Wall Street hope with his strong relations with the United States and his desire to lead the country down an orthodox economic path.
The bill to allow Uribe's re-election still faces one more hurdle in the country's constitutional court.
Current law doesn't allow a president to serve two consecutive terms.
But Uribe -- who scores a 75-percent approval rating with constituents -- has relatively easily pushed his bid for a second term through the legislative system.
As for stocks, the IGBC index gained 99 points to close at 4,300.


text:
view advance walgreens ads and deals. find out what coupons to use. keep up to date with the latest and hottest deals at walgreens!
check your walgreens account for this coupon!
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Get 7000 points when you spend $20
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7000 pts = $7-$8.75


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Romney Cancels "The View" Appearance
He called it "high risk" to appear on the show. So why did he accept in the first place? Here's what Barbara Walters said:
Gov. Romney was supposed to be on with us this Thursday with Ann Romney. We were looking forward to it. Over the weekend, his people said that he had scheduling problems and would not be coming on with us. Nor at this point did he feel that he could reschedule. We are happy to have Mrs. Romney on with us. We are sorry that we won't have Governor Romney and that's the situation…He can change his mind and we hope he does. It would be our pleasure to have him on the program.Click here for reuse options!
Copyright 2012 Liberaland
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If you ever find yourself wondering what information the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency might have on the health effects of a particular pesticide, herbicide or some other chemical you'll likely find it at a new website the agency just put online.
Actually, the toxicity reference database appears to have most everything the U.S. EPA has available, which is a little daunting. I typed in "Atrazine" and got what looks like three months of heavy reading.
The terms are a little daunting, too. Just remember "hepatoxicity" refers to studies of chemical induced liver damage and altered liver functions.
Click here to do your own research.


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The Jewish people introduced to the world the idea of the weekend and there is no better place than in the Holy City of Jerusalem to experience a real Shabbat.
Join us for this unique chance to explore the various aspects of traditional Judaism. We will guide you through the Jewish Quarter during the golden hours before Shabbat begins and visit the Western Wall as hundreds of people arrive to begin their sincere and powerful Shabbat prayers.
Unfortunately, this tour is not wheelchair accessible
*Average tour length. The independent guides with whom we work have your best interests in mind; while the tour usually includes the sites and stories above and lasts this long, your tour may vary depending on what your guide thinks is best for your group!
- Jaffa Gate
This 2-hour walking experience covers:
- The Jewish Quarter
- The Hurva Synagogue
- Different aspects/movements on Judaism
- The 4 Sepharadic synagogues
- The Wailing Wall
- External characteristics of the Jewish Orthodox
- Day of Rest – whose great idea was that?
...and much more!


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Three Bridges public health unit will be offering the following parenting class at the Robert Lee YMCA.
The Challenge of Parenting your Preschooler
DATE: Wednesdays- February 3,10,17,24, 2016
TIME: 5:30 – 6:00 pm (welcome & registration)
6:00 – 7:30 pm (group session)
LOCATION: Robert Lee YMCA 5th fl.
To Register: Call Three Bridges CHC at 604-714-3438


text:
JOURNAL OF OCCUPATIONAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL MEDICINE, vol. 39, n° 9, 1997, pages 832-843, 49 réf., ISSN 1076-2752, USA
Division of Safety Research. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Morgantown WVa. AUS
Over 3700 occupational fatalities among all US construction laborers 16 years of age and older during 1980-1992 were analyzed from death certificates to identify differences in mortality rates, higher risk groups, and leading causes of death to be targeted for prevention and monitored over time.
Female laborers had an average fatality rate (17.4 deaths/100,000 workers) similar to that for all male construction workers (17.3 deaths/100,000 workers), and ten times higher than for all female construction workers.
On average, nonwhite laborers had 27% greater mortality than white laborers.
Women were at a higher risk (10.8 deaths/100,000 workers) for motor vehicle injury than were men (6.1 death/100,000 workers).
The smallest percentage annual decline in cause-specific mortality rates was from motor vehicle for construction laborers (0.1%) and all construction workers (1.4%). Environmental-related fatality rates for laborers rose an average of 0.8% annually.
The average years of potential life lost (to age 65) ranged from 27.4 years from explosion to 34.3 years from electrocution.
Prevention measures aimed at addressing the highest risk areas, along with research needs, are discussed.
With over a quarter of construction fatalities occurring among laborers, occupational injury research on laborers should become a priority.
Mots-clés BDSP : Accident travail, Décès, Homme, Etats Unis, Amérique du Nord, Amérique, Prévalence, Facteur risque, Sexe, Ethnie, Poste travail, Cause décès, Etiologie
Mots-clés Pascal : Accident travail, Mort, Industrie construction, Homme, Etats Unis, Amérique du Nord, Amérique, Prévalence, Facteur risque, Sexe, Ethnie, Poste travail, Etiologie, Etude longitudinale
Mots-clés Pascal anglais : Occupational accident, Death, Construction industry, Human, United States, North America, America, Prevalence, Risk factor, Sex, Ethnic group, Workplace layout, Etiology, Follow up study
Notice produite par :
Inist-CNRS - Institut de l'Information Scientifique et Technique
Cote : 97-0518009
Code Inist : 002B30B04. Création : 13/02/1998.


text: This guide contains information about places where you can stop for the night when driving from Greensboro, North Carolina to Washington, District of Columbia. Total distance for the trip is around 309 miles with a driving time of approximately 4 hours 44 mins. Cities and towns with hotels that are on the fastest route between Greensboro and Washington are listed below. (Driving times are approximate and will vary with traffic and weather conditions.)