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Falcon Pro
I recently installed Falcon Pro, a new Twitter client, on my Nexus 4. I really enjoy using this application but I noticed a few hiccups here and there while using it and it seemed that scrolling the main timeline did not yield a perfectly stable framerate. I dug a little bit with some of the tools and techniques I use every day at work and I was able to quickly find some of the reasons why Falcon Pro does not behave as well as it can.
My goal in this article is to show you how you can track down and fix performance issues in an application, even if you don't have its source code. All you need is a copy of the latest Android 4.2 SDK – the new ADT bundle makes setup a breeze. I would highly recommend you download the application to apply the techniques described here on your own. Falcon Pro is unfortunately – for you – a paid application and I will therefore provide links to various files you can download to follow my analysis.
A word about performance
Android 4.1 put focus on performance with Project Butter and it brought new performance analysis tools, such as systrace. Android 4.2 does not offer anything as significant as systrace but offers a couple of useful addition to your toolbox. You will discover one of these new tools later in this article.
Performance analysis is often a complex task that requires a lot of experience and a deep knowledge of one's tools, hardware, APIs, etc. It is experience that allowed me to perform the analysis presented here in only a few minutes – you can see it happen in "real time" on my Twitter stream on December 1st. It will likely take you a few tries before you feel at ease with this kind of work.
Confirming my suspicions
One of the most important things to remember about performance work is to always use measurements to validate your actions. Even though it seemed obvious to me that Falcon Pro was suffering from framerate drops on a Nexus 4, I needed to make sure. I therefore installed the application on a Nexus 7 which, while powerful, offers a different performance profile than Nexus 4. Nexus 7 offers another interesting advantage for performance analysis that we'll talk about later.
Installing the application on Nexus 7 did not make a difference and I could still see framerate drops. It even seemed slightly worse. To measure the problem I decided to use a Profile GPU rendering, a tool introduced in Android 4.1. You can find this tool in the Developer options section of the Settings application.
If Developer options is not available on your device running Android 4.2, go to the About phone or About tablet section and tap the Build number item at the bottom 7 times.
With this option turned on, the system will keep track of the time it took to draw the last 128 frames of every window. To use this tool you must now kill your application – a future version of Android will get rid of this requirement.
Methodology: unless specified otherwise, every measurement in this analysis is done by slowly scrolling the main timeline up and down by a few pixels at a time, revealing at most one extra list item.
After launching the application and scrolling the main timeline, I ran the following command from a terminal:
$ adb shell dumpsys gfxinfo com.jv.falcon.pro
In the resulting logs you will find a section entitled Profile data in ms. This section contains, for each window belonging to the application, a table of 3 columns. To use this data, simply copy the table in your favorite spreadsheet program and generate a stacked columns chart. The chart below is the result of my measurement (the original spreadsheet can be viewed online.)
Each column gives an estimate of how long each frame takes to render:
Draw is the time spent building display lists in Java. It indicates how much time is spent running methods such as View.onDraw(Canvas).
Process is the time spent by Android's 2D renderer to execute the display lists. The more Views in your hierarchy, the more drawing commands must be executed.
Execute is the time it took to send a frame to the compositor. This part of the graph is usually small.
Reminder: to render smoothly at 60 fps, each frame must take less than 16 ms to complete.
About Execute: if Execute takes a long time, it means you are running ahead of the graphics pipeline. Android can have up to 3 buffers in flight and if you need another one the application will block until one of these bufferes is freed up. This can happen for two reasons. The first one is that your application is quick to draw on the Dalvik side but its display lists take a long time to execute on the GPU. The second reason is that your application took a long time to execute the first few frames; once the pipeline is full it will not catch up until the animation is done. This is something we'd like to improve in a future version of Android.
The chart obviously confirms my suspicions: while the application mostly performs well, it sometimes drops a frame.
Taking a closer look
Even though the data we gathered shows that the application sometimes takes too long to draw, it doesn't tell the whole story. The framerate can also be affected by unscheduled or mischeduled frames. For instance, if an app always draws in less than 16 ms but sometimes performs long tasks between frames, it will sometimes miss a frame.
Systrace is the easiest tool to check whether Falcon Pro is suffering from this issue. This tool is a system profiler with very low overhead. Its timings are reasonably accurate and give you an overview of what the entire system is doing, including your application.
To enable systrace, go to Developer options and select Enable traces. A dialog appears, letting you choose what type of events you want to profile. We are only interested in Graphics and View.
Note: do not forget to turn off Profile GPU rendering.
To use systrace, open a terminal and from the directory tools/systrace in the Android SDK, run systrace.py:
$ ./systrace.py
By default, the tool will capture events for 5 seconds. I simply scrolled the main timeline up and down. The resulting trace is a stand-alone HTML document.
Tip: to navigate a systrace document, use the WASD keys to pan and zoom. W will zoom in on the mouse cursor.
A systrace document shows a lot of very interesting information. For instance, it shows you whether a process is scheduled, and on which CPU. If you zoom in on the last row, called 10440: m.jv.falcon.pro you can see what the application was doing. If you click on one of the performTraversals blocks you can see how long the application spent drawing a frame.
While most of the performTraversals are below the 16 ms threshold, some take more time, thus confirming the measurements previously obtained (zoom in at the 935 ms marker to see such a block.)
More interestingly, you can see that the application sometimes misses a frame because it doesn't manage to schedule a draw operation. Zoom in at the 270 ms marker to find a deliverInputEvent block taking 25 ms. This blocks indicates that the application spent 25 ms processing a touch event. Since the application is using a ListView, this is likely due to a problem in the adapter but we'll get back to this later.
Systrace was useful to not only confirm that the application is spending too much time drawing, but also to help us find another potential performance bottleneck. It is a very useful tool but it has its limitations. It only provides high level data and we must turn to other tools to understand what is truly going on.
Visualizing overdraw
Drawing performance issues can have many root causes but a common one is overdraw. Overdraw happens every time the application asks the system to draw something on top of something else. Think about the simplest application possible: a window with a white background and a single button on top of it. When the system draws the button, it draws over the existing white background. That's overdraw.
Overdraw is inevitable but too much overdraw can be an issue. Devices have limited memory bandwidth and if overdraw causes your application to require more bandwidth than available, performance will degrade. The amount of overdraw you can reasonably afford varies from device to device.
A good rule of thumb is to aim for a maximum overdraw of 2x; this means you can draw the screen once, then draw twice again on top, painting each pixel 3 times total.
The presence of overdraw also usually indicates other problems: too many views, complex hierarchy, longer inflation times, etc.
Android offers 3 tools to help identify and fix overdraw: Hierarchy Viewer, Tracer for OpenGL and Show GPU overdraw. The first two can be found in ADT or the stand-alone monitor tool. The last tool is part of Developer options.
Show GPU overdraw paints the screen in different colors to indicate where overdraw occurs, and how much. Turn it on now and don't forget to kill your application – a future version of Android will remove this requirement.
Before we look at Falcon Pro, let's see what the Settings application looks like with Show GPU overdraw turned on.
It is easy to interpret the results if you remember the meaning of each color:
- No color means there is no overdraw. The pixel was painted only once. In this example, you can see that the background is intact.
- Blue indicates an overdraw of 1x. The pixel was painted twice. Large blue areas are acceptable (if the entire window is blue, you can get rid of one layer.)
- Green indicates an overdraw of 2x. The pixel was painted three times. Medium-sized green areas are acceptable but you should try to optimize them away.
- Light red indicates an overdraw of 3x. The pixel was painted four times. Small light red areas are acceptable.
- Dark red indicates an overdraw of 4x or more. The pixel was painted 5 times or more. This is wrong. Fix it.
Based on this information you can see that Settings is a well behaved application that does not require any extra work. There is a little bit of red in the switches but nothing worth our efforts.
Transparent pixels: look closely at the previous screenshots. Each icon is painted blue. You can see that the transparent pixels of the bitmaps count against your overdraw. Transparent pixels must be processed by the GPU and can be expensive. Android uses optimizations to avoid drawing transparent pixels in layers and 9-patches so you should only worry about bitmaps.
Overdraw and the GPU: there are two type of mobile GPU architectures. The first uses deferred rendering, for instance ImaginationTech's SGX series. This architecture allows the GPU to detect and fix overdraw in specific situations (it doesn't work if you are blending transparent or translucent pixels.) The second architecture uses immediate rendering and can be found in NVIDIA's Tegra GPUs. This architecture cannot optimize overdraw for you, which is why I like to test on Nexus 7. There are many advantages and disadvantages to both architectures but it's beyond the scope of this article. Just know that both work really well.
Let's now take a look at Falcon Pro…
There is a lot of red in that screenshot! What is interesting however is that the list background is green. This shows there's a 2x overdraw before the application even starts drawing its content. The problem we see here is most likely related to having several fullscreen backgrounds. It is usually trivial to fix.
Removing extraneous layers
To reduce overdraw we must first understand where it's coming from. This is where Hierarchy Viewer and Tracer for OpenGL before useful. Hierarchy Viewer is part of ADT (or monitor) and can be used to inspect a snapshot of the View hierarchy. It is especially useful to debug layout issues but comes in handy for performance work as well.
Important: Hierarchy Viewer will only work on non-secure devices by default, such as engineering phones and tablets or the emulator. To use Hierarchy Viewer on any phone add ViewServer, an Open Source library, to your application.
Open the Hierarchy Viewer perspective in ADT (or monitor), then select the Windows tab. The window highlighted in bold is the foreground window on the device and usually the one you want to inspect. Click on it then click the Load button in the toolbar (it looks like a tree of blue squares.) Loading the tree can take a while so be patient. When the tree is ready you should see something similar to the picture below.
Now that the View hierarchy is loaded in the tool we can export it as a Photoshop document. To do so, click the second button in the toolbar – the tooltip says "Capture the window layers […]". Adobe Photoshop itself is not required as the generated document is compatible with tools such as Pixelmator, The GIMP, etc. The PSD file I generated is available for download.
The Photoshop document shows one layer per View in the application. Each layer is marked visible or invisible, based on the return value of View.getVisibility(). Each layer is named after its View, using either the View android:id if available or its class name. I once started adding support for groups to recreate the View tree… I should really finish this feature.
By inspecting the list of layers, we can quickly identify at least one source of overdraw: multiple fullscreen backgrounds. The first one is the first layer, called DecorView. This view is generated by Android and contains the background specified in the theme. This default gradient is invisible in the application so it can be safely removed.
Scrolling up from DecorView you can see a LinearLayout containing another fullscreen gradient background. This is the same exact background as DecorView's and it is therefore unnecessary. The only visible background that must remain belongs to the View called id/tweet_list_container.
Removing the window background: the background defined in your theme is used by the system to create preview windows when launching your application. Never set it to null unless your application is transparent. Instead, set it to the color/image you want or get rid of from onCreate() by calling getWindow().setBackgroundDrawable(null).
Further reducing overdraw
The Photoshop document is useful to understand how the application is built but it is a little bit difficult to use to get rid of smaller overdraw regions. We must now turn to Tracer for OpenGL. Open the perspective of the same name in ADT (or monitor) and click the arrow icon in the toolbar. Enter the package name of your app and the name of the main Activity, then select a destination file and click Trace.
Word of advice: OpenGL traces can be huge and really slow to capture. To make them smaller and capture faster, uncheck all the Data Collection Ooptions boxes.
Activity name: logcat will show the name of the package and Activity when you launch an application. This is how I know what to type in Tracer for OpenGL.
When the application is up and running, turn on the first two options:
- Collect Framebuffer contents on eglSwapBuffers()
- Collect Framebuffer contents on glDraw*()
The first option is useful to quickly find the frame you're interested in while the second option allows us to see each frame being built drawing command by drawing command. This second option is key to solving overdraw problems.
With these two options enabled I started scrolling the main timeline. It will now take a long time to capture each frame (30 seconds is not unexpected) so I recommend you simply download the trace I captured. You can open this tracefile in Tracer for OpenGL by clicking the first button in the toolbar.
Once loaded, a trace shows you each GL command sent to the GPU for every captured frame. If you downloaded my trace file, skip to frame 21. When a frame is selected you can see what it looks like in the Frame Summary tab. In addition, you can click on drawing commands, highlighted in blue, to see the current state of the frame in the Details tab.
Organization: the GL commands are grouped by View. They recreate the same tree you can see in Hierarchy Viewer or your XML layout files. This makes it very easy to understand what View generated a specific operation.
By clicking successively on the first 3 drawing commands you can see the problem already identified in Photoshop; a fullscreen background is drawn 3 times.
We can find more to optimize by looking further down the trace. When a tweet (list item) is drawn, an ImageView is used to draw the avatar. The ImageView first draws a background then the avatar itself:
If you look closely you will notice that the background is only used as a border for the image. This means the dark part in the center of the avatar background creates overdraw. That piece of the 9-patch is entirely covered by the avatar.
A very simple fix for this problem is to make the stretchable center piece of the 9-patch transparent. Android's 2D renderer optimizes away transparent pieces in 9-patches. This simple change will get rid of a bit of overdraw.
Interestingly, the same exact problem occurs with inline media. Avatars are small so their overdraw is not a big deal, but inline media can occupy large areas of the screen. The fix is exactly the same.
Future optimization: I would like Android's 2D rendering pipeline to be able to automatically detect and correct overdraw for you. We have a few ideas but I cannot make any promise. Just as with built-in GPU optimizations, this would only work with fully opaque primitives.
Flattening the view hierarchy
Now that overdraw is (mostly) taken care of, let's go back to Hierarchy Viewer. By inspecting the tree we can try to identify unnecessary views. Removing views, especially ViewGroups, can not only help improve framerate but also memory consumption, startup time, etc.
A quick look at Falcon Pro's view hierarchy is enough to identify several ViewGroups with a single child. These ViewGroups are often unnecessary and easy to remove. At least two of the nodes shown in the screenshot below should be removed.
There are numerous other views that can be removed from this tree. For instance, each tweet contains a RelativeLayout called id/listElementBottom. This layout contains the name of the author, his Twitter handle, the time elapsed since the tweet was posted and an icon. The name and the handle are two separate TextView instead of being just one with spans to use different styles. The time and the icon use a TextView and an ImageView that could be combined in a single TextView, using TextView's compound drawables.
The slide-in menu on the left uses several groups of LinearLayout+TextView+ImageView to display labels with icons. Each one of these groups can be replaced by a single TextView.
How to flatten your UI: I explain these techniques in more detail in my 2009 Google I/O talk entitled Turbo-charge your UI.
What about input events?
Remember when we looked at systrace and found out that touch events handling was sometimes slow? It's now time to address this issue and the best tool at our disposal to understand more about what the application is doing is traceview.
Traceview is a Dalvik profiler which measures how much time the application spends calling methods. To invoke it, open the DDMS perspective in ADT or monitor, select your application process in the Devices tab, then click the "Start method profiling" button (three arrows with a red circle.)
After enabling tracing, I scrolled the main timeline up and down and clicked the button again to finish the trace. You can also download my own trace. The result looks like the screenshot below.
Clicking on item #21, ViewRootImpl.draw(), highlights the time spent drawing. The last column of the table gives you an idea of the average time spent in this method and all its children. If you look closely at the timeline, with the highlights, you will notice gaps between successive frames.
An easy way to figure out what's going in during these gaps is to zoom in at the beginning of one them and click the largest colored block you can find. You can then follow the parent chain until you find something you recognize. In my case, I followed a call to Pattern.compileImpl, taking an average of 0.5 ms, all the way up to DBListAdapter.bindView.
Obviously the application recompiles the same regular expression over and over again, every time a new item is bound while scrolling the main timeline. Traceview shows that bindView takes 38 ms on average and 56% of that time is spent parsing HTML text. This seems like something that could be achieved in the background instead of blocking the UI thread. and of course, the regex should not be recompiled every time.
It's your turn!
I kept one last trace as an exercise. The application has two slide-in menus that can be unveiled by swiping the timeline left or right. Show GPU overdraws highlights an excessive amount of drawing during the swipes and I used Tracer for OpenGL to capture several frames of a swipe. Download my trace and see if you can figure out what's causing the overdraw (go to frame #34.)
Hints: the application should use hardware layers by calling View.setLayerType() to simplify drawing. There are also extraneous backgrounds that can be optimized away with clever use of 9-patches. Clipping could also be very helpful. Finally, maybe a ColorFilter set on a Paint passed to setLayerType() could help remove the last drawing command.
I showed you various tools you can use to optimize your applications. I could spend a lot of time describing what techniques to use to solve issues identified with these tools but this article would turn into a book. Check out the reference documentation of the official Android developers web site and all the Google I/O Android talks (slides and videos are available online for free.)


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date and dark chocolate hand pies
- 1½ cups (210g) pitted dried dates, chopped
- ¼ cup (60ml) boiling water
- 1 tablespoon maple syrup
- 2 sheets frozen puff pastry, thawed
- 60g dark chocolate, broken into pieces
- 1 egg, lightly beaten
- icing sugar, to dust
- Preheat oven to 200°C. Place the dates, water and maple syrup in a small bowl and set aside for 5 minutes.
- Cut the pastry into 8 x 10cm squares and place on 2 large baking trays lined with non-stick baking paper.
- Divide the date mixture between the squares and top with a piece of the chocolate.
- Fold the squares over, pressing the edges to form a triangle. Brush with the egg and cook for 12–14 minutes or until golden. Dust with icing sugar to serve. Makes 8.
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subset: commoncrawl


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According to CNN, Apple and other digital download services are in talks with record labels to up music files from 16-bit to pristine, high-fidelity 24-bit. But while Macs can handle 24-bit music already, iPods and iPhones would need to be retooled to accommodate the sweet sounds. Soon please! [CNN]
Your iTunes Might Sound Almost Twice as Nice Soon


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Don't Break Up the Gay Penguins!
The gay hating zookeepers at the Toronto Zoo are about to do something awful. They're going to break up a pair of male penguins, Buddy and his Latin lover Pedro, and make them have sex with women. How could they do that?
The pair of penguins came to Toronto from Toledo, and they were already a couple. They spend most of their time together and engage in the mating behavior that males and females usually exhibit toward each other. Now the officials in Canada (which is sarcastically well-known for being an evil and homophobic country) are going to separate them and make them mate with women because of their "top-notch genes" and the threat of the birds going extinct. Ugh, it's so hard to be gay. People are always saying, "You're so attractive and fit and have such great taste and you're so intelligent. If I had to have a baby, I'd want it to be with you."
Well, guess what: gay people—and gay penguins—are sick of being exploited for our genes. Maybe the reason we're so attractive, intelligent, stylish, and gay is that we're so incredibly perfect that all this isn't meant to be passed on. Everyone would be too perfect. There'd be no one to pick on, and no bad taste to make our good taste look better! So, for everything that is holy, please keep the gay penguins together. They probably wouldn't have sex with a woman if they were the last penguins on earth anyway.


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Hundreds turn out for soccer scrimmage fundraiser
Organizers hope to raise $20k for young woman fighting cancer
Hundreds of people on more than 30 teams turned out for a soccer scrimmage fundraiser for a young woman fighting for her life.
Carly Cannon, who was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer at the age of 20, is determined to kick the disease.
"Really, her strength is what gets us through," said Cannon's father, Gene.
Gene said Cannon has good days and bad. She found out several months ago she had ependymoma.
"About 300 adults a year are diagnosed in the United States with it, and about 200 children," Gene said.
With a tumor spreading up her spine to the base of her brain, Cannon chose to fight.
"She did 37 treatments of radiation in a row," Gene said.
On Saturday, athletes of all ages joined her fight at a soccer scrimmage. The children on the field played in "Team Carly" T-shirts.
Gene said to get better, Cannon will travel a long road.
"She said, 'I pray for my family because I know how difficult this has been on them,'" Gene said.
Saturday's soccer scrimmages will end at 8 p.m. Admission is $50 per team, and all ages are welcome on the field. Organizers hope to raise $20,000 by the day's end.
Those wishing to donate can visit redbasket.org, and search for "Carly Cannon."


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He may not find his "Mother" among the students at William McKinley High School– but Neil Patrick Harris, get ready to meet the "Glee" club.
The "How I Met Your Mother" star will make a guest appearance on FOX's "Glee" during the upcoming run of new episodes, a rep for the network confirmed to Access Hollywood.
According to E! Online, it will only be a one-episode appearance.
"[He will be] much more of the Dr. Horrible variety than Doogie Howser, M.D.," a source told E!, referring to Neil's popular online blog character.
Neil is the latest star the hit FOX show has lined up for a cameo when new episodes begin on April 13.
As previously reported, Molly Shannon and Olivia Newton-John will both join the "Glee" gang, as well as Kristin Chenoweth, who will reprise her role as April Rhodes.
In other NPH news, the actor will make his musical directorial debut this summer when "Rent" visits the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles in August.
Neil played "Rent" lead Mark Cohen in 1997.
Related Content from AccessHollywood.com:
VIEW THE PHOTOS: 'Glee' Stars Rock Out In NYC With Antlers, Teddy Bears & Toy Guitars
PLAY IT NOW: Preview: 'Glee' Returns In April!
PLAY IT NOW: Behind The Scenes: The Cast Of 'Glee' Strikes A Pose For ELLE
MORE ACCESS ON THESE TOPICS: Glee - Neil Patrick Harris - TV - Olivia Newton-John - Molly Shannon


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Jurors will not hear directly from the defendant in the trial of the former Rutgers University student accused of using a webcam to spy on his roommate's intimate encounter with another man.
Indian-born Dharun Ravi's defense lawyer rested his case Monday without calling Ravi to testify.
The jury could begin deliberating on Tuesday after lawyers give their summations.
The trial captured in detail the actions of Ravi and his randomly-assigned freshman roommate, Tyler Clementi, over a few days in September 2010, beginning when Clementi asked for privacy so he could have a guest over and continuing past when he committed suicide by jumping off the that links New York City with New Jersey.
RECOMMENDED:Tyler Clementi and cyberbullying: How courts ruled in 5 other cases
The suicide made Clementi a national symbol of the difficulties young gays can face.
Ravi is not charged with his death. He faces 15 criminal counts, including invasion of privacy and bias intimidation. Seven of the charges are related to allegations that he tried to cover his tracks by changing a Twitter messages, deleting text messages and telling another witness what she should say.
Testimony stretched over 12 days and included about 30 witnesses, including several college students, along with school officials and investigators. Jurors also heard from the other man in the streamed video; he was identified only by the initials M.B.
Without a chance to hear testimony from Ravi, who told Judge Glenn Berman that it was his own decision not to testify, jurors may give more consideration to the one instance they did get to hear his voice. It came in a video of an interview he gave police on Sept. 23, 2010.
Ravi looked composed for an 18-year-old wearing shorts, a T-shirt and flip-flops when he was brought into a police station.
Word had spread that Ravi used his webcam to view Clementi in a private moment with another man, just days before Clementi committed suicide.
As he was questioned, Ravi looked directly at the investigator who grilled him and accused him repeatedly of lying. He talked quickly but his voice didn't trail off.
Throughout the trial, Ravi sat about 20 feet (six meters) from jurors wearing a suit, his formerly unkempt hair trimmed neatly. Sometimes, he fiddled with his tie. Sometimes he cracked a smile. Sometimes, he whispered to his lawyers.
Between his recorded words and those of others, a portrait of him has been painted for jurors.
Ravi came to New Jersey with his family as a young child. He and his family live in the upscale central New Jersey community of Plainsboro.
The son of a computer software firm executive, he has designed some software on his own.
The younger Ravi had a custom-made computer that functioned on both Microsoft and Apple Macintosh operating systems. That technical accomplishment — while not unheard of — impressed the detective assigned to examine the machine.
He was gregarious and good enough at calculus that other students came to him for help.
In high school, he ran track and played ultimate Frisbee, then joined the disc team when he got to Rutgers. He was proud when he bought new cleats for the sports, describing them in a text message to a friend as "purple and flashy."
At Rutgers, he planned to major in economics. The university assigned him and Clementi to be roommates at random. They didn't meet before they moved in at the end of August.
When he met with police, he was asked to explain a Twitter post in which he said: "Anyone with iChat, I dare you to video chat me between the hours of 9:30 pm and 12."
On the video, he said he meant that sarcastically. "When I'm uncomfortable about something," Ravi explained during the interrogation, "I joke about it."
To convict him on the most serious charge — bias intimidation — prosecutors will need to convince the jury that he acted out of animus against gays. He faces up to 10 years of prison if he's convicted of bias intimidation, which is considered a hate crime in New Jersey. Most people convicted of the other charges he faces don't get jail time.
Throughout the trial, defense lawyers have worked hard to show that he didn't.
As prosecutors called college students to testify, defense lawyers asked them all a variation of the same question: Did he ever say anything bad about gays? In each case, the answer was "no."
But there was a bit more to it than that. Some students said Ravi told them he was "uncomfortable" having a gay roommate.
The defense began presenting its side of the case on Friday by calling seven men to testify. All of them are friends — and most current or former business associates — of Ravi's father.
Defense lawyer Philip Nettl asked each of them if Ravi ever said anything derogatory about gay individuals or gays in general.
In each case, the men said no.
Then, Prosecutor Julia McClure began questioning them.
All said they had never seen his Twitter posts, and exchanged texts or instant messages with him. And each of them said homosexuality was never discussed in their conversations.
"Why would that come up?" asked one of the men, Anil Kappa, a business partner of Ravi's father.
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Some Background
In October I have been asked by the school I teach at to organise and lead 'a hands-on cryptography session' for a bright group of 13 year olds to follow a talk on Enigma by an outside speaker.
The plan is to start with some affine shifting in ones and twos, then hit them with a task creating and breaking monoalphabetic substitutions in teams. After that I'd like at least to show them something harder, ideally interpolating somewhere in between monoalphabetics and enigma (all the better if I can recycle the sweet macro code I've written to help with the first two tasks- better still if I can recycle the kids' ciphers). Which has all led me to 'inventing' a particular class of cipher.
The Ciphers
Given a monoalphabetic substitution $g \in S_{26}$, we evaluate the ciphertext of plaintext character '$x$', $n$ characters into the string, as $C(x,n)= g^n(x)$, where $S_{26}$ is the permutation group on 26 elements and $g(x)$ is the natural action on the alphabet.
My Question(s)
Clearly I am not the first person to think of this. But after going through wikipedia's list of classical encryptions to no avail, as someone who had never done any cryptography before being tasked with this, I'm stumped. What the dickens is this class of encryption called?!
Given that someone has probably though of this before, someone has probably also tried to break it, and has probably found weaknesses. Going through ciphertext and looking at weaknesses, even if this is all they could accomplish, would I think still be a good activity to end on, as it represents a nod toward the real activities at Bletchley Park. But so far the only weakness I've been able to find without a reference is that the 26771144400th character must be the same in ciphertext as in plaintext. This is not helpful. What are the weaknesses of this class of encryption?
And finally, since I may as well ask, having given you the background, has anyone got any better ideas?


text:
U.S. Calls On South Sudan's Kiir To Release Machar's Allies For Addis Peace Talks
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry
[South Sudan Crisis]
The United States has called on South Sudan's President Salva Kiir to immediately release Former Vice President Riek Machar's colleagues so that the Addis Abbaba peace talks to end fighting can "be meaningful and productive."
The conflict in South Sudan erupted December 15 as a power struggle between Kiir and Machar but has quickly taken on an ugly ethnic dimension with Kiir's armed supporters attacking Nuers and Machar's backers targeting Dinkas.
There are no firm estimates of people killed although the 1,000 figure has been widely used; more than 100,000 people have been displaced from their homes and many sought shelter at UN barracks.
Machar has denied Kiir's accusations that he'd tried to stage a coup, sparking the fighting. In a report on Sudan Tribune Machar claims his forces are now marching to seize Juba, the capital city.
The U.S. has warned against any attempted military solution to what it's terms a political conflict. In a statement today, The U.S. Department of State supported Machar's earlier demands that his political allies who have been detained by Kiir be released so they can take part in the peace talks.
"We urge the Government of South Sudan to uphold its commitments and release political detainees immediately. To be meaningful and productive, discussions of political issues requires the presence of the senior SPLM members currently detained in Juba, among others," the statement, released by Marie Harf, deputy State Department spokesperson, said.
Machar had made his side's participation on the talks conditional on the release of his colleagues. Machar's allies include Pagan Amum, the former ruling SPLM's Secretary General and the chief negotiator during dispute with Sudan that had led to the temporary halt in oil exports; pipelines run through Sudan.
"These talks are of critical importance to the people of South Sudan. There can be no military solution to this conflict. Forging a durable and lasting peace depends on resolving the underlying political causes of the conflict. Special Envoy Booth's presence at the talks in Addis Abbaba underscores our enduring commitment to peace, reconciliation, and a unified, democratic South Sudan," the statement adds, referring to U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan and South Sudan, Donald E. Booth.
"The parties must use these talks to make rapid, tangible progress on a cessation of hostilities, humanitarian access, and the status of political detainees," the statement also said.
Latest comments
- Ann GarrisonFebruary 22,2018 @ 08:03 PM
I think you have "Filtered HTML" turned on here. If you switch to "Full HTML," it will probably...
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text:
Python 3.0.1 Release
Python 3.0.1
Python 3.0 is end-of-lifed with the release of Python 3.1. All users of Python 3.0 should upgrade to Python 3.1.
Python 3.0.1 was released on February 13, 2009. It was a bugfix release of Python 3.0.
This is the first bugfix release of Python 3.0. Python 3.0 is now in bugfix-only mode; no new features are being added. Dozens of bugs that were reported since the release of 3.0 final have been fixed.
Python 3.0 (a.k.a. "Python 3000" or "Py3k") is a new version of the language that is incompatible with the 2.x line of releases. The language is mostly the same, but many details, especially how built-in objects like dictionaries and strings work, have changed considerably, and a lot of deprecated features have finally been removed. Also, the standard library has been reorganized in a few prominent places.
Here are some Python 3.0 resources:
- What's new in Python 3000
- Python 3.0 change log.
- Online Documentation
- Read more in PEP 3000
- To help out, sign up for firstname.lastname@example.com
- Conversion tool for Python 2.x code: 2to3
Please report bugs at http://bugs.python.org
See also the license.
Python 3.0.1 Released: 13-Feb-2009
This is a production release; we currently support these formats:
MD5 checksums and sizes of the released files:
220b73f0a1a20c4b1cdf9f9db4cd52fe 11258272 Python-3.0.1.tgz 7291eac6a9a7a3642e309c78b8d744e5 9495088 Python-3.0.1.tar.bz2 be8f57265e1419330965692a4fa15d9a 13702656 python-3.0.1.amd64.msi ffce874eb1a832927fb705b84720bfc6 13434880 python-3.0.1.msi b17949fe1aa84c7b1b5c8932046c5b6f 16984391 python-3.0.1-macosx2009-02-14.dmg
The signatures for the source tarballs above were generated with GnuPG using release manager Barry Warsaw's public key which has a key id of EA5BBD71. The Windows installers were signed by Martin von Löwis' public key which has a key id of 7D9DC8D2.
- Online Documentation is updated twice a day
- What's new in Python 3000
- Guido van Rossum's current blog
- Guido van Rossum's previous blog
|The binaries for AMD64 will also work on processors that implement the Intel 64 architecture (formerly EM64T), i.e. the architecture that Microsoft calls x64, and AMD called x86-64 before calling it AMD64. They will not work on Intel Itanium Processors (formerly IA-64).


text:
Photographer Unknown
Dr. Mary Walker, c.1863
Gelatin silver print
Who we are and what we do in our private lives may sometimes be at odds with how we live in the world, and vice versa. Imagine Dr. Mary Walker, who, at her 1856 wedding to another surgeon, wore trousers and a man's coat and kept her own name. After being appointed assistant surgeon during the American Civil War, Walker made herself a slightly modified officer's uniform to wear, in response to the demands of traveling with the soldiers and working in field hospitals. In 1865 she was the only woman ever to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor, the highest military award given by the United States. When Congress revised the standards in 1917, Walker refused to give back her Medal of Honor, wearing it every day until her death in 1919. Or consider the intimate relationship of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, a relationship that is increasingly celebrated as information about it becomes more public. There are a myriad of thought-provoking stories acknowledging the boundaries between private and public.


text:
Break out the napkins! This pie is an over-the-top, vegetarian concoction with black-bean spread, Jack cheese, tomatoes, scallions, olives and pickled jalapenos; it's part nacho, part pizza. For an even more decadent treat, serve with low-fat sour cream. Beer pairing: Spicy foods need spicy beers—go for an India Pale Ale (IPA). If you're not a hop-head, the malty sweetness of brown ales work well with the sweeter elements on the pizza.
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|Billoomi Fashion Pvt Ltd
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Phone: 09999300966
Local Business Registration Code: U17299DL2016PTC305323
Number of company employees : 10-50
Approximate annual sales : USD$1,000,000
Percentage of exports : 100%
Website: www.billoomifashion.com
|Catagory:Apparel Sub-categories: Baby Wear Jackets Jeans
|We can verify that Billoomi Fashion Pvt Ltd has been registered with ExportBureau
from 15/03/2017 to today 11/12/2019 for a period of 2 years and 271 days.
|Report this company
Thank you ! We have sent your message.
The mid-market rates shown here are neither "buy" rates nor "sell" rates. Mid-market rates are derived from mid-point between the buy and sell rates of large-value transactions in the global currency markets. Actual ExportBureau member rates are often better.
|This report should be used only as a guide to build a more informed opinion on potential international trading partners.
click here to update this company information


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Final Fantasy XIV (ファイナルファンタジーXIV, Fainaru Fantajī Fōtīn), also known as Final Fantasy XIV Online, is the fourteenth installment in the Final Fantasy series, due for release on September 30, 2010[6] for Microsoft Windows and March 2011 for PlayStation 3. [8] The game is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game and is developed and published by Square Enix. The game takes place in a land called Hydaelyn, mainly in a region named Eorzea, which will have a contemporaneously aesthetic blend of science fiction and classic fantasy elements.[9][10] The game will be released in Japanese, English, French, and German.[11]
The first stage of alpha testing began on March 11, 2010. This was announced at VanaFest 2010, an event to commemorate the eighth year of Final Fantasy XI.[12] The second stage of alpha testing began on June 10, 2010. The PlayStation 3 release of Final Fantasy XIII contained a key for a chance to access a beta, to be held later in the year.[13] Beta testing officially started on July 13th, 2010.
The "Standard Edition" PC version is due to be released on September 30, 2010, while the "Collector's Edition" is set for release a week earlier, on September 22, 2010. The PS3 version is dated for March 2011.[6][14]
The battle and job systems will be different from the one previously used in Final Fantasy XI, which utilized experience points and level-based progression. Final Fantasy XIV is being designed to utilize a skill-based progression[15] system similar to that of Final Fantasy II. Character races will resemble and allow players to create avatars similar to ones in Final Fantasy XI.[9] Group play has been de-emphasized, and now solo and group play have been balanced.[9] Weapon use will alter "character development".[9]
The North American official website[16] was updated October 7, 2009 and explains about the Job System, also known as The Armoury System. By wielding different weapons and even crafting tools, players will be able to take on the role of their choosing such as Gladiator or Thaumaturge. In general, the different roles are divided into four disciplines: Disciples of War (masters of combat arms), Disciples of Magic, Disciples of the Land (gatherers of material resources and students of the natural order), and Disciples of the Hand (crafters who invest their creative ingenuity in synthesis and industry). The crafting system will be a part of the Armory System; when a player decides to wield a Blacksmith hammer, their appearance will change and they will become a blacksmith. The same goes for harvesting tools; a player will be able to equip them and their appearance will change. They will then take on the role of a resource gatherer.
Square Enix is looking for a way to allow users to transfer their game names to the new MMORPG.[9] The developers say that, in addition to Final Fantasy XI, games that have also influenced Final Fantasy XIV include World of Warcraft, Age of Conan, Diablo and Warhammer Online; however, they have also stated that their most important influence is player feedback.[9] Chocobos will also return, but in a different role than in Final Fantasy XI.[9]
In a DVD included with the September 2009 edition of Famitsu magazine, Nobuaki Komoto announced that while Final Fantasy XIV will include XI's job system, it will return to focus on weapons and skills, and will not have experience points or a leveling system. This would have been the third time since Final Fantasy II that the series had seen this kind of change. However, as revealed by game-play footage during the first open Alpha tests, players will accumulate experience points towards a player "Physical Level". The players physical level will affect attributes such as HP (health/hit points), MP (magic/mana points), Strength, Intelligence, and other similar basic stats. There are no specific job-levels though, as seen in FFXI. The setting will also be changed from that of XI; while still set in a "high fantasy" world, the setting will be more modern than that of its predecessor and will include higher technology. The game will also include races "familiar" to players of Final Fantasy XI, but with new names and "other changes".[17][18]
So far there are five confirmed playable races in Final Fantasy XIV, all similar to the races from Final Fantasy XI. The goal of the developers was to create an atmosphere of aesthetic familiarity to players of FFXI.[9]
Hyur (ヒューラン, Hyūran?): A race that is more or less human. They are divided into the Midlanders and the Highlanders. The Midlanders place a heavy emphasis on education, and are generally considered to be the most cultured people of the world. Physically larger and bulkier than their Midlander cousins, the Highlanders once governed the grand city-state of Ala Mhigo, which was invaded and razed by the Garlean Empire. With their homeland destroyed and their numbers decimated, the Highlanders now eke out their existence as mercenaries. While the Midlander clan offers both sexes as playable characters, it seems that only males of the Highlander clan will be playable.
Elezen (エレゼン, Erezen?): An elf-like race and the original inhabitants of Eorzea. They are divided into the Wildwood and the Duskwight Elezen. The Wildwood live in the forests and possess a keen sense of sight - a contributing factor in their unparalleled expertise as archers. The Duskwight are a reclusive clan who dwell in caves and caverns, which has given them a heightened sense of hearing. The two clans seem to dislike each other immensely.
Lalafell (ララフェル, Raraferu?): Physically diminutive humanoids of high agility and intelligence from the southern regions. They are divided into the Plainsfolk and the Dunesfolk. The Plainsfolk are a very earthy clan who thrive on the prairies. The Dunesfolk literally live on the backs of enormous beasts of burden and are known for wearing gemstones in their foreheads that signify their zodiacal signs.
Roegadyn (ルガディン, Rugadin?): A physically large and muscular race who hail from the northern regions. They are divided into the Sea Wolves and the Hellsguard. The Sea Wolves were once a band of fearsome pirates, but have since largely abandoned that lifestyle; presently they are normally employed as sailors or naval mercenaries. The Hellsguard dwell in a volcanic region and are said to be masters of the magical arts, guarding the gateway to Hell itself. It seems that only males of this race will be playable.
Miqo'te (ミコッテ, Mikotte?): Cat-like humanoids who are divided into two religious sects: the Seekers of the Sun, who are dedicated to the sun goddess Azeyma the Warden, and the nocturnal Keepers of the Moon, who are dedicated to the moon goddess Menphina the Lover. It seems that only females of this race will be playable.
Final Fantasy XIV, previously codenamed Rapture (ラプチャー?),[22] was first mentioned in August 2005, when Square Enix announced they had begun working on a new MMORPG, but neither confirmed nor denied that it was a sequel to Final Fantasy XI, or that it was Final Fantasy-related.[23] Hiromichi Tanaka, producer of the MMORPG Final Fantasy XI, stated in April 2006 that developers were working to make Rapture a worldwide release for the PlayStation 3 and Windows Vista,[24] before announcing in February 2007 that the game was being developed for the Xbox 360 and for personal computers, and that it might be brought to the PlayStation 3 at some stage as well.[25] Square Enix announced at GDC 2008 that the new MMO was being targeted at all aforementioned systems and hinted that Mac and Linux clients would not be out of the question.[26]
On June 2, 2009, at the Sony E3 Conference, Final Fantasy XIV was officially announced for the PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Windows through a trailer mixing pre-rendered CGI and actual in-game sequences running from the Crystal Tools engine.[9][27] The game will be produced by the same team working on Final Fantasy XI including Hiromichi Tanaka, and will be directed by Nobuaki Komoto.[27] Akihiko Yoshida is the art director, and Nobuo Uematsu is composing the music.[1] The game will have cross-platform servers between PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Windows, making all servers accessible from any country. The game will be beta tested for longer than the 4 months that Final Fantasy XI was.[9] The PlayOnline system will not be used for the game, but a solution is in the works for those wishing to easily switch between FFXIV and FFXI.[28]
A 360 version of FFXIV was considered, being announced to be in talks with Microsoft to bring the game to the system. However, in an interview with Eurogamer, Tanaka stated that, "The main reason why we couldn't go with Xbox 360 was the Xbox Live system. [Live is] different to the normal internet environment, so when we wanted to introduce this game in the same environment as Windows PC it had to be PS3, so that was our choice. Microsoft has a different point of view: they want to have a closed environment for Xbox Live. We're still talking to... We couldn't come to an agreement on Xbox Live."[29] FFXI was only allowed by SE onto Xbox Live as it only required a silver xbox live membership, therefore was not considered closed as did not require any additional fees to play. The 360 version was eventually cancelled by Tanaka because Square Enix could not make an agreement with Microsoft.[citation needed]
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The Omani short film titled Crossing has been nominated in the short narrative category of the Abu Dhabi Film Festival. Directed by Dr Maitham al Musawi, the seven-minute movie will be competing with short films from the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain.
"I am very happy to be part of this prestigious event. In 2011, my short film Raneen competed in the same category and it won the Special Jury Award. I hope that I will bring laurels this year as well.
"Crossing will also be screened this month in the US at the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) Film Festival. It will have 15 films from the Gulf. The festival will be held in New Orleans, Louisiana from October 10 to 13," said Dr Musawi.
Crossing is the story of a young boy, Faisal, who tries to explore the 'other' world and wants to meet his mother.
Dr Musawi is a graduate from the Oman Medical College and is currently working in the Ministry of Health as an orthopaedic surgeon.
He started writing, directing and editing films in 2004 and got his first big break when his first film Reminiscence, won the fourth best film award in the second edition of Sheikh Majid Youth Media Awards in Dubai.
Via SyndiGate.info
© Apex Press and Publishing


text:
News & Newspapers (ProQuest)
- Coverage Dates: Varies with publication
- Update Frequency: Daily
ProQuest Newspapers offers international, national, regional, and local papers including The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Washington Post, The Guardian, El Norte, Jerusalem Post, and South China Morning Post. Detailed indexing covers not only complete bibliographic information but also subjects, companies, people, products, and geographic areas and provides access to detailed information on the arts, sports, business, and popular culture. Even items such as editorials, editorial cartoons, obituaries, and letters to the editor from well-known people are indexed.
This database also includes exclusive access to 85 full-text newspapers from the world-leading news and information provider, Gannett, plus an additional 7 U.S. military titles will be available on a non-exclusive basis. Gannett newspapers span 30 states providing high quality reporting to their local and regional constituencies. A complete list of Gannett titles available through ProQuest can be found on this spreadsheet.
Some titles of note in this database are:
- Atlanta Constitution (1990-2001)
- The Atlanta Journal (1995-2001)
- The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (2001-current)
- Augusta Chronicle (abstracts)
- Christian Science Monitor (1988-current)
- Georgia Trend (1986-current)
- The Guardian (1992-current)
- Los Angeles Times (1985-current)
- Macon Telegraph (abstracts)
- New York Times (1980-current)
- New York Times Book Review (1997-current)
- New York Times Magazine (1997-current)
- Savannah Morning News (1999-current)
- USA Today (1987-current)
- Wall Street Journal (1984-current)
- The Washington Post (1987-current)
In addition to the content in ProQuest Newspapers, a search executed in this resource will also include content from the following databases if they are included in the library's subscriptions:
- Alt-PressWatch
- Atlanta Journal & Constitution
- Ethnic NewsWatch
- GenderWatch
- International Newspapers
- National Newspaper Abstracts (3)
- National Newspapers Core
- New York Times
- ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Atlanta Daily World (1931-2003)
- ProQuest Newsstand
- The Christian Science Monitor
- The Wall Street Journal
- The Washington Post
- Journals in this Database: Title Lists
- Database Provider: ProQuest LLC
- Database Tutorial: ProQuest Training Materials
- Database Tutorial: ProQuest LibGuide
- Database Handout: ProQuest Newspapers Information Sheet
Express Link (bookmark): http://www.galileo.usg.edu/express?link=zupn


text:
|By Liz McMillan
Article Rating:
|June 15, 2019 08:00 PM EDT
Gordon Haff, Daniel Oh, Veer Muchandi, and Chris Van Tuin from Red Hat will present seven Kubernetes sessions at the upcoming CloudEXPO Silicon Valley which will take place June 24-26, 2019 at the Santa Clara Convention Center, Santa Clara, CA.
Cloud-Native: A New Ecosystem for Putting Containers into Production
Register for this session Here
The standardization of container runtimes and images has sparked the creation of an almost overwhelming number of new open source projects that build on and otherwise work with these specifications.
Of course, there's Kubernetes, which orchestrates and manages collections of containers. It was one of the first and best-known examples of projects that make containers truly useful for production use. However, more recently, the container ecosystem has truly exploded. A service mesh like Istio addresses many of the challenges faced by developers and operators as monolithic applications transition towards a distributed microservice architecture. A tracing tool like Jaeger analyzes what's happening as a transaction moves through a distributed system. Monitoring software like Prometheus captures time-series events for real-time alerting and other uses. Grafeas and Kritis provide security policy attestation and enforcement. And there are many more.
In short, there's an entire new cloud-native ecosystem growing up around containers. Come to this talk by Red Hat technology evangelist Gordon Haff and learn all about it.
Speaker Bio:
Gordon Haff is senior cloud strategy marketing and evangelism manager at Red Hat. Prior to Red Hat, he wrote hundreds of research notes and was frequently quoted in publications like The New York Times on a wide range of IT topics, as well as advising clients on product and marketing strategies. He also has many years of hands-on experience with both IT software and hardware.
Knative in the Developer's Serverless Life
Register for this session Here
Knative allows developers not only to address the challenges of using managed services, but also they can jump into the serverless world easier without specific expertise of Linux containers, Kubernetes, or cloud infrastructure platform. But what does this really look like if you're, say, a Java developer? What's the full developer experience?In this session, I will walk you through the beauty of Knative, via a live demo, in terms of developing the modern app on Spring Boot, building Linux containers, deploying it superfast, and scaling down to zero automatically along with workloads. In the end, you will feel better how cool Knative is for developers to make it more comfortable, easier, and quicker to run serverless cloud-native apps.
Speaker Bio:
Daniel Oh is DevOps Evangelist at Red Hat and CNCF ambassador as well. He's well recognized in cloud-native app development practitioner, container geek, the agile coach using many open source projects. He'd also love to talk about the way to transform modern application architecture with practical guideline via technical workshop, brown bag session, hackathon, hand on labs across regions at international conferences like Open Source Summit, ApacheCon, Red Hat Summit, muCon, DevOps Enterprise Summit, DevConf.CZ and so on for audiences who are living in the cloud-native world.
Securing Applications and Pipelines on a Container Platform
Register for this session Here
Kubernetes as a Container Platform is becoming a de facto for every enterprise. In my interactions with enterprises adopting container platform, I come across common questions: - How does application security work on this platform? What all do I need to secure? - How do I implement security in pipelines? - What about vulnerabilities discovered at a later point in time? - What are newer technologies like Istio Service Mesh bring to table? In this session, I will be addressing these commonly asked questions that every enterprise trying to adopt an Enterprise Kubernetes Platform needs to know so that they can make informed decisions.
Service Mesh with Enhanced Observability and Traceability
Register for this session Here
This is an introductory session with demos where you will understand:
- What is a service mesh?
- Reasons for service mesh on Kubernetes and the problems it addresses
- Demo of a Istio as a service mesh on an enterprise Kubernetes cluster
- Adding observability to your Istio cluster with Kiali and trace-ability with JaegerIf you are new to service mesh and want to understand how the service mesh technology is shaping up for enterprise consumption with additional tools and technologies, this session is for you.
Container Technologies - Impact on Enterprises
Register for this session Here
Container Strategy is on every CTO's agenda. You may be already using containers or just starting off your journey in your enterprise. This session provides you an executive level understanding of how the technologies are evolving in the Container Landscape.
Will walk step by step through container technologies:
- At the Operating System level
- Container Orchestration
- Building Containerized Applications
- Managing your containerized microservices
- Service Mesh
- Serverless with Containers and more..
Will cover the use cases for these technologies, and when to think about applying these technologies in your enterprise. We will also understand how the cloud providers are approaching these areas, the available open source options and the reasons to make such choices.
All in all, if you are a CxO, an IT Executive, an IT Manager or someone who wants to have paint a picture of container technology landscape in your mind, you must attend this session.
Speaker Bio:
Veer Muchandi is a Container and PaaS evangelist. As a Principal Architect with Red Hat, he helps enterprises with Container Strategy, DevOps, Microservices strategy. He conducts strategy sessions, workshops and education sessions and drive the change. Veer is a well known speaker and blogger. He also runs OpenShift Meetup groups in Atlanta and Jacksonville and presents at several forums.
A DevOps State of Mind: Microservices and Databases with Kubernetes
Register for this session Here
Rapid innovation, changing business landscapes, and new IT demands force businesses to make changes quickly. In the eyes of many, DevOps + Microservices + Containers are at the brink of becoming pervasive in IT to accelerate business innovation. In this presentation, you'll learn about managing containerized Microservices + Databases at scale:
* Best practices for immutable and secure container images
* Deployment strategies for Microservices including Recreate, Rolling, Blue/Green, A/B testing with Canaries
* Managing Database migrations in a CI/CD pipeline
Continuous Security with Kubernetes
Register for this session Here
When it comes to adopting containers in the enterprise, Security is the highest adoption barrier. Is your organization ready to address the security risks with containers for your DevOps environment? In this presentation, you'll learn about best practices for:
- Addressing the top container security risks in a container environment including images, builds, registry, deployment, hosts, network, storage, APIs, monitoring & logging, and federation.
- Integrating continuous security for containers in the CI/CD pipeline
- Deployment strategies for deploying container security updates including recreate, rolling, blue/green, canary and a/b testing.
Speaker Bio:
Chris Van Tuin, Chief Technologist, NA West at Red Hat, has over 20 years of experience in IT and Software. Since joining Red Hat in 2005, Chris has been architecting solutions for strategic customers and partners and is a frequent speaker on DevOps, Security, and Containers. He started his career at Intel in IT and Managed Hosting followed by leadership roles in services and sales engineering at Loudcloud and Linux startups. Chris holds a Bachelors of Electrical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology.
As you know, enterprise IT conversation over the past year have often centered upon the open-source Kubernetes container orchestration system. In fact, Kubernetes has emerged as the key technology -- and even primary platform -- of cloud migrations for a wide variety of organizations.
Kubernetes is critical to forward-looking enterprises that continue to push their IT infrastructures toward maximum functionality, scalability, and flexibility.
As they do so, IT professionals are also embracing the reality of Serverless architectures, which are critical to developing and operating real-time applications and services. Serverless is particularly important as enterprises of all sizes develop and deploy Internet of Things (IoT) initiatives.
ServerlessSUMMIT at CloudEXPO to Present 50 Rockstar Speakers and 60 Serverless and Kubernetes Sessions in Three Simultaneous Tracks
Serverless and Kubernetes are great examples of continuous, rapid pace of change in enterprise IT. They also raise a number of critical issues and questions about employee training, development processes, and operational metrics.
There's a real need for serious conversations about Serverless and Kubernetes among the people who are doing this work and managing it.
So we are very pleased today to announce the ServerlessSUMMIT at CloudEXPO.
Register Today and SAVE ▸ Here
Speaking Opportunities ▸ Here
Sponsorship & Exhibit Opportunities ▸ Here
Silicon Valley Faculty ▸ Here
Silicon Valley Schedule ▸ Here
ServerlessSUMMIT at CloudEXPO to present 50 rockstar speakers, 60 sessions in three simultaneous tracks. Call for Papers Here.
The three-day event will take place June 24-26, 2019 at the Santa Clara Convention Center, Santa Clara, CA and will be colocated with CloudEXPO Silicon Valley!
Today we have announced our first 12 sessions. We are accepting speaking submissions for ServerlessSUMMIT through Friday, February 8th.
Our CloudEXPO Silicon Valley 2019 schedule showcases 200 presentations, including keynotes, technical sessions, general sessions, power panels, and hands-on tutorials presented by 150 rockstar speakers in the 10 hottest conference tracks of 2019. We are excited to add the ServerlessSUMMIT to this lineup!
Cloud-Native thinking and Serverless Computing are now the norm in financial services, manufacturing, telco, healthcare, transportation, energy, media, entertainment, retail and other consumer industries, as well as the public sector.
The widespread success of cloud computing is driving the DevOps revolution in enterprise IT. Now as never before, development teams must communicate and collaborate in a dynamic, 24/7/365 environment. There is no time to wait for long development cycles that produce software that is obsolete at launch. DevOps may be disruptive, but it is essential.
As they do so, IT professionals are also embracing the reality of Serverless architectures, which are critical to developing and operating real-time applications and services. Serverless is particularly important as enterprises of all sizes develop and deploy Internet of Things (IoT) initiatives.
Serverless and Kubernetes are great examples of continuous, rapid pace of change in enterprise IT. They also raise a number of critical issues and questions about employee training, development processes, and operational metrics.
DevOpsSUMMIT at CloudEXPO Celebrates Its 12th Event in Six Years
ServerlessSUMMIT and DevOpsSUMMIT at CloudEXPO expands the DevOps community, enable a wide sharing of knowledge, and educate delegates and technology providers alike.
There's a real need for serious conversations about Serverless and Kubernetes among the people who are doing this work and managing it.
So we are very pleased today to announce the ServerlessSUMMIT at CloudEXPO.
At CloudEXPO Silicon Valley, June 24-26, 2019, Digital Transformation (DX) is a major focus with expanded DevOpsSUMMIT and FinTechEXPO programs within the DXWorldEXPO agenda. Successful transformation requires a laser focus on being data-driven and on using all the tools available that enable transformation if they plan to survive over the long term. A total of 88% of Fortune 500 companies from a generation ago are now out of business. Only 12% still survive. Similar percentages are found throughout enterprises of all sizes.
CloudEXPO Has Been the M&A Capital For Cloud Companies
CloudEXPO has been the M&A capital for Cloud companies for more than a decade with memorable acquisition news stories which came out of CloudEXPO expo floor. DevOpsSUMMIT New York faculty member Greg Bledsoe shared his views on IBM's Red Hat acquisition live from NASDAQ floor. Acquisition news was announced during CloudEXPO New York which took place November 12-13, 2019 in New York City.
Our Silicon Valley 2019 schedule will showcase 200 keynotes, sessions, general sessions, power panels, and hands on tutorials presented by 150 rockstar speakers in 10 hottest conference tracks of 2019:
» CloudEXPO
» DevOpsSUMMIT
» ServerlessSUMMIT
» Kubernetes at CloudEXPO
» FinTechEXPO Blockchain
» DXWorldEXPO Digital Transformation
» AI | ML | DL | Artificial Intelligence
» Big Data | Analytics
» IoT | IIoT | Smart Cities
» Mobility | Security
» Enterprise Cloud Hot Topics
CloudEXPO Silicon Valley 2019 Show Prospectus ▸ HERE
Prospectus At-a-Glance ▸ HERE
Attendee Profile ▸ HERE
Keynote Opportunities ▸ HERE
General Session Opportunities ▸ HERE
Diamond Sponsorship Opportunity ▸ HERE
Platinum Sponsorship Opportunity ▸ HERE
Gold and Silver Sponsorship Opportunities ▸ HERE
Bronze Sponsorship and Exhibitor Packages ▸ HERE
Benefits of Exhibiting at CloudEXPO 2019 ▸ HERE
CloudEXPO is the single event where technology buyers and vendors meet to experience and discus cloud computing and all that it entails. For more than a decade, sponsors and exhibitors of CloudEXPO benefit from unmatched branding, profile building and lead generation opportunities through our following unique tools. For more information on sponsorship, exhibit, and keynote opportunities call us at 954 242-0444 or contact us ▸ Here
- Featured on-site presentation and ongoing on-demand webcast exposure to a captive audience of industry decision-makers
- Showcase exhibition during our new extended dedicated expo hours
- Breakout Session Priority scheduling for Sponsors that have been guaranteed a 40-minute technical session
- Online advertising on 4,5 million article pages in SYS-CON's leading i-Technology Publications
- Capitalize on our Comprehensive Marketing efforts leading up to the show with print mailings, e-newsletters and extensive online media coverage
- Unprecedented PR Coverage: Unmatched editorial coverage on Cloud Computing Journal
- Tweetup to over 184,000 plus Twitter followers
- Press releases sent on major wire services to over 500 industry analysts
FinTech and Blockchain Are Now Part of CloudEXPO 2019 Program
Financial enterprises in New York City, London, Singapore, and other world financial capitals are embracing a new generation of smart, automated FinTech that eliminates many cumbersome, slow, and expensive intermediate processes from their businesses.
Accordingly, attendees at the upcoming 23rd CloudEXPO, June 24-26, 2019 at Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA will find fresh new content in full new FinTech & Enterprise Blockchain track.
DXWorldEXPO Showcases Cutting-Edge IoT, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Digital Transformation
Now is the time for a truly global DX event, to bring together the leading minds from the technology world in a conversation about Digital Transformation. DX encompasses the continuing technology revolution, and is addressing society's most important issues throughout the entire $78 trillion 21st-century global economy.
DXWorldEXPO® has organized these issues along 10 tracks, 22 keynotes and general sessions, and a faculty of 222 of the world's top speakers.
DXWorldEXPO® has three major themes on its conference agenda:
Technology - The Revolution Continues
Economy - The 21st Century Emerges
Society - The Big Issues
Global 2000 companies have more than US$40 trillion in annual revenue - more than 50% of the world's entire GDP. The Global 2000 spends a total of US$2.4 trillion annually on enterprise IT. The average Global 2000 company has US$11 billion in annual revenue. The average Global 2000 company spends more than $600 million annually on enterprise IT. Governments throughout the world spend another US$500 billion on IT - much of it dedicated to new Smart City initiatives.
For the past 10 years CloudEXPO® helped drive the migration to modern enterprise IT infrastructures, built upon the foundation of cloud computing. Today's hybrid, multiple cloud IT infrastructures integrate Big Data, analytics, blockchain, the IoT, mobile devices, and the latest in cryptography and enterprise-grade security.
Digital Transformation is the key issue driving the global enterprise IT business. DX is most prominent among Global 2000 enterprises and government institutions.
About DXWorldEXPO LLC
DXWorldEXPO LLC is a Lighthouse Point, Florida-based trade show company and the creator of DXWorldEXPO - Digital Transformation Conference & Expo. The company produces and presents the world's most influential technology events including CloudEXPO, DevOpsSUMMIT, and FinTechEXPO.
Moroccanoil®, the global leader in oil-infused beauty, is thrilled to announce the NEW Moroccanoil Color Depositing Masks, a collection of dual-benefit hair masks that deposit pure pigments while providing the treatment benefits of a deep conditioning mask. The collection consists of seven curated shades for commitment-free, beautifully-colored hair that looks and feels healthy.
Sep. 6, 2019 09:00 AM EDT
The textured-hair category is inarguably the hottest in the haircare space today. This has been driven by the proliferation of founder brands started by curly and coily consumers and savvy consumers who increasingly want products specifically for their texture type. This trend is underscored by the latest insights from NaturallyCurly's 2018 TextureTrends report, released today. According to the 2018 TextureTrends Report, more than 80 percent of women with curly and coily hair say they purcha...
Sep. 5, 2019 07:00 PM EDT
The textured-hair category is inarguably the hottest in the haircare space today. This has been driven by the proliferation of founder brands started by curly and coily consumers and savvy consumers who increasingly want products specifically for their texture type. This trend is underscored by the latest insights from NaturallyCurly's 2018 TextureTrends report, released today. According to the 2018 TextureTrends Report, more than 80 percent of women with curly and coily hair say they purcha...
Sep. 4, 2019 11:15 PM EDT
We all love the many benefits of natural plant oils, used as a deap treatment before shampooing, at home or at the beach, but is there an all-in-one solution for everyday intensive nutrition and modern styling?I am passionate about the benefits of natural extracts with tried-and-tested results, which I have used to develop my own brand (lemon for its acid ph, wheat germ for its fortifying action…). I wanted a product which combined caring and styling effects, and which could be used after shampo...
Sep. 4, 2019 11:00 PM EDT Reads: 313
The platform combines the strengths of Singtel's extensive, intelligent network capabilities with Microsoft's cloud expertise to create a unique solution that sets new standards for IoT applications," said Mr Diomedes Kastanis, Head of IoT at Singtel. "Our solution provides speed, transparency and flexibility, paving the way for a more pervasive use of IoT to accelerate enterprises' digitalisation efforts. AI-powered intelligent connectivity over Microsoft Azure will be the fastest connected pat...
Jul. 1, 2019 07:30 AM EDT
There are many examples of disruption in consumer space – Uber disrupting the cab industry, Airbnb disrupting the hospitality industry and so on; but have you wondered who is disrupting support and operations? AISERA helps make businesses and customers successful by offering consumer-like user experience for support and operations. We have built the world's first AI-driven IT / HR / Cloud / Customer Support and Operations solution.
Jun. 27, 2019 08:00 AM EDT
Codete accelerates their clients growth through technological expertise and experience. Codite team works with organizations to meet the challenges that digitalization presents. Their clients include digital start-ups as well as established enterprises in the IT industry. To stay competitive in a highly innovative IT industry, strong R&D departments and bold spin-off initiatives is a must. Codete Data Science and Software Architects teams help corporate clients to stay up to date with the mod...
Jun. 24, 2019 06:00 AM EDT
At CloudEXPO Silicon Valley, June 24-26, 2019, Digital Transformation (DX) is a major focus with expanded DevOpsSUMMIT and FinTechEXPO programs within the DXWorldEXPO agenda. Successful transformation requires a laser focus on being data-driven and on using all the tools available that enable transformation if they plan to survive over the long term. A total of 88% of Fortune 500 companies from a generation ago are now out of business. Only 12% still survive. Similar percentages are found throug...
Jun. 17, 2019 01:00 PM EDT
Druva is the global leader in Cloud Data Protection and Management, delivering the industry's first data management-as-a-service solution that aggregates data from endpoints, servers and cloud applications and leverages the public cloud to offer a single pane of glass to enable data protection, governance and intelligence-dramatically increasing the availability and visibility of business critical information, while reducing the risk, cost and complexity of managing and protecting it. Druva's...
Jun. 15, 2019 08:15 PM EDT
BMC has unmatched experience in IT management, supporting 92 of the Forbes Global 100, and earning recognition as an ITSM Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader for five years running. Our solutions offer speed, agility, and efficiency to tackle business challenges in the areas of service management, automation, operations, and the mainframe.
Jun. 15, 2019 01:00 PM EDT


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New Zealand Rugby
Chiefs set to bag Cruden
ESPNscrum Staff
July 14, 2011
Cruden will link up with All Blacks coach Wayne Smith at the Waikato franchise © Getty Images
The Chiefs look set to confirm the signing of All Blacks fly-half Aaron Cruden this week ahead of the 2012 Super Rugby season.
Chiefs boss Gary Dawson has said he has verbal confirmation from the 22-year-old but is waiting on his signature before officially announcing the capture. "We've just got some work around finalising the contract to get completed to make it 100 per cent," Dawson said, talking to The Waikato Times."We're just working through that process at the moment."
Cruden, who was weighing up offers from both the Chiefs and the Hurricanes for 2012, has missed out on All Blacks selection for this year's Tri-Nations squad. Cruden will link up with a familiar face in new Chiefs coach Dave Rennie when he arrives at Waikato as the two previously worked together at Manawatu and the New Zealand Under 20 side.
The signing of the six-cap Kiwi will be a huge boost to the Chiefs as they face losing both of their stand-offs with Stephen Donald apparently journeying to the northern hemisphere to line up for Bath while Mike Delany also appears to be seeking pastures new. The Chiefs are also rumoured to be chasing All Blacks centre Sonny Bill Williams though that move appears to be a way off.
© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.
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Wednesday, January 23, 2008
2 comments:
- jays shadow said...
great art work. i love how the imagination of ones mind can flow
- January 24, 2008 at 6:32 PM
- SeasonOfShadows.com said...
I like the new Brewing page. It's awesome! I hadn't been to your site for a week or so and when I clicked on the brewing button I didn't recognize things.
Glad to see you decided to go with the blog format. It has a lot of advantages. Are you enjoying it?
- January 26, 2008 at 3:48 PM
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)


text:
Released back in February - Valentine's Day to be precise - Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang's latest long-play release is both their first for five years and since departing long-term home Sub Pop - 20/20/20 is their own label. The former Galaxie 500 duo's USP hasn't changed - dreamy vocals collide with borderline psychedelic ambiance and traditional indie-pop choruses - and, similarly, the quality remains high.
Early songs like charm the listener effortlessly - the solo on 'A Second Life' is a dash of unabashed rock splendour on a record of apologetic understatement, whilst the trumpet of 'Malibran' is truly mournful - but the record peaks at one of its two cover versions. D&N's take on 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps' is sublime; the song's mood isn't dramatically altered from the original George Harrison version, but its delivery is slowed and the subsequent effect on the listener seems considerably greater. Again, subtle trumpet plays a noticeable part in its appeal. That said, the comparably sorrowful guitars of 'Ueno Station' and the title track are just as captivating.
Hardly a record you'd play to a potential partner during Valentine's courting, such are its melancholy undertones, but The Earth Is Blue is a potent lesson in deceptively simple but exquisitely emotive songwriting, and one that continues to reveal further charms many a listen later.
8Mike Diver's Score


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Fewer than 27,000 people have successfully signed up for health insurance through the glitch-plagued federal Obamacare website, the White House said Wednesday, giving Americans their first official glimpse of just how many people have managed to buy insurance through HealthCare.gov.
The White House also said that just over 106,000 people signed up for insurance through Obamacare overall since open enrollment's Oct. 1 launch, with the vast majority of them — more than 79,000 people — enrolling through state-run exchanges.
That is despite the fact that the federal website, whose rollout was plagued by technical woes the Obama administration is still scrambling to fix, is used by 36 states.
And the figure was barely one-fifth of the nearly 500,000 people administration officials had projected would sign up the first month of Obama's signature program, a numerical rebuke to the administration's ability to deliver on its promise. The 106,185 people who made it all the way through to selecting a plan represent just 1.5 percent of the 7 million people the administration hopes to enroll by next year.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said things will get better, and quickly. "There is no doubt the level of interest is strong," she said.
Close to 1 million Americans — 975,407, the White House said — had made it through the application process on the national and state exchanges and gotten eligibility determinations but had not yet selected an insurance plan, according to Wednesday's numbers. About half are within sight of having their plans lined up for the start of next year, the administration said.
Close to 400,000 more had been found eligible for Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program, it added.
The numbers landed amid a political storm on Capitol Hill. Democrats who had hoped to run for re-election next year on the success of the health care law are increasingly worried.
It's not only the website woes, but a wave of cancellation notices hitting constituents whose individual health insurance policies don't measure up to the law's requirements. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has scheduled an all-Democrats meeting Thursday with White House health care officials.
The administration has staked its credibility on turning the website around by the end of this month. From the president on down, officials have said that HealthCare.gov will be running smoothly for the vast majority of users by Nov. 30.
Some outside experts are concerned. "People are starting to get nervous because there is not enough indication from the government that things are on track," said Caroline Pearson, who runs the health reform practice at Avalere Health, a market analysis firm. "You wonder if there are still underlying programming problems that are causing the system to shut down when volume is high."
Administration officials have not specified what "running smoothly" means, or what would constitute the "vast majority" of users.
On daily media calls, Health and Human Services department officials have described a situation where problems get fixed and then new issues crop up as consumers are able to venture further into the website. It's a bit like traffic heading back to a city late on a summer Sunday: You get past one jam, and odds are you run into another.
There was a hopeful sign this Tuesday when Julie Bataille, HHS communications director for the rollout, said that 275,000 people who got hung up in the early days are being invited back to try to complete their applications. The administration is sending the email invitations in batches, so as not to risk any disruptions. White House chief technology officer Todd Park told Congress on Wednesday that system response times are much faster, and error rates have plunged.
But other signals have raised questions. In a blog post on Saturday, Bataille quoted chief White House troubleshooter Jeff Zients as saying improvements would continue in "December, January, February — just like you do with any website."
Asked whether the Nov. 30 target was still achievable, Bataille said on Tuesday, "I want to be clear that our plan remains the same. We are on a path to make improvements week by week so that by the end of November, the site will be working for the vast majority of users."
It's unlikely that Congress will let the effort keep floundering much beyond Nov. 1. Millions of lawmakers' constituents are losing current individual policies that don't meet the law's requirements. To guarantee they don't experience a break in coverage they would have to select new plans by Dec. 15. That's a major political problem for Democrats who so far have stood by the president.
The main federal website is central because other enrollment routes, from call centers to counselors to paper applications received by mail, all depend on having that access.
"They either need to get HealthCare.gov up and functioning smoothly, or they need to come up with work-arounds so enrollments can be processed without going through the website," Pearson said.
In Congress earlier Wednesday, the House's chief investigator plunged into the technical issues behind the dysfunctional rollout.
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is investigating a long list of issues: insufficient testing, possible security flaws, design shortcomings — even allegations of political meddling.
But as his hearing went on, there didn't seem to be a "smoking gun" behind the technical failure that has mortified supporters of the health care law and cheered its opponents. The technology's cost to taxpayers: north of $600 million and climbing.
It was the sixth major congressional hearing since computerized insurance markets went live Oct. 1 and millions of consumers encountered frozen screens. The oversight committee was sharply divided along partisan lines.
"Established best practices of our government were not used in this case," said Issa. As a result, the law's promise of affordable health insurance "does not exist today in a meaningful way." Like other Republicans, Issa wants the law repealed, not fixed.
Ranking Democrat Elijah Cummings of Maryland questioned Issa's fairness.
Addressing Issa directly, Cummings said: "Over the past month, instead of working in a bipartisan manner to improve the website, you've politicized this issue by repeatedly making unfounded allegations."


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Solar Irradiance Reconstruction (Lean, 2004)Entry ID: NOAA_NCDC_PALEO_2004-035
Abstract: Updated solar irradiance reconstruction. (See also Lean et al., 1995).
Included are time series of annual mean irradiance from 1610 to 2000
of just the 11 year solar irradiance cycle, plus the 11 year
cycle with a background component. See Lean (2000) for discussion of
the amplitude of the background component.
Because of the dependence of the Sun's irradiance on solar activity,
reductions ... from contemporary levels are expected during the
seventeenth century Maunder Minimum. New reconstructions of spectral
irradiance are developed since 1600 with absolute scales traceable to
spacebased observations. The long-term variations track the envelope
of group sunspot numbers and have amplitudes consistent with the range
of Ca II brightness in Sun-like stars. Estimated increases since 1675
are 0.7%, 0.2% and 0.07% in broad ultraviolet, visible/near infrared
and infrared spectral bands, with a total irradiance increase of 0.2%.
Related URL
Geographic Coverage
Spatial coordinates
Data Set Citation
Dataset Originator/Creator: Lean, J.
Dataset Title: Solar Irradiance Reconstruction
Dataset Series Name: GBP PAGES/WDCA CONTRIBUTION SERIES NUMBER: 2004-035
Dataset Release Date: July 2004
Dataset Release Place: Boulder, CO
Dataset Publisher: IGBP PAGES/World Data Center for Paleoclimatology
Issue Identification: 2004-035
Other Citation Details: NOAA/NCDC Paleoclimatology ProgramOnline Resource: ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/climate_forcing/solar_variab...
Temporal Coverage
Start Date: 1610-01-01Stop Date: 2000-12-31
Paleo Temporal Coverage
Paleo Start Date: 400 ybp
Paleo Stop Date: 0 ybp
Chrono Unit:
Location Keywords
Data Resolution
Temporal Resolution: yearly
Science Keywords
ISO Topic Category
Ancillary Keywords
Data Set Progress
Originating Center
Data Center
Distribution Media: online www
Distribution Format: ascii
Fees: none
Role: INVESTIGATOR
Phone: 202-767-5116
Fax: 202-404-7997
Email: jlean at ssd5.nrl.navy.mil
Contact Address:
Code 7673L Naval Research Laboratory
City: Washington
Province or State: DC
Postal Code: 20375
Country: USA
Lean, J. 2000. Evolution of the Sun's Spectral Irradiance Since the Maunder Minimum. Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 27, No. 16, pp. 2425-2428, Aug. 15, 2000.
Lean, J., J. Beer, and R. Bradley. 1995. Reconstruction of Solar Irradiance Since 1610: Implications for Climate Change. Geophysical Research Letters, v.22, No. 23, pp 3195-3198, December 1, 1995.
Extended Metadata Properties
(Click to view more)
Creation and Review Dates
DIF Creation Date: 2004-09-17
Last DIF Revision Date: 2004-09-17